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2021-03-31-accounts

Company number: 05435630 Charity Number: 1112094

The Glass-House Community Led Design

Report and financial statements For the year ended 31 March 2021

The Glass-House Community Led Design Contents page For the year ended 31 March 2021

Reference and administrative information 1
Directors’ report 2
Independent examiner's report 31
Statement of financial activities (incorporating an income and expenditure account) 32
Balance sheet 33
Notes to the financial statements 34

The Glass-House Community Led Design Reference and administrative information For the year ended 31 March 2020

Company number 05435630
Charity number 1112094
Registered office 2 Wardrobe Place
and operational London
address EC4V 5AH
Country of United Kingdom
incorporation
Directors Prue Chiles Chair
Susannah Davis
Robert Johnson
Alexander Sainsbury
Key management Sophia de Sousa Chief Executive
personnel
Secretary Sophia de Sousa
Bankers CAF Bank Ltd
25 Kings Hill Avenue
Kings Hill
West Malling ME19 4JQ
Solicitors Portrait Solicitors
1 Chancery Lane
London WC2A 1LF
Independent Noelia Serrano
Examiner Sayer Vincent LLP
Chartered Accountants
Invicta House
108-114 Golden Lane
London EC1Y 0TL

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

The Directors, who also act as Trustees for charity law purposes, submit their annual report and the financial statements of The Glass-House Community Led Design for the year ended 31 March 2021. The Directors confirm that the annual report and financial statements of the Charity comply with current statutory requirements, the requirements of the Charity's governing document and the provisions of the Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP) 'Accounting and Reporting by Charities'.

Structure, governance and management

The Glass-House Community Led Design, which is a Registered Charity (1112094) and a Company Limited by Guarantee (05435630), is constituted through its Memorandum and Articles of Association.

The Board of Directors currently has four appointed members, who give their time to the Charity on a voluntary basis. The Directors of the Company during the year are set out in the legal and administrative information on page 1. The current Directors are Prue Chiles (Chair), Susannah Davis, Robert Johnson (Chair of Finance Committee) and Alex Sainsbury.

Either existing Directors or senior staff members may propose potential new Directors. The Chair and at least one other member interview each potential Director. If approved, potential Directors attend a meeting of the Board of Directors as an observer. Directors may subsequently be appointed by a unanimous vote on an ordinary resolution at a quorate meeting of the Charity’s Board of Directors. There is an established process for the induction of Directors. All new Directors are provided with an induction pack containing relevant documentation as recommended by the Charity Commission. The Board carries out regular governance reviews of the Board and its functions.

The Directors appoint a Chief Executive to manage the day-to-day activities of the Charity.

Risk management

The Charity has assessed the governance, operational, financial, and external risks, as well as those related to compliance with law and regulation. Where appropriate, the Charity has consulted external experts to ensure that the systems and structures in place meet standards and regulations. The Charity has established a clear set of Financial Policies and Procedures adhering to guidance from the Charity Commission, as well as a Financial Reserves Policy appropriate to the risks of the Charity. A comprehensive review of the risks is carried out on an annual basis.

Related parties

One of the Charity’s Directors (Alex Sainsbury) is also on the board of the Charity’s main core funder, The Glass-House Trust. See note 8 for further information.

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

Objectives and activities

The principal objects of the Charity are:

Mission and approach

We want to make great places a reality for everyone.

We connect people with the design of their places, and connect design with people.

Our work is focused on supporting communities, organisations and networks to work collaboratively on the design of buildings, open spaces, homes and neighbourhoods.

We see design not only as a tool for creating great places, but also as a way to connect people and to empower them with enhanced confidence, skills, and a greater sense of agency.

We work openly and collaboratively across disciplines and sectors to develop research, projects, events and practical resources. We are committed to sharing the learning from our work to help affect change for people, places and practice.

What we do

Champion: We are an independent advocate for the value of empowering design practices and for the importance of design quality and its effect on people’s quality of life.

Connect: We use design to bring people together to work collaboratively to improve their places and support local relationships and networks that help build community.

Innovate: We test new ideas and methodologies with partners, projects, and places and share what we learn to inform and innovate design practice.

Areas of work

Improving places

We enable a wide range of people and organisations to work together to shape places, such as the design of new housing, revitalising a green space or transforming a community building.

Our independent, hands-on support helps to build confidence and capacity, to inspire, and to give people the agency to improve the quality of their neighbourhoods.

Innovating practice

We inject new approaches and processes that enhance the social and economic impact of designing places and inform policy and practice.

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

Our support empowers organisations to rethink their culture and practice to support a more open and collaborative approach to shaping places.

Action research

We undertake action research with partners across sectors and disciplines to explore the value and impact of empowering design practices in supporting people and places.

Through our collaborations with partners and the communities engaged with our research, we develop and share new knowledge, tools and resources.

Supporting dialogue

We create and facilitate interactive events and activities that help people from different backgrounds and professions work together and learn from each other.

We also share our work on empowering design practices at conferences, workshops, lectures and other events that explore the connections between people and places.

When planning our activities for the year, the Directors have considered the Charity Commission’s guidance on public benefit. The Glass-House works to ensure that our programmes are inclusive, accessible and responsive to the needs of our beneficiaries. We also aim to ensure that any support that we offer brings benefit not only to the direct participants, but also to a broad crosssection of the communities in which their projects are based. We are also committed to ensuring that our work supports innovation, and the production and sharing of learning.

Allocation of resources to beneficiaries

The Glass-House offers free or subsidised enabling and support to community groups and organisations through a number of different programmes.

The Glass-House delivers a programme of free events, which includes our national Glass-House Debate / Event Series and other workshops, seminars and events. We generally offer open registration to these on a first come, first served basis.

The Glass-House also offers some free or subsidised project-based support and training to selected communities, which is sometimes made possible through theme-based funded programmes. All of this support is accessed through a both rigorous and responsive process to assess eligibility of groups and projects, managed by the Charity’s staff and relevant partners. Applicants are interviewed and/or visited by one or more members of staff, and information assessed by at least two members of staff. The staff team reports regularly to the Chief Executive and the Board of Directors on both projects being considered and resource allocations made. All support given has clear terms and conditions attached and is subject to rigorous monitoring and evaluation. Above all, there is the expectation that we will capture and share learning from each of these projects, and that those we support will work with us to help ensure that the work we do with them can benefit others as well.

In some cases, our free support to communities is linked to the collaborative action research programmes we deliver with higher education and third sector partners. This allows us to both provide practical support on the ground in communities, and to extract and disseminate learning to contribute to the growing evidence base and movement of community-led, participatory and collaborative design of place.

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

Report on activities 2020/21

A year like no other

The Covid-19 pandemic and the associated restrictions transformed life and work around the globe and led to a year of great adaptation and innovation for The Glass-House. We were fortunate to have the systems in place to be able to adapt easily to working from home, but our usual activity, grounded in bringing people together to work collaboratively through design, had to be completely reimagined to enable creative engagement and co-design processes online. We embraced this, and quickly shared what we had learned, positioning our organisation as one that could adapt and innovate. The result was that while some projects had to be postponed, we managed to deliver a wide range of activities and were as busy as ever.

