2025-03-31-accounts

Registered company number: 04573564 Registered charity number: 1096185

THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A company limited by guarantee)

TRUSTEES’ REPORT AND FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

31 MARCH 2025

Self Portrait by Diana Cumming (1929–2024) © The Ruth Borchard Collection. Image credit: The Ruth Borchard Collection

THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) CONTENTS

	Page
Legal & Administrative information	1
Trustees’ report	2
Statement of Trustees’ Responsibilities	23
Report of the independent auditor	24
Statement of Financial Activities	28
Balance Sheet	29
Statement of Cash Flows	30
Notes to the Financial Statements	31

THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) LEGAL & ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION

Trustees Thomas Davies (Chair) Hasan Bakhshi Professor Carola Boehm Dr Caroline Campbell (Appointed 31 August 2024) Professor Jago Cooper (Appointed 12 August 2024) Ian Cuerden (Resigned 15 April 2024) George Entwistle (Resigned 12 December 2024) Sarah Hayden (Appointed 12 August 2024 and Resigned 28 May ……………………………………………………………………………. 2025) Catherine Holden (Vice Chair) Clare Lilley (Resigned 05 April 2024) Thomas Marks (Vice Chair) Avril Martindale (Appointed 14 October 2024) Sherece Rainford (Appointed 12 August 2024) Kathleen Soriano (Resigned 13 January 2025) John Stack Kimberley Streets (Resigned 12 December 2024) Lisa Wong (Appointed 23 October 2024) Chief Executive Andrew Ellis Company Secretary Elizabeth Rimell Company Number 04573564 Charity Number 1096185 (England & Wales) SC048601 (Scotland) Registered Office address TC Group The Courtyard Shoreham Road Upper Beeding West Sussex BN44 3TN Auditors TC Group The Courtyard Shoreham Road Upper Beeding Steyning West Sussex BN44 3TN

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) TRUSTEES’ REPORT

The Trustees (who are also directors of the charity for the purposes of the Companies Act) present their annual report together with the audited financial statements of The Public Catalogue Foundation (the company) for the year ended 31 March 2025. The Trustees confirm that the Annual Report and financial statements of the company comply with the current statutory requirements, the requirements of the company's governing document and the provisions of the Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP), applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) (second edition October 2019).

Since the company qualifies as small under section 383, the strategic report required of medium and large companies under The Companies Act 2006 (Strategic Report and Director's Report) Regulations 2013 is not required.

The Company operates under the name Art UK.

OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES

Purpose and Objectives

In brief, the Charity is transforming public access to the art that is owned by the public across the whole of the UK. At the same time, it is opening up opportunities for the public to learn about and engage with the UK’s national art collection whilst also supporting participating public collections through improved accessibility and sustainability.

The Public Catalogue Foundation’s ‘objects’, as laid out in its Memorandum and Articles of Association, are:

1. To research, publish and distribute information in relation to, and to promote, publish and provide catalogues of paintings, sculptures and other works of art, including associating with museums, art galleries and organisations affiliated with art, in a common effort to advance and promote arts and education generally.

2. To encourage, assist, arrange and provide support for the restoration of paintings, sculptures and works of art held or owned by museums, art galleries and other bodies and organisations making works of art available to the public and to cooperate with, assist and support such museums, art galleries and other bodies in connection with the same.

3. To promote, maintain, improve and advance works of art and the arts in general for the benefit of the public, including the arts of painting, drawing, sculpture, photography and design and to promote, maintain and advance public education and appreciation of, and public interest in, the arts generally.

4. To promote the efficiency and effectiveness of charities, including without limitation charitable museums, art galleries and other charitable organisations making works of art available to the public and the effective use of charitable resources in the arts sector.

5. To carry out such other charitable objects which the trustees may consider to be ancillary or complimentary to any of the foregoing objects or which may be undertaken in connection or conjunction therewith or which are incidental or conducive to the attainment of any of the foregoing.

The mission and work of the Charity are driven by these objectives. In the early years of the Charity there was a focus, inter alia , on raising funds for the conservation and restoration of oil paintings, as per the second object above. However, this was not found to be an effective use of the Charity’s resources and the Trustees

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) TRUSTEES’ REPORT (CONTINUED)

determined to focus on supporting the institutions that hold public art collections in other ways, as described in this report.

The Charity pursues its mission and performs its activities under the operating name ‘Art UK’. This operating name was adopted by the Trustees in February 2016. The ‘Public Catalogue Foundation’ will remain the Charity’s legal name.

The Charity’s Work

The Charity’s purpose is to open up art in public collections for enjoyment, learning and research. This means providing universal free online access to the UK’s national collection of art for anyone who loves art, wishes to learn about art or visit art, t hrough a single digital platform shared by all the UK’s public art collections. In short, Art UK is for everyone, everywhere, all the time.

It pursues its mission through digitising artworks, telling the stories behind the art and creating exciting opportunities for public interaction with art both online and offline. Its work contributes to the promotion and sustainability of the UK cultural sector through the use of the shared artuk.org digital infrastructure. Successful partnership and collaboration are a hallmark of the organisation.

The UK holds one of the greatest public collections of art in the world. The vast majority of this collection is not on public view and has not been photographed. At the same time, few collections have the resources to put their collections online. Therefore, what is publicly owned is often not publicly accessible.

The Charity’s first major project was to create a photographic record of every oil painting in public ownership in the United Kingdom. This project was completed in late 2012. Initially, the principal publication vehicle for this project was the Oil Paintings in Public Ownership series of printed volumes. However, in 2011 the project went online through the Your Paintings website. In February 2016 Your Paintings was retired and replaced by the Art UK we bsite at artuk.org. Online publication is now the Charity’s principal publication vehicle.

The second major digitisation project was that of sculpture of the last thousand years in public collections and in our streets and squares. This was funded by the Heritage Fund and other funders and was completed in 2022. The Charity’s third UK -wide digitisation and engagement programme commenced in January 2024. This three-year project is recording murals and street art across the UK and involves a significant contribution from Art UK’s network of approaching 100 volunteers. In total some 6,000 murals are likely to be recorded when this programme ends in late 2025.

However, going forward, digitisation programmes such as that of sculpture and murals will provide only a small fraction of the works added to Art UK. The majority of new artworks joining the platform will come through ‘ingest’ from the Museum Data Service, the Charity’s joint venture with Collections Trust and the University of Leicester. Since 2016 collections have been able to upload object records using spreadsheets and a dedicated Art UK portal but the process has been slow. MDS has revolutionised the scale at which object records can be added to Art UK with the number of records rising from 310,000 in November 2024 (a database built up over twenty years) to over 700,000 in September 2025. Image ingest however is moving at a slower pace.

The Charity also invites important private collections such as those in country houses, livery companies and corporations to add their art to Art UK. However, private collections will never constitute more than a very small percentage of institutions on th e website; the Charity’s principal focus will always be showing art from public collections.

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) TRUSTEES’ REPORT (CONTINUED)

However, the Charity’s work goes well beyond listing artworks on it platform. Over the last ten years substantial resources have been dedicated to creating free-to-access stories about the UK national collection (there are now well over 2,500 stories), and schools learning resources (over 300 of these, many with a particular focus on visual literacy), as well as many opportunities for volunteering and public engagement (both digital and in person) with the artworks shown.

Also a significant part of our operations directly support the 3,500 collections that use our platform to share ‑ their artworks with a global audience. This includes a shared e commerce platform to allow participating art collections that are Partner Collections, paying Art UK an annual fee, to generate much‑needed commercial income for themselves. It also includes substantial resources that are dedicated to facilitating participating collections to join the Bloomberg Connects in-gallery guide App, work that supports the Charity’s ambition to encourage more people to visit museums and other collections in person.

Showing art online creates substantial public and economic benefit. At the end of 2024 the DCMS estimate that the economic value created by Art UK was almost 50 times its annual running costs with a calculation that was only based on the Charity’s UK audie nce. Showing art online dramatically improves access to artworks and collections. It allows audiences to find out about artworks in store while encouraging visits to the art that is on display, thereby promoting greater cultural tourism. It opens up wonderful learning opportunities for schools and audiences of all ages, inspires creativity and is vital for academic research. All of this can be achieved in ways that promote maximum social inclusion. And for collections it offers valuable commercial income‑generating potential.

The Charity’s head office was relocated to Stoke -on-Trent in January 2022. Art UK has a distributed workforce, with staff working from home across England, Wales and Scotland (one staff member was also based in Northern Ireland until early 2024). Collections across the four home nations are involved in the strategic development of the Charity through the Art UK Steering Panel.

Strategies for Achieving the Charitable Objectives

Three strategies underline the Charity’s approach to achieving its objectives: innovative partnership building; the exploitation of scale and shared digital infrastructures; and delivering exciting public engagement offerings. Since the Charity’s launch in 2003, collaborations with other organisations have been central to the way it works. Such collaborations and partnerships have allowed it to access specialist knowledge, innovative technologies, and authoritative content and new audiences.

Oxford University Press, the BBC, the Paul Mellon Centre, Culture Street, the Royal Photographic Society and VocalEyes have been among the Charity’s partners for a number of years. Following discussions that started in 2020, Art UK entered into a major partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies that was announced in April 2021 built around the Connects app. In December 2022 the Charity announced a major partnership with Collections Trust and the University of Leicester to build the Museum Data Service, which is described further below.

A key feature of the Charity’s offer to collections (and indirectly to public audiences) is that by creating shared ‑ digital infrastructures and digitising art in UK wide projects, it enables participating institutions to reap the benefits of technology and scale and achieve outcomes that they would not normally be able to achieve on their own, particularly if they are smaller institutions. For most small institutions, digitising and putting their art collections online is out of their reach. Art UK’s initia tive means that the audiences have access to artworks in the national collection that they would not otherwise have been able to see.

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) TRUSTEES’ REPORT (CONTINUED)

We surveyed the collections that participate in Art UK in spring 2025. The survey results were overwhelmingly positive, and the key findings underpin the importance of our sharing digital infrastructure with collections large and small.

• 80% of responders felt showcasing their collection as part of the national collection was either very important or important.

• The importance of Art UK in providing a digital home for artworks is particularly pronounced for small collections; 71% of small collections only show their collection online with us. (This figure was 40% for medium sized collections, 35% for large collections and 19% for very large collections).

• The share of responders who thought showing artworks on Art UK led to an increase in visits to their physical collection increased in 2025 to 35% from 25% 2022).

• All Art UK features were rated as either excellent or good by 80% of collection responders, evidencing a high level of satisfaction.

Whilst the recording and digitisation of artworks is a key part of the process of improving access to the UK’s national art collection, the Charity believes strongly in ensuring these artworks can be made accessible to as wide an audience as possible through creating engaging ways of interacting with the artworks online, telling the stories behind the art, and offering learning resources around the artworks that support the teaching of Art & Design and Art History. A significant focus is therefore put on producing learning resources and writing or commissioning engaging articles about art and artists, and the subject matter represented in the art. Through initiatives such as Art Detective, Curations, Tagger and in-person community engagement, the Charity provides new and imaginative mechanisms for the public to engage with art and contribute in satisfying ways to the Charity’s work. In short, giving agency to the UK public that owns the extraordinary collection that is shown on the Art UK platform, is of vital importance to the Charity.

