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2025-07-31-accounts

COMPANY NO. 03705562

CHARITY NO. 1085607 COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE

ANNUAL REPORT AND FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

Photo: Alaor Filho

2024-25

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

3 Introduction

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INTRODUCTION

Professor Kathryn Richardson Head of the School of the Arts Queen Mary University of London

As we move into the School of the Arts’ second year of operation, we are delighted to affirm the deepening and strengthening of the relationship between People’s Palace Projects (PPP) and the School of the Arts.

PPP was born in the School’s Department of Drama in 1997, and across the School and PPP, we share the vision that the arts and cultural practice can create positive impact, change lives, advocate for environmental and social justice, and provide space for marginal identities and histories to be included, seen, and heard. Our shared values permeate our decision-making, guide our behaviours and inspire us all in our daily work.

A clear example of PPP’s commitment to positive impact and changing lives is the re-creation of the Kamukuwaká Cave, vandalised some years ago, and its journey to COP 2025. In a region whose material culture is defined by impermanence, the Sacred Cave of Kamukuwaká provides an insight into Xingu cosmogonic and ethno-historic cartography. The project of re-creation, undertaken with PPP and using high-resolution 3D-imaging technologies, will have real-world impact in reclaiming the cave and its surroundings as indigenous lands in a context of unprecedented political threat to the Amazon rainforest. The opening festival for the cave, and ongoing project, used live performance, film, new media, and endangered languages and cultures, and in this way reflects the School’s focus on all its academic disciplines and its commitment to cultural heritage and social justice.

A second highlight of the past year is the recognition of the PPP team’s dedication to changing lives through arts and cultural practice with the bestowing of the MBE on its Artistic Director and founder, Professor Paul Heritage. This honour acknowledges Paul’s services to UK/Brazil collaboration through creative practice in the King’s New Year’s Honours list of 2025, a date which also marked the 200th anniversary of Brazil/UK diplomatic relations.

As PPP moves into its 29th year, we continue to strengthen the relationship between PPP and our university, Queen Mary University of London. Over this last year, the University has committed to maintaining PPP with the agreement to appoint a new directorship to take us into the future.

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THIS YEAR

Project Activity

2024-25 delivered the spectacular culmination of two major long-term projects run by the project strands Indigenous Exchange and Climate Action, and Arts, Health and Wellbeing.

In October 2024, our six-year-long Kamukuwaká Cave programme saw the opening of a cultural centre in the Xingu region of Brazil, built to house the life-size replica of the sacred cave. For Brazilian Indigenous communities, for whom this cave is their origin story and a physical representation of their cultural heritage, this was a critical moment of resistance, connection and celebration. Meanwhile, the OLA project concluded five years of research and community engagement, with outputs including a short film, a theatre production and a toolkit. The final stages saw nine Young Ambassadors from Argentina, Colombia and Peru visiting London in April 2025 for a cultural exchange programme with UK arts organisations and public audiences about mental health, resilience and creativity. Elsewhere, PPP’s support for the development of social justice projects including The Verbatim Formula, Museum of Colour and Agency of Change continues to form the third key pillar for our future programme of activity.

Photo: Alaor Filho

Forward Planning

QMUL’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences gave PPP the very welcome commitment this year that it will support the appointment of a new director post in anticipation of Paul Heritage’s retirement. PPP’s board and staff team have worked closely together to develop a five-year plan for leadership transition, future work, and capacity-building. The plan positions our Indigenous exchange and climate action work alongside our creativity and mental health programme as two key strands of future research and project activity.

Photo: PPP Archive

This year has strongly evidenced the level of financial pressure across the sector, from arts funding to research grants to trusts and foundations. In this challenging environment, we are pleased by the fundraising successes achieved by various projects that secure work several years ahead. As we close the year, PPP looks forward to our next activities, which will draw on our creative and organisational learnings and continue building and strengthening networks, collaborating with artists, partners and communities, and championing the application of the arts and creativity in driving transformation.

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DEVELOPMENT, ACTIVITIES AND ACHIEVEMENTS

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PROJECT ACTIVITY

INDIGENOUS EXCHANGE AND CLIMATE ACTION

This work is rooted in the Indigenous Territories of the Brazilian Amazon region, supporting and extending cultural exchange between Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, activists, and academics.

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PPP’s work in this area has had one of its most significant years, with the delivery of the Kamukuwaká Cave replica to the Xingu Indigenous Territory and the expansion of our advocacy on climate and culture. Over 2024-5, we gained new partners in other regions of Brazil (the Amazon and Ceará), worked closely with the Brazilian Government (including the Ministry of Culture and the Brazilian Embassy in London), and secured funding from the British Council and Instituto Guimarães Rosa (Brazil’s Foreign Affairs Institute) to mark the UK–Brazil Season of Culture. For the first time, PPP joined our long-time Indigenous partners – the Wauja and Kuikuro – at Acampamento Terra Livre (ATL) in Brasília.

The impact of this work extended beyond Indigenous territory, raising PPP’s profile in the cultural heritage and climate sectors. Media coverage highlighted the importance of protecting cultural heritage through global collaboration and amplified the voices of the Wauja people in their fight to safeguard the original Kamukuwaká cave.

Kamukuwaká: Replica Inauguration, Short Film and VR Experience

The new Cultural and Monitoring Centre in the Wauja village of Ulupuwene now houses the full-size replica of the Kamukuwaká Cave with its recovered engravings. Together with the Ulupuwene Association, and with financial support from QMUL and Iron Mountain Foundation, PPP organised a complex 10-day logistical journey to the heart of the Amazon forest after the cave replica’s arrival by ship and truck. The installation was carried out by Factum Foundation artists, who travelled from Madrid to the Xingu, while the PPP team hosted ten international and Brazilian journalists invited to report on the arrival and inauguration. Authorities from the Brazilian Government, Indigenous leaders and environmental NGOs also attended. Following a historic ritual, the unveiling of the Kamukuwaká replica was a deeply emotional moment for the Wauja, drawing over 300 people to Ulupuwene.

Photo: Alaor Filho

"This replica embodies our strength, our struggle, and our unity. Our entire history is now here." – Cacique Elewoka Waurá

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Scan to view ‘A Journey of Restoration’

On the same trip, PPP coordinated two film crews to shoot an institutional video and a short film commissioned by Iron Mountain, and a VR/360° immersive video funded by grants from QMUL (to PPP) and Itaú Rumos (to Piratá Waurá). The filming also served as capacity-building for young Indigenous videomakers, who worked as assistants on both productions. The first half of 2025 saw the creative processes of scripting, editing and developing these works, in which PPP was deeply involved. Premieres will take place in late 2025/2026.

International cultural exchange: Exquisite Corpse

A small seed funding grant from the British Council enabled PPP to collaborate with Welsh theatremakers Dirty Protest and commission six groups of artists, three in Wales and three in Brazil, to create one ‘part’ of a performance ‘body’, with only one clue from the group ahead of them before starting their process of creation. The Exquisite Corpse project, directed by Catherine Paskell with Paul Heritage, was initiated in an online meeting between all the artists, who shared how they felt within their personal, local and global contexts; what connected them, and what felt meaningful to them in the present moment.

Drawing on these themes, the Exquisite Corpse began its gestation with the Wauja artists living in the Xingu Indigenous Territories in the Amazon, who recorded five minutes of audio-visual material and selected only five photos and five words to pass on to the next group in Wrexham, Wales. The journey continued via similar handovers from Wrexham to the Complexo da Maré, the largest complex of favelas in Rio de Janeiro, to the Welsh Rhondda Valley, to Brazilian mining state Minas Gerais, and finally to Caernarfon in Wales. The baton was finally passed to digital dramaturg Jorge Lizalde, who wove all the content together into one digital performance piece, creating a story about how we live together and demonstrating the power of connecting artists across geographies. A public showing at Tŷ Pawb in Wrexham in December 2024, incorporating Welsh, English, Portuguese and Waurá languages, marked the official launch of the British Council’s Year of UK-Brazil Collaboration, which commemorates 200 years of diplomatic relations between the nations.

Preparing for Brazil’s hosting of the COP30 Climate talks

PPP this year expanded its advocacy for integrating culture into UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) processes. In November 2024, our strand leader for Indigenous Cultural Exchange and Climate Action, Thiago Jesus, was the curator of the first G20 International Seminar on Culture and Climate Change, organised as part of the G20 Culture Working Group. During this event, G20 parties adopted the historic Salvador da Bahia Declaration, which for the first time explicitly linked culture and climate change in G20 negotiations, calling for the integration of ‘cultural heritage, arts, and creative industries into national climate adaptation and mitigation strategies’. Thiago also represented PPP and QMUL at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, which saw a second High-level dialogue on Culture-Based Climate Action, organised by the Group of Friends for Culture-Based Climate Action (GFCBA). PPP is a knowledge partner for the GFCBA, the first UNFCCC member states group dedicated to coordinated action in support of culture’s integration into climate policy, and COP29 further cemented PPP’s relationship with key Brazilian stakeholders in culture and climate policy, including Tulio Andrade (COP30 Chief Strategy and Alignment Officer), Marcele Oliveira (COP30 Youth Champion), Ursula Vidal (Secretary of Culture of the State of Pará), and Marcello Brito (COP30 Special Envoy for Amazonian subnational governments): as well as strengthening alliances between international cultural and climate policymakers and actors working in the Amazon region in the leadup to COP30.

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At the outset of 2025, PPP do Brasil was commissioned to deliver Arts for Climate with Julie’s Bicycle and PPP as part of the UK–Brazil Season of Culture. Three collectives of artists from Rio de Janeiro, Ilha do Marajó (Pará), and Alagoas were selected to create original works and participate in a training programme designed by Julie’s Bicycle. This project will be featured in We Make Tomorrow , a global mobilisation placing culture at the heart of climate action in the lead-up to COP30.

In January, PPP joined a preliminary visit to Fortaleza to explore collaborations on Brazil’s energy transition. The programme, supported by QMUL seed funding, brought together QMUL (Geography and Drama), the Federal University of Ceará (UFC)/Labocart, PPP, and community partners including Indigenous, riverside and quilombola groups, alongside local artists. Site visits, community dialogues and a seminar at UFC laid the groundwork for developing critical social cartography and artistic approaches to highlight the social and local environmental impacts of new green hydrogen plants.

February saw PPP partnering with the NGO Amazônia de Pé to deliver a three-day gathering in Alter do Chão, Pará, bringing together 30 participants: artists, cultural practitioners, masters of popular traditions, socioenvironmental and climate activists, researchers, environmentalists and communicators – mainly from organisations and communities across the Amazon. As a result, we released a mini-documentary and began developing a bilingual booklet and website to make the intersection of culture and climate activism more accessible to the general public. These will be launched and distributed to 100 cultural venues across Brazil as part of Virada Cultural Amazônia de Pé in September 2025 and at COP30 in Belém. The preliminary results of this gathering were presented by PPP at a two-day event at the British Council’s headquarters in London, organised by AHRC and DCMS, the funders of the project, together with the QMUL Impact fund.

In April, Paul Heritage and Pedro Ferreira joined Piratá Waurá at the Indigenous Peoples’ March during the Free Land Camp in Brasília, supporting our partners by reaffirming the ongoing struggle to incorporate the sacred cave of Kamukuwaká and its surroundings into the Xingu Indigenous Territory. PPP worked with partners on a large banner raising public awareness and advocating for Indigenous rights to have the sacred cave formally recognised as part of their land.

At London Climate Week in June 2025, PPP partnered with the Brazilian Embassy in London to lead a discussion on climate and culture. Using the ‘Long Table’ methodology created by PPP Associate Artist Lois Weaver, we encouraged participants to share ideas that could inspire climate action. The conversation was chaired by COP30 youth climate champion Marcele Oliveira and Magda Gomes, with our Communications and Indigenous & Climate Projects Manager, Yula Rocha, facilitating the follow-up session featuring Brazil’s Minister of Indigenous Peoples, Sônia Guajajara.

Looking ahead, PPP is preparing for our participation in COP30 in the Amazon, where we will showcase some of this year’s key accomplishments and join international debates on climate and culture.

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PROJECT ACTIVITY

ARTS, HEALTH AND WELLBEING

We explore the interaction between arts and health, increasingly recognised as important by a huge variety of sector stakeholders. Our research into the impacts of such engagement allows us to convene conversations, share knowledge, and develop new strategies.

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Over the past year, PPP’s work at the intersection of arts, health and wellbeing, particularly focusing on young people, has consolidated and expanded across the UK, Latin America, and South Asia. Building on long-term collaborations with international artists, community-based and arts organisations, and academic partners, our projects have produced films, training, and research outputs that demonstrate the transformative role of arts and culture in health and wellbeing.

OLA

The research programme OLA: Building resilience and resources to reduce mental distress in young people in Latin America concluded in March 2025 after surveying 2,402 adolescents across Buenos Aires (Argentina), Bogotá (Colombia), and Lima (Peru). PPP has worked with the research and arts partners throughout the five-year project to conduct arts-based research activities. Furthermore, we created the Young Ambassadors initiative, which brought together nine young artists from the three cities to discuss the research findings and promote them with their peers and communities, reaching approximately 2,000 young people.

In this final year, PPP led activities focusing on consolidating and expanding the impact of the YAs’ work. In March 2025, alongside the Young Ambassadors, we produced the final seminar’s arts programme which included a performance of Gris , a play created by the Peruvian young artists to discuss mental health challenges faced by youth in Lima. Then, in April 2025, PPP hosted the nine Young Ambassadors in London for a week-long visit, during which they delivered workshops for UK youth arts groups including Sounds Like Chaos, Camden Youth Theatre, Spotlight Youth Centre, Black Minds Matter, Battersea Arts Centre and The Agency. They also took part in a seminar showcasing OLA’s findings at UCL alongside the research project’s principal investigators, Professor Vicky Bird and Professor Stefan Priebe. Finally, the documentary Caminar Distinto (Walking Our Way) , directed by Lizet Chavez, produced by PPP and co-created with the Young Ambassadors, premiered internationally and won Best Documentary Short at the Toronto International Short Film Awards.