Being ambitious about the future of The Glass-House

Our strategic plan had set five key strategic objectives for 2017-2020, which we continued to apply to our work in these new circumstances:

  1. Be catalytic to affect change (Choose and make opportunities for targeted action that has a significant impact)

  2. Further develop, articulate and share our stories, practice and tools (Develop our archive and shareable resources to widen practice and build legacy)

  3. Champion, challenge and provoke

  4. (Constantly ask people to reflect, reconsider and imagine)

  5. Explore and test future scenarios for The Glass-House beyond 2020

  6. (Consider where the future balance will lie between support, championing and educating)

  7. Ensure that The Glass-House is a place where people love to work

This year saw us deliver a rich programme of activities whilst looking back on the strategic objectives we had set for 2017-20 and reflecting on what we had achieved over this period. There is undoubtedly an increased interest and general shift in perceptions and enthusiasm around community engagement in design and placemaking. That said, with this comes the growing recognition of an enormous skills gap within local government, in practice and industry and within communities to do design engagement well.

There is still much work for The Glass-House to do.

We are looking ahead with a new strategy for the coming years, and have identified key areas of work and partners that can both build on existing projects, programmes and collaborations and lay the path for new ones in the future. It is above all clear to us that there is too much for us to achieve on our own and that one of our key objectives looking forward must be to empower as many other people as possible to do what we do, and to give others the confidence to experiment and innovate in this field.

What follows is a snapshot of our work in 2020/21, and how it is helping to inform our work as we look ahead.

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

Innovating practice

Innovation took a front seat in 2020/21, with The Glass-House having to reimagine how we work with all of our different audiences and through our various strands of work. Through a series of lockdowns and a plethora of social distancing measures, we had to get creative about how we kept our activities engaging, interactive, informative and above all, collaborative. Here are some highlights from the past year:

Union Chapel Heritage workshop

The Glass-House Community was invited by Union Chapel, a heritage building and active church in Islington, North London, to design and deliver a hybrid workshop to a local primary school. The workshop aimed to unpack the stories within Union Chapel and encourage a wider, diverse audience to get involved with heritage buildings. This work was part of a larger project funded by Historic England.

We worked with 21 Year 5 and 6 students from the neighbouring Canonbury Primary School in coordination with a multi-disciplinary facilitation team. We used a range of innovative and interactive digital assets in tandem with physical resources to engage the children throughout the one-day workshop.

Themes of the day

The workshop was designed to help the children learn about the heritage within Union Chapel, while connecting them with the idea that historic buildings are layers of stories and empowering them to engage with the future of heritage spaces. The school has a long-term history with Union Chapel and the venue is often used for celebration events, so the majority of the children had an existing link to the chapel which we could build upon throughout the workshop.

It was important for us to retain a sense of exploration in the digital engagement spaces, allowing the children to discover narratives within the chapel and to develop a sense of excitement around these stories. We viewed this workshop as an explorative space for us as well, a space which we could use to continue to investigate the possibilities of digital engagement and hybrid facilitation.

Working across physical and digital spaces

Designed during the third national Covid-19 lockdown in the UK, the workshop was delivered to the students within their classrooms in Islington completely remotely by The Glass-House and

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

Union Chapel teams through the online video conferencing platform, Zoom. Teachers were present within the classroom to help support the children.

Using Zoom, the online whiteboard platform Miro and a host of physical resources developed specifically for this workshop model, we created a series of learning, reflective, active and design activities. These included: memory mapping the children’s pre-existing and changing perceptions of Union Chapel; an introduction to building design and the principles of form, function and feeling; an exploratory digital treasure hunt of Union Chapel; a collaged group poster task; and as a creative art and design activity, re-imaging one of the elements of Union Chapel (pulpit, clock, stained glass windows or organ) while using drawing, modelling or collaging to depict the result.

Some of the physical and digital resources produced for the workshop

Limitations becoming innovations

The key area of innovation within this workshop was the transformation of a Miro board into a treasure map for the children to use, giving them agency over which aspects and stories from Union Chapel they explored. This was shared through Zoom screen-sharing and then independently accessed by the children through the classroom smartboards, allowing the children to use their hands to open areas of content and explore through the map. We used a range of media, including videos, sounds and live music, throughout the experience to keep the children engaged.

Looking forward

This workshop served as the first iteration in a larger framework of workshop development for Union Chapel. We hope that Union Chapel will be able to use the physical and digital resources developed to host and run workshops with other schools in the local vicinity, as well as to connect with children from across the UK.

We have developed a publication which captures an overview of the workshop and the range of immersive resources developed, which can be found here - - https://theglasshouse.org.uk/resources/union chapel - - heritage workshop report/

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

Supporting and innovating practice through Glass-House Chats:

As the world moved online due to lockdown, we became aware that spaces for informal conversation had become increasingly hard to find, and in a strange way seemed more important than ever. Most online events tended to be people speaking to audiences through conferencing platforms, with little space for discussion. Our own experience told us that people value the space and time to talk through themes being explored at events, and to have a chat about things happening in their own practice and compare notes with others.

We were also particularly struck by the challenges facing local authorities, who were suddenly having to grapple with the service and delivery implications of communities facing the challenges of Covid and at the same time, innovate how they took their design and placemaking conversations online.

With all of this in mind, The Glass-House initiated a new space for conversation called Glass-House Chats. These free online sessions were designed to create a safe space to ask questions, explore ideas, approaches and methods, share learning and make connections. While initially conceived to support local authority officers, they were open to and attracted a wide range of participants who were interested in how we can collectively build confidence and capacity in the sectors to engage communities in design and placemaking.

These monthly sessions are chaired by The Glass-House Chief Executive, who briefly introduces the theme and then opens the floor for an informal and open discussion among participants. To ensure space for meaningful discussion, places are limited to a small group. The themes we have covered to date include

Following each chat, we share summaries of the key discussion points with participants and = through our blogs. https://theglasshouse.org.uk/?s chats+takeaways

Glass-House Chats have been much appreciated by participants, and have also created an invaluable space for connection, dialogue and learning for our team as well as for those who join us. We will continue this activity with a new season of Chats, which we now plan to keep as a regular part of The Glass-House programme.

Participant voices

"It was great to have a small group of professionals interact and learn from each other.”

" I really enjoyed the conversation. It's so poignant and really feel there's a massive gap in pushing for community relationship building at senior management level (heads of service) etc. across service areas outside of comms."

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

RSA Student Design Awards Workshop:

exploring participatory design as part of the design process

In collaboration with RSA, The Glass-House ran an interactive workshop to introduce students to elements of action research and participatory design, applicable to all Student Design Awards briefs. The interactive online workshop also explored the value and methods of participatory design, essential to shaping informed and inclusive design proposals built on solid research. Through real-life examples, discussion and co-design tasks, we explored the role that effective engagement can play in better understanding the context and brief; exploring need and opportunity; unleashing assets and creativity; and building interest, collaboration and investment.

Students were set a co-design task, to envision how they would engage people in designing a new object or building for a local park. While designing their engagement activities, students had to contemplate who their project was targeting, how they would reach these groups, which groups they would try to bring together and which specific engagement tasks they would develop.

All of the working groups then shared their varied creative and playful ideas, and we considered the opportunities and challenges associated with the various approaches outlined.

The session unpicked the groups’ proposed research processes, exploring learning from their target user groups and how to make engagement fun and successful. There was also discussion on the methods that can be utilised in a socially distanced way and how mapping tools such as Miro and QR codes can be adapted and used within research.

“It was lovely to see and hear about design from a place perspective, where it’s not a product or service, but a process of bringing together many perspectives to inform an idea that serves the collective…the “how” of making this happen was my biggest learning.”