Main Activities Undertaken to Further the Charity's Purposes for the Public Benefit

The Trustees have had due regard to guidance published by the Charity Commission on public benefit. The benefits of the Charity’s work accrue to the public at large and art collections that participate in the Art UK website.

Art UK believes that the public should have the right to access the art that is held on their behalf by publicly funded institutions. The benefits to the public at large include easier access to images of and information about artworks owned by the public. This information aids learning and informs the public of collections they can visit. This resource is available to the public free of charge through the Art UK website and is presented to the public in an easy‑to‑use manner with interesting and contextual information that tells the stories behind many of the artworks and artists whilst also providing more formal learning resources for schools.

The benefits to the participating collections principally revolve around the use of a shared digital infrastructure, which would in most cases be out the reach of individual collection budgets. In addition, the benefits include free digital images during third-party funded digitisation projects, improved artwork security, better catalogue records, greater public recognition, interest from other collections in borrowing artworks for exhibitions and the encouragement of cultural tourism.

As a result of the Art Detective project, the benefits have included improved knowledge of paintings in public collections. In addition, participating in Art UK’s Shop allows collections to generate much ‑needed commercial income through the sale of products such as print-on-demand and museum merchandise.

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) TRUSTEES’ REPORT (CONTINUED)

Revenue ‑ Generating Activities

The vast majority of the Charity’s revenue comes from grants from charitable trusts, donations from individuals and from grants from the public sector. In the last financial year 62% of income came from grantgiving foundations, 17% from the public sector, 11% from individuals, 7% from earned income, 2% from corporates and 1% from ‘other’.

To ensure the sustainability of the charity, the charity has diversified its income streams beyond voluntary and grant income. A key element of this ‘earned income’ is a subscription scheme whereby participating public art collections become Partner Collections and pay an annual fee that ranges from £50 per year to £2,500 per year. In return, the Partner Collections can upload works on paper to the site and use the Charity’s Art UK Shop digital infrastructure to generate commercial income. The growth in the Partner Collection income stream is – – a key focus for the charity. Recruiting corporate collections all paying at the higher annual rate is part of this focus. The sale of hardcopy catalogues raises small amounts of funds for the charity as does the sale of a number of Art UK products through the Shop.

For some years there has been a focus on growing the recurring revenue income from the Patron scheme whereby individuals and corporations contribute £1,000 to £5,000 per annum to the charity. In addition, the Patrons Circle is focused on one-off donations of £25,000 and above. It is a high-impact philanthropy programme aimed at garnering vital core funding and valuable insight from a small group of individual donors in order to enable Art UK to achieve its ambitions. The charity also is attempting to grow the mass-giving income through online giving, lower value recurring gifts and match-funding campaigns through the Big Give. Converting engaged users of Art UK (for example newsletter subscribers, repeat visitors and users who engage in multiple ways) into repeat donors is a particular focus.

Looking to the future, a key focus for the charity will be to raise substantial funding from the US through a planned 501(c)(3) vehicle which is pending IRS approval, with the American Friends of Art UK now incorporated in New York State and a Board of Directors established. The Charity is also looking to explore ways of working more closely with HE institutions and through this collaboration raise funding for its work.

A full-time Head of Development is employed by the charity as part of the Development Team who focuses on grant applications to public sector and private sector grant-giving organisations as well as supporting the Charity’s fundraising from individuals. A part-time Individual Giving Manager is also employed to support fundraising from individuals, and a full-time Development Officer is employed to support administration of the fundraising programme. A full-time CRM Officer was recruited at the end of 2024 to manage a major project migrating the Charity’s fundraising data to a new CRM system, whilst incorporating contacts from across the organisation into the centralised CRM. A Philanthropy Board comprising Trustees, the Chief Executive and external members, with the Development Team in attendance, meets every three months with a focus on fundraising from individuals.

The Head of Commercial Programmes and Collection Partnerships is focused on increasing the recurring Collection Partnership income stream and is supported in this role by the Chief Executive.

Approach to Fundraising

The Board of Trustees is closely involved in fundraising planning and implementation establishing strategic priorities and goals, and approving plans put forward by the Philanthropy Board and Development team. The ‑ Philanthropy Board is primarily focused on sourcing both one off and recurring unrestricted donations from

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) TRUSTEES’ REPORT (CONTINUED)

high-net-worth individuals and corporates with an interest in the arts, through introducing prospects, making approaches and developing a funder events programme. The efforts of the Philanthropy Board are focused on generating funds towards core costs through encouraging prospects to join the Patrons scheme or making a philanthropic gift. They also support the annual Big Give campaigns.

The Charity is fully aware of the provenance of each gift proposed to it. A more formal gift acceptance policy was implemented in March 2023. Due diligence is carried out on all single gifts or cumulative giving valued at more than £25,000.

‑ Approaches to trusts and foundations are largely project based (but not exclusively) and made when appropriate prospects have been identified through research. Care is taken to approach trusts and foundations with a demonstrable history of supporting similar projects and organisations. There were no external pro fessional fundraisers carrying out any fundraising activities on the Charity’s behalf during the year, and there were no failures by the charity or by any person acting on its behalf to comply with fundraising standards. There were no complaints received by the charity with regards to fundraising activity. The Charity subscribes voluntarily to the Fundraising Regulator.

In 2024 and 2025, following grant support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the charity has sought consultancy support in a number of areas including building a requirements specification for a new CRM, improving its mass individual giving offering and seeking corporate sponsorship.

ACHIEVEMENTS AND PERFORMANCE

Review of Activities

Audiences

Over the year to the end of March 2025, there were 5.4 million total users of the Art UK website, down 2% on the previous year. Organic search traffic dropped by 13% during this time-period with the introduction of AI overviews possibly partly being responsible for this but also the generally low budgets that are available for marketing the platform. Declining web traffic is a cross-industry problem for content creators as users have fewer reasons to click through to a site from a search result to acquire information although this challenge is more one for content creators with no imagery. In February 2025 we introduced an overseas marketing campaign which has had a positive impact on traffic with overseas total users up 12% in February-March 2025 compared to the same period in the previous year. In the period between April 2025 and August 2025 overall underlying traffic (adjusting for any exceptional Bot traffic) to the platform was up 7% compared to the same period a year before.

According to GA4, over the year to the end of March 2025, 39% of total users were from the UK, with the USA once again the second largest source of traffic with 28% of total users, followed by India with 3.3%. The other countries in our top five list of overseas audiences were Australia, Canada and Germany. This is the first time India has appeared as one of our top countries and follows the introduction of the overseas marketing campaign in early 2025. The total social media following at the end of March 2025 was 193,284, representing a growth of 9% on the previous year. The weekly newsletter had an audience of 31,783 and a very strong average open rate of 41%, which shows it is a key tool for audience engagement. Web traffic from email was also up by 9% over the year.

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) TRUSTEES’ REPORT (CONTINUED)

Engaging with communities

Public art digitisation

Art UK started a new digitisation and engagement programme in January 2024 focused on murals and street art. This three-year programme is using digital and in-person engagement to raise awareness of murals and street art, and their place in our communities. The project is supported by grants from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, The Pilgrim Trust, Historic England, John S. Cohen Foundation, Colwinston Charitable Trust, The Walker Trust and Honeymead Arts Trust. As of the end of March 2025, our network of dedicated public art volunteers had submitted images of 4,700 murals to Art UK’s Public Art Manager. Our project target is recording 5,000 murals by the end of 2025, so the volunteers had almost achieved this, well ahead of schedule. By the end of March 2025, our volunteers had contributed 4,258 hours of their time, which is the equivalent of 568 working days. The project’s learning and engagement programme starts in July 2025.

In October 2024, the Charity started a 12-month digitisation scoping programme, funded by The Headley Trust and the French Porcelain Society to investigate the opportunities and challenges around adding more ceramics to the Art UK website, testing the use of the Museum Data Service to bring on ceramics records at scale. The project is being run by a Ceramics Researcher and a Data Officer and is supported by a Ceramics Digitisation Steering Panel. The project staff are surveying collections about their ceramics collections, bringing new ceramics collections onto Art UK through the Museum Data Service initiative, writing stories about ceramics collections, creating new artist biographies and creating ceramics-focused learning resources.

Community engagement

Tagger: Art UK started a new two-year Community Volunteering programme in May 2024, with funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, which is being managed by a Community Volunteer Manager based in Stoke-on-Trent. The main focus of the project is to engage more deeply with Taggers around the world, who are contributing their time as micro-volunteers to make artworks more discoverable by adding keywords to their data, and to engage in-person with communities in Stoke-on-Trent, to bring people together and encourage them to use Tagger to learn more about the art and collections in the city. By the end of March 2025, the Community Volunteer Manager had delivered 28 Tagger-focused activities and events which saw 572 acts of participation. These included events for children in Stoke-on-Trent parks, activities with community groups and schools, and webinars for staff and volunteers from collections.

By the end of the reporting period over 432,000 tags had been added to artworks since Tagger’s relaunch in June 2022. Just under 170,000 tags were added between April 2024 and March 2025.

Curations: By the end of the reporting period, 2,671 Curations had been published on Art UK, an increase of 402 Curations over the previous 12 months. The most popular Curation during the reporting period was ‘Modern art and religion: 20th Century artists and the Crucifixion’ by Art UK’s Director of Digital Assets, with 18,630 views. Curations had 514,990 overall views in the reporting period, an increase of 10% from the previous year (467,010 views).

Art Detective: Unfortunately, due to the lack of core funding on the retirement of the Art Detective Manager, the Charity decided to pause Art Detective in the summer of 2024. Art UK is seeking funding to replace the digital infrastructure of Art Detective, in advance of a relaunch of the initiative in the future.

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) TRUSTEES’ REPORT (CONTINUED)

Digital Assets

As of March 2025, we had just short of 600,000 artworks on Art UK, an uplift of nearly 290,000 during the year. – – The reason for the exponential change considering the previous year registered an uplift of 10,000 works was due to the implementation of the Museum Data Service and Fine Art filtering from the large data sets from the first of the collections using the new MDS service. This new approach encourages collections to move away from submitting compiled spreadsheets of hundreds of artworks and a one-by-one artwork addition process using the Collections Portal to a new system where updates and additions to the Art UK database can be made more automatically by taking an export of data directly from the collection’s own collections management system. The new system eliminates the administrative burden on collections manually updating Art UK in addition to their own collections management system.

As of the March 2025 approximately 30 collections had led to an effective doubling of the size of the artwork database since MDS was launched just over 4 months earlier. Collections ranging from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford to Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museum took advantage of the efficiency benefits of the new systems to bring through their works on paper collections through. The Ashmolean went from just short of 2,000 artworks on Art UK to just over 100,000; Aberdeen Art Gallery from just short of 2,000 to over 16,000 artworks. At the same time collections are providing images to illustrate these artworks, albeit at a pace that has yet to catch up with the object record information. Aberdeen was the first to supply a very significant set of images, nearly 10,000 in total.

Intellectual Property Rights Management

As of March 2025, 58% of artists represented on Art UK remain in copyright. Within the last year a total of 1,917 in-copyright artists were approved for their works to be reproduced on the website for non-commercial use, with 56% of these as part of the Mural Digitisation Project. 97% of the available images for artworks on the Art UK platform are cleared for reproduction.