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Photos: OLA Archive
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Cultural Strategies in Favelas (Manguinhos and Cidade de Deus)

The documentary Coisa de Favela (A Favela Thing) , produced with a majority local, Black, and womenled crew, was completed in July 2025 and submitted to national and international film festivals. The project not only amplified favela voices through film but also informed new methodologies of cultural mapping that are being adapted in other territories. The film’s director, Franciele Campos, was a coresearcher in the first stage of the project and supported the mapping of sociocultural initiatives in Manguinhos.

Elsewhere, in Cidade de Deus, the Networks of Culture and Care project mapped 45 initiatives linking culture and mental health, culminating in a digital catalogue, which will be soon launched. The participatory research included training for local residents as researchers, emphasising co-production and community-led evidence.

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Mental Health Toolkit

In December 2024, our team also participated in the third edition of Rema Maré (Maré Mental Health Week), an engagement and outreach series of events which PPP co-created alongside Redes da Maré as a result of the Building the Barricades research project (2018-22). In this third edition, Rema Maré mobilised 234 participants through training, cultural events, and debates on mental health care in favelas .

Photos: PPP Archive

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LatAm Centre

Building on the mapping methodology developed through Cultural Strategies , PPP contributed to the NIHR Centre for Community Management of Non-communicable Diseases in Latin America (LatAm Centre)’s work in Bolivia, Colombia, and Guatemala, embedding cultural mapping and participatory methods into the co-creation of health interventions that are both context-specific and communityowned. The local community teams from each country were trained and then proceeded to identify strategies deeply rooted in local identities, such as community theatre, dance, muralism, traditional cooking, health corridors and sports, to support future NCD prevention proposals. As Daisy Bin, a community connection coordinator in Guatemala, explained, the work meant:

Photos: LatAm Archive

“a deeply gratifying immersion… to investigate the symbolic value of the different expressions of art and culture,” sparking “a revaluation of art as a vehicle to redefine health, especially from its emotional dimension.”

PIECEs: Participatory Theatre for Psychosis

Another project concluding in 2025, PIECEs embedded participatory arts into mental health research on psychosis. Following training, knowledge exchange and coproduction with local teams, over 90 performances from the project’s theatre groups using Theatre of the Oppressed techniques reached over 3,000 people in Karachi and Chennai, challenging stigma and opening dialogue in hospitals, communities, and festivals.

The programme has also trained earlycareer researchers, supported lived experience advisory panels, and produced sustainability tools including Voices in Practice: A Guide for Participatory Mental Health Research . PPP’s support helped transform theatre from a dissemination tool into a recognised method of coproduction and advocacy in mental health.

Photos: PIECEs Archive

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Feminist Activism among Youth in Brazil (FAYB)

Building on previous collaborations on gender-focused projects with Professor Cathy McIlwaine from King’s College, FAYB is a two-year project funded by the AHRC, engaging young women in Maré and Durham in arts-based feminist activism to prevent gender-based violence. By July 2025, 19 young women had participated in 19 workshops exploring feminism, identity, and activism. These participants are working to curate WOW Festivals in Rio and Durham (October 2025), showcasing artworks, performances, and debates.

Photo: FAYB Archive

Uma Só Voz (With One Voice)

PPP’s W1V Choir in Rio de Janeiro, led by Ricardo Branco (Rico), continues at full steam, having carried out over 30 rehearsals and 13 performances for more than 4,800 people during the course of this year. Recomeçar é Possível (New Beginnings) , a new project involving W1V participants and focusing on homeless people, led by PPP do Brasil, has been approved and is now in its initial planning stages. This is an important milestone as we prepare to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Choir next year.

Academic Presentations

This year, PPP’s Arts, Health and Wellbeing projects were the subject of roundtable discussions, debates, lectures, courses, and workshops at academic events in Brazil and the UK. Events we participated in include ABRASME’s 9th Brazilian Congress on Mental Health; a seminar on participatory cartography, public health and social justice; and a discussion on public and mental health across favelas and peripheries. Through these activities, we sought to promote the dissemination of methodologies and research findings, consolidating PPP’s academic work and expanding partnerships within and outside universities.

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PROJECT ACTIVITY

RESISTANCE AND TRANSFORMATION

PPP’s ongoing mission is to bring artists, activists, academics, and audiences together for projects that address a wide range of social justice and human rights issues. We want to make changes not just to people’s lives, but also to public policy, and to add our voice to wider social, political, and cultural movements that are calling for radical change and a more equitable, inclusive and just world.

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Aawaaz Audio Drama

This year, PPP partnered with the National Academy of Performing Arts (NAPA) from Karachi, Pakistan, to deliver Aawaaz Audio Drama, a new initiative aiming to revive the art of audio storytelling in Pakistan. Blending modern technologies with traditional storytelling, sound design and effects celebrating Pakistan’s rich history of radio drama, the project supported playwrights, voice actors, and audio producers to create immersive audio experiences, preserve cultural heritage, and explore new avenues for artistic expression.

Three writers were selected by NAPA and undertook a course of training, workshops, and mentorship, including PPP masterclasses taught by Mojisola Adebayo and Avaes Mohammed in audio drama scriptwriting. In spring 2025, PPP hosted the writers for a week of cultural exchange activity in the UK that included masterclasses from Kate Rowland, Paul Heritage, and Vik Sivalingam; a live seminar and multimedia exhibition at the QMUL BLOC cinema; and engagement with London theatre. The writers also recorded a podcast and a rehearsed English reading of their scripts.

At the heart of Aawaaz is a commitment to artistic exchange between Pakistan and the UK, and the fostering of cultural exchange, skill development and artistic innovation. The project brought together earlycareer and established practitioners working across scriptwriting, voice performance, direction and sound design. In doing so, it created space for dialogue between different narrative traditions, production contexts, and creative approaches.

Photos: NAPA Archive

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Museum of Colour

Museum of Colour CIC (MoC) is a heritage and creativity social enterprise incubated at People’s Palace Projects. It is building a digital museum that explores, celebrates, and raises recognition of the contribution made by people of colour to the nation’s culture, specifically in film, television and the arts from 1766 to 2016. Over the past year, MoC has undertaken a wide range of activities in co-production with PPP that continue to advance its mission of rebalancing the cultural record.

Microsite Development

As part of A Very British Rhythm (AVBR), MoC worked with researcher Ezinda Franklin-Houtzager to consider how best to expand MoC’s digital presence. At the end of 2024, it drew on Ezinda’s insights to develop a companion website to our museum, explaining our background, processes, and projects. The microsite also includes In Their Honour , a page dedicated to celebrating artists who have passed. The first tribute honours Agenda Brown, a visionary creative entrepreneur, visual artist and photographer. The microsite will launch publicly in September 2025.

Triangle of Unity Festival

MoC took part in the Triangle of Unity Festival, which explores how history connects us through the transatlantic triangular trade route linking Great Britain, Africa and the Americas. The festival celebrated the arts, culture and innovation of the Atlantic Triangle through food, performance, panel discussions, art displays and The World Reimagined globe tours. MoC collaborated with Cooperative Innovations and Virtual Umbrella to preview its first virtual exhibition, Respect Due , using VR headsets.

Liberatory Archive

In November 2024, MoC joined the Liberatory Archive learning circle, a national network advancing global majority archival resurgence. The programme focuses on rethinking the infrastructures of archives, museums and other institutions of memory, while Portrait: Grace Lee resisting the increasing datafication of heritage. As a pilot project, Liberatory Archive is convening communities of practice, building collective skills, and creating resources to establish a global knowledge commons.

Postal Museum Loan

April marked a milestone for MoC, its our first portrait loan was displayed at the Postal Museum in London. The museum requested Grace Lee’s portrait of Robert Wedderburn, originally commissioned for our My Words exhibition. It is being shown in the Voices of Resistance – Slavery and Post in the Caribbean exhibition. At the summer launch event, MoC’s founder-director and PPP Associate, Samenua Sesher OBE, spoke on a panel about the value of portraiture in providing visibility to those historically overlooked.

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Funding Plus: Research Project

In May 2025, MoC received support from Esmée Fairbairn Foundation for a research project led by Ezinda Franklin-Houtzager. A previous study she had conducted with MoC revealed strong public appetite for a physical MoC presence. Given the time and funds required, and today’s economic and fundraising climate, MoC is now researching the demand and possibilities for such a space. This work will explore what a physical museum could look like, where it might be based, and who its visitors might be.

A Very British Rhythm: Moving Histories

Photo: MoC Archive

Moving Histories was the concluding activity of MoC’s A Very British Rhythm exhibition in coproduction with PPP. In partnership with Stepney All Saints School, students learned about dancer Ram Gopal and his contributions to British dance, before creating animation films inspired by his life. Facilitators Germma Orleans-Thompson and Nia Fekri guided the workshops, and in May the students proudly shared their films at QMUL's BLOC Cinema. Seeing their work on the big screen was a highlight, and MoC plans to share the films at future events.

Keeping it Real: The Protest and the Play

As part of our sixth exhibition, Keeping it Real , MoC produced a podcast to mark the anniversaries of two cancelled plays: Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s Behzti (2004) and Brett Bailey’s Exhibit B (2014). Presented by Samenua Sesher and actor-playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah, the series explored questions around artistic freedom, cultural ownership and censorship. These plays, cancelled amidst protests and national debate, served as entry points for wider reflection on who has the right to tell certain stories and whether such works would be staged today.

Keeping it Real: Portraits

Closing the year, MoC launched the physical strand of Keeping it Real , our sixth exhibition curated by Samenua Sesher and Joy Francis. The exhibition celebrates 20 under-recognised non-fiction writers of colour whose critical ideas and lived experiences have shaped British attitudes over 250 years. Six newly commissioned portraits are now displayed at the Holburne Museum and the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath, while the remaining 14 writers are represented through typographic collages by illustrator Naki Narh on MoC’s digital platform.

The Holburne hosts Naomi Shewa’s portraits of historian Ron Ramdin, abolitionist Ottobah Cugoano, and political leader Dadabhai Naoroji. At the Victoria Art Gallery, Shannon Bono’s portraits of activist Claudia Vera Jones, physician and writer Dr Ghada Karmi, and freedom fighter Ellen Craft are on show. Together, these works give overdue visibility to thinkers whose contributions have shaped British society but remain undercelebrated.

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“For us, this is a beginning. There are many more non-fiction writers we would like to recognise, and we will do so in the future. We are delighted to share this work within existing collections.” – Samenua Sesher

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The Verbatim Formula

In 2024–2025, The Verbatim Formula (TVF) continued to strengthen its role as a pioneering arts-based project that amplifies the voices of care-experienced young people (CEYP). This year’s work focused on deepening long-term partnerships with local authorities, refining participatory tools, and expanding creative practices that place young people with lived experience at the heart of dialogue about care. It held regular core strategic meetings and co-design sessions throughout the year, produced a public event at the National Theatre, and participated in over 10 events and conferences.

Creative Care

TVF continued its intergenerational and collaborative Working Parties, holding co-design and coproduction sessions supporting CEYP to develop creative and leadership skills. During the latter half of 2024, two of the new participants from the Foundling Museum activities joined the Working Party group, bringing fresh perspectives and strengthening the team. This phase of the work was focused on advocating for arts education as social justice for care-experienced young people, and TVF Core Team and Co-Researchers began co-leading steering groups with education and arts professionals to hear about their experiences and share CEYP experiences. These efforts culminated in a landmark crosssector event at The Clore Learning Studio at the National Theatre in January 2025. Co-designed and coproduced by TVF Core Team and the team of CEYP Co-Researchers, the event celebrated and advocated for accessible arts practices and learning opportunities for all young people, regardless of background. The event brought together approximately 45 participants, including CEYP from London and key stakeholders in children’s care and arts education, with a panel discussion facilitated by the CoResearchers and the Core Team following the performance.

Photos: TVF Archive

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Resource Pack

Photos: TVF Archive

In parallel, TVF strengthened its partnerships with the Newham Youth Empowerment Service and Wandsworth Children in Care Council, while establishing a new partnership with the Children’s Active Involvement Service (CAIS) in Islington, to create a resource that supports Participation Officers in Children in Care Councils (CiCCs). A central achievement was the development of the Creative Care Resource, co-designed with young people and participatory officers. TVF worked alongside content strategist and designer Ana Bender to develop Prototype 1 of the Creative Care resource, later presented in the National Theatre event. The resource was initially designed as a physical card deck, using interactive flashcards and storytelling methods to support engagement sessions with CiCCs, and enabling young people’s lived experiences to guide systemic change. Tested with CEYP and Participatory Officers in Newham in December 2024, CEYP were able to use the cards for reflection and meaningful discussions about their experiences, while Co-Researchers and the Core Team gathered valuable feedback.

Responding to calls for a more interactive, engaging, and responsive resource for CEYPs, TVF Core Team and Co-Researchers applied for the QMUL Impact Fund to develop Prototype 2, a digital version of the resource. Collaborative planning and design sessions continued through the first half of 2025, ranging from online sessions for content development and in-person workshops for media production with the Co-Researchers. Prototype 2 was designed around arts-based activities, helping CEYP reflect on their experiences, connect with peers and professionals, and share their suggestions for improving the care system. A new testing session in Newham gathered further feedback to refine the resource.

Next Steps

Looking ahead, TVF is planning deliveries for the second year of the Portal Trust project, sharing and showcasing the digital resource across up to six London CiCCs to foster broader engagement. New partnerships are already being established with additional boroughs, including Islington, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, City of London, and Lewisham. TVF has also made contact with the Digital Youth Agency and will disseminate the Digital Resource through its network. It will take part in a training day for Virtual School staff at Tower Hamlets.