Workshop participant

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

The Glass-House and higher education

The Glass-House enjoys working with universities and where possible, we inject some of our experience and learning into degree programmes for emerging design and regeneration professionals. This year we experimented with a new model for collaboration with higher education linked to our 2020/21 WEdesign event series (see below in the Supporting Dialogue section). This included a student research project in collaboration with The UCL Bartlett School of Planning.

Glass-House workshops for universities

The Glass-House did workshops for the following universities, injecting our expertise into various different design modules and degree courses at:

We also advised several students working on dissertations through one-to-one interview sessions.

Continuing Professional Development

Last year, The Glass-House delivered a series of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) seminars for The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) on community engagement and collaborative design techniques as part of the 2019 RIBA Core Curriculum Programme, City Club Programme and in-practice offer. This took us to 20 locations across the country, and saw us providing our training on Community engagement: collaborative design techniques to over 700 design professionals. A webinar version of the seminar has been recorded, and now is available on demand via the RIBA Academy website. This has been part of the new essential online CPD offer from RIBA during a year in which face-to face learning has not been possible.

Contributing to central government policy and guidance

The Glass-House also uses our experience to contribute to policy responses, and this year was no exception, as we submitted our take on the Planning for the Future Whitepaper .

We also worked with the Ministry for Housing Communities and Local Government to advise on two key pieces of guidance:

We are already seeing that The Glass-House will play an active role in the national conversation on design codes and that we are being invited in to both events and training spaces, and indeed partnering with others to convene spaces ourselves, to talk about how communities can meaningfully be involved in the creation of design codes that will guide policy and development in their area.

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

Glass-House participation on commissions, panels & advisory groups

Redbridge Growth Commission

Our Chief Executive Sophia de Sousa was appointed as independent Chair of the LB Redbridge Growth Commission, set up to help the council convene a conversation with local people and organisations, and to make a series of recommendations about future growth in the borough.

The Commission involved a number of key figures from industries such as development and placemaking, community development, health and wellbeing, and youth services, to bring different perspectives to this new project. These included:

The Commission offered an independent space to explore how the borough should grow with local people and stakeholders, and with potential collaborators for the future. It posed challenging questions, engaging in dialogue with a broad spectrum of voices and interests.

The Redbridge Growth Commission Report was launched in February 2021 and has already begun influencing policy and practice at LB Redbridge. We are particularly pleased with the recommendations that place people at the heart of design and placemaking:

Other appointments

The Glass-House team has also been active on a number of other groups, panels and advisory groups this year. These include:

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

Improving places

Our approach to supporting projects has always been rooted in helping people to develop the skills, tools and confidence to lead their local project and to connect with potential partners and beneficiaries. Our enabling and empowerment model aims to support better collaboration and more sustainable approaches to transforming places and spaces. We respond to communities, local authorities, housing associations, developers design teams that approach us for support. The following examples illustrate the spectrum of our responsive support to place-based projects:

Enabling design engagement in estate regeneration

Once again, this year has seen us collaborating with the design practice Karakusevic Carson Architects to support an engaged design process to shape the regeneration of Broadwater Farm Estate in North London. This included playing an advisory role to help the design practice shape their engagement programme, and injecting specialist support in building capacity among local residents to contribute meaningfully to the design process. The estate is currently part of an area undergoing regeneration being led by LB Haringey, and is due to go to ballot in 2021.

This year, we had to reimagine our long-established two-day Design Training course, Homes & Neighbourhoods by Design. The training offered participants, who included residents and local stakeholders, a safe and independent space to develop a shared understanding of the principles and language of urban and housing design, and to explore the particular qualities of the Broadwater Farm Estate. The sessions touched on how design thinking can influence elements such as parking, green space, facilities and amenities, and was aimed at helping the Community Design Group (CDG) prepare for the journey ahead with the appointed design team.

This was our first entirely digital iteration of a Glass-House Design Training course and required us to reimagine workshop activities and adapt the learning journey to this new environment.

The Glass-House invited Urbed to co-design and co-facilitate the workshops as GlassHouse Enablers, bringing their independent urban design expertise to the sessions.

Using Zoom as our online meeting platform and Miro as our co-creation space, we created a series of interactive sessions that included: an introduction to urban design principles and language; mapping spatial relationships; exploring housing typologies and density; and as a creative codesign activity, re-imagining the undercroft areas currently used for parking.

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

One of the innovations in our digital Design Training was to take a hybrid approach to the walking tour of the estate. As it was not possible to do a walkabout together as we usually did due to Covid restrictions, we devised a walking map that those on site could use whilst walking on their own, and filmed a video walking tour for those not able to do the walk in person.

The training explored how design thinking can influence elements such as parking, green space, facilities and amenities, and helped participants articulate what they love about their estate, and which elements might be improved through regeneration. Our Design Training offered a space for the Community Design Group to build their confidence to work constructively and creatively together, and with the appointed design team looking forward.

Participant voices

‘I managed to get out on a real tour of the Broadwater estate yesterday, in the sunshine, with my husband, my son and his girlfriend. It was really good to walk round not only with the knowledge acquired during Saturday’s discussions but with the fresh eyes and opinions of my family who joined me.’

“One important thing I learned on the course is that my views count.”

“An important thing I learned is that we need to be aware of sustainability, community cohesion and costings.”

“I will use more design vocabulary.“

The training also offered The Glass-House team an interesting reflection space on the opportunities and challenges of doing our Design Training remotely. We wrote a series of reflective blogs documenting our learning journey, which have been much appreciated by our networks. - - - https://theglasshouse.org.uk/tag/neighbourhoods by design digital/

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

Exploring a school-wide culture of design with King Alfred School

This year we also began an interesting collaboration with King Alfred School, an independent democratic school in North West London, to explore how they could enable a school-wide conversation about their school grounds, and develop a working group that involves students, the school leadership team, teaching and maintenance staff, parents and school alumni in championing and enabling great design together.

The school already has a long history of championing and commissioning great design, and the school grounds boast some wonderful architecture and clever thinking about the importance of the built and natural environment in supporting education.

We ran an initial planning workshop with their Grounds and Building Committee to explore how a collaboration between the school and The Glass-House might create an interesting new model for empowering students to work alongside school staff and parents to shape design decisions looking forward. Through this, we identified key guiding principles linked to their very interesting democratic approach to education, which sat well alongside Glass-House principles of inclusion and empowerment in and through design.

The project was unfortunately paused due to the various restrictions facing the school, and the constant adaptations they were facing to their regular teaching programme. However, we are still in conversation with the school and are planning to pick up the collaboration in the next academic year.

The Glass-House as a critical friend

Sometimes, a conversation with The Glass-House team can make a big difference, and we create opportunities for informal sessions with community groups leading design and placemaking projects to provide this. These informal spaces, which this year happened over phone and Zoom calls, allow us to help groups test direction of travel, explore design ideas and think about how to make their design process as inclusive and impactful as possible.

One such group was Touch Community Garden, a community-led garden project in Dunfermline, outside Edinburgh. This group was keen to explore how to bring an underused and somewhat unloved local green space back to life by developing a community garden with a focus on activities that bring together ecology and biodiversity education, growing and play. They had already made great strides in building a relationship with their local council, activating a group of local volunteers, and attracting some initial funding, but were interested in how they could engage more people locally in the conversation and progress some of their initial design thinking.