Collection participation in the Art UK Shop continues to grow with 22 further collections signing our Print-ondemand and Merchandise agreements. Notable new additions to the Art UK Shop Print-on-demand service include works by Ceri Richards, Sidney Nolan, Jack Butler Yeats, and Frank O. Salisbury, all approved through DACS by the respective artists’ estates.

An internal AI policy was implemented in the staff handbook, with a public-facing version published on 17 February 2025 and available at https://artuk.org/footer/ai-policy. Art UK also submitted a formal response to the UK Government’s consultation on Copyright and AI, ensuring Art UK’s voice is represented in policy discussions affecting the cultural heritage sector.

Story Content and Engagement

As part of the content strategy, the story content on the site has continued to grow. By the end of March 2025 there were 2,503 stories published on the site, with 378 published in the year April 2024 to March 2025.

Since November 2022, the Charity has applied for a series of content grants focused either geographically or thematically, with great success. Since this plan was adopted, successful grant applications have been made to Arts Council Northern Ireland, the Esme Mitchell Foundation, Creative Scotland, the Welsh government, the US-based Samuel H. Kress Foundation, Jerwood Foundation, the Bridget Riley Art Foundation, PF Trust, Weiss Gallery and the Henry Moore Foundation. Most have provided for a part-time commissioning editor, focused on delivering content, and budget to pay external writers for their contributions.

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) TRUSTEES’ REPORT (CONTINUED)

With the number of stories reaching over 2,500 we are planning to slow the rate of publishing and instead aim to consolidate what we have, using a new audience framework developed for us by the agency Storythings. The plan is to make sure this content is findable through improvements to search, but also through a thorough audit of art terms and topics. We will continue to identify gaps in the content offering and matching this up with trusts and foundations whose funding aligns with those areas. The business plan was updated in mid 2025 to reflect these changes. We have also continued to make our story content and learning output more aligned, with elements such as Art terms and Topics worked on jointly by both teams within the organisation.

Over the 12 months between April 2024 and March 2025, the number of active users on stories was 1,089,781 – down 18% from 1,336,675 in the previous year (but slightly up on from the figure of 1,070,228 in the year preceding that). Some of the traffic losses are down to potential bot traffic in previous years, which is now being recognised and removed from reporting. Another aspect of the downturn is the appearance on search engines of AI summaries, which have impacted the clicks through to the site (across the whole site). We are experimenting with other ways to engage audiences that will not rely on search engines – this is an internetwide issue and not just something we are facing.

Learning Activities

The Learning programme has continued to grow, leading to a rich range of resources being added to the Learn pages – from lesson plans and making activities, to videos and exam support. During this period, 24 new resources were produced, bringing the total number of learning resources on Art UK to 251 at the end of March 2025. To meet the needs of our primary, secondary and post-16 audiences, they were created in collaboration with teachers, collection partners and young people.

Highlights include a series of primary and secondary lesson plans created with Tees Valley Museums around various curriculum topics such as industrialisation and railways; a pilot resource for our Big Give-funded Our Art, Our Place, Our Voice place-based programme for young people; an Artist-in-Focus resource for 16+ students looking at Chila Kumari Singh Burman; and partner round-ups on themes ranging from Wellbeing to The Olympics and Paralympics.

A key success was the development of new resources for students preparing for GCSE and A-level Art & Design exams. This involved making Curations for 21 different exam themes which in January – March 2025 alone led to over 5,900 views of the GCSE resources.

The Superpower of Looking, our flagship learning programme focused on visual literacy, continued to roll out nationally, bringing on board 1,638 teachers and 1,571 schools through training sessions, events and our website. As at September 2025 Superpower of Looking has reached approaching 9% of UK primary schools. During the period under review nine new resources were created, featuring eight new films, including works on identity by artists such as The Singh Twins and Holbein the Younger. There were 68,000 Superpower related page views in this period, and our downloads rose to 3,750.

In autumn 2024, Art Adventure was launched, taking learners on a virtual school trip with artist Sarah Graham to galleries in Glasgow and Walsall. This was part of a Visual Literacy Week with stories, webinars and a teacher symposium at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Our impact was tracked through five teacher action research projects with Roehampton University, and in November 2024, we announced our involvement in Picture This, a threeyear longitudinal research project with the University of Oxford and the Government Art Collection, funded by the Robson Orr Foundation.

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) TRUSTEES’ REPORT (CONTINUED)

Our Christmas 2024 Big Give campaign secured further funds for Our Art, Our Place, Our Voice , designed to connect young people with collections on their doorsteps through workshops and online resources. The Write on Art 2025 competition, run with the Paul Mellon Centre, launched in January with two new categories and a series of workshops continues to attract a wider cross section of applications.

Supporting Collections

We renewed our key partnership with Bloomberg in January 2025 for two further years. We support collections through this partnership by working with them to develop in-gallery guides on Bloomberg Connects. We are exceeding our Bloomberg targets around bringing new collections on to Bloomberg Connects by running cohorts which start monthly and last for thirteen weeks.

Another way we support collections is through the Art UK Shop. The shop was relaunched in October 2023 and we had a difficult initial few months of sales due to technical difficulties. It took us a long time to recover from these difficulties (and there were ongoing challenges through the summer of 2024). The difficulties had – a significant impact on shop revenue in the financial year 2024 2025, with sales down to £185,167 (a 5% decrease on 2023 – 2024) and collection revenue down to £55,000. At the time of writing, (August 2025) sales have stabilised and are once again increasing YOY. In spite of recent challenges the shop remains a very popular part of our partnership offer with 174 collections signed up to participate by the end of March 2025.

We received funding from ACE in January 2025 to develop a project that directly supports collections to acquire digital skills; this has enabled us to build out our programme of collection webinars and toolkits that was initially launched with project funding from Garfield Weston. We have increased resource around this project and have a project manager and a collection marketing specialist working directly with collections to teach them how they can better improve their digital storytelling and digital marketing activities. We are working with 20 collections one to one, through a cohort learning model, and are also making the webinar programme and toolkit resources available to all of the participating collections in Art UK.

People and Culture

Art UK has a distributed workforce throughout the UK, with the majority if staff working remotely from home. Our centrally located head office in Stoke-on-Trent provides office space for our local North Staffordshire staff, a convenient location for other staff, trustees and volunteers to meet, and provides opportunities for new partnerships and projects.

The comprehensive staff handbook is routinely reviewed, updated and relevant new policies added. The Charity continues to provide staff with excellent pastoral support, particularly in relation to mental health and wellbeing. We continue to focus on training and CPD opportunities for staff, with a focus on nurturing talent and developing our team to support internal progression. However, the wider organisational focus on cost control means we spend less on training than we would like.

The Equality, Diversity and Inclusion group continues to work together to ensure the organisation is inclusive across all its activities. The Charity continues to monitor EDI data for its staff, job applicants, content contributors, and the Trustee Board, and utilises positive action within the recruitment process by redacting applications and ensuring that at least one candidate from an under-represented background in the arts progresses to the interview stage.

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FINANCIAL REVIEW

The Year Under Review

The Charity recorded a net income during the year of minus £777 (2024: plus £232,333), which resulted in a very slight decrease of Net Assets, with Funds carried forward at year end of £772,096 (2024: £772,873).

Funds raised for the Charity through donations and grants amounted to £1,813,895 over the period (2024: £2,071,822) and revenue from charitable activities amounted to £221,758 (2024: £168,763). Included in the donations figure, contributions in kind from corporations are estimated to have amounted to £65,088 (2024: £97,374) during the year.

7.04% of total expenditure supported fundraising and publicity during the year (2024:4.75% and 2023: 7.96%). This includes the cost of a Development Manager, a Development Officer, and Individual Giving Manager, as well as additional costs resulting from two people on maternity leave, and a part-time fundraising consultant for six months. There was also an allocation of support costs based on the percentage of total staff costs allocated to fundraising.

The funds generated have been used to cover the Charity’s running costs and project costs and to invest in the Charity’s assets namely the development of the new e -commerce platform and the component of the Museum Data Service that will sit on the Charity’ s balance sheet as well as expenditure on other specific projects such as Art Detective, Tagger, and targeted work on developing Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish content and audience development. The other more recent significant projects include further development of The Superpower of Looking programme, and the Murals project and the Ceramics scoping project.

With the majority of employees working remotely, the only office rent and running costs relate to the small office in Stoke-on-Trent. This cost is under £4,000 per year.

The income received from Partner Collection subscriptions has continued to grow as planned with a small yearon-year increase to £114,645 (2024: £109,715), with almost all Partners having renewed their subscriptions.

Over the period 2017 to 2024, dependence on total public funding (mainly ACE and NLHF) rose to a peak of c.72% of total income but has fallen back sharply since. With a continued increased emphasis on a wider variety of sources of income, the dependency on public funding declined down to 23% in the year to March 2023 and again reduced to 14% in the year to March 2024 and in the most recent year to March 2025 formed 12% of total income.

Reserves Policy

The financial statements of the Charity show that at 31 March 2025 there were £429,925 (March 2024: £207,275) of unrestricted funds and £342,171 (March 2024: £565,598) of restricted funds.

The Board of Trustees and senior management continue to review the reserves policy and position on a regular basis and it was agreed in June 2024 by the Trustees that there should be a shift in emphasis towards ensuring that there is always sufficient forecasted unrestricted cashflow for the following six months, a position that we are currently maintaining.

With regards to the balance sheet reserves, the policy is that unrestricted reserves should be an amount that is equivalent to four months’ unrestricted budgeted expenditure plus an estimation of wind -up costs if the Charity was to cease. This policy allows reserves to support any shortfall in voluntary income whilst giving the Charity time to address this but ensuring that there are sufficient reserves if the Charity needs to be wound

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up. The unrestricted reserves figure of £429,925 at 31 March 2025 is another significant improvement on the previous year figure and successfully achieves the target reserves.

With the investment in its fixed assets and in particular intangible assets developing the Art UK platform, unrestricted funds less fixed assets (free reserves) at 31 March 2025 show an improvement to a deficit of £84,685 (31 March 2024: deficit of £238,233). In order to improve this position further, continued work is being done on generating alternative unrestricted income streams.

Focus on Improving the Charity’s Financial Sustainability

The Charity remains focused on implementing a broadly based mixed revenue funding model that encompasses raising subscription income from collections, receiving grants from charitable trusts, philanthropy from high-net-worth and other individuals, low-level mass giving and corporate philanthropy. Public sector funding, which has fallen back considerably as a proportion of total funding, however, does - remain an important constituent in the Charity’s mixed funding model mix. Whilst the Charity will seek one off project grants from Arts Council England, the National Lottery and the devolved Governments of the home nations – where it has had success over the years – the Charity will continue to explore possible regular public funding for its work, despite the lack of success with its Arts Council England grant National Portfolio application in 2022. In the medium term, the Charity is also keen to pursue public funding that might be available through bodies such as Innovate and the AHRC, although it recognises that such funding is most likely to be achieved in partnership with HE institutions.

Trust funding will continue to be important with the Charity having built up strong relationships with numerous grant-giving trusts over the years. There is a large number of grant-giving trusts that have not supported the Charity for a number of years (or ever) that it will be returning to for support. The Charity is particularly grateful to all the Trusts and Foundations that supported it so generously in the year ending March 2025.