TVF remains committed to working with CEYP as active co-researchers and leaders, continuing to develop arts-driven approaches to social justice in the care system. Feedback from these sessions will inform the next stages of resource development, aiming to create a flexible, scalable, and accessible tool for councils nationwide. TVF will also assess the extent to which Co-Researchers experience ownership and agency in decision-making, while seeking further funding to continue enhancing the digital resource.

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STAGES

The STAGES Initiative develops human rights education projects in schools and youth and community groups in the UK. Over the past eight years, our multidisciplinary team of theatre practitioners, educators, and public health specialists from the UK, Northern Cyprus, Bulgaria, Nigeria, and the US has collaborated with university students, primary and secondary school teachers, community members and non-profit organisations in the UK to create the STAGES Performing Arts Programme. This is a way to explore human rights not as abstract concepts, but as participatory performance acts.

The STAGES method creates performance by pairing a social issue, or a current or historic event, with a human rights framework (the Ten Stages of Genocide). These ten stages demonstrate how the erosion of human and civil rights begin in the ways that we relate to each other, on a person-to-person basis. They show how the normal, everyday human process of classifying (Stage 1) can stray into stages of Discrimination and Dehumanisation (Stages 3 and 4).

Our project is called ‘STAGES’ because it looks at how discrimination manifests itself, from excluding behaviours all the way through to large scale human rights violations. Using the STAGES Toolkit exercises with prompts for discussions, new ideas for taking action can take shape and young people can develop a deeper understanding of how to resist and challenge discrimination and welcome difference in our communities.

STAGES: Hastings, July 2025

Photo: PJ Webb

STAGES’ new project in Hastings, in collaboration with the community organization, Black Butterfly, creates opportunities for dialogue between communities of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, and local host communities. Taking as inspiration the 960th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings (2026), this project explores how immigration, resistance and identity shaped British heritage and how local narratives around this historic event shape the way we see the present and the future. Participants create new ways of using theatre to mark and explore history and re-frame dominant narratives to become more inclusive and representative of a wide range of experience, whilst also developing leadership skills to discuss and advance human rights.

A 4-day training programme in Hastings during July ended with a short, interactive performance, Faces of Life . This multi-sensory, immersive journey guided the audience through environments that blended performance, art installation, and social commentary, whilst encouraging active participation from the audience. The final discussion offered space to reflect, respond, and bear witness—transforming a short theatrical interaction into a shared experience of reflection and connection, where meaning was coconstructed across the porous boundary between performers and audience.

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STAGES: New Vic Theatre

In collaboration with the New Vic Theatre’s Borderlines , STAGES piloted a Performance Making workshop with creatives and educators from the Newcastle-under-Lyme community. This 1-day workshop focused on the participants’ choice of Themes: Identity, Belonging, and Heritage , and included discussions on agency and authority in the context of excluding behaviours. It concluded with a short performance that was devised and performed by the participants that day.

Photo: STAGES Archive

STAGES: Goldsmith’s, University of London

STAGES presented a workshop for students in the Applied Theatre course and introduced them to the Stages Toolkit: how it can be applied in their work and how drama exercises can improve learning strategies. Exercises from the Stages Toolkit Themes section explored creative expression, media and free speech (in the context of fake news and miscommunication), negative stereotyping and how to address and respond to sensitive situations.

Photo: PJ Webb

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Split Britches

Throughout 2024-2025, the Split Britches Company (Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw) celebrated their 45th anniversary and focused on key activities: events related to Weaver’s retirement from QMUL, where she is now a Professor Emerita; touring Last Gasp, A Recalibration; developing new solo performances; and producing the Peopling the Palaces Festival 2025. Alongside these, Weaver hosted public engagement events related to her development of protocols for public conversation such as Long Tables, Care Cafes and Public Studios.

In the autumn of 2024, Weaver and Shaw concentrated on events related to Weaver’s retirement from QMUL, produced by the QMUL Drama Department in partnership with PPP. This included two sold out performances of Last Gasp, A Recalibration , followed by receptions and a separate evening cabaret featuring QMUL’s associate artists and staff. Elsewhere, Weaver hosted A Public Studio on Intergenerational Programming for the Coast Is Queer, literary festival in Brighton. This public engagement format brought together the artistic director of the festival and a young artist-activist for a public discussion on how to extend programming to an intergenerational audience. This discussion format culminated in a participatory creative problem-solving session with the audience.

As part of a shift from collaborative to solo practice, Weaver adapted two earlier texts – Faith and Dancing , a memoir performance, and Miss America , a full Split Britches performance – to create Faith and Dancing, a reading from the Diary of a Domestic Terrorist , which she performed in London in April. Later in the spring, Split Britches toured Last Gasp, a Recalibration to the Live Collision Festival in Dublin.

Summer 2025 saw Weaver and a team of Drama staff and students producing the Peopling the Palaces Festival 2025, five days of events designed for public and community engagement. In the context of the festival, Weaver created and hosted two events. The first was Public Studio on Resistance , a conversation between Weaver, multidisciplinary artist, producer and activist E, and Megan Clinch, a social anthropologist working in public health and intervention design and socially engaged practice/art-led methodologies. Together they explored the principles of resistance from the points of view of science, health, political resistance, and the arts. The second event was Making Feast: part ritual, part impromptu performance, part long table conversation and a large part delicious potluck supper designed to combine making thinking talking and eating to celebrate the end of the festival and contemplate what comes next. At the same time, Split Britches continued work on a documentary film about their practice filmed and edited by Claire Nolan. They held a private screening of a draft of the film and a feedback session for the Sexuality Summer School, University of Manchester, in June 2025.

Photos: Split Britches Archive

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Peopling the Palaces

Continuing its decade-long legacy, the Peopling the Palaces festival was produced within the School of the Arts with support from PPP. With five days of events designed for public and community engagement, the festival expanded on existing partnerships and worked to create new connections, internal and external. This year’s programme was curated on the theme of ‘resistance’, with workshops teaching skills of active resistance, academic talks and lectures, and performances/film screenings. The vast variety of events, as always, demonstrated the multiplicity and value the arts can provide. These included:

Live Art Day : building on last year’s Live Art performance day, we welcomed over twenty artists to perform across two public facing events, including an afternoon of durational performances. We also hosted the Live Art Development Agency, who screened films from their archive, as well as setting up a bookshop for our attendees.

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PUBLICATIONS

Flores, S., Ramirez-Meneses, D., Carbonel, A., Sanchez, H., Vilela-Estrada, A. L., Toyama, M., … Priebe, S. (2025). Outcomes and experiences of an art workshop on young people’s symptoms of depression and anxiety in Peru : a non-controlled trial. Arts & Health , 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/17533015.2025.2471414.

Gómez-Restrepo, C., Roldan, M.C., Ariza-Salazar, K. et al. Outcomes and experiences of music workshops for adolescents with depression and anxiety: An exploratory noncontrolled trial in Bogotá . BMC Res Notes 17, 355 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13104-024-07007-z.

People’s Palace Projects and Amazonia de Pé. What’s culture got to do with the planet’s climate? People’s Palace Projects (2025). https://peoplespalaceprojects.org.uk/en/publications/culture-isclimate-booklet.

Steffen, M.W., Murray, A.J., Mohammed, I. et al. Identifying the active ingredients and contextual factors of social prescribing when used to support the mental health of children and young people: a qualitative study . Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-025-02734-5.

Stephens M, Rahmanfard N, Conneely M, et al. "Instead of Building More Buildings, They Should Plant More Trees", a Photovoice Study of Determinants of Happiness and Sadness Among East London Adolescents . Qual Health Res . 2025; 35(9):1068-1090. doi:10.1177/10497323241291667.

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PARTNERS AND FUNDERS

As always, the breadth, quality, and impact of our work this year has been enabled and sustained by our key partnerships. The Board would like to express its deep gratitude to individual donors and advocates, organisations that generously support PPP’s work, and the funders who made it possible:

Amazonia de Pé Arts and Humanities Research Council Arts Council England ATIX (Xingu Territory Indigenous Association) Battersea Arts Centre Big Give Arts for Impact Black Butterfly Black Minds Matter Brazilian Ministry of Culture The British Council Camden Youth Theatre Central School of Speech and Drama Children’s Active Involvement Service (CAIS), Islington Council Clod Ensemble Coletivo de Pesquisa Construindo Juntos Crozier Curious Monkey Dirty Protest The Embassy of Brazil in London English Speaking Union of Pakistan Esmée Fairbairn Foundation Factum Foundation FUNAI (National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples, Brazil) Fundação Getúlio Vargas Fundação Oswaldo Cruz Fundación Crear Vale la Pena Fundación Nacional Batuta Gardens, Libraries and Museums (University of Oxford) Imhay Instituto Guimarães Rosa Instituto Homem Brasileiro Instituto LAR Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico (IPHAN) Instituto Socioambiental Instituto Terramar Interactive Research and Development Pakistan Iron Mountain Itaú Rumos Julie’s Bicycle King’s College London

London Participation Network Maquina Filmes Medical Research Council Museu do Amanhã Museum of Colour CIC National Academy of Performing Arts, Pakistan National Institute for Health and Care Research National Lottery Heritage Fund National Theatre National Youth Agency New Vic Theatre Newham Youth Empowerment Service Paul Hamlyn Foundation People’s Palace Projects do Brasil Performing Medicine Pontifícia Universidad Javeriana Portal Trust Redes da Maré Queen Mary University of London Schizophrenia Research Foundation Sounds Like Chaos Spotlight Youth Centre Stepney All Saints School Studio 1504 Studio KwO Suraras do Tapajós Teatro La Plaza The Holburne Museum The Postal Museum Theatre and Performance Research Association Topepeweke Indigenous Association Ulupuwene Association Unit for Social and Community Psychiatry (QMUL) Universidad de Buenos Aires Universidade Federal do Ceará Universidad Franz Tamayo Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia Universidad Rafael Landívar Victoria Art Gallery Wandsworth Children in Care Council Whose Knowledge? Words of Colour WOW - Women of the World Youth Resilience Unit (QMUL)

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PEOPLE

TRUSTEES

who served for the financial year ending 31st July 2025

Alison Sutton , Chair Catrin John , Trustee Cristiane Fontes , Trustee Karim Mijal , Trustee Penny Green , Trustee Martin Welton , Trustee Appointed 27th March 2025 Rowena Dean , Trustee Scott McCracken , Trustee Shane Boyle , Trustee

GOVERNANCE GROUP

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Poppy Spowage Rosie Hunter
Research and Executive Director;
Development Deputy Chief
Associate Executive
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Mariana Steffen Paul Heritage
Project Lead Artistic Director;
Creativity and Chief Executive
Mental Health Officer
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Thiago Jesus
Project Lead
Indigenous
Exchange and
Climate Action
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Yula Rocha
Communications Manager;
Project Manager
Indigenous Exchange and
Climate Action
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Sam Moloney
General Manager
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TEAM (UK)

Bettine Solf Assistant Project Manager Creativity and Mental Health

Drashti Shah Project Manager Creativity and Mental Health

Kristina Nilles Research Assistant

Bruna Martins Intern Creativity and Mental Health

Harriet Davies Operations and Editorial Intern

Lucy Freedman Fundraising Officer

Darcey Williamson Research Assistant The Verbatim Formula

Isabel Stuart Research Funding and Development Officer

Magali Hochberg Executive Producer The Verbatim Formula

David Ajibade Project Producer Stages

Kalina Toromanova Project Coordinator Stages

Molly McPhee Executive Producer Stages

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Monica Griffith General Manager Museum of Colour

Renata Peppl Project Manager Creativity and Mental Health

Samantha Blackwood Mckinson Exchange Coordinator Creativity and Mental Health

Samenua Sesher Director Museum of Colour

Sangavi Sugumar Administration and Finance Officer

Shana Swiss Director Stages

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TEAM (Brazil)

Brenno Erick Production Manager

Bruna Dantas Ribeiro Project Manager Creativity and Mental Health

Carolina Movilla Project Manager Creativity and Mental Health

Eduardo Ferreira Executive Director, PPPdoBrasil

Elquires Sousa Casa Rio Manager, PPPdoBrasil

Mayra Mota Project Coordinator Indigenous Exchange and Climate Action

Patricia Azevedo Administrative Assistant, PPPdoBrasil

Vitória Lobo Communications Assistant

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ASSOCIATES

Cat Fallow

Jan Onozsko

Nathaniel Mann

Eliana Sousa Silva

Jerry Brotton

Pedro Ferreira

Gary Stewart

Leandro Valiati

Pedro Rothstein

Germma OrleansThompson

Lois Weaver

Shalyce LawrenceBell

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Suzy Willson Sylvan Baker
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Takumã Kuikuro Tobi Poster-Su
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MinA Theatre Company
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Stage 3 Theatre Company
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INCOME, CASHFLOW AND RESERVES

INCOME AND EXPENDITURE

Total incoming resources for the year amounted to £1,059,874 (2023/24, £1,356,447).

Total resources expended in the year amounted to £1,053,066 (2023/24, £1,282,028).

The year ended with an overall surplus of £6,808, through a deficit on unrestricted funds of £24,770 and a surplus on restricted funds of £31,578 in 2024/25 (2023/24, overall surplus of £74,419).

Incoming and outgoing resources are explained in detail by project in note 13 to the financial statements which form the final part of this report.

The core contributions of Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) (cash and in-kind) and Arts Council England (ACE) (NPO) were critical to PPP’s organisational sustainability this year.

Revenue funding from ACE (London) has been confirmed until 31st March 2027.

RESERVES

The charity’s reserve policy, reviewed annually, is to have sufficient free reserves to meet three months’ salary costs including the statutory entitlements of all permanent staff support costs set for the financial year 2024/2025 at a level of £93,394 (2023/24, £79,411).

The charity’s unrestricted reserves at 31st July 2025 were £132,906 (31st July 2024: £157,676).

The charity’s restricted reserves at 31st July 2025 were £180,436 (2023/24, £148,858). The restricted reserves represent grants and donations received.

