Investment Objectives

This fund seeks to invest in culture in the City of Dallas, including but not limited to cultural events, concerts, art exhibitions, festivals, markets, rentals, web technology, media enterprises, structural operations, urban planning, real estate development, and small businesses. This fund will prioritize opportunities to invest in creatives and community of color, but will also invest in other opportunities across the city regardless of race and ethnicity in an equitable manner.  

Principal Investment Strategies

The CEIF fund will take advantage of the funding gap that exists in the area of culture with creatives of color and communities of color, as well as generally throughout the city. This funding gap will give the fund access to established and proven opportunities, as well as emerging opportunities. Identifying opportunities where investments of $250 to $500 can make an outsize impact and return will be the core of fund activities.  As a small fund, the CEIF can be nimble and decisive with investments, enabling the fund to achieve a high volume and variety of deals. As there are very few outlets for investment available to creatives in Dallas, this should enable the fund to have the deal flow needed to make high quality investments across a diversified area of culture. The fund will be active in the community when it comes to bridging gaps, and creating opportunities, sharing our networks and knowledge, alongside our resources to those we invest in to ensure their success and maximize our return.

Fund Management

The fund will be managed by Darryl Ratcliff, who is a poet and social practice artist with a curatorial and writing practice. Ratcliff is a member of the award winning Michelada Think Tank (MTT), an art collective who works nationally on the issue of cultural equity. Ratcliff’s other current projects include Ash Studios and Creating Our Future. Recently, Ratcliff was the Community Engagement Associate at SMU Meadows School of the Art and the inaugural artist-in-residence for Rick Lowe’s Trans.lation Vickery Meadow initiated by the Nasher Sculpture Center.  Ratcliff most recently curated, Viola Delgado’s Transformation of a Thought, the first retrospective of a Latina artist in Dallas, at the Latino Cultural Center in Spring 2015, and has curated over a dozen solo shows since 2011. As a noted writer and thinker on art and culture Ratcliff has written for Glasstire, Centraltrack, and the Dallas Morning News. From 2009-2013, Ratcliff ran the company The Green Bandana Group which focused on art commerce and received a Best of Dallas award from The Dallas Observer in 2013. From 2008-2010, Ratcliff held both the Series 7 and 66 licenses and worked as a securities agent and investment advisor for AXA Financial.  Projects Ratcliff has been involved with have been featured in the Dallas Morning News, D Magazine, FD Luxe,  Glasstire, Art in America, Hyperallergic, Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, to name a few. Ratcliff has also been the recipient of numerous awards and honors. Most recently he is the recipient of the City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs Special Projects grant award.