A major development in April 2021 was the announcement of a two-year partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies. This partnership strengthens and improves digital access to the UK's national collection of art while encouraging broader engagement with local museums and art galleries. With this multi-year collaboration, Bloomberg Philanthropies became one of Art UK's leading supporters, helping Art UK deliver substantial benefits to almost 3,500 public art collections across the UK as well as our growing global audience. The Charity was delighted that this partnership was renewed in early 2025 and it hoping that this partnership will continue for a number of years.

The Philanthropy Board continues to be an important route to growing income from high net-worth individuals and the Charity is working on ways to make this as effective as possible a route to growing the membership of the Patrons scheme whereby corporates and individuals contribute annually between £1,000 and £10,000 to the charity. There will also be a renewed emphasis on growing the Angels scheme membership which seeks one-off donations of £25,000 or more. To support this growth the Charity is setting up a 501(c)(3) in New York with the pro bono support of Linklaters to enable the Charity to grow sharply the income raised in the USA (where approaching 25% of Art UK’s users are based). Three Directors have been appointed to the Board of the American Friends of Art UK with the President of the Board being Charles Gregson, the former Chair of Art UK. It is expected that the 501(c)(3) will receive approval from the US Inland Revenue Service by early 2026.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the individual-giving scale, the Charity has embarked on a reinvigorated approach to growing the high-volume low-value gifts to the Charity with a particular focus on asking users of the site more frequently to support the Ch arity’s work. At present less than 0.02% of users give to the Charity.

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With generous support from a National Lottery Heritage Fund grant and grant-giving trust, the Charity employed consultants to improve sharply its ability to grow its income stream from this audience and launched the improved online giving service in the autumn of 2024. The results from this are a material growth on the previous income generated from low-level giving but more needs to be done to improve this income flow. Meanwhile, a generous grant from a foundation has allowed the Charity to build a new CRM which went live in the summer of 2025 and employ a CRM officer. This CRM will help the Charity optimise its management of fundraising (and other) contacts as well as its communication with these contacts.

The key commercial income stream currently in place is the Collection Partnership subscription fees. Collections that are part of this scheme pay this to support the sustainability of the Art UK site, and to use the Art UK Shop to generate commercial income for themselves, as well as make use of other opportunities on the Art UK platform. Over the year the number of Partners grew 6% and the income generated grew by 4%.

Going Concern

Given the plans and forecasts in place and known income streams for the next years referred to in the sections above, the Trustees are satisfied that the going concern basis of preparation of the accounts remains appropriate.

PLANS FOR THE FUTURE

At a high level the Charity has five major objectives for the current financial year to March 2026. These are:

1. Plan the delivery of a major upgrade to the Art UK digital platform in such a way that it will improve the long-term financial sustainability of the organisation.

2. Produce a credible fundraising strategy, one that acknowledges the size and strengths of our development team, which provides a roadmap to substantially grow the fundraising pipeline of unrestricted funding asks. Enact this plan ASAP with concrete results appearing later this year.

3. If successful in our Heritage Fund development funding grant application, plan the build of significant elements of upgraded Art UK platform digital infrastructure and a major move to more open licences on Art UK artwork images.

4. Building on the audience understanding work consultancy work executed by Storythings and mentioned above, create an audience development plan and content/marketing strategy, encompassing the full breadth of our offering, which delivers significant audience growth and deeper audience engagement.

5. Tilt the organisation towards more effective support of collections through our work with Bloomberg Connects and the shared e-commerce platform, and embed our content creation within our Collection Support team in such a way that it delivers substantial benefits to collections.

Aligning with these high-level objectives for the current year, product teams with Art UK have their own objectives which are described in more detail below.

Digital Assets

Digital Assets have four main objectives for the forthcoming year, two of which are linked to the Museum Data Service.

Firstly, we continue to seek to replace the old spreadsheet and Collections Portal approach to updating and adding to Art UK through getting more collections to adopt the Museum Data Service approach. Over 120 collections have either submitted expressions of interest and are at varying stages of onboarding, and the

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objective by the end of December 2025 is to have 1 million artwork records on Art UK, and 4 million by the end of December 2027.

Allied to this we continue to transform largely manual image ingestion processes through automation. The objective by the end of December 2025 is to have half a million images illustrated on Art UK, and 2 million by the end of December 2027.

At the same time as focusing on artwork numbers we want to transform the impact of the lead artist and artwork pages for all these new and existing Art UK artists and artworks. We have ambitious targets on the percentage of artists on Art UK where we have set what we think is the best image to illustrate their work, as well as embedding biographies, as well as increasing the number of links to a collection’s own online record for their individual artworks.

Finally, as a short-term objective we are managing a Welsh Digitisation project, funded by the Welsh Government, where we are offering free digitisation from freelance photographers to Welsh accredited nonnational museums or museums seeking accreditation. We have to digitise 4,000 items from 40 collections, half of which should be artworks and appear on Art UK by the end of March 2026.

Content

The overriding focus in the current year is to ensure that content creation plays a more active role supporting the participating collections on Art UK. To this end the Director of Content has joined the Collections Support team. The Charity will continue to grow the number of stories about artists, art and the subjects represented. Over time this will be supported by the substantial growth of artworks joining the website. The Charity will continue to produce powerful content in a range of formats about the contributions made by artists underrecognised due to their gender, ethnicity or socio-economic group, while telling more stories relating to underserved communities. The growth in the stories on the website will be funded through a range of grant applications to Trusts (and in due course individuals) who have particular areas of grant focus that align with our story writing aspirations. There will also be experimentation with content formats over the coming year, largely supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Learning

In 2025 – 26 we will continue to expand the learning opportunities we offer to schools, young people and lifelong learners through our online learning resources, UK-wide projects for young people, and The Superpower of Looking. This will be underpinned by the development of a new three-year Learning strategy.

In the summer of 2025, we recruited a new Community Engagement Officer for Murals as part of the NHLF project who will deliver a series of place-based, artist-run projects across the UK, leading to a collection of teacher resources and films. The Our Art, Our Place, Our Voice project will be rolled out in autumn 2025 with a range of partners including The Andrew Logan Museum in Powys, The Wyllieum in Greenock, and Pinc College in Aston, and the Write on Art competition will aim to magnify its workshop pilot through creating regional hubs of activity.

Building on feedback from teachers and the success of our first trial, we will review and expand our exam resources in spring 2026, seeking to engage a wider range of exam boards across all four nations through ongoing consultation.

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The Superpower of Looking will continue as a major priority, championing the importance of visual literacy as a vital life skill for children. Alongside our CPD sessions for teachers and trainee teachers, we will reach out to networks and partners to extend our reach, including NSEAD and LCEPs. We will add audio descriptions to all Superpower resources to increase their inclusivity, launch our first suite of Welsh resources, which will be bilingual, and make our first Northern Irish resource working with Ulster Museum.

The major communications campaign for The Superpower of Looking will be anchored around an Open Letter in partnership with Change.org to invite schools, parents and sector stakeholders to support the importance of visual literacy in children’s lives. This will feature a new film on murals, encouraging children to apply their Superpower of Looking skills to the outside world. There will also be a focus on expanding the programme to secondary schools. We will continue to explore new ways to engage our Teacher Champions, celebrating their support and embedded practice, as we work towards meeting our target of reaching 25% of primary schools by September 2027. The Picture This project will shift from setting up research tools and the recruitment of schools, to implementing the research interventions that will measure the effectiveness of The Superpower of Looking on improving visual literacy skills as well as a broader set of social and academic metrics.

Community Engagement

In January 2024, the Charity started running a three-year volunteer-led programme to identify, research and photograph outdoor murals and street art. Our target is to record at least 5,000 murals across the UK by the end of 2025. The murals learning and engagement programme runs from July 2025 to December 2026, and will include in-person activities with schools and communities, filmmaking and audio descriptions, and the creation of new stories, curations and learning resources on the Art UK website.

In October 2024, the Charity started a 12-month digitisation scoping programme, funded by The Headley Trust and the French Porcelain Society to investigate the opportunities and challenges around adding more ceramics to the Art UK website, testing the use of the Museum Data Service to bring on ceramics records at scale.

We were successful in a grant application to The National Lottery Heritage for a Community Volunteering programme, which started in May 2024. This two-year programme is being run by a Community Volunteer Manager and is developing deeper engagement between the public and Tagger through volunteering and micro-engagement, both in-person in Stoke-on-Trent and online.

Unfortunately, Art Detective has been temporarily paused due to insufficient funding to run the service after its manager retired in July 2024. All 887 discussions and more than 22,000 individual submissions remain accessible on our website, but no new discussion or submission comments are being accepted. The links in the Art Detective Resources pages also remain live, including to more than 200 artist biographies produced through Art Detective (30 of them women artists) and to a selective list of sources useful for researching the history of works of art.

The Charity is applying for funding to rebuild the Art Detective digital infrastructure and to continue to staff the service in the future.

Collections Support

The Charity plays a key role in supporting collections to showcase their art to a global audience. As identified in the previous Trustees report, we have three pillars of activity currently in progress (that will remain a focus over the coming year).

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Art UK aims to drive digital engagement with collections and physical visits to collections. In the Charity’s spring 2025 survey, the percentage of collections that thought showing their artworks on Art UK had led to an increase in physical visits had increased from 25% to 35%. We support our ambition to use digital engagement to drive physical footfall to collections through the creation of in-gallery guides and dedicated app content on Bloomberg Connects. Digital marketing of collections through stories and social media campaigns such as #OnlineArtExchange are also effective channels in helping to drive engagement with collections and artworks.

We remain ambitious about growing revenue in the Shop to over £500,000 March 2028 with over £100,000 per annum returned to collections plus more income for artists. The upgrade to the ecommerce interface has, however, posed some challenges which took a long time to address due to lack of resources, and issues with our supplier. These seem to be largely solved now, and we are seeking additional investment around the Shop, to support a scaling up of marketing activity that will help us to achieve our targets.

Third, the Charity is building on its collection training programme, offering webinars to collections around intellectual property rights, Art Detective, the Shop and how best to use Art UK as well as introducing a range of toolkit guides to help collections make the most of the platform. The first of these toolkits joined the site in August 2024 and there are another ten toolkits in development. This work is partly supported by our first funding from ACE since we lost regular funding from this public sector body.

STRUCTURE, GOVERNANCE AND MANAGEMENT

Constitution

The company is registered as a charitable company in England and Wales limited by guarantee and was set up by a Memorandum of Association on 12 December 2002, registered under the number 1096185. The Charity was registered in the Scottish Charity Register by the OSCR on 3 August 2018 and now has charitable status under the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005, registered under the number SC048601.

Method of Appointment or Election of Trustees

Trustees are chosen for their experience relating to the Charity’s work. A Trustees’ skills and experience matrix is kept. There is a Nominations Committee which has been set up for appointing Trustees which consists of 4 Trustees and the Chief Executive, Deputy Chief Executive and Company Secretary. It is chaired by the ViceChair. The nominations committee is responsible for writing role descriptions, reviewing applications, conducting interviews and recommending candidates to the Board of Trustees. Decisions to appoint are minuted at a meeting of the Trustees.

Policies Adopted for the Induction and Training of Trustees

An induction programme is offered to Trustees to ensure they are aware of the Charity's objectives, strategy and activities and their duties as Trustees.

Pay Policy for Senior Staff

The setting of pay for staff is the responsibility of the Chief Executive following consultation with the Deputy Chief Executive, the Head of People and Culture and an assessment of relevant market pay scales. The range of pay awards is agreed by the Board. The Chair is responsible for setting the pay of the Chief Executive following consultation with the Trustees and an assessment of relevant market pay scales.