The complete financial statements for the year ended 31st July 2025 form the final part of this report.

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INCOME ANALYSIS TOTAL INCOME12024125): £1,059,874 12 . kn Counul En￿¥￿d QMUL Donated Servi(e5 (*)nations ¥ritlshtoundl . Re5earth Grnnts QMUL Funds . kes& Producbon ContsibuttM$ Twsts& Found3tion¥ 8anklnterest Income Arts Council En land QMUL Donated Services Donations British Council Research Grants QMUL Funds Fees & Production Contributions Trusts & Foundations Bank Interest 2024-25 (totsl) £135,298.00 £236,955.00 £85,152.00 £4,200.00 £275,495.00 £169,195.00 2024-25 (% 16.0 % £20,225.00 £129,113.00 £4,241.00 34

The chart below shows the difference in income generation between 2023-24 and 2024-25. While research grant income has decreased, indicating the competitiveness of the funding landscape, the charity maintained a healthy level of income and was able to control expenditure.

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STRATEGIC DEVELOPMENT

PPP is an arts charity which undertakes practice-based research to advance the practice and understanding of art and social justice. In particular, it uses the medium of theatre and performance to promote social welfare and to facilitate development projects for the benefit of the public, whether directly or in partnership with governmental or non-governmental organisations and others.

Our mission is to channel the power of the arts to enrich lives through cultural projects, enquiry, and advocacy. Our work is rooted in a belief in the capacity of people to discover positive transformation through art and is based on a strong commitment to social justice. Focusing on participants and communities perceived as being at risk or on social peripheries, PPP works to strengthen opportunities for people to lead creative and expressive lives.

The main aims adopted by PPP to achieve its charitable objects are:

To realise its aims, PPP’s strategies and objectives are:

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FUNDRAISING

The development of PPP's practice-based research projects depends on continued success with funding applications to a variety of potential funders. Recovering core costs from project funding is a key goal for any arts charity. Being based within a Higher Education Institution (QMUL) means that PPP is in the fortunate position of being able to access research grants, which can also fund staff members employed to undertake or support research activities.

Over the ten years since 2014, PPP’s turnover has more than doubled, this being the fifth consecutive year its total income has been more than £1M. While its regular core funding from Arts Council England as a National Portfolio Organisation is an essential lynchpin of the charity’s fundraising mix, many years of freezes to this annual support have meant NPO grant income has risen by a total of approximately 2% over the entire decade. Arts Council England funding pays salary costs for 2.6 staff members, and all other staff salaries are paid for by project funding. The value of in-kind support from QMUL (donated staff, office and audit) has risen by 75% over the same period. Income raised by PPP from other sources in 2024-5 was nearly 2.8 times that raised in 2014-15, i.e. project fundraising has risen by almost 180% in ten years. Although lower than the 2023-4 figure, against a backdrop of severe financial challenge across the nonprofit sectors, and intense competition for funds driving steep falls in success rates for both Trust and Foundation and research funding, PPP’s performance remains strong.

To mitigate income risk, the PPP team continues to engage with colleagues across QMUL, as well as external academics and HEIs, supporting and collaborating on a wide variety of interdisciplinary research grant applications and programmes to incorporate applied creative practice. This also ensures that PPP shares its expertise and experience regarding research impact, civil society partnerships, research management, grant writing, and practice-based research management: and supports the engagement of civil society partners and individuals who would otherwise be unable to participate in research programmes.

During the year, we were delighted that PPP’s Research Development Associate Dr Poppy Spowage was awarded a British Academy ODA Global Innovation Fellowship for a 12-month research project – demonstrating one of the ways that building skills within PPP can boost the opportunities of early career academics in the QMUL community. Both the Executive and Artistic Directors increased their contributions to fundraising and development work to ensure that strong leadership remained in place and that PPP was able to maintain its strategic focus on larger, longer-term and multi-year grants.

Since August 2024, 27 applications have been submitted totalling £16,054,337 at full economic cost (some of them in collaboration with our partners in SMD): eight applications were successful during this period, generating income of £361,891, and five applications have been successful subsequent to the close of the period, generating more than an additional £111,000 at full economic cost.

PPP also supported the work of Museum of Colour CIC, which raised grants from Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Foyle Foundation, National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council England for projects coproduced by PPP; and of our sister organisation PPPdoBrasil who raised grants from British Council among others for co-produced projects.

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INCOME GENERATION

PPP has traditionally had five different income streams: research grants, Arts Council England, other public funds such as local councils, earned income in the shape of production fees and consultancies, and trusts and foundations. Over the last three years, PPP’s main income has derived from research grants, QMUL (in-kind and project grants), trusts and foundations, and Arts Council England.

Looking forward to 2025-26, the fundraising team aims to continue its strategy of developing applications for multi-year programmes of interdisciplinary research.

PPP’s trustees assess our income generation on a quarterly basis. At the reporting date the charity has met its core fundraising target for the financial year 2025-6, and has received confirmation of the renewal of our Arts Council England National Portfolio funding for 2026-7, with a welcome 5% uplift to help meet the costs of inflation. At the date of reporting, we are still waiting for the outcome of a tender submission for consultancy and of six grant funding applications (totalling £3,516,039 at full economic cost); with 11 applications for future years in active development.

HOW DO WE MEASURE SUCCESS?

PPP is a reflective organisation, whether that be as part of a specific project, partnership, or initiative, or as a whole. We believe that a commitment to organisational self-reflection not only enhances and improves our working practices across all areas, but gives our projects the strongest chance of success at every stage, from initial conception, to securing funding, to administration and execution.

We use various methods to assess our performance, including external evaluation and internal evaluation, feedback from partners and participants, and clear, effective financial management. PPP’s Board monitors and reviews performance directly against our funding agreement with Arts Council England at each Board meeting to ensure the high standard of PPP’s delivery is maintained.

We are also continuing to build the capacity of early career researchers in our team, as Indigenous Culture and Climate Action Strand leader Thiago Jesus enters the final year of his PhD with QMUL/Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Arts, Health and Wellbeing Strand leader Mariana Steffen enters the final year of her PhD with PPP/Youth Resilience Unit QMUL, and Poppy Spowage begins to conduct research as part of her British Academy Fellowship.

The most important measure of financial success at PPP is the unrestricted reserve balance. The Board monitors the unrestricted balance on a quarterly basis to ensure that PPP remains a going concern. As noted earlier in this report, PPP has an excellent relationship with Arts Council England and has no reason to fear any cut to its core funding. This does not, however, make us complacent, and we try to develop ways to diversify our income streams, such as fundraising consultancy, and drama workshops using verbatim theatre techniques, which we have used over several years with great impact.

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COMMUNICATIONS

The PPP comms team had a busy and productive year, expanding our reach and taking a stronger storytelling approach across projects and events. The Kamukuwaká Cave project dominated communications in 2024, securing more than 70 press articles and significantly raising our profile.

A big shift in workflow has taken place. Comms is now included in most project frameworks from the start, working alongside managers and producers to shape strategy from day one. This has helped us secure budgets to commission quality content such as photos, videos and booklets.

We also worked more closely with partners’ communications teams, learning from their experience while ensuring PPP’s branding and identity are embedded in every project. Collaborations this year stretched from the Amazon (Amazônia de Pé) to Wales (Dirty Protest), from the UK (Julie’s Bicycle) to Pakistan (Aawaaz). To support consistency in our public presence, PPP commissioned a designer to produce updated branding guidelines, including logo applications, presentation templates and social media assets aligned with our visual identity.

Press Coverage

PPP’s biggest comms moment of the year was the delivery of the Kamukuwaká Cave replica to the Xingu Indigenous Territory. Working with a PR agency in Brazil, the comms manager coordinated a group of 10 journalists to travel to the Xingu.

Bringing in a professional photographer from Fotos Públicas proved an excellent decision, ensuring powerful images were widely distributed. This effort resulted in 71 articles in Brazilian and international media, including a full feature in The Guardian , a one-hour documentary on TV Cultura, and a one-hour podcast. The estimated media value was around half a million pounds.

The conclusion of the OLA project and the launch of Caminar Distinto also engaged the comms team. The film premiered in Latin America, supported by an external PR commission in Argentina.

Photos: Alaor Filho

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Content

Our Instagram account — PPP’s main social media platform — gained over 1,500 new followers this year, continuing steady organic growth. We have officially left X (formerly Twitter) and joined BlueSky, although our presence there remains modest.

PPP’s events and news were shared weekly in the new School of the Arts newsletter, and our team stayed in close contact with QMUL’s press and comms departments, keeping them updated on research milestones and activities for academic staff and external partners.

This year has consolidated PPP’s approach to communications: being part of project planning from the outset, strengthening collaboration with partners, and developing a clearer public identity. These steps give us a more solid base to share our work and the voices of our collaborators in the lead-up to our 30th anniversary.

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STRUCTURE, GOVERNANCE AND MANAGEMENT

TRUSTEES

The Directors of the charitable company (the charity) are its trustees for the purposes of charity law and throughout this report are collectively referred to as the trustees.

The trustees serving during the year and since the year-end were as follows:

Arts Council England London is sent copies of Board papers and is permitted to observe Board Meetings on an occasional basis, but does not appoint a trustee.

GOVERNING DOCUMENT

People’s Palace Projects, sometimes known as PPP, is a registered charity and a company limited by guarantee. It is governed by its Memorandum & Articles of Association dated 27th January 1999, amended on 20th August 2007 to make the Charity a subsidiary of Queen Mary University of London (QMUL); by special resolution dated 19th November 2008 to clarify procedures for appointment of Trustees; by special resolution dated 24th November 2014 to allow directors with conflicts of interest to remain present at meetings (without voting) if authorised by the remainder of the Trustees; and an administrative amendment dated 12th January 2015 following consultation with the Charity Commission to abolish the requirement for an AGM.

The sole member of the Company is Queen Mary University of London, although the Articles of Association make provision for other Members to be admitted at the existing Member(s)’s discretion. The members of the Board of Management, who are appointed by the Member(s), are also the Trustees of the Charity. In the event of the Charity being wound up, the liability in respect of the guarantee is limited to £1 per Trustee.

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REFERENCE AND ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION

Company registration number: 03705562

Charity registration number: 1085607

Registered address and principal office: Queen Mary University of London, 327 Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS

Company Secretary: the charity has opted not to appoint a Company Secretary.

Senior Staff: Professor Paul Heritage – Artistic Director & Chief Executive Rosalind (Rosie) Hunter – Executive Director & Deputy Chief Executive

Website: www.peoplespalaceprojects.org.uk

PROFESSIONAL ADVISORS

Bankers

Barclays Bank Plc 240 Whitechapel Road London, E1 1BS

CAF Bank Ltd 25 Kings Hill Avenue Kings Hill West Malling Kent, NE19 4JQ

Independent auditor

BDO LLP 55 Baker Street London, W1U 7EU

APPOINTMENT OF NEW TRUSTEES

The Trustees review their membership on an annual basis, and gaps in skills and representation are identified. Trustees research potential new members and open recruitment is undertaken to increase diversity. New trustees may be appointed by the Trustees of the Charity or by QMUL as sole Member.

As set out in the Articles of Association, one third of the Trustees retire from office in each year. The trustees retiring in any year are normally those who have been longest in office. Retiring Trustees may offer themselves for immediate re-election (not exceeding in aggregate nine years from the date of original appointment).

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When considering the appointment of new trustees, the Board has regard to the Charity’s need for any specialist skills, to the diversity of the Board’s composition, and to its representation of the Charity’s beneficiaries, including people engaged as participants.

TRUSTEE INDUCTION AND TRAINING

New Trustees are invited to introductory meetings with the Artistic and Executive Directors, and with the Chair. An information pack is sent to all new Trustees, including the Charity’s Memorandum & Articles of Association, recent audited financial statements, the business plan, minutes of recent Board Meetings, a full current list of the members of the Board, and the Charity Commission’s information on Responsibilities of Trustees.

ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE

The Board of Trustees sets the charity’s main policies and strategic objectives. The Board normally meets four times a year to receive reports from senior staff, review financial and other performance against objectives, and approve future plans and annual and project budgets. Trustees delegate the dayto-day management and operation of PPP to its paid staff, who make approaches, commitments, and decisions on future projects in line with agreed strategic objectives.

The charity has offices in the UK, based in the Arts Research Centre at QMUL’s Mile End campus. The offices and most of the charity’s infrastructure costs are provided without charge by QMUL. The close association with QMUL, especially its significant cash and in-kind support, is vital to the charity’s ability to operate in its current manner towards its charitable objectives, undertaking high quality practicebased arts research and delivering public engagement and knowledge exchange outcomes.

The salary of the charity’s Artistic Director and Chief Executive, Professor Paul Heritage, is paid by his employer, QMUL; in 2019-20, Paul’s teaching replacement was confirmed as a permanent post.

People's Palace Projects was founded 28 years ago, registered as a UK charity in 1999, and has been a charitable subsidiary of Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) for 17 years, based in its Drama Department with the status of a research centre specialising in theatre and performance practice. PPP's 2008 Memorandum and Articles of Association has been reviewed and updated to incorporate changes to the Companies Act, refine procedures for management of conflict of interest among Trustees (with Charity Commission approval), and allow for digital communication methods and meeting attendance.

As PPP's programme has expanded, since 2021 the charity has appointed a lead and coordinator for each of its thematic strands, who take responsibility for detailed programme planning, capacity and resource planning, and management within their strand. Each project within each strand reports at regular weekly meetings, attended by strand leads and Governance Group members, who then pick up any issues requiring resource approval or balancing between strands, policy decisions, discussion of risks, or stakeholder or Board engagement. The Governance Group consists of the Artistic Director, Executive Director, and strand leads for the thematic strands of PPP's programme, with the most senior representative for each of the organisation's three cross-cutting functions – Development, Communications, and Finance and Administration – as well as senior practice research and arts producing expertise. Updates from each strand are also shared and discussed at PPP's weekly team meeting for all staff.