The Glass-House team provided a space for the group to pick our brains on design engagement, learn about some of the approaches other community groups had taken, and to talk through potential approaches to phasing the work to the garden and the design and build of a potential resource building on site. Above all, the session gave the Touch group the confidence to reach out to local people in new and diverse ways. It also helped them reach the conclusion that it would be premature to start designing a permanent building structure for the site, which would be better informed by activities as they developed and could be tested through light-touch temporary structures.

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

Supporting dialogue

Co-designing Sustainable Places

The Glass-House WEdesign online event series 2020/21

The Glass-House WEdesign event series, Co-designing Sustainable Places , was our first fully online event series, and quite different from previous years.

The Covid-19 pandemic raised many questions about our relationship with nature, our local environments, work and each other, and during this series we discussed the growing need for more to be done in terms of sustainability, place quality and place equity.

The pandemic also created a moment of transition in how we all work, as many of our conversations, meetings and engagement processes moved online. Through this series, we began to explore and test new ways of working collaboratively and creatively to co-design ideas, activities and programmes using a range of both digital and more traditional tools and techniques.

Working with higher education partners, each event in the series was an interactive space in which we worked alongside academics and students across the country to co-design and co-facilitate these free interactive online events. These sessions also linked into the students’ current university projects, providing them with a platform to explore their ideas whilst empowering them as presenters and facilitators.

As with previous series, our events brought together community activists, practitioners, students, researchers, academics, policy makers, voluntary, public and private sector professionals and representatives from the design, housing and development industries. The key difference this year was that people participated in the events from different parts of the UK and from all over the world.

Our series partners were UCL Bartlett, The Glasgow School of Art, The University of Sheffield’s School of Architecture and Live Works.

The series and co-designed propositions are recorded in this booklet, which celebrates a new way of integrating Glass-House WEdesign events with higher education degree courses in built environment qualifications. - - https://theglasshouse.org.uk/resources/co designing sustainable-places-voices-of-the-glass-house-2020-21event-series/

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

The Air We Share: Inclusion & Policy

In partnership with UCL Bartlett 26 November 2020

This event, in collaboration with students from UCL Bartlett’s MSc in International Planning & MSc in Spatial Planning, focused on sustainability and inclusion.

Using evaluation of ‘inclusion’ in LB Camden’s Clean Air Strategy as a starting point for discussion, we explored how to engage the public in informed decision-making and how policy-makers can use a range of participatory methods to involve citizens in shaping and activating public policy to tackle our climate emergency.

This was an active space, where practitioners, policymakers, academics and citizens worked together with The Glass-House and UCL students to explore and co-design creative methods of engagement around clean air. In this digital workshop, our exploration will focus on creative and inclusive engagement in the time of Covid.

Here are some of the ideas that emerged:

Street mapping to share ideas for the future of their area.

Sending packs and letters to older people to inform them about clean air initiatives.

Utilising soundbites and QR codes to engage people from certain industries.

Using design to make policy more accessible and pass the baton onto young people.

Incentivising local businesses to connect and spread the message to the local public.

Enabling young people to experience ownership of part of a green space in their local community.

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

Water Works: People & Materiality in Place

In partnership with Glasgow School of Art 25 February 2021

This event in partnership with the Glasgow School of Art used creative co-design activities to explore the role of water in how we shape our places, and how we can activate both citizens and the different sectors as collaborative placemakers that value, respect and utilise water effectively and share it equitably.

This was an active space, where students, practitioners, policy-makers and citizens worked together with The Glass-House and with students and tutors from the MDes in Design Innovation & Environmental Design to explore and co-design creative methods of engagement around water, design and placemaking.

This event both drew on and contributed to live student projects exploring these themes.

Here is a mind map of the discussion:

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

Harnessing the Elements: Towards Zero Carbon Neighbourhoods

In partnership with University of Sheffield’s School of Architecture & Live Works 4 March 2021

This event, in collaboration with The University of Sheffield School of Architecture’s Live Works, used the universal elements of earth, air, fire and water as themes for creative co-design activities to explore how we can activate both citizens and the different sectors as collaborative placemakers. Using the area around London Road in Sheffield as a starting point for discussion, we explored how local placemaking can be informed by and drive forward the zero-carbon agenda.

At the event students, practitioners, policy-makers and citizens worked together with The Glass-House and with Year 2 students and tutors from The University of Sheffield School of Architecture to explore and co-design creative methods of engagement around the zero-carbon agenda.

Here are the some of the ideas that emerged:

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

- Co design in the time of Covid

In partnership with UCL Bartlett

and participation from Glasgow School of Art, University of Sheffield’s School of Architecture & Live Works

25 March 2021

Our final event explored how we empower people and communities to work creatively and collaboratively towards more sustainable places, and to do so with the limitations of social distancing.

The event brought together students and tutors from our series partners UCL Bartlett, The Glasgow School of Art and The University of Sheffield, as well as community activists, design and regeneration practitioners, housing providers, policy makers, researchers and others for a pause for reflection, and to share what we have learned through the series and in the past year.

The event also incorporated research carried out by UCL MSc Planning students on how placemakers around the country have been adapting to new ways of communicating and interacting through design engagement online and off. You can read the full report or their research, entitled Best practice recommendations for participatory planning post COVID-19 at https://theglasshouse.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Best-practice-recommendations-forparticipatory-planning-post-COVID-19-Edited-17.06.21.pdf

Our student researchers used the online live polling tool Mentimeter within the event to help inform their research.

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

- Reflections on the Co designing Sustainable Places series

“…it’s worth reflecting on the power of the students’ preparations before and afterwards. From the get go they brought enthusiasm and fresh eyes, and throughout the series there they were helping to raise the game technically and connecting in a range of insights to the discussions. By the final event, they were leading the way sharing their own research and setting new agendas.”

Dr Lucy Natarajan

UCL Lecturer and Researcher at The Bartlett School of Planning

“As the students are at a relatively early stage in their education and careers, The Glass-House event series provided an invaluable opportunity to share their work in a supportive semi-public environment. The session was hugely beneficial for the students: showing the agency that their work holds, the positive influence that it could have and the relevance of their designs in addressing complex societal issues.

The students grew in confidence during the short session and came away with renewed vigour and sense of purpose. In what has been a difficult year for everyone, this was a real fillip for our young architects, and offered the possibility of a brighter and more collaborative future.”

Leo Care

Programme Leader (School of Architecture) at University of Sheffield

“I have never helped facilitate an event like this before so I found it to be a really interesting experience. It was also good to put research from my readings/MSc into practice and play a practical role in designing inclusive strategies.”

Student facilitator from UCL

“This was a really great event tonight co-designing & learning together to ensure that all parts of the community have their voices heard. Glad that I was part of the creativity.”

UCL student via Twitter

“Excellent way of bringing people in and offering opportunities for participation to each and everyone.”

Participant

“[The students showed] clarity, friendliness and professionalism with good technical use – presenting and capturing ideas.”

Participant

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

Other events to inform, provoke discussion and inspire

The Glass-House has an approach to developing and participating in events that engage audiences in thinking, exploring and doing. We have embedded this interactive approach and created spaces to inform and inspire at the following events organised by others:

GH contributing at roundtables

External events attended included:

Interview on BBC Surrey breakfast radio

In June 2020, our Chief Executive was interviewed on Surrey Breakfast Radio, discussing the reopening of high streets safely and strategically post lockdown. A blog captures the key points of discussion. https://www.theglasshouse.org.uk/reopening-high-streets-safely-and-strategically/

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

Supporting dialogue through our website

When the first Covid lockdown was imposed in March 2020, we had to cancel what would have been the last event in our 2022/21 Glass-House WEdesign event series. Because we were keen to keep the conversation going, we introduced a new blog series and invited the speakers who had been scheduled to take part in the event and others to share their ideas through our blog.