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Organisational Structure and Decision Making

The Board of Trustees has ultimate responsibility for the Charity, as described in the Articles of Association (updated in 2016). It is responsible for ensuring Art UK follows an appropriate strategy that delivers public benefit, acts responsibly with regard to risk management and financial control, and in accordance with the law. These responsibilities are shared with Trustees as part of their induction. Trustees (and senior management) are required to declare conflicts of interest four times per annum in line with The Charity’s policy. The Chief Executive reports to the Chair regularly, providing updates on operations, finance and risk management.

The Board meets four times per year to review financial and operational progress and risks, and address issues of strategic importance. A comprehensive, data-driven Board Report is delivered to Trustees ahead of meetings. Meetings are hybrid to help accessibility. At least one meeting a year is held in Stoke, where a Trustee is based. Meeting minutes are available to funders.

The Board delegates certain responsibilities and decision-making to the Chief Executive as defined in his job specification. The Chief Executive manages the Charity on a day-to-day basis supported closely by the senior management team (SMT). Two committees bring the SMT together with Trustees: The Future Strategy Board and The Finance Committee.

Art UK’s programme of work is divided into four delivery areas (‘verticals’), each with a department head. The first three are audience-facing and logically build on each other: (i) getting the artworks onto our platform (Digital Assets) and ensuring the appropriate rights are cleared; then move to (ii) creating learning opportunities for schools with a focus on visual literacy (Learning); before (iii) giving the audience agency over the artworks through participative digital engagement and volunteering activities, in-person activities nationally and in Stoke-on- Trent (Community Engagement). The fourth vertical covers the Charity’s support for collections and includes the Shop, our work with Bloomberg Connects and creating story content. These are supported by five ‘horizontals’ (Digital Infrastructure, Marketing and Communications, People and Culture, Development and Finance). The Management Board comprises the heads of each vertical and the heads of each horizontal. Each vertical and horizontal department h ead has a ‘buddy’ or mentor on the Board of Trustees.

The Management Board meets twice a month and ensures the business plan and operational plans of the Charity are implemented and the needs of audiences and collections are met. It focuses on monitoring financials, performance in key areas, resourcing, marketing and risk management. A digital dashboard of metrics monitors progress against goals and informs decision-making. Relevant team ideas are discussed.

The Future Strategy Board comprises the Chief Executive, the two Deputy Chief Executives and four Trustees and is chaired by one of the Vice Chairs on the Board of Trustees. Its focus is the long-term strategic direction of Art UK. It is responsible for de veloping the Charity’s business plan (subject to Board approval), responding to new opportunities, being alert to organisational weaknesses and threats, and assessing investment needs. It meets bi-monthly.

The Finance Committee meets once a month and comprises the Chief Executive, Deputy Chief Executive/ Chief Operating Officer, Head of Finance and three Trustees. This Committee has oversight of the Charity’s finances, cash flow and development prospects and is chaired by one of the Vice Chairs on the Board of Trustees.

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Each month a Resource Management Meeting is attended by the Deputy Chief Executive/ Chief Operating Officer and Head of People and Culture. Its focus is staffing and recruitment; salaries and contracts; team wellbeing and feedback (there is an annual staff survey); talent development; staff handbook updates; whilst thinking about long-term resource needs. Since moving to majority remote working, the meeting has focused on ensuring an inclusive workplace for a distributed workforce.

A weekly team meeting provides direction and encourages team communication and cohesion. It covers KPIs, organisational developments, audience and collection feedback and celebrates success. It sometimes includes presentations on new initiatives and strategy updates. Staff are encouraged to share ideas and opinions, also through annual staff surveys and a digital suggestion box. A longer business strategy update is given by the Chief Executive Officer twice a year.

The Charity looks to take external advice on many of its activities through the setting up of Steering Panels. The Charity sees Art UK as a digital platform that is shared by the participating collections. All of them have a – – stake in it. Ensuring the collections large institutions and small are involved in developing the initiative is key and the Steering Panels play a key role here. A number of these have existed for limited periods during the development of new initiatives such as for the creation of the Learning portal and for the development and delivery of the sculpture digitisation project. The principal extant Steering Panel is the Art UK Steering Panel. The other extant ones are the Shop Steering Panel and the Ceramics Digitisation Steering Panel.

A Philanthropy Board plays a key role in supporting the Charity to raise funds from individuals and corporates and is now chaired by one of the Trustees, Tom Davies.

Related Parties

Details of related party transactions are disclosed in note 22 to the accounts.

Risk Management

The Charity assesses risks to its operations, finances, strategic direction and charitable objectives on a regular basis. A full risk matrix has been compiled and is reviewed by the Trustees at every quarterly Board meeting.

Three particular risks are uppermost in the minds of the Trustees and management at all times.

The first risk relates to the financial sustainability of the organisation at a challenging time for charities and the arts and culture sector. Considerable focus has been put on protecting and improving the financial strength of the organisation by broadening the streams of income to the Charity and ensuring that an increasing proportion of these are from reliable recurring sources. The Charity’s Finance Committee plays a key role in monitoring financial risks to the Charity.

The second risk relates to the security of the website and the Charity’s other digital assets from cyber security - threat. Great focus has been put on evaluating the vulnerability of the Charity’s digital platforms to cyber attack and putting in place additional protections and training for staff.

The third risk relates to the threat of a national or global internet virus and the impact that could have on the organisation’s ability to operate the Art UK website. The Charity has a robust system of backups of data and images which will preserve historic data holdings, but in the event of an internet virus, the ability to operate would be substantially impacted.

The Charity put in place an AI policy during the year under review.

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Internal Controls

The Board has overall responsibility for establishing, maintaining and reviewing the effectiveness of the system of internal control. The system of internal control is designed to manage risk and provide reasonable assurance that key business objectives and expected outcomes will be achieved. It also exists to give reasonable assurance about the preparation and reliability of financial and operational information, the safeguarding of the Charity‘s assets and interests and compliance with relevant legislatio n, law and regulations.

The assurance framework is designed to provide sufficient, continuous and reliable assurance on organisational stewardship and the management of the major risks to organisational success and delivery of value for money. Executive responsibility has been clearly defined for the identification, evaluation and control of significant risks. The Chief Executive Officer and executive members of the Management Board carry out evaluations of the risks which impact on the Charity’s ability to meet key business objec tives. Risk assessments are carried out on a monthly basis at the Management Board and are aligned to the business planning process. The Chief Executive is responsible for reporting to the Board any significant changes affecting key risks or the breakdown of internal control.

The Board is responsible for a defined range of issues covering strategic, operational, and financial and compliance issues. The Board has not formally adopted the Charity Governance Code for smaller charities but has due regard to it. The governance framework is supported by a framework of policies and procedures with which employees must comply covering issues such as health and safety, data protection, and safeguarding. Financial reporting procedures include detailed budgets for the year ahead which are reviewed by the Chief Executive Officer and Head of Finance on a monthly basis and approved by the Board of Trustees quarterly.

The Board confirms that there is an ongoing process for identifying, evaluating and managing significant risks faced by the Charity. This process has been in place throughout the year under review, up to the date of the annual report, and is reviewed by the Board. The Board has reviewed the effectiveness of the systems of internal control, including the agreed sources of assurance and confirms they are appropriate for that purpose. The Board is satisfied there is sufficient evidence to confirm that adequate systems of internal control existed and operated throughout the year. Up to the date of signing of these financial statements, those systems were directed at the management of the significant risks facing the Charity. No weaknesses were identified which would have resulted in material misstatement or loss that would have required disclosure in the financial statements.

CONCLUDING COMMENTS

Art UK connects everyone with the UK’s public collections of art – free of charge. We digitally unite over – – 700,000 artworks from 3,500 institutions museums, libraries, town halls, hospitals so anyone, anywhere can enjoy, learn from, and research them. As an art education charity, we enrich lives through trusted storytelling, engaging learning resources, and inclusive digital access. Our platform empowers museums and other public collections, inspires creativity, supports wellbeing and gives agency to the UK public who owns the extraordinary art collection we showcase. Trusted and valued by the museum sector, and backed by significant partnerships, we democratise access to art, ensuring creative discovery is not limited by users’ location, education, income or background.

Our vision is simple. The UK’s national art collection is for everyone, everywhere all the time. Our values run through everything we do. We are ambitious, innovative and inspirational. We are resourceful, collaborative and supportive. And we are trusted, inclusive and ethical.

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Art UK plays a vital role in supporting UK public collections and opening up these institutions’ art collections to a global audience for enjoyment, learning and research. The Trustees believe that the work of the Charity is transforming public access to the art that is owned by the British public. At the same time, it is providing an economically efficient shared digital infrastructure for public collections the length and breadth of the UK that is now widely recognised by funders as well as the participating collections.

The Trustees are particularly excited about the Museum Data Service and The Superpower of Looking. The former, through our partnership with the Collections Trust and the University of Leicester, is transforming the way in which knowledge and data is exchanged across museums with the MDS platform now showing over six million records whilst enabling Art UK to more than double the artworks on its own platform. The Trustees are grateful to Bloomberg Philanthropies for their generous initial support of this important initiative and the generous ongoing support MDS has received from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The Trustees are also grateful to Bloomberg Philanthropies for their strong partnership in making art collections more accessible, particularly through the Bloomberg Connects app, which Art UK is introducing to its many Partner Collections.

The Charity has been concerned for many years about the marginalisation of the teaching of the creative arts in the UK’s state schools. The Charity’s second major initiative that is underway, The Superpower of Looking, will help correct this. The Superpower of Looking is an innovative and inclusive programme that seeks to transform the visual literacy skills of primary school children across the UK, taking the world of art and images as its starting point. Using a set of free teaching resources, children gain an essential superpower: the ability – to really 'see' to critically observe, analyse, question, interpret, and empathise. Children will become visually literate in the image-dominated world around them. This flagship programme, generously funded by the Freelands Foundation, together with the Charity’s wider learning resources will support the teaching of Art & Design and Art History in schools across the country and connect the UK’s young people to the extraordinary art collection they all own.

The Trustees believe the Art UK platform is a global model of innovation, inclusion and collaboration (across communities, collections, universities and artists); and the content created will help support and develop creative careers and the work of the creative industries, from curators to designers. Art UK aims to be an exemplar of inclusivity. The Charity will continue to diversify the platform’s content, building on previous years’ work, to ensure that it reflects the interests of the wider British publ ic. The Charity’s staff and Trustees believe Art UK can play an important role in amplifying the voices and histories of under-represented groups through continuing to tell the stories about Black and global majority artists that are not known and sitters who have been overlooked or forgotten. This work will continue to be a key focus for the Charity.

Despite the important work of the Charity and its vital role in providing digital access to the UK’s national collection of art, funding the Charity remains challenging. Whilst the Charity continues to be successful in raising funding for projects, its real challenge has been raising the funding to cover its core running costs. The – lack of any regular public funding whatsoever in the largest Home Nation, England despite the principal focus of the Charity’s work being creating public access to the UK natio nal art collection – has certainly put the Charity at a disadvantage. Whist keeping a very firm lid on costs, the Charity is making progress addressing this challenge around core income, with a new fundraising strategy being enacted to underpin this. As a marker of the progress, whilst total income has hardly changed since in the last few years, in the year under review 88% of the Charity’s income came from the private sector, which shows the progress the Charity has made in diversifying its income stream following the loss of regular funding from Arts Council England in 2023.