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Quarterly Board meeting agendas include activity updates, regular discussion and review of progress against Business Plan, organisational strategies and funder KPIs, and discussion of project evaluations, as well as budget setting and approval, review of management accounts, fundraising progress and year end forecast, staffing decisions, discussion of stakeholder relationships, risk review and mitigation, and scheduled reviews of policies. The reserves policy is reviewed annually. The PPP Board also attends performances, workshops and exhibitions, discussion events, evaluation and feedback sessions with participants and partner organisations, and regular consultations with staff and PPP’s very diverse group of Associate Artists, to ensure the broadest range of ideas and voices feeds into the development of PPP's programme.

During the main part of the year reported on, the charity had three full-time employees (Executive Director, Communications Manager and Finance and Administration Officer) and twenty-two part-time employees (two Strand Leads, two General Managers, three Project Managers, a Research and Development Associate, two Project Directors, two Project Coordinators, two Fundraising Assistants, one Executive Producer, and seven co-researchers). It employed key freelancers and short-term staff, such as research assistants, consultants, and ad hoc support, as required.

Reflecting its commitment to social justice and QMUL’s status as a leading researcher into and ambassador for the Living Wage, the charity meets the requirements of a Living Wage Employer and has regard to the wage differential between its highest and lowest paid employees, a figure which is reported regularly to the Board and made available to stakeholders for transparency. Occasionally, short-term (under eight weeks) volunteering opportunities on projects are offered unpaid. There was one volunteering opportunity in 2024/25.

RELATED PARTIES

PPP is a charitable subsidiary of QMUL, which is an Exempt Charity and the sole Member of People’s Palace Projects; Professor Martin Welton is the representative of QMUL at General Meetings. The charity’s Artistic Director/Chief Executive and four trustees (Professor Martin Welton, Professor Penny Green, Professor Scott McCracken, and Dr Shane Boyle) are employees of QMUL. The parent charity provides PPP with essential support via the in-kind provision of office and administrative facilities, services, accounting assistance and audit costs. It also gives financial support to PPP at various times through a number of funds. No financial remissions are made by PPP to QMUL other than reimbursements for expenditure incurred by QMUL on PPP’s behalf (e.g. reimbursements for catering supplies, printing, event portering and so on).

PPP’s research work was submitted as part of QMUL’s institutional submission to the Research Excellence Framework 2021 (REF2021), including Impact Case Studies on Paul Heritage’s research, ‘Progressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in Fragile Territories through Collaborative Arts-based Research Projects’, and Maggie Inchley’s research with The Verbatim Formula. PPP expects to make a valuable contribution to QMUL’s submission to REF2029, including Impact Case Studies.

Paul Heritage (CEO) is an Associate of the QMUL Global Policy Institute and an Associate Professor at the QMUL Institute of Population Health Sciences. Rosie Hunter (Deputy CEO) is a member of QMUL’s Centre for Creative Collaboration Strategy Steering Group. Both have been invited to serve on the Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences’ Centre for Digital Collections Project Board.

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People’s Palace Projects is recognised by QMUL’s Centre for Public Engagement as a flagship for engagement activities within the College, and PPP was selected for the Alliance Award for Impact in 2021 for its work with the Kuikuro Indigenous Association of the Upper Xingu (Brazil), raising urgently needed funds to provide infrastructure, food and vital medical support to the Kuikuro people affected by COVID19. In 2024, PPP received the QMUL award Impact: Culture, Civic, Community and Policy in recognition of our work in climate and Indigenous cultural exchange; in 2025, Paul Heritage received an MBE from the British Crown, the Pedro Ernesto Medal from the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro (the city’s highest civic honour) and he and the PPP team were awarded the QMUL Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty Vice-Principal’s Special Prize for our longstanding commitment to excellent knowledge exchange and research impact, particularly our equitable and collaborative engagement with Indigenous communities in Latin America and our work focused on mental health and climate change.

Paul Heritage is Executive Director of People’s Palace Projects do Brasil (PPP do Brasil), a separate NGO established in Brazil. PPP do Brasil has no constitutional link to People’s Palace Projects and is not a related party but has similar aims and objectives. A bilingual Partnership Agreement signed in 2012 sets a framework for the two organisations to carry out joint actions aimed at promoting exchange between Brazil and the UK and developing joint cultural projects, such as With One Voice/Uma Só Voz and the Kamukuwaká Cave project.

Paul Heritage is a member of AHRC’s Strategic ODA Peer Review College and a member of AHRC GCRF Strategic Advisory Group.

Rosie Hunter, Executive Director, is a Director of Museum of Colour CIC, and from 14th October 2025 a Trustee of the new Agency of Change CIO, of which PPP is one of four Founding Members of the Association. Both of these not-for-profit organisations collaborate with PPP on projects that support their shared aims.

The Charity’s Memorandum & Articles of Association permit it to engage Trustees for work which needs to be carried out, and at no more than a normal market rate; not more than half of the Trustees may be engaged in this way, and no Trustee may vote on any matter connected with their engagement or remuneration. No Trustee was paid for work carried out for the Charity during this year (2023/24: £0).

TRUSTEES’ OTHER INTERESTS

Dr Shane Boyle (none) Rowena Dean (none) Cristiane Fontes (none) Professor Penny Green (none) Catrin John – trustee, Daedalus Theatre Company Professor Scott McCracken (none) Karim Mijal (none) Alison Sutton – trustee, Proteknon Foundation for Innovation and Learning (PFIL) Professor Martin Welton (none)

Arts Council England London is sent copies of Board papers, and is permitted to observe Board Meetings from time to time (usually once each year), but does not appoint a trustee.

45

RISK MANAGEMENT

The Trustees review the major risks to the charity at least annually as part of the following year’s budgeting process. Risks of a changing nature, or pertinent to specific projects, are reported and discussed quarterly at Board meetings. Trustees agree actions, systems and procedures to mitigate these risks, and monitor the staff’s progress on agreed actions.

A key risk for 2024/25 continued to be the pressures on the fundraising climate, and the increased risk level of sustaining the PPP team at its current size. To mitigate this, our Research and Development team continued to submit funding bids and develop a fundraising strategy to diversify PPP’s income streams, while project managers worked to organise project commitments in line with available resources.

Another important risk for PPP to manage is Paul Heritage’s planned retirement in 2028. PPP’s Trustees and senior management team have developed a five-year strategic plan to carry us through this transition period with confidence and a clear path to future success.

Arts Council England NPO funding has been confirmed until the end of March 2027 and the Arts Council has announced its intention to issue a one-year extension to funded organisations until March 2028.

Changing government policy on both research and arts funding always represents a potential key risk. By diversifying our interdisciplinary research profile since 2017, clearly demonstrating the social impact of our work for the UK community as well as its international impacts, and by expanding our research funders to include the Arts & Humanities Research Council, British Academy, British Council, Economic & Social Research Council, Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council, Medical Research Council, the National Institute for Health Research and the Wellcome Trust, we have significantly mitigated this risk.

The decision in 2020 to expand PPP's core staff beyond the level affordable within our Arts Council NPO funding enabled a 50% expansion in turnover and social media engagement with our work, but also brought risk that our project core cost recovery would not be sufficient to sustain the new posts. To mitigate this risk, a core cost recovery target has been set for all new funded projects and budgets are approved by the senior management team prior to applications being submitted. Staffing commitments are carefully monitored, short-term contracts reviewed regularly, and contingencies for any redundancy entitlements are set aside within project budgets.

We commission consultancy from time to time to advise on PPP's fundraising strategy in relation to core costs and UK Project work, and have recently made significant new relationships with UK Trusts and Foundations. These include Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and Paul Hamlyn Foundation, who have funded Museum of Colour through PPP, but have also indicated they are open to future approaches from PPP for other projects. During the year, PPP worked with organisational & development consultancy Achates to review our fundraising potential and strategy.

International currency exchange rates represent a risk within international grant-funded projects and are managed via two mechanisms: a minimum Forex contingency of 20% applied to all projects budgeted in other currencies, and regular review by the senior management Governance Group of project budgets and future commitments, with activity contingencies set in all projects. While we always plan to manage our resources for maximum impact, research grants allow the option to reduce activity delivery if necessary.

46

STATEMENT OF TRUSTEES’ RESPONSIBILITIES

The Trustees (who are also Directors of People’s Palace Projects, a company limited by guarantee for the purposes of company law) are responsible for preparing the Trustees’ Annual Report and the financial statements in accordance with applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice) including FRS 102 “The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Ireland”.

Company law requires the Trustees to prepare financial statements for each financial year which give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the charitable company and of the incoming resources and application of resources, including the income and expenditure, of the charitable company for that period. In preparing these financial statements, the Trustees are required to:

The Trustees are responsible for keeping proper accounting records that disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the financial position of the charitable company and enable them to ensure that the financial statements comply with the Companies Act 2006. They are also responsible for safeguarding the assets of the charitable company and hence for taking reasonable steps for the prevention and detection of fraud and other irregularities.

In so far as the Trustees are aware:

The Trustees are responsible for the maintenance and integrity of the corporate and financial information included on the charitable company’s website. Legislation in the United Kingdom governing the preparation and dissemination of financial statements may differ from legislation in other jurisdictions.

GOING CONCERN STATEMENT

After making appropriate enquiries, the Trustees have a reasonable expectation that the charity has adequate resources to continue in operational existence for the foreseeable future. For this reason, they continue to adopt a going concern basis.

47

INDEPENDENT AUDITOR

A resolution will be proposed at a meeting of the board of directors that BDO LLP, Statutory Auditor, be re-appointed as auditor for the Charity for the ensuing year.

Approved/authorised for issue by the board of directors on __ February 202619 and signed on behalf of the directors by

(Alison Sutton) (Shane Boyle) Trustee Trustee MSB Alison Sutton (Feb 19, 2026 16:43:51 GMT) MSB (Feb 19, 2026 17:23:01 GMT)

48

INDEPENDENT AUDITOR’S REPORT TO THE MEMBERS OF PEOPLE’S PALACE PROJECTS LIMITED

OPINION ON THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

In our opinion, the financial statements:

have been prepared in accordance with the requirements of the Companies Act 2006.

We have audited the financial statements of People’s Palace Projects Limited for the year ended 31 July 2025 which comprise the statement of financial activities, balance sheet and notes to the financial statements, including a summary of significant accounting policies. The financial reporting framework that has been applied in their preparation is applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards, including Financial Reporting Standard 102 The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).

BASIS FOR OPINION

We conducted our audit in accordance with International Standards on Auditing (UK) (ISAs (UK)) and applicable law. Our responsibilities under those standards are further described in the Auditor’s responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements section of our report. We believe that the audit evidence we have obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion.

Independence

We remain independent of the Charitable Company in accordance with the ethical requirements that are relevant to our audit of the financial statements in the UK, including the FRC’s Ethical Standard, and we have fulfilled our other ethical responsibilities in accordance with these requirements.

CONCLUSIONS RELATED TO GOING CONCERN

In auditing the financial statements, we have concluded that the Trustees’ use of the going concern basis of accounting in the preparation of the financial statements is appropriate.

Based on the work we have performed, we have not identified any material uncertainties relating to events or conditions that, individually or collectively, may cast significant doubt on the Charitable Company's ability to continue as a going concern for a period of at least twelve months from when the financial statements are authorised for issue.

Our responsibilities and the responsibilities of the Trustees with respect to going concern are described in the relevant sections of this report.

49

OTHER INFORMATION

The Trustees are responsible for the other information. The other information comprises the information included in the Annual Report, other than the financial statements and our auditor’s report thereon. Our opinion on the financial statements does not cover the other information and, except to the extent otherwise explicitly stated in our report, we do not express any form of assurance conclusion thereon. Our responsibility is to read the other information and, in doing so, consider whether the other information is materially inconsistent with the financial statements or our knowledge obtained in the course of the audit, or otherwise appears to be materially misstated. If we identify such material inconsistencies or apparent material misstatements, we are required to determine whether this gives rise to a material misstatement in the financial statements themselves. If, based on the work we have performed, we conclude that there is a material misstatement of this other information, we are required to report that fact.

We have nothing to report in this regard.

OTHER COMPANIES ACT 2006 REPORTING

In our opinion, based on the work undertaken in the course of the audit:

In the light of the knowledge and understanding of the Charitable Company and its environment obtained in the course of the audit, we have not identified material misstatement in the Strategic report or the Trustees’ report.

We have nothing to report in respect of the following matters in relation to which the Companies Act 2006 requires us to report to you if, in our opinion:

RESPONSIBILITIES OF TRUSTEES

As explained more fully in the Statement of Trustees’ Responsibilities, the Trustees (who are also the directors of the charitable company for the purposes of company law) are responsible for the preparation of the financial statements and for being satisfied that they give a true and fair view, and for such internal control as the Trustees determine is necessary to enable the preparation of financial statements that are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error.

50

In preparing the financial statements, the Trustees are responsible for assessing the Charitable Company’s ability to continue as a going concern, disclosing, as applicable, matters related to going concern and using the going concern basis of accounting unless the Trustees either intend to liquidate the Charitable Company or to cease operations, or have no realistic alternative but to do so.

AUDITOR’S RESPONSIBILITIES FOR THE AUDIT OF THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

We have been appointed as auditor under the Companies Act 2006 and report in accordance with the Act and relevant regulations made or having effect thereunder.

Our objectives are to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements as a whole are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error, and to issue an auditor’s report that includes our opinion. Reasonable assurance is a high level of assurance, but is not a guarantee that an audit conducted in accordance with ISAs (UK) will always detect a material misstatement when it exists. Misstatements can arise from fraud or error and are considered material if, individually or in the aggregate, they could reasonably be expected to influence the economic decisions of users taken on the basis of these financial statements.