In April 2020 we launched the What’s Vital Now? blog series, and put an open call out to contributors to share one “What if…?” proposition for a shift in culture, policy or practice, a new approach or project idea to help us better shape our places. Their idea should link to one or more of the themes

of connection, power , sustainability , or diversity . This could also include a reflection on the current crisis This series was not a space for promoting programmes or products but instead, for putting forward creative, innovative and even challenging ideas and propositions, big or small, for doing things differently in the future.

The call attracted video, audio and written contributions from diverse community activists, practitioners and locally based groups.

The success of What’s Vital Now? encouraged us to launch another series in January 2021.

Our new INSPIRED blog series is a space to celebrate what people see as the ideas, processes and projects that are pushing boundaries to empower people and communities to shape their places. We want to hear, in our writer’s own words, about a story that they think should be shared, and about how it has inspired them.

We are particularly interested in celebrating “inspired” approaches, whether complex or very simple, to enabling civic leadership and cross-sector collaboration in shaping buildings, open spaces, homes or neighbourhoods.

This series is helping us to build a repository of good stories and projects beyond our own activities and networks, and extending our conversation and reach to new audiences, as well as providing useful and inspiring examples of best practice to our existing networks.

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

Action research

The Glass-House has become a respected voice in the field of research on design processes that empower people in and through placemaking. Our action research is rooted in working collaboratively across sectors and both with and within communities to co-design projects that develop new knowledge methodologies and practical resources.

An ongoing strategic partnership with the Open University

Since 2013, The Glass-House has had a strategic partnership with the Open University’s Design Group. Our partnership innovates, supports and promotes community-led, participatory and codesign practice and research for the benefit of better places for all.

Empowering Design Practices: historic places of worship as catalysts for connecting communities

This now seven-year collaborative research project is the largest project in the Design and Communities strand funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). It explores how community-led design can help empower those who look after historic places of worship to create more open, vibrant and sustainable places that respect and enhance their heritage. While working within this context of faith and heritage, the project also aims to develop tools, resources and training to support community-led design practice and research more widely. The Empowering Design Practices (EDP) project is a collaboration between The Glass-House, The Open University, Historic England, National Lottery Heritage Fund (formerly Heritage Lottery Fund), Historic Religious Buildings Alliance, and others. The project launched in October 2014 and though originally conceived as a five-year project, was extended through October 2020, and then again due to Covid, through October 2021.

Having wrapped up our practical support to communities on live projects last year, this year we continued with our focus on consolidating our learning and producing practical resources that were informed by the research. We also focused on how we begin to cascade this learning and in particular our resources out to both communities and the professionals who work with historic places of worship.

Here is a snapshot of some of the EDP project activities this year:

EDP LIVE Event & Exhibition Catalogue

In February, 2020, The Empowering Design Practices research team had gathered with partners, community collaborators, colleagues, funders and friends to celebrate five years of research exploring community leadership in design within the context of historic places of worship. This was a day to share learning and the resources produced by the research team, to celebrate community achievements and to explore the potential, opportunities and challenges that these buildings, and their custodians, face in providing welcoming spaces for their whole community.

The event had created an opportunity for us to share our learning and resources in a clear and concise way with those attending the event, and we were keen to find a way to extend the reach of the event. We had already created a short film about the event but realised that the event exhibition had actually created a wonderful snapshot of the project and the resources we had produced.

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

For this reason, we created a conference and exhibition catalogue, which has become a useful snapshot of the project learning, outcomes and outputs.

Creating practical tools and resources

Our work on the ground in communities helped us identify a number of gaps in the support and resources available to groups leading community-led design projects in historic places of worship. This year we continued to build on the resources we had developed in previous years, and to complete work on those started. Here are some of these new resources in which The Glass-House played a leading role:

Preparing to Work with Architects: A beginner’s guide for community clients ( publication)

This booklet is for community groups seeking to appoint an architect and to understand the various ways this can be done. It provides some basic information on what to look for in the person and practice groups commission, as well as what they can do to prepare as a community-based commissioning client.

Using a real-life example and some imagined scenarios, we illustrate how an architect can bring different kinds of support and direction at different stages within a project.

Digital Media and Community-Led Design: creative tips for your project ( publication)

The booklet is part of a set of resources to support the use of digital media in community-led design projects. The booklet presents some case studies for various approaches, and provides some scenarios to get groups thinking about their own projects.

The accompanying film provides an overview of the ways you can use digital media and some visual examples.

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

Online course on enabling community-led design for historic places of worship

One of the other interesting learning points from EDP Live was that while people valued the wide range of resources we had created, there was a clear interest in our research partnership team providing some guidance and training on how to use the resources, and when best to introduce them into a project journey.

This has led to us working with our partners The Open University to develop a course aimed at doing just that, and this year we began developing the course brief and content. The course places an emphasis on the potential of anyone, be they a community activist, design professional, support officer or funder to become a “design enabler” and builds on our learning and experience in this space. It outlines key principles and methods for enabling community-led and participatory design processes, introducing the resources we have produced through EDP as practical enabling tools.

The course, which will sit within the Open University suite of free online courses, is currently in development and we hope to launch it in late 2021.

Fostering creative citizens through co-design and public makerspaces

A collaboration between The Glass-House, Brunel University and Tongji University in China. October 2018 – September 2021

This project seeks to develop a novel and inclusive means of fostering creative citizens in China in a bottom-up manner through strategic use of co-design and public makerspaces. The project looks at creative community centres and makerspaces in both the UK and China, and is producing bilingual resources that share experience and learning from the UK and China, to help inspire makerspaces of the future. The project is funded by The Arts and Humanities Research Council and Newton Fund

Activity on the ground planned for this year in China had to be postponed due to the pandemic, so attention was given to capturing and sharing our learning through the production of academic papers, participation in conferences and seminars.

At The Glass-House, we placed a particular focus on sharing our learning from the research visit to China within the UK context and on developing a facilitation guide for our Design by Consensus: Makerspaces workshop designed by the Glass-House and delivered in both the UK and China.

https://www.theglasshouse.org.uk/project/creative-makerspaces/#1470145920510-2a5e01a76b6a9dfe-b39e

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

New research projects on Civic Leadership in Design

Working once again with our research partners at The Open University, we secured funding for two small collaborative research projects aimed at further exploring methods and approaches for supporting community leadership in design and placemaking, as well as collaboration across sectors.

Mapping Civic Leadership

A collaboration between The Glass-House and Open University

Over the course of two months (from June to July 2020) desk research was conducted in order to explore the kinds of digital platforms used by different actors (government, local authorities and community organisations) to support civic activity at different scales (national, local). The research aimed to understand current practice and to identify gaps and opportunities for supporting civic leadership in the future, through the use of digital tools. This research was funded through an internal Open University funding stream.

The research found that the Covid-19 pandemic and first lockdown period in the UK exposed many deficiencies with government at both central and local levels, which require more trust and collaboration. The resulting wave of voluntary activity in response to the crisis must be seen as an opportunity to build greater resilience amongst citizens, communities and neighbourhoods. This can be facilitated through the wider adoption of digital platforms that can foster engagement and empowerment in shaping places and their futures, post-pandemic.