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) TRUSTEES’ REPORT (CONTINUED)

One important development over the year under consideration was the publication by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport of an estimated economic value of the work carried out by Art UK. In theory, following such studies, decisions to invest would depend on comparisons between the economic value created and the cost of investment (or equivalently the annual value versus the annual cost of the service). Typically, where the ratio is greater than 1 that would be a trigger to consider investment.

In the case of Art UK, the published study has only been carried out on our UK audience (some 40% of the total). However, just for that audience and only taking into account the 'use value' of the Art UK offering, the calculated annual economic value is estimated at £71.4 million . This compares to Art UK's annual running cost of £1.5 million. Naturally, it is hoped, that this study will over the years encourage more public investment in the Charity!

Irrespective of the split between private and public funders, the Trustees of the Charity are deeply grateful to all the donors who have supported its work in the last year. All of these institutions and individuals have made Art UK what it is today and enable Art UK to share the UK national collection of art with everyone, everywhere, all the time. Special thanks go to four particularly significant supporters: Bloomberg Philanthropies, The Deborah Loeb Brice Foundation, the Freelands Foundation and the National Lottery Heritage Fund for their particularly generously support over the period.

As the Museum Data Service gains traction, The Superpower of Looking continues to be rolled out to UK primary schools, the Charity’s new audience growth and engagement framework is implemented and with the prospect of a major upgrade to the Art UK platform, the Trustees look forward to the future with great confidence. All of the Trustees are grateful to the Charity’s dynamic and dedicated staff who have made everything reported in this document possible.

Finally, the Trustees would like to thank George Entwistle, Sarah Hayden, Kathleen Soriano and Kim Streets who have all retired from the Board since the last Board Report was published and welcome Avril Martindale and Lisa Wong who have recently joined the Board in October 2024.

This report was approved by the Trustees, on 18 September 2025 and signed on their behalf by:

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…………………………………………..
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Tom Davies Chair of Trustees

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) STATEMENT OF TRUSTEES’ RESPONSIBILITIES

The Trustees (who are also directors of The Public Catalogue Foundation for the purposes of company law) are responsible for preparing the Trustees' Report and the financial statements in accordance with applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).

Company law requires the Trustees to prepare financial statements for each financial year. Under company law the Trustees must not approve the financial statements unless they are satisfied that they 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:

• select suitable accounting policies and then apply them consistently;

• observe the methods and principles in the Charities SORP;

• make judgments and accounting estimates that are reasonable and prudent;

• prepare the financial statements on the going concern basis unless it is inappropriate to presume that the charitable company will continue in operation.

The Trustees are responsible for keeping adequate accounting records that are sufficient to show and explain the charitable company's transactions and 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.

23

THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT AUDITOR TO THE MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION

We have audited the financial statements of The Public Catalogue Foundation (the ‘charitable company ’ ) for the year ended 31 March 2025. 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).

In our opinion the financial statements:

• give a true and fair view of the state of the charitable company’s affairs as at 31 March 2025 and of its incoming resources and application of resources, including its income and expenditure, for the year then ended;

• have been properly prepared in accordance with United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice; and

• have been prepared in accordance with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011, the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005 and regulation 8 of the Charities Accounts (Scotland) Regulations 2006 (as amended).

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 are 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. We believe that the audit evidence we have obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion.

Conclusions relating 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.

Other information

The trustees are responsible for the other information. The other information comprises the information included in the trustees’ 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.

24

THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT AUDITOR TO THE MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION

In connection with our audit of the financial statements, 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 audit or otherwise appears to be materially misstated. If we identify such material inconsistencies or apparent material misstatements, we are required to determine whether there is a material misstatement in the financial statements or a material misstatement of the other information. 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.

Opinions on other matters prescribed by the Charities Act 2011

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

• the information given in the trustees’ report for the financial year for which the financial statements are prepared is consistent with the financial statements; and

• the trustees ’ report has been prepared in accordance with applicable legal requirements.

Matters on which we are required to report by exception

In the light of our knowledge and understanding of the charitable company and its environment obtained in the course of the audit, we have not identified material misstatements in the trustee s’ report.

We have nothing to report in respect of the following matters in relation to which the Charities Act 2011 and the Charities Accounts (Scotland) Regulations 2006 (as amended) requires us to report to you if, in our opinion:

• adequate accounting records have not been kept, or returns adequate for our audit have not been received from branches not visited by us; or

• the financial statements are not in agreement with the accounting records and returns; or

• certain disclosures of trustees ’ remuneration specified by law are not made; or

• we have not received all the information and explanations we require for our audit.

Responsibilities of trustees

As explained more fully in the trustees’ responsibilities statement, the trustees 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.

In preparing the financial statements, the trustees are responsible for assessing the charitable incorporated organisation’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 incorporated organisation or to cease operations, or have no realistic alternative but to do so.

25

THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT AUDITOR TO THE MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION

Auditor’s responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements

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.

A further description of our responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements is located on the Financial Reporting Council’s website at: https://www.frc.org.uk/Our -Work/Audit/Audit-and-assurance/Standardsand-guidance/Standards-and-guidance-for-auditors/Auditors-responsibilities-for-audit/Description-ofauditors-responsibilities-for- audit.aspx. This description forms part of our auditor’s report.

Irregularities, including fraud, are instances of non-compliance with laws and regulations. The extent to which our procedures are capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud, is detailed below.

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

The objectives of our audit, in respect to fraud, are: to identify and assess the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements due to fraud; to obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence regarding the assessed risks of material misstatement due to fraud, through designing and implementing appropriate responses; and to respond appropriately to fraud or suspected fraud identified during the audit. However, the primary responsibility for the prevention and detection of fraud rests with both those charged with governance of the entity and its management.

Our approach was as follows:

• We identified areas of laws and regulations that could reasonably be expected to have a material effect on the financial statements from our general sector experience, and through discussion with the trustees and other management (as required by auditing standards), and discussed with the trustees and other management the policies and procedures regarding compliance with laws and regulations (see below);

• We identified the following areas as those most likely to have such an effect: health and safety; General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR); fraud; bribery and corruption, and employment law. Auditing standards limit the required audit procedures to identify non-compliance with these laws and regulations to enquiry of the trustees and other management and inspection of regulatory and legal correspondence, if any. The identified actual or suspected non-compliance was not sufficiently significant to our audit to result in our response being identified as a key audit matter.

• We considered the legal and regulatory frameworks directly applicable to the financial statements reporting framework (FRS 102 and the Charities Act 2011) and the relevant tax compliance regulations in the UK;

• We considered the nature of the charity’s operations, the control environment and financial performance.

• We communicated identified laws and regulations throughout our team and remained alert to any indications of non-compliance throughout the audit;

26

THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT AUDITOR TO THE MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION

• We considered the procedures and controls that the charity has established to address risks identified, or that otherwise prevent, deter and detect fraud; and how senior management monitors those procedures and controls.

Based on this understanding we designed our audit procedures to identify non-compliance with such laws and regulations. Where the risk was considered to be higher, we performed audit procedures to address each identified fraud risk. These procedures included: testing manual journals; reviewing the financial statement disclosures and testing to supporting documentation; performing analytical procedures; and enquiring of management, and were designed to provide reasonable assurance that the financial statements were free from fraud or error.

Owing to the inherent limitations of an audit, there is an unavoidable risk that we may not have detected some material misstatements in the financial statements, even though we have properly planned and performed our audit in accordance with auditing standards. For example, the further removed non-compliance with laws and regulations (irregularities) is from the events and transactions reflected in the financial statements, the less likely the inherently limited procedures required by auditing standards would identify it. The risk is also greater regarding irregularities occurring due to fraud rather than error, as fraud involves intentional concealment, forgery, collusion, omission or misrepresentation. We are not responsible for preventing noncompliance and cannot be expected to detect non-compliance with all laws and regulations.

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 and section 44 (1)(c) of the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005 and regulation 10 of the Charities Accounts (Scotland) Regulations 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.

Thep Mark Cummins FCCA (Senior Statutory Auditor) For and on behalf of TC Group Statutory Auditors Office: Steyning

Dated: 13 October 2025

27

THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL ACTIVITIES (INCLUDING INCOME AND EXPENDITURE ACCOUNT) FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2025

Note Income from Donations 3 Charitable activities 5 Other trading activities 6 Investments 4 Total Expenditure on Raising funds 7 Charitable activities 7 Total Net income / (expenditure) Transfer between funds 18 Net movement in funds Reconciliation of funds: Total funds brought forward 17/18 Total funds carried forward 17/18	Unrestricted Funds £ 898,333 221,758 196,425 11,401 1,327,917 157,932 1,113,434 1,271,366 56,551 166,099 222,650 207,275 429,925	Restricted Funds £ 915,562 - - - 915,562 - 972,890 972,890 (57,328) (166,099) (223,427) 565,598 342,171	2025 Total £ 1,813,895 221,758 196,425 11,401 2,243,479 157,932 2,086,324 2,244,256 (777) - (777) 772,873 772,096	2024 Total £ 2,071,822 168,763 37,500 12,207
				2,290,292
				97,831 1,960,128
				2,057,959
				232,333
				-
				232,333
				540,540
				772,873

All of the charity’s activities are continuing.

There are no gains and losses other than those shown above.

The statement of financial activities also complies with the requirements for an income and expenditure account under the Companies Act 2006

The notes on pages 31 to 46 form part of these financial statements

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) BALANCE SHEET AS AT 31 MARCH 2025

Notes FIXED ASSETS Intangible assets 11 Tangible assets 12 Total fixed assets CURRENT ASSETS Stocks 13 Debtors 14 Cash at bank and in hand Total current assets CURRENT LIABILITIES: Creditors: Amounts falling due within one year 15 Net current assets Total assets less current liabilities Creditors: Amounts falling due after more than one year 16 Total net assets The funds of the charity: Unrestricted funds 17 Restricted funds 17/18 Total charity funds	2025 £ 508,412 6,198 514,610 1,047 409,822 338,689 749,558 (419,168) 330,390 845,000 (72,904) 772,096 429,925 342,171 772,096	2024 £ 438,241 7,258 445,499 1,370 133,394 553,255 688,019 (256,741) 431,278 876,777 (103,904) 772,873 207,275 565,598 772,873

The financial statements were approved and authorised for issue by the board and were signed on its behalf on

…………………….

by: 18 September 2025

Tom Davies Chair

Registered company number: 04573864

The notes on pages 31 to 46 form part of these financial statements .

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) STATEMENT OF CASH FLOWS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2025

Notes Net cash provided by operating activities 19 Cash flows from investing activities: Interest receivable and similar income 4 Purchase of tangible and intangible fixed assets 11/12 Net cash used in investing activities Cash flows from financing activities: Repayment of loans and borrowings 15 Net cash used in financing activities Net increase/(decrease) in cash and cash equivalents Cash and cash equivalents at 1 April 2024 Cash and cash equivalents at 31 March 2025 Analysis of net cash Cash at bank and in hand	2025 £ £ (31,143) 11,401 (194,824) (183,423) - - (214,566) 553,255 338,689 At 1 April Cash flow 2024 £ £ 553,255 (214,566)	2024 £ £ 214,365 12,207 (234,503) (222,296) (4,000) (4,000) (11,931) 565,186 553,255 Non-cash At 31 March Changes 2025 £ £ - 338,689	2024 £ £ 214,365 12,207 (234,503) (222,296) (4,000) (4,000) (11,931) 565,186 553,255 Non-cash At 31 March Changes 2025 £ £ - 338,689
	-	(4,000)
			(4,000)
	At 1 April 2024 £ 553,255	Non-cash Changes £ -
			(11,931) 565,186
			553,255
			At 31 March 2025 £ 338,689

The notes on pages 31 to 46 form part of these financial statements.