Extent to which the audit was capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud

Irregularities, including fraud, are instances of non-compliance with laws and regulations. We design procedures in line with our responsibilities, outlined above, to detect material misstatements in respect of irregularities, including fraud. The extent to which our procedures are capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud is detailed below:

Non-compliance with laws and regulations

Based on:

we considered the significant laws and regulations to be the applicable accounting framework.

The Charitable Company is also subject to laws and regulations where the consequence of noncompliance could have a material effect on the amount or disclosures in the financial statements, for example through the imposition of fines or litigations. We identified such laws and regulations to be employment law, health and safety laws and data protection legislation.

Our procedures in respect of the above included:

51

Fraud

We assessed the susceptibility of the financial statements to material misstatement, including fraud. Our risk assessment procedures included:

Based on our risk assessment, we considered the areas most susceptible to fraud to be revenue recognition and management override.

Our procedures in respect of the above included:

We also communicated relevant identified laws and regulations and potential fraud risks to all engagement team members and remained alert to any indications of fraud or non-compliance with laws and regulations throughout the audit.

Our audit procedures were designed to respond to risks of material misstatement in the financial statements, recognising that the risk of not detecting a material misstatement due to fraud is higher than the risk of not detecting one resulting from error, as fraud may involve deliberate concealment by, for example, forgery, misrepresentations or through collusion. There are inherent limitations in the audit procedures performed and the further removed non-compliance with laws and regulations is from the events and transactions reflected in the financial statements, the less likely we are to become aware of it.

52

A further description of our responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements is located at the Financial Reporting Council’s (“FRC’s”) website at: https://www.frc.org.uk/auditorsresponsibilities. This description forms part of our auditor’s report.

USE OF OUR REPORT

This report is made solely to the Charitable Company’s members, as a body, in accordance with Chapter 3 of Part 16 of the Companies Act 2006. Our audit work has been undertaken so that we might state to the Charitable Company’s members those matters we are required to state to them in an auditor’s report and for no other purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than the Charitable Company and the Charitable Company’s members as a body, for our audit work, for this report, or for the opinions we have formed.

James Aston MBE (Senior Statutory Auditor) For and on behalf of BDO LLP, statutory auditor Gatwick, UK Date 22 February 2026

BDO LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales (with registered number OC305127).

53

People’s Palace Projects Financial Statements

Statement of Financial Activities (including income and expenditure account)

for the year ended 31 July 2025

Note
Income and endowments from :
Grants, donations and legacies
2
Charitable activities
4
Investments
Total
Expenditure on:
Charitable activities
6
Raising funds
6
Total
Net income
Transfers between funds
13
Net movement in funds
Reconciliation of funds:
Total funds brought forward
13
Total funds carried forward
13		 Restricted
Unrestricted
funds
funds
£
£
17,984
448,430
588,588
631
-
4,241
606,572
453,302
575,205
345,082
-
132,779
575,205
477,861
31,367
(24,559)
211
(211)
31,578
(24,770)
148,858
157,676
180,436
132,906
Year ended 31 July		 Total
2025
£
466,414
589,219
4,241
1,059,874
920,287
132,779
1,053,066
6,808
-
6,808
306,534
313,342
2025		 Restricted
funds
£
1,967
864,515
-
866,482
846,862
-
846,862
19,620
-
19,620
129,238
148,858		 Unrestricted
Total
funds
2024
£
£
486,218
488,185
3,747
868,262
-
-
489,965
1,356,447
188,999
1,035,861
246,167
246,167
435,166
1,282,028
54,799
74,419
-
-
54,799
74,419
102,877
232,115
157,676
306,534
Year ended 31 July 2024

All the above results are derived from continuing activities.

All gains and losses recognised in the year are included in the Statement of Financial Activities. There is no material difference between the net incoming and net outgoing resources for the financial years stated above and their historical cost equivalents. Notes 1 to 16 form part of these financial statements

People’s Palace Projects Financial Statements

Balance Sheet as at 31 July 2025

Note
Current assets:
Debtors
11
Cash at bank and in hand
Total Current Assets
Current liabilities:
Creditors: amounts falling due within one year
12
Net Current Assets
Total assets less current liabilities
Total net assets
The Funds of the Charity
Restricted income funds
13
Unrestricted funds
13
Total Charity Funds		 Restricted
Funds
£
37,729
186,389
224,118
(43,682)
180,436
180,436
180,436
180,436
-
180,436
Year		 Unrestricted
Total Funds
Funds
2025
£
£
1,500
39,229
140,750
327,139
142,250
366,368
(9,344)
(53,026)
132,906
313,342
132,906
313,342
132,906
313,342
-
180,436
132,906
132,906
132,906
313,342
ended 31 July 2025		 Total Funds
2024
£
222,711
106,666
329,377
(22,843)
306,534
306,534
306,534
148,858
157,676
306,534

Notes 1 to 16 form part of these financial statements.

The financial statements of People's Palace Projects, company number 03705562 and registered charity number 1085607, were approved

by the Board of Trustees on 19 February 2026 and signed on its behalf by:

Alison Sutton (Feb 19, 2026 16:43:51 GMT) Alison Sutton Trustee

MSB MSB (Feb 19, 2026 17:23:01 GMT) Shane Boyle Trustee

People’s Palace Projects Financial Statements

Notes to the financial statements for the year ended 31 July 2025

1 Principal accounting policies People's Palace Projects, a public benefit entity, is incorporated in England and Wales as a company limited by guarantee not having a share capital. There are currently 9 Trustees who are also the directors of the company. Each director has undertaken to contribute to the assets in the event of winding up a sum not exceeding £1. The charity is a registered charity. The registered office is Queen Mary University of London, 327, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS.

The Charity’s results are consolidated in the group financial statements of Queen Mary University of London which is a Russell Group university incorporated by Royal Charter. Whilst Queen Mary University of London does not have an equity holding in Peoples’ Palace Projects, it is treated as a subsidiary in the University’s consolidated financial statements on the basis that the University as sole member of the charity can appoint trustees and by virtue of this relationship, Queen Mary University of London is able to govern the financial and operating policies of the charity and obtain benefits from its activities. 1.1 Basis of preparation of the financial statements The financial statements are prepared under the historical cost convention, in accordance with the Statement of Recommended Practice "Accounting and Reporting by Charities (SORP 2019)" applicable to charities preparing their financial statements in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102), effective 1 January 2015; and the Companies Act 2006. The results of People's Palace Projects are consolidated into the financial statements of Queen Mary University of London, the ultimate parent undertaking, and which as sole member of the charity exercises control of the charity via the right to appoint and remove trustees. Exemptions have been taken in these separate charitable company financial statements in relation to the presentation of a cash flow statement. 1.2 Income Income derived from fees, production contributions, sales, donations and grants is recognised when received or when it is probable that it will be received. All donated services are provided by Queen Mary University of London. All valuations are based on actual costs incurred during the year. 1.3 Expenditure Expenditure is included on an accruals basis. Production costs are represented by costs directly incurred in relation to a project or production. Support costs consist of administrative staff salaries, office and premises costs, and administrative and development costs for the charity. Support costs have been allocated to charitable activities and fundraising in proportion to the direct staff costs. Other costs include those incurred in the governance of the charity and its assets and are primarily associated with constitutional and statutory requirements. The nature of the costs allocated to this category are audit fees and staff expenses. Staff costs/services donated by Queen Mary University of London are allocated based on time spent on PPP activities. 1.4 Going Concern The charity continues to receive the support of Queen Mary, University of London towards its office and services costs, being based in the School of the Arts. The University recognises in extensive publicity material the contribution made by PPP to its 2030 Strategy including via the results of the Research Excellence Framework, the University's Civic and Public Engagement strategies, through international, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, and to its reputation for high-quality research partnerships that increase the impact of its work. To support PPP's transition to new leadership, the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences has agreed to appoint a new post of PPP Director from April 2026, salaried by QMUL. The new Director will work with Paul Heritage until his retirement in 2029, ready to assume organisational leadership at the point when Paul takes full retirement. PPP is a National Portfolio Organisation funded by Arts Council England, which provides an assurance of funding towards core costs. PPP received excellent annual review feedback and the NPO funding for 2023-26 was confirmed by Arts Council England on 4 November 2022. A second extension year from Arts Council England with funding until end of March 2028 was confirmed in July 2025. After making appropriate enquiries, and based on financial plan forecasts covering at least 12 months from the signing of the accounts, the Trustees have a reasonable expectation that the charity has adequate resources to continue in operational existence for the foreseeable future and that current projects will continue to receive support from funders. For these reasons, they continue to adopt a going concern basis. 1.5 Funds structure Funds held by the charity are either: Restricted funds : these are funds which can only be used for the purpose or purposes stipulated by their donor or which are raised specifically for a particular restricted purpose. Unrestricted income funds : these are funds which can be used in accordance with the objects of the charity at the discretion of the Trustees. Designated funds : these are unrestricted funds which have been designated by the Trustees for a specific purpose. Further explanation of the funds held by the charity at the end of the year can be found in note 13. 1.6 Taxation The company is a registered charity and is considered to pass the tests set out in Paragraph 1 Schedule 6 Finance Act 2010 and therefore meets the definition of a charity for corporation tax purposes. Accordingly, the company is potentially exempt from taxation in respect of income or capital gains received within categories covered by Section 287 of CTA 2009 and sections 471 and 478-488 CTA 2010 or Section 256 of the Taxation of Chargeable Gains Act 1992 to the extent that such income or gains are applied to exclusively charitable purposes. The Trustees do not believe that the company is liable for corporation tax on any of its activities during the year. The company is not registered for Value Added Tax (VAT) as it does not make taxable supplies. 1.7 Financial instruments

The charitable company only has financial assets and financial liabilities of a kind that qualify as basic financial instruments. Basic financial instruments are initially recognised at transaction price and are subsequently measured at their settlement value.

1.8 Cash 1.9 Trade debtors and other receivables

Cash includes all cash in hand and deposits repayable on demand.

Short term trade debtors and other receivables are measured at transaction price, less any impairment

People’s Palace Projects Financial Statements

Notes to the financial statements for the year ended 31 July 2025 (Continued)

1 Principal accounting policies (continued)

1.10 Creditors and provisions

Creditors and provisions are recognised where the charity has a present obligation resulting from a past event that will probably result in the transfer of funds to a third party and the amount due to settle the obligation can be measured or estimated reliably. Creditors and provisions are normally recognised at their settlement amount after allowing for any trade discounts due.

1.11 Pensions

The charity set up a defined contribution scheme with NEST on 1 April 2017. All employees are automatically enrolled if they are eligible workers unless they have exercised their right to opt out of scheme membership. The employer's contributions made to the scheme in the year to 31 July 2025 were £6,695 (2024: £6,569) with an employer's contribution rate of 3% of pensionable pay and an employee's contribution of 5% of pensionable pay. Outstanding contributions payable as at 31 July 2025 were £NIL (2024: £NIL).

1.12 Critical accounting judgements and key sources of estimation uncertainty

In the application of the accounting policies, which are described above, the Trustees are required to make judgements, estimates and assumptions about the carrying amounts of assets and liabilities that are not readily apparent from other sources. The estimates and associated assumptions are based on historical experience and other factors that are considered to be relevant. Actual results may differ from these estimates.

(i) Key sources of estimation uncertainty: The estimates and underlying assumptions are reviewed on an ongoing basis. Revisions to accounting estimates are recognised in the period in which the estimate is revised if the revision affects only that period, or in the period of the revision and future periods if the revision affects both current and future periods. The Trustees do not consider there are any sources of estimation uncertainty requiring disclosure.

(ii) Critical accounting judgements: The Trustees do not consider there to be any critical judgements requiring disclosure.

People’s Palace Projects Financial Statements

Notes to the financial statements for the year ended 31 July 2025 (Continued)

2. Grants, donations and legacies

Note
Arts Council England (as a Regularly Funded/National
Portfolio Organisation)
Queen Mary University of London
London Borough of Newham
Team Collective Cymru
Paul Hamlyn Foundation
Battersea Arts Centre
Donated services (Queen Mary University of London) -
support in kind
3
Donations received
5
Total		 Restricted
funds
£
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
17,984
17,984
Ye		 Unrestricted
funds
£
135,298
67,168
-
3,914
1,500
1,500
236,955
2,095
448,430
ar ended 31 July 2		 Total
2025
£
135,298
67,168
-
3,914
1,500
1,500
236,955
20,079
466,414
025		 Restricted
funds
£
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
1,967
1,967		 Unrestricted
funds
£
134,575
113,751
3,000
-
-
-
234,892
-
486,218
Year ended 31		 Total
2024
£
134,575
113,751
3,000
-
-
-
234,892
1,967
488,185
July 2024

Arts Council England made grants to People's Palace Projects as a National Portfolio Organisation which covered the year from 1 August 2024 to 31 July 2025. £135,298 (2024: £134,575) was received for the year and was fully expended in the year.