Incubating Civic Leadership

A collaboration between The Glass-House, Open University, Knowle West Media Centre, Bristol September 2020 – July 2021

Our Incubating Civic Leadership (ICL) research project explores approaches and processes to help enable active citizenship, supporting community leadership and cross-sector collaboration in placemaking. This knowledge exchange project, funded through Research England’s Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF), is a collaboration between The Open University, The Glass-House Community Led Design and Knowle West Media Centre. We are also working with local partners LB Redbridge and Muslimah Sports Association on a locally based initiatives that test new ways of catalysing leadership and collaboration through placemaking.

The activities with local partners build on our cross-pollination approach as means of quickly unearthing, connecting and mobilising resources, networks and projects across specialisms and sectors within a place-based community.

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

Articles and publications

Co-authored academic papers

The Glass-House has worked with colleagues from The Open University, Brunel University on a number of academic papers. The following were published this year:

Empowering design practices: exploring relations between architecture, faith, society and community

This paper presents and discusses some key insights derived from the collaborative research project Empowering Design Practices. The project brought together a multidisciplinary team of academic and non-academic partners to explore the processes, resources and environments that support community-led design practice in the context of historic places of worship. The paper discusses barriers and opportunities surrounding the development and adaptation of historic places of worship as community hubs, and proposes a set of approaches that can help empower those looking after those places to re-imagine and design the future of their places while respecting complex faith, architectural, societal and community values. - - https://openartsjournal.org/issue 9/article 5/

Co-Design Visions of Public Makerspaces in China

This paper discusses the design and outputs of co-design workshops used to facilitate the cocreation of a shared vision for public makerspaces in China and the design of such space. The workshops were held with Chinese and non-Chinese participants to identify similarities and differences in terms of approaches, outputs and key considerations. Initial results suggested that these workshops were effective at supporting value co-creation, as they excel at engaging participants and enable them to collaborate as equal partners. It was observed that Chinese participants were rather pragmatic and conscious of sustainable growth. - https://www.designsociety.org/publication/43045/CO

DESIGN+VISIONS+OF+PUBLIC+MAKERSPACES+IN+CHINA%C2%A0

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

Business development and financial review of 2020/21

The Glass-House began 2020/21 with a fully funded secure budget, a commitment of core funding from the Glass-House Trust through 2023, and ongoing research funding. Working against the strategic objectives set out in our 2017-2020 strategic plan, we were determined that the Covid pandemic should not compromise the work or the stability of our organisation, and that we should remain a strong presence and leader in the field of community empowerment in and through design and placemaking.

Having delivered the rich programme of activities as described in the previous sections, we ended the year of 2020/21 with a surplus of approximately £13.5k, which has brought our reserves back up to a more comfortable level of £56.5k. This has helped us achieve one of the core objectives set out in our strategic plan for 2017-20, to rebuild our reserves to allow us to better respond to both challenges and opportunities. With secured core funding from The Glass-House Trust through 2023 alongside our research funding and commissions, we have a more solid foundation on which to build and to consider how, after a period of consolidation and focus, we may grow again as an organisation in the short to medium term.

Looking forward

This year saw us deliver a rich programme of activities, whilst looking back on the strategic objectives we had set for 2017-20 and reflecting on what we had achieved over this period. We also looked ahead to develop a new strategy for the coming years, and identify key areas of work and partners that can both build on existing projects, programmes and collaborations and lay the path for new ones in the future. Our strategic objectives for 2021-24 evolved into:

  1. Be catalytic to affect change (Choose and make opportunities for targeted action that has a significant impact)

  2. Champion, challenge, provoke and inspire

(Constantly ask people to reflect, reconsider and imagine)

  1. Maximise impact through collaboration (Build on existing partnerships to create new opportunities and to extend our impact and reach)

  2. Widen practice and build legacy (Further develop, articulate and share our stories, practice and tools to develop our shareable resources and archive)

  3. Nurture The Glass-House team & champions (Ensure that working for and with The Glass-House helps people to build the confidence and skills to support and enable The Glass-House mission)

We step into this new strategic cycle of our work in a more robust financial position with healthy reserves, and with core strategic partnerships in place that help us extend our reach and impact. We have also found a balance to our work that is allowing us to both continue to provide practical support on the ground, and to use our experience and learning to champion and enable best policy and practice, and increasingly to educate and empower others to do what we do.

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

With a growing staff team in 2021, we are also taking on more projects at local, regional and national scale. We are also continuing to develop action research that shows seeds of collaboration and knowledge exchange with national and international partners.

The coming year will see us continuing to deliver a broad spectrum of work, with a focus on further strategic development for the future, and at the same time, developing a wide range of resources to support communities and professionals to help connect design, people, and place, and to build capacity to support community-led and participatory design processes.

We will further explore how we can best work with others to support a cross-sector and interdisciplinary network, our “collaborative economy”, of those supporting community leadership in design and placemaking. Our core strategic partnership with The Open University is going from strength to strength, with now a rich legacy of collaborative projects, and new ones in development. Through this we will explore the feasibility of a joint resource hub and incubator to open source our learning and resources, and to serve as a catalyst for new collaborations and projects to support community leadership in design and placemaking. We are also collaborating on the development of online courses.

We will be working in collaboration with a number of higher education partners to support the integration of our learning and experience into degree courses, and to support new champions heading into practice. We are also working with students and communities involved in live projects, mentoring students working with their locally based groups in their area, and helping to draw students and communities onto our event series and the national dialogue around design and placemaking.

It is our aim to continue to play an active and outspoken role in the field of design and placemaking, and to champion the role of community leadership in shaping where we live, work and play.

Reserves policy

The desired figure for reserves of £35k compares with our existing general funds of approximately £56.5K, with free reserves of £54k. Our reserves policy, for the purposes of ensuring the robustness of the organisation, is based on three months’ fixed running costs and is calculated at £35k based on our current budget and forecasts for the next three years. In calculating the free reserves, the Directors have excluded the designated fund that represents the net book value of the fixed assets.

The Glass-House Trust will continue to fund the organisation at the current level of support (£100k per annum), which, combined with other secured funding, provides a high degree of security and the financial viability of the organisation at its current scale through 2023.

In 2015/16, our risk analysis revealed that a careful review and targeted reduction of fixed costs could dramatically reduce risk related to income targets and reserves. Our decision to implement steps to reduce fixed costs has helped us return to a more sustainable and flexible model and to considerably reduce risk. This allowed us to operate in 2016/17 through 2020/21 with reduced risk despite low reserves, basing operating budgets on income already secured. Having already secured funding at 100% of our budget for 2021/22 and core funding from The Glass-House Trust through 2023 alongside some project funding, we are confident that we are operating with a keen

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The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2021

eye on financial risk while operating on a now more comfortable level of reserves. We aim to maintain and further build on our reserves in order to ensure resilience and the ability to respond to opportunity and crisis effectively in the future.

Our reserves policy will therefore be reviewed again in the new year, to ensure that we are addressing any new challenges both to the sector and to our organisation, and to plan how we will further build on our reserves in order to ensure resilience and the ability to respond to opportunity and crisis effectively in the longer term.

Preparation of the report

This report of the Directors has been prepared taking advantage of the small companies exemption of section 415A of the Companies Act 2006.