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2025

1. PRINCIPAL ACCOUNTING POLICIES

1.1 Basis of preparation and statement of compliance

The financial statements have been prepared under the historical cost convention. The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with the Statement of Recommended Practice for Charities (SORP 2015 (FRS 102)), and applicable accounting standards (FRS102).

The Public Catalogue Foundation is a public benefit entity.

The financial statements are prepared in sterling, which is the functional currency of the charity. Monetary amounts in these financial statements are rounded to the nearest pound.

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. There are no material uncertainties about the charity’s ability to continue as a going concern and as such, the going concern basis has been adopted for the preparation of these financial statements.

The principal accounting policies and estimation techniques are as follows:

1.2 Income

All income is recognised once the Charity has entitlement to the income, it is probable that the income will be received and the amount of income receivable can be measured reliably.

Donation income, including income from the Art UK Benefactor Scheme, is recognised when the Charity has entitlement to the donation and grant income is recognised in the period in which the recognition criteria has been met.

Art UK products are recognised on the sale of a book or item.

Donated services or facilities are recognised when the charity has control over the item, any conditions associated with the donated item have been met, the receipt of economic benefit from the use of the company of the item is probable and that economic benefit can be measured reliably. On receipt, donated professional services and donated facilities are recognised on the basis of the value of the gift to the charity which is the amount the charity would have been willing to pay to obtain services or facilities of equivalent economic benefit on the open market; a corresponding amount is then recognised in expenditure in the period of receipt.

Interest on funds held on deposit is included when receivable and the amount can be measured reliably by the charity; this is normally upon notification of the interest paid or payable by the Bank.

Income tax recoverable in relation to donations received under Gift Aid or deeds of covenant is recognised at the time of the donation.

1.3 Fund Accounting

Restricted funds are those the use of which is restricted by the conditions imposed by the donors.

Unrestricted funds are those which are available for the general advancement of charity’s objectives.

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2025

1. PRINCIPAL ACCOUNTING POLICIES (continued)

1.4 Allocation of Costs

Expenditure is accounted for on an accruals basis and has been classified under headings that aggregate all cost related to the category. Where costs cannot be directly attributed to particular headings they have been allocated to activities on a basis consistent with the use of resources.

1.5 Charitable activities

Charitable activity costs include all expenditure incurred in direct pursuit of the charity’s charitable objectives.

1.6 Pension schemes

The Charity operates a defined contribution pension scheme and the pension charge represents the amounts payable by the Charity to the fund in respect of the year.

1.7 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.

1.8 Cash at bank and in hand

Cash at bank and in hand includes cash and short-term highly liquid investments. The trustees seek to use shortterm deposits where possible to optimise the return on monies held at the bank and to manage cash flow.

1.9 Stocks

Stock of Art UK products are valued at the lower of cost and net realisable value.

1.10 Debtors

Amounts owing to the charity at the balance sheet date are shown as debtors less any provisions for amounts that may prove uncollectable.

1.11 Financial instruments

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

1.12 Intangible assets and amortisation

Intangible assets are capitalised and recognised when the future economic benefits are probable and the cost or value of the asset can be measured reliably. Intangible assets are initially recognised at cost and are subsequently measured at cost net of amortisation and any provision for impairment.

Amortisation is provided on intangible assets at rates calculated to write off the cost of each asset on a straightline basis over its expected useful life.

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2025

1. PRINCIPAL ACCOUNTING POLICIES (continued)

1.12 Intangible assets and amortisation (continued)

Amortisation is provided on the following basis:

Art UK website development - 25% straight line

– Other software development - 10 33% straight line

1.13 Tangible fixed assets and depreciation

Tangible fixed assets costing £500 or more are capitalised and recognised when future economic benefits are probable and the cost or value of the asset can be measured reliably.

Tangible fixed assets are initially recognised at cost. After recognition, under the cost model, tangible fixed assets are measured at cost less accumulated depreciation and any accumulated impairment losses. All costs incurred to bring a tangible fixed asset into its intended working condition should be included in the measurement cost.

Depreciation is charged so as to allocate the cost of tangible fixed assets less their residual value over their estimates useful lives.

Depreciation is provided on the following basis:

1.14 Key estimates and judgements

In the application of the charity’s accounting policies, the trustees are required to make judgements, estimates and assumptions about the carrying amount 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.

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

The trustees do not consider that there are any critical estimates or areas of judgement that need to be brought to the attention of the readers of the financial statements.

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2025

2. STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL ACTIVITIES – YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

Income from Donations Charitable activities Other trading activities Investments Total Expenditure on Raising funds Charitable activities Total Net income / (expenditure) Transfer between funds Net movement in funds Reconciliation of funds: Total funds brought forward Total funds carried forward	Unrestricted Funds £ 702,388 168,763 37,500 12,207 920,858 97,831 931,237 1,029,068 (108,210) 223,435 115,225 92,050 207,275	Restricted Funds £ 1,369,434 - - - 1,369,434 - 1,028,891 1,028,891 340,543 (223,435) 117,108 448,490 565,598	2024 Total £ 2,071,822 168,763 37,500 12,207
			2,290,292
			97,831 1,960,128
			2,057,959
			232,333
			-
			232,333
			540,540
			772,873

3. INCOME FROM DONATIONS

Donations	Unrestricted Funds £ 898,333	Restricted Funds £ 915,562	Total 2025 £ 1,813,895	Total 2024 £
				2,071,822

In 2024 £702,388 of income from donations was unrestricted and £1,369,434 was restricted.

Included in unrestricted donations is £65,088 (2024: £97,374) of donations in kind.

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2025

3. INCOME FROM DONATIONS (CONTINUED)

Unrestricted donations comprise:

Deborah Loeb Brice CAF Advised Fund Bloomberg L.P. The Hotspur Trust Annonymous C Gregson The de Pass Family Trust Treebeard Trust 29th May 1961 Charitable Trust A and L Ellis Lennox Hannay Charitable Trust Martin Porter Charitable Trust Gifts in Kind–Google Gifts in Kind–Freshfields Legal Gifts in Kind–Fundraising venue hire Lord Hintze Sotheby’s Other small unrestricted donations below £10,000 Restricted donations comprise: Freelands Foundation Fidelity Foundation National Lottery Heritage Fund - Capacity Build National Lottery Heritage Fund - Murals Arts Council England Garfield Weston Foundation The Headley Trust Welsh Government University of Leicester–Museum Data Service The Pilgrim Trust Consello LLC Deborah Brice - The Big Give The Hotspur Trust Bloomberg L.P Bridget Riley Art Foundation Kress Foundation Creative Scotland Sub-total	Total 2025 £ 344,495 168,750 50,000 34,000 25,000 20,000 15,000 10,000 10,000 10,000 10,000 50,565 11,233 3,290 - - 136,000 898,333 Total 2025 £ 229,605 150,638 96,745 75,656 50,000 50,000 50,000 49,233 31,667 20,000 15,000 10,000 10,000 - - - 9,454 847,998	Total 2024 £ 60,000 337,500 25,000 - 5,000 - 15,000 - 10,000 - - 48,774 40,000 8,600 35,000 10,000 107,514
		702,388
		Total 2024 £ 118,908 - - - 272,958 50,000 - 49,760 - 20,000 - - - 555,000 78,132 31,039 28,363
		1,204,160

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2025

3. INCOME FROM DONATIONS(CONTINUED) b/fwd Jerwood Foundation National Gallery Trust Tavolozza Foundation Colwinston Charitable Trust Lennox Hannay Charitable Trust Stoke Creates Other small restricted donations below £10,000 4. INVESTMENT INCOME Interest receivable In 2024 all of the investment income was unrestricted. 5. INCOME FROM CHARITABLE ACTIVITIES Art UK Partner Collection Subscriptions Art UK Products and Book Sales Miscellaneous Shop commission Workshop income		Unrestricted Funds £ 11,401 Unrestricted Funds £ 114,645 83,781 3,780 14,077 5,475 221,758	Restricted Funds £		847,998 - - - - - - 67,564		1,204,160 25,000 25,000 25,000 10,000 10,000 10,000 60,274
					915,562		1,369,434
					Total 2025 £ 11,401 Total 2025 £ 114,645 83,781 3,780 14,077 5,475 221,758		Total 2024 £
			-				12,207
			Restricted Funds £ - - - - -				Total 2024 £ 109,795 45,532 2,262 7,124 4,050
			-				168,763

In 2024 all of the income from charitable activities was unrestricted.

6. INCOME FROM OTHER TRADING ACTIVITIES

Sponsorship income Service fee	Unrestricted Funds £ 34,375 162,050 196,425	Restricted Funds £ - - -	Total 2025 £ 34,375 162,050 196,425	Total 2024 £ 37,500 -
				37,500

In 2024 all of the income from other trading activities was unrestricted.

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2025

7. ANALYSIS OF EXPENDITURE

Cost of raising funds: Fundraising and publicity costs Support costs allocation (see below) Staff costs Total cost of raising funds Charitable expenditure: Staff costs Depreciation and amortisation Other costs Support and governance costs Total charitable expenditure Total expenditure	Staff costs £ - - 115,928 115,928 1,062,766 - - 130,068 1,192,834 1,308,762	Depreciation and Amortisation £ - - - - - 121,236 - 4,478 125,714 125,714	Other costs £ 19,388 22,616 - 42,004 - - 669,619 98,157 767,776 809,780	Total 2025 £ 19,388 22,616 115,928 157,932 1,062,766 121,236 669,619 232,703 2,086,324 2,244,256	Total 2024 £ 21,158 17,916 58,757
					97,831
					909,974 70,306 651,681 328,167
					1,960,128
					2,057,959

Included within costs of raising funds is £157,932 (2024: £97,831) attributable to unrestricted funds and £nil attributed to restricted funds (2024: £nil).

Included within charitable expenditure is £1,113,434 attributable to unrestricted funds (2024: £931,237) and £972,890 attributed to restricted funds (2024: £1,028,891)

Analysis of support and governance costs Staff costs Depreciation Office and other costs IT costs Financial Control fees Allocation of support costs to fundraising activities Governance costs–audit fees and professional fees	2025 £ 130,068 4,478 22,737 40,036 47,400 (22,616) 10,600 232,703	2024 £ 166,280 2,884 89,131 32,088 44,400 (17,916) 11,300
		328,167

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2025

8. EMPLOYEE INFORMATION

Average monthly headcount Average monthly headcount expressed as full-time equivalents Employee costs were as follows: Salaries National Insurance Pension contributions	2025 No 41 34 £ 1,171,905 111,024 25,833 1,308,762	2024 No 35 29 £ 1,018,701 95,260 21,050
		1,135,011

The number of employees whose annual emoluments were £60,000 or more were nil (2024: nil).