3. Donated Services from Queen Mary University of London

Statutory audit Fee
Staff Salaries
Office Costs
All donated services income is unrestricted		 2025
£
21,690
137,547
77,718
236,955		 2024
£
20,670
138,841
75,381
234,892

4. Income from Charitable Activities

Note
Fees and production contributions
Restricted income
5
Total		 Restricted
funds
£
-
588,588
588,588
Ye		 Unrestricted
funds
£
631
-
631
ar ended 31 July 2		 Total
2025
£
631
588,588
589,219
025		 Restricted
funds
£
-
864,515
864,515		 Unrestricted
funds
£
3,747
-
3,747
Year ended 31		 Total
2024
£
3,747
864,515
868,262
July 2024

People’s Palace Projects Financial Statements

Notes to the financial statements for the year ended 31 July 2025 (Continued)

5. Restricted income

Project
Principal funder
Acampamento de Terra Livre
QMUL
Arts and Culture
QMUL
BA Fellowship (Poppy Spowage)
British Academy
British Council: Exquisite Corpse
British Council Wales
Building Inclusive Recovery Through Theatre (BIRTh)
AHRC
Catalyse: FAPESP
QMUL
Cooking Connections
QMUL/IHSS
Creative Care
Portal Trust
Cultural Heritage and Climate Change Consultation
AHRC
Culture, Community, Civic and Policy Award
QMUL
Follow on: Communicating through Covid in General
Practice
AHRC
HSS Cradle of Learning
QMUL
Indigenous Exchange & Climate Action
Individual donations
IRD Pakistan Youth Resilience Toolkit
QMUL
Kamukuwaká Caves
Various funders
Lois Weaver: Public Engagement Fellowship
Wellcome Trust
Manguinhos: Cultural Strategies
QMUL
Mobilising QMUL Cultural Heritage and Climate Change
Research and Engaging Brazil’s Cultural Sector ahead of
COP30
QMUL/AHRC
Monitoring and evaluation framework for social prescribing
for young people with mental health difficulties
QMUL
Monteith (ISPF)
DSIT
Moving mindsets: changing migration narratives in Brazil
AHRC
Museum of Colour
Paul Hamlyn Foundation
Museum of Colour: A Very British Rhythm
ACE/Foyle Foundation
Museum of Colour: A Very British Rhythm (NLHF)
NLHF
Museum of Colour: My Words (NLHF)
NLHF
Museum of Colour: New Connections
Esmée Fairbairn Foundation
Museum of Colour: These Things Matter
Paul Hamlyn Foundation
Newham Schools: Creative tools for building emotional
literacy and resilience amongst children
AHRC
NIHR Global Mental Health: Community Management of
Long-term Conditions
NIHR
Oca Red: ECHOES
Various funders
OLA - Building Resilience: Young Ambassador Film
QMUL
OLA: Building Resilience
MRC/GCRF
OLA: Building Resilience (Follow on Fund)
AHRC
OLA: University of Buenos Aires
AHRC
OLA: YA Visit (London)
MRC
Pakistan Audio Drama
QMUL
PDE Resources
QMUL
Peopling the Palaces
QMUL
Performing Medicine: Colombia
QMUL
PIECEs
NIHR
QMUL Projects
QMUL
Stages
Peace Development Fund
The Agency UK
Battersea Arts Centre
The Loneliness Project
MRC
The Verbatim Formula: Core
Various funders
Towards COP30: develop cultural heritage strategies to
strengthen climate related resilience in Brazil
QMUL
TVF: Impact Fund
QMUL
TVF: QMUL Impact Fund (2024-25)
QMUL
VAWG: Feminist Activism
Kings College London
Verbatim Law
Kings College London
Total		 2025
Donations and
Legacies
£
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
1,045
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
16,939
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
17,984		 2025
Charitable
Activities
£
950
14,740
4,303
4,200
-
-
5,000
28,881
-
531
-
-
-
-
1,532
2,720
-
90,618
-
1,000
-
66,780
-
-
-
30,732
-
-
27,290
1,067
10,000
44,241
-
46,158
33,812
-
5,036
7,483
19,986
43,789
35,257
-
5,500
-
2,737
-
-
19,979
34,266
-
588,588		 2025
£
950
14,740
4,303
4,200
-
-
5,000
28,881
-
531
-
-
1,045
-
1,532
2,720
-
90,618
-
1,000
-
66,780
-
-
-
30,732
-
-
27,290
1,067
10,000
44,241
-
46,158
33,812
-
5,036
7,483
19,986
43,789
35,257
16,939
5,500
-
2,737
-
-
19,979
34,266
-
606,572		 2024
£
-
17,646
-
-
71,147
19,927
-
16,964
51,923
6,000
4,425
53,526
1,967
15,000
83,918
7,000
7,000
-
19,760
-
88,212
31,694
8,994
55,508
2,348
-
1,416
17,891
11,911
1,876
49,921
80,748
61,996
-
-
20,000
-
-
-
7,544
-
6,626
-
28,612
-
14,982
-
-
-
-
866,482

People’s Palace Projects Financial Statements

Notes to the financial statements for the year ended 31 July 2025 (Continued)

5. Restricted income (continued)

Within the above are grants received from the following
government or government related bodies:
Arts Council England (ACE)
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
Heritage Lottery Fund (NHLF)
Medical Research Council (MRC)
National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR)
Medical Research Council (MRC) with support from Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)		 2025
£
-
46,158
-
33,812
71,079
44,241		 2024
£
8,994
295,594
57,856
28,612
19,455
80,748

In each case the grants are received/receivable subject to the performance of conditions stated in the respective agreements. The research council grants are made directly to Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) from whom PPP draws down the funding.

6. Analysis of expenditure

Direct staff costs
Donated Staff Services
Fees, including production Fees
Travel, accommodation and subsistence
Production and technical
Website costs
Support and governance costs
Total
Unrestricted expenditure
Restricted expenditure		 Charitable
Activities
£
274,466
103,393
90,342
121,596
130,861
542
199,087
920,287
345,082
575,205
920,287		 Raising
Funds
£
112,100
20,679
-
-
-
-
-
132,779
132,779
-
132,779		 Total
2025
£
386,566
124,072
90,342
121,596
130,861
542
199,087
1,053,066
477,861
575,205
1,053,066		 Charitable
Activities
£
243,207
32,888
78,713
75,614
421,604
-
183,835
1,035,861
188,999
846,862
1,035,861		 Raising
Funds
£
150,135
96,032
-
-
-
-
-
246,167
246,167
-
246,167		 Total
2024
£
393,342
128,920
78,713
75,614
421,604
-
183,835
1,282,028
435,166
846,862
1,282,028

Support and governance costs includes auditor's remuneration of £21,690 (2024: £20,670) All expenditure on raising funds is unrestricted.

7. Analysis of support and governance costs

7. Analysis of support and governance costs
Basis of
Apportionment
Activity
Direct staff costs
Staff time
Donated staff services
Staff time
Office and administration
100% Support
Donated staff services - Accountancy
100% Governance
Legal and professional fees
100% Governance
Statutory audit fee
100% Governance
Total support and governance costs		 Support
activities
2025
£
60,706
5,169
95,463
-
-
-
161,338		 Governance
2025
£
8,464
-
-
7,562
33
21,690
37,749		 Total
2025
£
69,170
5,169
95,463
7,562
33
21,690
199,087		 Total
2024
£
54,353
2,631
97,697
7,682
802
20,670
183,835

People’s Palace Projects Financial Statements

Notes to the financial statements for the year ended 31 July 2025 (Continued)

----- Start of picture text -----
|||| |---|---|---| |2025|2024| |£|£| |Wages and salaries|406,742|406,200| |Social security costs|42,299|34,926| |Pension Costs| |6,695|6,569| |Total emoluments to staff|455,736|447,695|

----- End of picture text -----

One employee had employee benefits between £60,000 - £70,000. (2024: nil).

The charity's directors (trustees) were not paid and did not received any other benefits from employment with People's Palace Projects in the year (2024: £nil) neither were they reimbursed expenses during the year (2024: £nil). No charity trustee received payment for professional or other services supplied to the charity (2024: £nil).

The key management personnel of People's Palace Projects, comprise the trustees and the Strategic Planning and Governance Group The cost of the key management personnel to the Charity was £304,781 (2024: £291,283 ). However this includes an amount of £129,241 (2024: £131,550) donated by QMUL in respect of staff employed and paid by the University. The cost of employee benefits to People's Palace Projects of directly employed key management personnel excluding donated services is £175,540 (2024:£159,733)

9. Staff numbers

----- Start of picture text -----
|||||||| |---|---|---|---|---|---|---| |2025|2024| |Full time|Part time|Total|Full time|Part time|Total| |Average monthly headcount of employees|3|22|25|3|20|23|

----- End of picture text -----

Full time is defined as any member of staff working more than 25 hours per week

10. Net income is stated after charging:

----- Start of picture text -----
|||| |---|---|---| |10. Net income is stated after charging:|2025|2024| |£|£| |Statutory audit fee|21,690|20,670| |11. Debtors:|amounts falling due within one year| |2025|2024| |Total|Total| |£|£| |Trade debtors|15,418|2,000| |Amounts owed by Queen Mary University of London|8,800|120,633| |Other Debtors|2,703|908| |Prepayments and accrued income|12,308|99,170| |Total|39,229|222,711|

----- End of picture text -----

The amount due from Queen Mary University of London is a trading balance payable under standard credit terms.

12. Creditors: amounts falling due within one year

----- Start of picture text -----
|||| |---|---|---| |2025|2024| |£|£| |Taxation and social security|9,344|-| |Other Creditors|773|2,026| |Accruals|19,035|20,817| |Deferred income|23,874|-| |Total|53,026|22,843| |2025|2024| |£|£| |Brought forward at 1 August|-|30,211| |Released in the year|-|(30,211)| |Deferred in the year|23,874|-| |Carried forward at 31 July|23,874|-|

----- End of picture text -----

Deferred income consists of grant income received with performance conditions attached, where the performance conditions have not yet been met. Income received in advance of performance conditions being met is recognised as deferred income and released to income as the conditions are met.

People’s Palace Projects Financial Statements

Notes to the financial statements for the year ended 31 July 2025 (Continued)

13. Movement of funds

Current year
Unrestricted funds
Undesignated
Designated
Total unrestricted
Restricted funds
Funder
Acampamento de Terra Livre
QMUL
Arts and Culture
QMUL
BA Fellowship (Poppy Spowage)
British Academy
British Council: Exquisite Corpse
British Council Wales
Cooking Connections
QMUL/IHSS
Creative Care
Portal Trust
Culture, Community, Civic and Policy Award
QMUL
HSS Cradle of Learning
QMUL
Indigenous Exchange & Climate Action
Individual donations
Kamukuwaká Caves
Various funders
Lois Weaver: Public Engagement Fellowship
Wellcome Trust
Manguinhos: Cultural Strategies
QMUL
Mobilising QMUL Cultural Heritage and Climate Change
Research and Engaging Brazil’s Cultural Sector ahead of
COP30
QMUL/AHRC
Monitoring and evaluation framework for social prescribing
for young people with mental health difficulties
QMUL
Monteith (ISPF)
DSIT
Museum of Colour
Paul Hamlyn Foundation
Museum of Colour: New Connections
Esmée Fairbairn Foundation
NIHR Global Mental Health: Community Management of Long-
term Conditions
NIHR
Oca Red: ECHOES
Various funders
OLA - Building Resilience: Young Ambassador Film
QMUL
OLA: Building Resilience
MRC/GCRF
OLA: University of Buenos Aires
AHRC
OLA: YA Visit (London)
MRC
Pakistan Audio Drama
QMUL
PDE Resources
QMUL
Peopling the Palaces
QMUL
Performing Medicine: Colombia
QMUL
PIECEs
NIHR
QMUL Projects
QMUL
Stages
Peace Development Fund
The Agency UK
Battersea Arts Centre
The Loneliness Project
MRC
The Verbatim Formula: Core
Various funders
Towards COP30: develop cultural heritage strategies to
strengthen climate related resilience in Brazil
QMUL
TVF: Impact Fund
QMUL
TVF: QMUL Impact Fund (2024-25)
QMUL
VAWG: Feminist Activism
Kings College London
Verbatim Law
Kings College London
Total restricted
All funds		 Balance
01 Aug 2024
£
157,676
-
157,676
-
11,723
-
-
-
16,964
6,000
14,474
11
6,566
24,791
7,000
-
9,073
-
-
-
2,230
-
-
1,416
-
-
19,483
-
-
-
-
-
901
-
3,699
-
30
9,186
-
-
15,311
148,858
306,534		 Income
£
453,302
-
453,302
950
14,740
4,303
4,200
5,000
28,880
531
-
1,045
1,532
2,720
-
90,618
-
1,000
66,780
30,732
27,290
1,067
10,000
44,241
46,158
33,812
-
5,036
7,483
19,986
43,789
35,257
16,940
5,500
-
2,737
-
-
19,979
34,266
-
606,572
1,059,874		 Expenditure
£
(477,861)
-
(477,861)
(950)
(26,521)
(4,303)
(4,200)
(5,000)
(26,508)
(6,531)
(14,474)
(1,045)
(8,109)
(3,841)
(5,042)
(90,618)
(578)
(1,000)
(66,780)
(30,732)
(29,520)
(1,220)
(10,000)
(45,657)
(22,857)
(33,812)
(19,483)
(1,104)
(7,483)
(19,986)
(17,737)
(6,363)
(17,832)
(5,500)
(3,699)
(411)
(30)
-
(19,979)
(16,300)
-
(575,205)
(1,053,066)		 Transfers
£
(25,299)
25,088
(211)
-
58
-
-
-
-
-
-
(11)
11
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
153
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
211
-		 Balance
31 Jul 2025
£
107,818
25,088
132,906
-
-
-
-
-
19,336
-
-
-
-
23,670
1,958
-
8,495
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
23,301
-
-
3,932
-
-
26,052
28,894
9
-
-
2,326
-
9,186
-
17,966
15,311
180,436
313,342

Transfers from restricted to unrestricted funds represent residual surpluses on restricted projects where the funders have agreed that the surplus may be used against core costs. Transfer between restricted funds represents residual costs or surpluses being transferred to follow on projects with the same funder.