This report was approved and authorised for issue by the Directors on 7 December 2021 and signed on its behalf by:

Prue Chiles Chair

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Independent examiner’s report to the directors of The Glass-House Community Led Design For the year ended 31 March 2021

I report to the directors on my examination of the accounts of The Glass-House Community Led Design for the year ended 31 March 2021.

This report is made solely to the directors as a body, in accordance with the Charities Act 2011. My examination has been undertaken so that I might state to the directors those matters I am required to state to them in an independent examiner's report and for no other purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, I do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than the charity and the directors as a body, for my examination, for this report, or for the opinions I have formed.

Responsibilities and basis of report

As the charity directors of the Company you are responsible for the preparation of the accounts in accordance with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011 (‘the Act’) and the Companies Act 2006 (‘the 2006 Act’).

Having satisfied myself that the accounts of the Company are not required to be audited under Part 16 of the 2006 Act and are eligible for independent examination, I report in respect of my examination of the Company’s accounts carried out under section 145 of the 2011 Act and in carrying out my examination I have followed all the applicable Directions given by the Charity Commission under section 145(5)(b) of the Charities Act 2011 (‘the 2011 Act’).

Independent examiner’s statement

I have completed my examination. I confirm that no material matters have come to my attention in connection with the examination giving me cause to believe that in any material respect:

I have no concerns and have come across no other matters in connection with the examination to which attention should be drawn in this report in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached.

Signed:

Name: Noelia Serrano FCA DChA

Address: Sayer Vincent LLP, Invicta House, 108-114 Golden Lane, London, EC1Y 0TL Date: 15 December 2021

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The Glass-House Community Led Design

Statement of financial activities (incorporating an income and expenditure account)

For the year ended 31 March 2021

Note
Income from:
2
3
3
3
3
4
4
4
4
5
Reconciliation of funds:
Donations and legacies
Charitable activities
Total expenditure
Charitable activities
Action Research
Innovating Practice
Improving Places
Supporting Dialogue
Supporting Dialogue
Improving Places
Action Research
Innovating Practice
Investments - Bank interest
Total income
Expenditure on:
Total funds carried forward
Net income for the year and net movement in funds
Total funds brought forward		 2021
2020
Total
Total
£
£
100,000
100,000
10,930
11,230
24,990
38,166
1,500
428
18,320
9,922
2
7
155,742
159,753
26,749
27,303
43,770
49,839
30,475
38,271
40,960
30,376
141,954
145,789
13,788
13,964
42,941
28,977
56,729
42,941

All of the above results are derived from continuing activities and are unrestricted. There were no other recognised gains or losses other than those stated above. Movements in funds are disclosed in Note 14 to the financial statements.

32

The Glass-House Community Led Design

Company no. 5435630

Balance sheet

As at 31 March 2021

Note
Fixed assets:
10
Current assets:
11
Liabilities:
12
13
Total unrestricted funds
General funds
Total charity funds
Cash at bank and in hand
Tangible assets
The funds of the charity:
Creditors: amounts falling due within one year
Net current assets
Total net assets
Unrestricted income funds:
Designated funds
Debtors		 £
4,359
56,821		 2021
£
2,356		 £
16,389
31,544		 2020
£
3,056
54,373 39,885
61,180
(6,807)		 47,933
(8,048)
2,356
54,373		 3,056
39,885
56,729 42,941
56,729 42,941
56,729 42,941

The opinion of the directors is that the company is entitled to the exemptions conferred by Section 477 of the Companies Act 2006 relating to small companies.

The directors acknowledge the following responsibilities:

These accounts have been prepared in accordance with the provisions applicable to companies subject to the small companies’ regime.

Approved by the trustees on 7 December 2021 and signed on their behalf by

Prue Chiles Chair

33

The Glass-House Community Led Design

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2021

1 Accounting policies

a) Statutory information

The Glass-House Community Led Design is a charitable company limited by guarantee and is incorporated in the United Kingdom. The registered office address is 2 Wardrobe Place, London, EC4V 5AH.

b) Basis of preparation

The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) - (Charities SORP FRS 102), the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) and the Companies Act 2006.

Assets and liabilities are initially recognised at historical cost or transaction value unless otherwise stated in the relevant accounting policy or note.

c) Public benefit entity

The charitable company meets the definition of a public benefit entity under FRS 102.

d) Going concern

The trustees consider that there are no material uncertainties about the charitable company's ability to continue as a going concern.

Key judgements that the charitable company has made which have a significant effect on the accounts include a commitment by The Glass-House Trust to make a grant of £300,000 over three years (£100,000 for each of 2020/21, 2021/22 and 2022/23) to the charitable company.

The trustees do not consider that there are any sources of estimation uncertainty at the reporting date that have a significant risk of causing a material adjustment to the carrying amounts of assets and liabilities within the next reporting period.

e) Income

Income is recognised when the charity has entitlement to the funds, any performance conditions attached to the income have been met, it is probable that the income will be received and that the amount can be measured reliably.

Income from government and other grants, whether ‘capital’ grants or ‘revenue’ grants, is recognised when the charity has entitlement to the funds, any performance conditions attached to the grants have been met, it is probable that the income will be received and the amount can be measured reliably and is not deferred.

f) Interest receivable

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.

g) Fund accounting

Unrestricted funds are donations and other incoming resources received or generated for the charitable Designated funds are unrestricted funds earmarked by the trustees for particular purposes.

34

The Glass-House Community Led Design

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2021

h) Expenditure and irrecoverable VAT

Expenditure is recognised once there is a legal or constructive obligation to make a payment to a third party, it is probable that settlement will be required and the amount of the obligation can be measured reliably. Expenditure is classified under the following activity headings:

Resources expended are allocated to the particular activity where the cost relates directly to that activity. However, the cost of overall direction and administration of each activity, comprising the salary and overhead costs of the central function, is apportioned on the following basis which are an estimate, based on staff time, of the amount attributable to each activity.

Where information about the aims, objectives and projects of the charity is provided to potential beneficiaries, the costs associated with this publicity are allocated to charitable expenditure.

Where such information about the aims, objectives and projects of the charity is also provided to potential donors, activity costs are apportioned between fundraising and charitable activities on the basis of area of literature occupied by each activity.

Improving Places 18.38%
Action Research 33.15%
Supporting Dialogue 27.31%
Innovating Practice 21.03%
Governance costs 0.13%
Support and governance costs are re-allocated to each of the activities on the following basis which is an
estimate, based on staff time, of the amount attributable to each activity
Improving Places 18.40%
Action Research 21.04%
Supporting Dialogue 33.23%
Innovating Practice 27.33%

Governance costs are the costs associated with the governance arrangements of the charity. These costs are associated with constitutional and statutory requirements and include any costs associated with the strategic management of the charity’s activities.

j) Operating leases

Rental charges are charged on a straight line basis over the term of the lease.

k) Tangible fixed assets

Items of equipment are capitalised where the purchase price exceeds £500. Depreciation costs are allocated to activities on the basis of the use of the related assets in those activities. Assets are reviewed for impairment if circumstances indicate their carrying value may exceed their net realisable value and value in use.

Where fixed assets have been revalued, any excess between the revalued amount and the historic cost of the asset will be shown as a revaluation reserve in the balance sheet.