The key management personnel of the charity comprise the Trustees and the Chief Executive. The Trustees all give their time and expertise without any kind of remuneration or other benefit in kind (2024: £nil). The total employment benefits of key management personnel including employer’s national insurance contributions were £44,928 (2024: £65,829).

During the period there were no payments made with regards to the termination of employment (2024: £nil).

9 . TRUSTEES’ REMUNERATION AND EXPENSES

During the year the charity was controlled by the Trustees. None of the Trustees received any remuneration during the year (2024: none). Expenses reimbursed to Trustees during the year amounted to £690 (2024: £1,191).

10 . AUDITOR’S REMUNERATION

	2025	2024
	£	£
Audit	9,800	9,250
Amounts paid to the auditors for non-audit fees	800	2,050

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2025

11. INTANGIBLE FIXED ASSETS

Cost At 1 April 2024 Additions At 31 March 2025 Amortisation At 1 April 2024 Charge for the year At 31 March 2025 Net book value At 31 March 2025 At 31 March 2024	Other software development £ 473,415 5,520 478,935 321,019 52,735 373,754 105,181 152,396	Sculpture website interface development £ 247,784 - 247,784 247,784 - 247,784 - -	Museums Data Services Software Platform Build £ 299,806 185,494 485,300 13,961 68,108 82,069 403,231 285,845	Total £ 1,021,005 191,014
				1,212,019
				582,764 120,843
				703,607
				508,412
				438,241

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2025

12. TANGIBLE FIXED ASSETS

Cost At 1 April 2024 Additions Disposals At 31 March 2025 Depreciation At 1 April 2024 Charge for the year Depreciation eliminated on disposal At 31 March 2025 Net book value At 31 March 2025 At 31 March 2024 13. STOCKS Art UK Products 14. DEBTORS Amounts falling due within one year Trade debtors Prepayments & accrued income Other debtors	2025 £ 1,047 2025 £ 347,265 62,507 50 409,822	Computer equipment £ 65,635 3,810 (5,672)
		63,773
		58,377 4,871 (5,673)
		57,575
		6,198
		7,258
		2024 £
		1,370
		2024 £ 20,901 112,443 50
		133,394

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2025

15. CREDITORS: amounts falling due within one year

Trade creditors Accruals & deferred income Social security and other taxes Other creditors Deferred income at 1 April 2024 Resources deferred during the year Amounts released from previous periods 16.CREDITORS: amounts falling due after more than one year Other loans	2025 £ 55,592 288,390 24,497 50,689 419,168 2025 £ 74,301 222,166 (74,301) 222,166 2025 £ 72,904	2024 £ 70,750 131,764 29,202 25,025
		256,741
		2024 £ 69,462 74,301 (69,462)
		74,301
		2024 £
		103,904

Other loans are interest free, and only repayable once the charity has sufficient funds to do so.

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2025

17. ANALYSIS OF NET ASSETS BETWEEN FUNDS

As at 31 March 2025: Intangible fixed assets Tangible fixed assets Current assets Creditors: amounts falling due within one year Creditors: amounts falling due in more than one year As at 31 March 2024: Intangible fixed assets Tangible fixed assets Current assets Creditors: amounts falling due within one year Creditors: amounts falling due in more than one year	Unrestricted Funds £ 508,412 6,198 407,387 (419,168) (72,904) 429,925 Unrestricted Funds £ 438,241 7,258 122,421 (256,741) (103,904)		Restricted Funds £ - - 342,171 - - 342,171 Restricted Funds £ - - 565,598 - -		Total 2025 £ 508,412 6,198 749,558 (419,168) (72,904) 772,096 Total 2024 £ 438,241 7,258 688,019 (256,741) (103,904)
	207,275		565,598		772,873

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2025

18. RESTRICTED FUNDS

Fidelity Strengthening Fund Raising Capacity The Big Give–Learning The Superpower of Looking Collections Digital Skills The Bridget Riley Art Foundation Content Commissioning Ceramics Digitalisation Scoping Murals Museum Data Service Museum Data Service II Scottish Content Commissioning –PF Trust Railway 200 Robson Orr Visual Literacy Weiss Total Economic Value Jerwood Foundation Content Commissioning–20&21C BritArt NLHF Development Capacity Building Northern Ireland Content Dvtmnt Samuel H. Kress Foundation Content Commissioning Scottish Content & Audience Dvtmnt Scottish core funding Tavolozza Foundation funding Digital Asset Team Welsh Audience Dvtmnt Total restricted funds	Balance at 1 April 2024 £ - 38,700 8,049 - 73,375 - 23,060 341,308 - - - - - 6,879 22,518 - - 17,084 8,216 7,143 19,266 - 565,598	Incoming Resources £ 150,638 56,315 229,605 100,000 - 54,000 101,906 - 31,667 7,000 6,250 6,250 1,500 - - 96,744 15,000 - 9,454 - - 49,233 915,562	Resources Expended £ (82,070) (38,365) (184,021) (57,780) (34,613) (24,898) (96,914) (136,366) (28,287) (4,824) (4,996) (5,113) (750) (6,879) (27,498) (107,957) (12,469) (19,207) (17,670) (7,143) (25,955) (49,115) (972,890)	Transfers £ - - - - - - - (188,455) - - - - - - 4,980 11,213 (2,531) 2,123 - - 6,689 (118) (166,099)	Balance at 31 March 2025 £ 68,568 56,650 53,633 42,220 38,762 29,102 28,052 16,487 3,380 2,176 1,254 1,137 750 - - - - - - - - -
					342,171

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2025

18. RESTRICTED FUNDS (Continued)

The specific purposes for which the funds are to be applied are as follows:

– Fidelity Strengthening Fund Raising Capacity Funding from Fidelity to build and implement a new customer relationship management platform with the aim of strengthening fundraising capacity.

– – The Big Give Learning Funds raised from the Big Give campaign specifically to go towards developing the Learning area of the Art UK site and developing learning resources.

– The Superpower of Looking A programme funded by Freelands Foundation designed to transform the visual literacy skills of primary school children across the UK, developing related digital resources, and supporting teachers with training opportunities.

– Collections Digital Skills Funding from Garfield Weston to support the digital assets team and to enable continued work supporting museums to digitise their collections.

– The Bridget Riley Art Foundation Content Commissioning Funding from the Bridget Riley Art Foundation to focus on increasing story content about drawings.

– Ceramics Digitalisation Scoping Project A 12 month project, primarily funded by The Headley Trust, to explore the opportunities and challenges to adding more ceramic objects to Art UK, using the Museum Data Service initiative to add new records to Art UK.

Murals – A three year programme funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Pilgrim Trust and other funders using digital and in-person engagement to raise awareness of murals and street art and their place in our communities.

Museum Data Service – The Museum Data Service is a three-way partnership between Art UK, Collections Trust and the University of Leicester. It is a real world digital infrastructure that is transforming the way museums share their object records and knowledge allowing Art UK to scale up its operation adding millions more artworks over time. This funding has also allowed Art UK to build a new state-of-the-art e-commerce platform to generate commercial income for its partner collections. The funding for this is from Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Museum Data Service II – Continuing on from the main Museum Data Service development, this is continued funding to support the digital assets team with MDS work.

Scottish Content Commissioning – PF Trust – Funding from the PF Trust to focus on increasing Scottish story content.

Railway 200 - To celebrate 200 years of the birth of modern rail, this is funding for railway-related story content and to find the world's favourite railway artwork.

– Robson Orr Visual Literacy Funding from Robson Orr to promote visual literacy in UK schools through supporting a research project.

Weiss – funding provided specifically for story content commissioning.

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2025

18. RESTRICTED FUNDS (Continued)

Total Economic Value – This funding relates to the Economic Value work and related data analysis work.

Jerwood Foundation Content Commissioning – 20[th] & 21[st] C British Art – Funding from the Jerwood Foundation to focus on increasing story content with particular emphasis on 20[th] and 21[st] Century British Art.

– NLHF Development Capacity Building A two year project primarily funded by the National Lottery Heritage fund to develop fundraising capacity and to develop community volunteering through Art UK's Tagger initiative, both in person in Stoke-on-Trent and online.

– Northern Ireland Content Development This funding from various sources is for increasing Northern Ireland content onto the Art UK site relating specifically to Northern Ireland.

– Samuel H. Kress Foundation Content Commissioning Funding from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation to focus on increasing story content on the Art UK site related exclusively to Old Master artworks.

– Scottish Content & Audience Development This fund is for increasing Scottish content on and audiences to the Art UK site relating specifically to Scotland.

– Scottish Core Funding Funding towards core costs that relate specifically to Scotland funded by The Lennox Hannay Charitable Trust.

– Tavolozza Foundation funding Digital Asset Team Funding from Tavolozza to support the Digital Asset Team.

– Welsh Audience Development Funding from the Welsh government to support and develop audiences in Wales.

Transfers – Where expenditure on a project exceeds funds raised for that particular project, a transfer is made from unrestricted funds to cover the remainder of the costs. Where funding has been received towards capital expenditure and no further restrictions remain, a transfer, equal to the costs capitalised has been made against those funds.

19. NET CASH OUTFLOW FROM OPERATING ACTIVITIES

Net income for the year Depreciation charges Amortisation charges Interest Decrease in stocks (Increase)/decrease in debtors Increase in creditors	2025 £ (777) 4,871 120,843 (11,401) 323 (276,428) 131,426 (31,143)	2024 £ 232,333 3,164 70,026 (12,207) 310 (96,945) 17,684
		214,365

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THE PUBLIC CATALOGUE FOUNDATION (A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE) NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2025

20. ANALYSIS OF CHANGES IN NET DEBT

Cash at bank and in hand Debt	At 1 April 2024 Cash flows At 31 March 2025 £ £ £ 553,255 (214,566) 338,689 (103,904) - (103,904)
	449,351 (214,566) 234,785

21. PENSION COMMITMENTS

The charity operates a defined contribution pension scheme. The assets of the scheme are held separately from those of the charity in an independently administered fund. The pension cost charge represents contributions payable by the charity to the fund and amounted to £25,833 (2024: £21,050). There were contributions payable to the fund at the balance sheet date totalling £nil (2024: £nil).

22. RELATED PARTY TRANSACTIONS

Previously the charity received a long term loan from Charles Gregson, formally a trustee who resigned 16[th] December 2023. At the year end the charity owed Charles Gregson £30,500 (2024 - £30,500). No advances or repayments were made on this loan during the year. The loan will be repaid when the charity has sufficient funds to do so.

At the year end the charity owed Andy Ellis (Chief Executive) £73,404 (2024 - £73,404). £25k of this loan was repaid in April 2025, the rest of the loan will be repaid when the charity has sufficient funds to do so. Donations totalling £17,376 was made to the charity during the year from Andy Ellis, including a £10,000 as a joint donation with his wife.

During the year the wife of Andy Ellis (Chief Executive) undertook editing work relating to Art UK for which she was – paid £250 (2024 £250), and donated £10,000 to the charity as a joint donation.

Donations totalling £3,378 were received in the year (2024 - £652) from 10 trustees.

23. TAXATION

As a charity, The Public Catalogue Foundation is exempt from income tax to the extent that income generated is applied to the organisation’s charitable purpose.

24. LEGAL FORM

The Public Catalogue Foundation is a Charitable Company limited by guarantee.

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