People’s Palace Projects Financial Statements

Notes to the financial statements for the year ended 31 July 2025 (Continued)

13. Movement of funds (continued)

Description, nature and purposes of restricted funds having significant activity in year

Mobilising UK Cultural Heritage and Climate Change Research and Energising Brazil’s Cultural Sector ahead of COP30 AHRC funded £40,636 and QMUL funded £49,982 towards this work as part of our Climate Action & Indigenous Exchange work. In February, we partnered with the NGO Amazônia de Pé to deliver a three-day gathering in Alter do Chão, Pará, bringing together 30 participants: artists, cultural practitioners, masters of popular traditions, socio-environmental and climate activists, researchers, environmentalists and communicators – mainly from organisations and communities across the Amazon. As a result, we released a mini-documentary and began developing a bilingual booklet and website booklet and website to make intersection culture and climate more accessible to the general public. These will be launched and distributed to 100 cultural venues across Brazil as part of Virada Cultural Amazônia de Pé in September 2025 and at COP30 in Belém. Creative Skills Mapping: Provision, Career Paths, Employer Engagement in east London. Working with QMUL's Centre for Creative Collaboration, PPP employed Kristina Nilles, a post doctoral researcher, to gather data to inform new programme and recruitment strategies for QMUL's School of the Arts and generate industry partnerships. Building on the first stage of the creative skills mapping project (May-December 2024), which is focussing on the screen, performing arts and publishing industries in east London, this six month project will undertake a literature review and primary research into the arts and humanities skills required for wider careers in the creative industries, particularly social media and creative tech, broadcasting and journalism, advertising and public relations, and events management. Total fund award by QMUL was £26,463 and this was fully spent out on project salaries. TVF: Creative Care (Portal Trust) TVF embarked on a new phase of the Creative Care Project in April 2024, funded by a two-year grant from the Portal Trust. The TVF Core Team and Co-Researchers began running steering groups and participating in monthly professional development and co-design meetings. These meetings and workshops culminated in an event at The Clore Learning Studio at The National Theatre in January 2025, celebrating and advocating for accessible arts practices and learning opportunities for all young people, regardless of their backgrounds. TVF has also strengthened its partnerships and collaboration with the Newham Youth Empowerment Service and Wandsworth Children in Care Council, to develop a resource to support Participation Officers in Children in Care Councils to engage collaboratively and creatively with care-experienced young people. Portal Trust awarded a total grant of £45,844 across two years. £26,508 was spent on project costs during 2024-25. The project will be completed and all funds expended by the end of March 2026. Museum of Colour: core costs (Paul Hamlyn Foundation) Museum of Colour CIC (MoC): An arts and heritage enterprise incubated at PPP, building a digital museum to explore the contributions of people of colour to British culture. The team has grown to include a Project Development Producer and a General Manager. Paul Hamlyn Foundation offered 4-year funding for core costs to enable MoC to become more independent and financially sustainable. Total grant awarded for 4 years: £240,000. £66,780 awarded in this financial year, and fully spent out of core MoC staff salaries. Museum of Colour: New Connections Museum of Colour CIC (MoC): An arts and heritage enterprise incubated at PPP, building a digital museum to explore the contributions of people of colour to British culture. Esmee Fairbairn Foundation awarded a 2-year core grant of £60,000 towards organistaional development. New Connections also offered £10,000 to join a peer network for funded organisations, co-designed by them, to enable peer support and learning, but also to shape Esmée’s future processes and funding practice. Total grant awarded for 2 years: £70,000. £30,732 awarded in this financial year, and fully spent out of core MoC staff salaries.

NIHR Global Mental Health: Community Management of Long-term Conditions

The NIHR Global Health Research Centre: Community Management of Non-Communicable Diseases in Latin America aims to strengthen research and service capacity, conduct high quality research and ultimately improve quality of life and disease specific outcomes for individuals with long-term NCDs, including those from often neglected indigenous communities. The Centre will be regional, with sites in Bolivia, Colombia and Guatemala. Researchers from Latin America with expertise in a range of areas including family medicine, mental health and community treatment will work in collaboration with UK experts to set up and support the Centre. PPP received £27,290 during 2024-25 for this project and this amount was fully spent out. OLA: Building Resilience (Medical Research Council)

This year PPP has concluded this 5-year research project. We have finished the editing process of the documentary film about the Young Ambassadors and the art outputs of the project, with funding support from the QMUL Impact Fund. We launched the film 'Camina Distinto', in October 2024. The film was screened in Bogotá, Lima, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro and Santiago de Chile.

OLA: University of Buenos Aires

PPP was invited by University of Buenos Aires (UBA) to produce the artistic part of the OLA Final Conference that took place in Buenos Aires in March 2025. We commissioned the Buenos Aires YAs to become hosts of the Lima YAs, who were invited to perform Gris - a play they have created as part of their work as Young Ambassadors, reflecting mental health challenges they face as youth living in Lima - at the conference. Paul Heritage was one of the speakers at the event. PPP was awarded £46,158 from MRC towards the cost of hosting the final OLA conference in Buenos Aires in November 2024. This fund is also to be spent on future film screenings and research finding disemination for the OLA project. £22,857 was spent during 2024-25.

People’s Palace Projects Financial Statements

Notes to the financial statements for the year ended 31 July 2025 (Continued)

13. Movement of funds (continued)

Description, nature and purposes of restricted funds having significant activity in year (continued)

OLA: YA Visit (London)

In April 2025, PPP concluded the Young Ambassadors Programme by promoting a week long exchange trip to London for nine Latin American young artists. We built on previous partnerships and established new links with local youth and arts organisations for this visit, ensuring the YAs would engage with interested, vibrant audiences interested in discussing mental health topics. To further support this visit, PPP was awarded a QMUL CPE Small Grant fund . Performing Medicine: Colombia Performing Medicine is a registered charity that exists to support health professionals to provide high-quality, compassionate care. PPP previously collaborated with Performing Medicine on an AHRC funded project, ' Communicating through Covid: Supporting healthcare professionals non-verbal communication through arts-based education'. PPP was awarded £19,986 this year from QMUL and spent all of these funds on R&D for future work. We hosted a group of collaborators from Javeriana University, Columbia and Performing Medicine in Feb 2025 to work together towards a future collaboration. PIECEs The PIECEs programme was initiated in 2020 and was a 5 year research project, aimed at improving community-based care for people with psychosis in India and Pakistan by adapting, testing, and scaling up DIALOG+, a digital tool that supports structured, solution-focused conversations between clinicians and patients. The study also focused on community engagement and awareness and used innovative and inclusive arts-based methods (Theatre of the Oppressed). £43,789 was received in 2024-25, and £17,737 was spent in year. QMUL Projects £35,257 was received in 2024-25 to work on smaller projects developed between QMUL researchers and PPP. £6,363 was expended in this year on these projects. Stages STAGES new project in Hastings, in collaboration with the community organization, Black Butterfly, created opportunities for dialogue between communities of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers and local, host communities. £16,940 was received in year from a donor for this project and £17,832 was expended. TVF: QMUL Impact Fund (2024-25)

QMUL's Impact Fund of £19,979 was received in this year and fully expended on the creation of a Creative Care Resource, co-designed with young people and participatory officers. The resource was initially designed as a physical card deck, using interactive flashcards and storytelling methods to support engagement sessions with CiCCs, and enabling young people’s lived experiences to guide systemic change. Tested with CEYP and Participatory Officers in Newham in December 2024, CEYP were able to use the cards for reflection and meaningful discussions about their experiences, while Co-Researchers and the Core Team gathered valuable feedback. Developing Innovative Arts-based Approaches To Prevent Gender-based Violence Through Feminist Activism Among Youth In The Favelas Of Brazil Funded by AHRC, this two-year project engaged young women in Maré and Durham in arts-based feminist activism to prevent gender-based violence. By July 2025, 19 young women had participated in 19 workshops exploring feminism, identity, and activism. £34,266 was received in 2024-25 and £16,300 was spent. The project will continue into 2025-26.

Awaaz (Pakistan Audio Drama)

This year, PPP partnered with the National Academy of Performing Arts (NAPA) from Karachi, Pakistan, to deliver Aawaaz Audio Drama, a new initiative working to revive the art of audio storytelling in Pakistan. This project was supported by QMUL, British Council Pakistan and the English Speaking Union, Pakistan.

PPP received £19,483 for this project in 2023-24 and this amount was fully expended on this project during 2024-25.

People’s Palace Projects Financial Statements

Notes to the financial statements for the year ended 31 July 2025 (Continued)

13. Movement of funds (continued)

Prior year to 31 July 2024

Unrestricted funds
Undesignated
Total unrestricted
Restricted funds
Funder
Arts and Culture
QMUL
Arts and Health Festival
QMUL
Building Inclusive Recovery Through Theatre (BIRTh)
AHRC
Catalyse: FAPESP
QMUL
Creative Care
Portal Trust
Cultural Heritage and Climate Change Consultation
AHRC
Culture, Community, Civic and Policy Award
QMUL
Follow on: Communicating through Covid in General Practice
AHRC
HSS Cradle of Learning
QMUL
Indigenous Exchange & Climate Action
Individual donations
IRD Pakistan Youth Resilience Toolkit
QMUL
Kamukuwaká Caves
QMUL
Lois Weaver: Public Engagement Fellowship
Wellcome Trust
Manguinhos: Cultural Strategies
QMUL
Monitoring and evaluation framework for social prescribing forQMUL
Moving mindsets: changing migration narratives in Brazil
AHRC
Museum of Colour
Paul Hamlyn Foundation
Museum of Colour: A Very British Rhythm
ACE/Foyle Foundation
Museum of Colour: A Very British Rhythm (NLHF)
NLHF
Museum of Colour: core funds
Esmée Fairbairn Foundatio
Museum of Colour: My Words (NLHF)
NLHF
Museum of Colour: Respect Due (Part 1)
Paul Hamlyn Foundation
Museum of Colour: These Things Matter
Paul Hamlyn Foundation
Newham Schools: Creative tools for building emotional literacyAHRC
NIHR Global Mental Health: Community Management of Long-NIHR
Oca Red: ECHOES
Various funders
OLA - Building Resilience: Young Ambassador Film
QMUL
OLA: Building Resilience
MRC/GCRF
OLA: Building Resilience (Follow on Fund)
AHRC
Pakistan Audio Drama
QMUL
PIECEs
NIHR
Stages
Peace Development Fund
The Loneliness Project
MRC
Towards COP30: develop cultural heritage strategies to strengtQMUL
TVF Business Plan (SED)
QMUL
TVF: Impact Fund
QMUL
Verbatim Law
Kings College London
Total restricted
All funds		 Balance
01 Aug 23
£
102,877
102,877
25,321
5,000
-
-
-
-
-
-
2,164
-
-
16,101
27,226
-
-
-
-
-
-
n
4,193
-
1,200
-
-
-
5,800
-
5,915
-
-
-
-
-
-
9,404
11,603
15,311
129,238
232,115		 Income
£
489,965
489,965
17,646
-
71,147
19,927
16,964
51,923
6,000
4,425
53,525
1,968
15,000
83,918
7,000
7,000
19,760
88,212
31,694
8,994
55,508
-
2,348
-
1,416
17,891
11,911
1,876
49,921
80,748
61,996
20,000
7,544
6,626
28,612
14,982
-
-
-
866,482
1,356,447		 Expenditure
£
(435,166)
(435,166)
(31,244)
(5,000)
(71,147)
(19,927)
-
(51,923)
-
(4,425)
(41,215)
(1,957)
(15,000)
(93,453)
(9,435)
-
(10,687)
(88,212)
(31,694)
(8,994)
(55,508)
(4,193)
(2,348)
(1,200)
(1,416)
(17,891)
(9,681)
(7,676)
(49,921)
(85,247)
(61,996)
(517)
(7,544)
(5,725)
(24,913)
(14,952)
(9,404)
(2,417)
-
(846,862)
(1,282,028)		 Transfers
£
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-		 Balance
31 Jul 24
£
157,676
157,676
11,723
-
-
-
16,964
-
6,000
-
14,474
11
-
6,566
24,791
7,000
9,073
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
2,230
-
-
1,416
-
19,483
-
901
3,699
30
-
9,186
15,311
148,858
306,534

Transfers from restricted to unrestricted funds represent residual surpluses on restricted projects where the funders have agreed that the surplus may be used against core costs.

People’s Palace Projects Financial Statements

Notes to the financial statements for the year ended 31 July 2025 (Continued)

14. Related Party Transactions

Transactions between members of the PPP board and PPP or other institutions in which they have an interest are given below:

Year ended 31 July 2025
Name
Role, Related party
Paul Heritage
Executive Director, PPP Do Brasil
Rosie Hunter
Director, Museum of Colour
Year ended 31 July 2024
Name
Role, Related party
Paul Heritage
Executive Director, PPP Do Brasil
Rosie Hunter
Director, Museum of Colour		 Income
in year
£		 Expenditure
in year
£		 Debtor
Balance
at 31 July
£		 Creditor Balance
at 31 July
£
-
97,512
1,357
99,960		 79,252
97,512
197,334
105,353		 -
9,918
-
-		 -
-
-
-

Paul Heritage is Executive Director of People’s Palace Projects do Brasil, a separate NGO established in Brazil. People’s Palace Projects do Brasil has no constitutional link to People’s Palace Projects, but has similar aims and objectives; a bilingual Partnership Agreement signed in 2012 sets a framework for the two organisations to carry out joint actions. Income and expenditure relates to co-production costs incurred by PPP and PPP do Brasil respectively and recharged as appropriate.

Rosie Hunter is a Director of the Museum of Colour. The Museum of Colour is a Community Interest Company that People's Palace Projects is incubating through the support of various funders including Esmee Fairburn Foundation, Paul Hamlyn Foundation,National Lottery Heritage, Foyle Foundation and Arts Council England. All expenditure on Museuem of Colour and its related projects is fully funded by third parties.

15. Ultimate Parent Undertaking

The Charity’s results are consolidated in the group financial statements of Queen Mary University of London which is the ultimate parent undertaking. Queen Mary is a university incorporated by Royal Charter. The University is the largest and smallest group into which the charity is consolidated.

Whilst Queen Mary University of London does not have an equity holding in Peoples’ Palace Projects, it is treated as a subsidiary in the University’s consolidated financial statements on the basis that the University as sole member of the charity can appoint trustees and by virtue of this relationship, Queen Mary University of London is able to govern the financial and operating policies of the charity and obtain benefits from its activities.

The consolidated financial statements of the University are available from the Director of Finance, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS (the registered office).

16. Post Balance Sheet Events

There are no post balance sheet events.