Depreciation is provided at rates calculated to write down the cost of each asset to its estimated residual value over its expected useful life. The depreciation rates in use are as follows:

3 years

35

The Glass-House Community Led Design

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2021

1 Accounting policies (continued)

l) Debtors

Trade and other debtors are recognised at the settlement amount due after any trade discount offered. Prepayments are valued at the amount prepaid net of any trade discounts due.

m) Cash at bank and in hand

Cash at bank and cash in hand includes cash and short term highly liquid investments with a short maturity of three months or less from the date of acquisition or opening of the deposit or similar account. Cash balances exclude any funds held on behalf of service users.

n) Creditors

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

o) Pensions

The Company contributes to members' stakeholder pension schemes by making contributions of 8% of gross wages. Contributions are charged to the Statement of Financial Activities as they become payable in accordance with the rules of the scheme.

2 Income from donations and legacies - all unrestricted

2
Income from donations and legacies - all unrestricted
3
Action Research
Open University - Arts & Humanities research council
Brunel University - Arts & Humanities research council
Income from charitable activities - all unrestricted
Other income from Innovating Practice
Innovating Practice
Supporting Dialogue
Other income from Supporting Dialogue
Improving Places
Other income from Improving Places
Total income from charitable activities
The Glass-House Trust		 2021
Total
£
100,000
100,000		 2020
Total
£
100,000
100,000
2021
Total
£
10,930
23,490
1,500		 2020
Total
£
11,230
27,334
10,832
24,990
1,500
18,320		 38,166
428
9,922
55,740 59,746

36

The Glass-House Community Led Design

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2021

4a Analysis of expenditure (current year)

Charitable activities

Improving Action Supporting Innovating Governance Support 2021
Places Research Dialogue Practice costs costs Total
£ £ £ £ £ £ £
Staff costs (Note 6) 20,009 31,295 23,012 33,554 983 3,563 112,416
Direct Costs 984 1,538 1,131 1,650 - - 5,303
Other Costs - - - - 2,200 22,035 24,235
20,993 32,833 24,143 35,204 3,183 25,598 141,954
Support costs 5,120 9,727 5,632 5,120 - (25,598) -
Governance costs 637 1,210 700 637 (3,183) - -
Total expenditure 2021 26,749 43,770 30,475 40,960 - - 141,954

All expenditure is unrestricted.

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The Glass-House Community Led Design

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2021

4b Analysis of expenditure - (Previous year comparative)

Charitable activities

Improving Action Supporting Innovating Governance Support
Places Research Dialogue Practice costs costs 2020 Total
£ £ £ £ £ £ £
Staff costs (Note 6) 19,039 34,359 28,290 21,780 979 3,230 107,677
Direct Costs 2,310 4,168 3,432 2,642 - - 12,552
Support Costs - - - - 2,150 23,410 25,560
21,349 38,527 31,722 24,422 3,129 26,640 145,789
Support costs 5,328 10,123 5,861 5,328 - (26,640) -
Governance costs 626 1,189 688 626 (3,129) - -
Total expenditure 2020 27,303 49,839 38,271 30,375 - - 145,789

All expenditure is unrestricted.

38

The Glass-House Community Led Design

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2021

5 Net income for the year

This is stated after charging / (crediting):

This is stated after charging / (crediting):
2021 2020
£ £
Depreciation 2,228 1,812
Accountants' remuneration (excluding VAT):
Independent Examination 2,200 2,150

Staff costs were as follows:

Staff costs were as follows:
Salaries and wages
Social security costs
Employer’s contribution to defined contribution pension schemes		 2021
£
98,662
6,343
7,411		 2020
£
93,800
6,373
7,504
112,416 107,677

The total employee benefits including pension contributions of the key management personnel were £73,211 (2020: £72,133).

The charity trustees were not paid or received any other benefits from employment with the charity in the year (2020: £nil). No charity trustee received payment for professional or other services supplied to the charity (2020: £nil).

Trustees' expenses represents the payment or reimbursement of travel and subsistence costs totalling £0 (2020: £724) incurred by 0 (2020: 1) members relating to attendance at meetings of the trustees.

7 Staff numbers

The average number of employees (head count based on number of staff employed) during the year was as follows:

2021 2020
No. No.
Improving Places 0.40 0.40
Action Research 0.70 0.70
Supporting Dialogue 0.60 0.60
Innovating Practice 0.50 0.40
Support 0.10 0.10
Governance - -
2.3 2.2

39

The Glass-House Community Led Design

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2021

8 Related party transactions

One of the charity's directors, Alex Sainsbury, is also on the board of the charity's main core funder, The Glass-House Trust.

The Glass-House Trust made a grant of £100,000 to The Glass-House Led Community Design (2020: £100,000). There were no amounts outstanding at the year end.

There are no donations from related parties which are outside the normal course of business and no restricted donations from related parties.

9 Taxation

The charitable company is exempt from corporation tax as all its income is charitable and is applied for charitable purposes.

10 Tangible fixed assets

Prepayments
Travel Loan
Additions in the year
Debtors
Cost or valuation
Net book value
Depreciation
At the end of the year
At the start of the year
Charge for the year
At the start of the year
At the end of the year
At the end of the year
At the start of the year
Trade debtors		 Office
Equipment
£
5,438
1,242		 Total
£
5,438
1,242
6,680 6,680
2,382
1,942		 2,382
1,942
4,324 4,324
2,356 2,356
3,056 3,056
2021
£
1,811
-
2,548		 2020
£
13,712
1,010
1,667
4,359 16,389

11 Debtors

40

The Glass-House Community Led Design

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2021

12 Creditors: amounts falling due within one year

Creditors: amounts falling due within one year
Taxation and social security
Trade creditors
Accruals
Pensions
Other creditors		 2021
£
15
3,518
108
526
2,640		 2020
£
275
2,532
-
2,661
2,580
6,807 8,048

13a Analysis of net assets between funds (current year)

General

General
Tangible fixed assets
Net current assets
Net assets at the end of the year		 unrestricted
£
-
54,373		 Designated
£
2,356
-		 Total funds
2021
£
2,356
54,373
54,373 2,356 56,729

13b Analysis of net assets between funds (prior year)

General funds
Movements in funds (current year)
Total funds
Total unrestricted funds
Designated funds:
Fixed Assets - Office Equipment
Tangible fixed assets
Net current assets
Net assets at the end of the year
Unrestricted funds		 At the start
of the year
£
3,056
39,885		 General
unrestricted
£
-
39,885		 Designated
£
3,056
-		 Total funds
2020
£
3,056
39,885
39,885 3,056 42,941
Incoming
resources
£
1,242
154,500		 Outgoing
resources
£
(1,942)
(140,012)		 At the end
of the year
£
2,356
54,373
42,941 155,742 (141,954) 56,729
42,941 155,742 (141,954) 56,729

14a Movements in funds (current year)

41

The Glass-House Community Led Design

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2021

14b Movements in funds (prior year)

General funds
Unrestricted funds
Designated funds:
Total funds
Fixed Assets - Office Equipment
Total unrestricted funds		 At the start
of the year
£
285
28,692		 Incoming
resources &
gains
£
4,583
155,170		 Outgoing
resources &
losses
£
(1,812)
(143,977)		 At the end
of the year
£
3,056
39,885
28,977 159,753 (145,789) 42,941
28,977 159,753 (145,789) 42,941

Purposes of designated funds

Fixed assets - This fund represents the net book value of the Charity's fixed assets.

15 Legal status of the charity

The charity is a company limited by guarantee and has no share capital. The liability of each member in the event of winding up is limited to £1.

42