Stuart Croft Foundation
Charity number 1163676
Annual Report and Financial Statements
for the year ended 30 September 2023
Group's logo
Stuart Croft Foundation
Annual Report and Financial Statements for the year ended 30 September 2023
| Contents | Page |
|---|---|
| Trustees' report | 2 to 6 |
| Examiner's report | 7 |
| Receipts and payments account | 8 |
| Statement of assets and liabilities | 9 |
| Notes to the accounts | 10 |
Prepared by West Yorkshire Community Accountancy Service CIO
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Stuart Croft Foundation
Trustees' report for the year ended 30 September 2023
Reference and administrative details of the charity, its trustees and advisors
The trustees during the financial year and up to and including the date the report was approved were: Name Position Dates
Position Dates Gary Thomas Chair Emma Bennett Chair Susan Jones Treasurer Steven Eastwood Gillian Fox Sarah Jones Gilane Tawadros
Charity number 1163676 Registered in England and Wales Registered and principal address Bankers 45 Empress Road Barclays Bank Market Harborough Building Society Derby 69 Albion Street Welland House DE23 6TD Leeds The Square LS1 5AA Market Harborough. LE16 7PD
Independent examiner
Katy Sargeant ACA
West Yorkshire Community Accountancy Service CIO Stringer House 34 Lupton Street Leeds LS10 2QW
Structure, governance and management
The charity is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) foundation formed on 21 September 2015.
Method of recruitment and appointment of trustees
The trustees of the charity are appointed by a resolution at a meeting of the trustees.
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Stuart Croft Foundation
Trustees' report (continued) for the year ended 30 September 2023
Objectives and activities
The charity's objects
To build on the legacy of artist-filmmaker Stuart Croft (1970-2015), to increase public understanding and knowledge of contemporary moving-image practice.
Mission
To make accessible Stuart’s legacy and archive, to exhibit his moving-image works, and to provide grants for new moving-image productions, research, publications and exhibitions.
Introduction
This is the seventh annual report of the Stuart Croft Foundation. The Foundation was formed in 2015 by friends and family of artist filmmaker Stuart Croft, following his death in that year. Stuart was an internationally recognised and award-winning artist who exhibited widely and whose significance is far-reaching. He was an innovative artist whose moving-image practice involved the language of genre cinema, appropriation and circular narratives.
Governance and public benefit statement
The Foundation's governing document is its constitution. The constitution follows the Charity Commission's foundation model, ie the model for a charitable incorporated organisation whose only voting members are its trustees. Responsibility for the Foundation therefore resides with its trustees.
Seven trustees were in post at the beginning of the year, and there have been no changes in the year. Gary Thomas and Emma Bennett acted as co-chairs, and Sue Jones acted as treasurer, for the year. No other trustee held an official role, but trustees have taken on tasks for the Foundation, clearly assigned to individual trustees or groups of trustees.
The Foundation employed no staff during the year but engaged a consultancy service to provide administrative support and project management assistance. Arts consultant Harriet Fleuriot acted as Freelance Office and Project Manager for the year. The Foundation agreed fees at a daily rate of £200, paid upon receipt of an invoice, for the number of days (or part days) worked in any given month or period of months, and the total paid for the year was £4,560.
The Foundation does not own any premises. Work carried out for the Foundation by the trustees and consultants during 2022-23 took place in their own homes, studios and offices, and trustees' meetings took place online.
Three meetings of the trustees were held during 2022-23 and average trustee attendance was 70%. A number of additional meetings were held through the year to focus specifically on fundraising and programming, with selected trustees in attendance. All trustees gave freely of their time to promote the objects of the Foundation. No trustee received any remuneration or benefit from the Foundation during 2022-23.
The Foundation cannot, and does not, operate in isolation. It seeks to work positively in partnership with others to provide activities that promote diverse artistic and cultural practice and the study of artists' moving image. Stuart Croft Foundation is committed to ensuring its decisions and decision-making processes are, and are seen to be, free from personal bias and do not unfairly favour any individual connected with the charity.
An official Conflict of Interest Policy and Privacy Policy was approved at the meeting of the trustees on 7 March 2019. It is the policy of Stuart Croft Foundation to ensure every trustee understands what constitutes a conflict of interest and that they have a responsibility to recognize, declare, and document any conflicts that might arise for them and to ensure that the conflict does not affect the decision making of the organisation. All prospective new trustees must register any conflicts of interests by filling in a Conflict of Interest form before joining the Foundation. A Conflict of Interest register is updated regularly, and conflict of interest is a standing order item for every meeting of the trustees.
In summary, the Foundation seeks to be an efficient and well-operating charity with effective processes, record keeping, financial management and full compliance with legal requirements and recommended good practice.
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Stuart Croft Foundation
Trustees' report (continued) for the year ended 30 September 2023
Governance and public benefit statement continued
The trustees confirm that, in carrying out all of their activities related to increasing public understanding and knowledge of contemporary moving image practice, they have complied with their duty under the Charities Act 2011 to have due regard to the public benefit guidance published by the Charity Commission.
Achievements and performance
Promoting public access to the Stuart Croft archive
In November 2022, the Stuart Croft Foundation announced publicly that they had been developing a beautiful new book that will be the first monograph to focus on the highly influential artist-filmmaker Stuart Croft.
The book will feature Croft’s highly cinematic film stills and production photographs, as well as drawings, draft scripts, and handwritten production notes from his extensive archive. The acclaimed novelist Deborah Levy and the esteemed psychoanalyst Darian Leader , who both knew Croft personally, will provide essays for the publication, and Croft’s own writing will also be included.
The announcement was part of a crowdfunding campaign to raise money to support the development of the book. As part of the 3-week online campaign, the Foundation offered limited-edition rewards to those who pledged support, including badges, postcards, DVDs and prints relating to Stuart Croft's work.
The Foundation has continued to promote the Stuart Croft archive online catalogue, which has been publicly accessible since August 2018 via the online BFI Collections Search, and which continues to attract viewers.
Since November 2019 a selection of 51 of Stuart Croft’s film stills images have been available via the Art Image website, a digital image licensing service. The most popular viewed image in this collection is a still from Remetior (2015), Stuart Croft’s final and unreleased film that was completed after his death.
The Stuart Croft Foundation Awards
Launched in 2017, the Stuart Croft Foundation Awards have enabled filmmakers, curators, writers, researchers, students and recent graduates working between and beyond the gallery and cinema to create small-scale projects, where other funding may be difficult to obtain.
The most recent awards were made in March 2020, the Foundation awarding Anna Brass and Michelle Williams Gamaker (Moving Image Award, £5000 each), Seán Elder (Curation Award, £2000), and Myrid Carten and Grzegorz Stefański (Education Award, £1000 each). Due to the impact of Covid-19, most of the projects were delayed. The Stuart Croft Foundation remained committed to supporting the awarded projects, which have now all been completed.
In March 2023, Anna Brass’ experimental film Haukebodde Hacoud Hacwod Aukud premiered at Ancient House Museum in Thetford and The Assembly House in Norwich. In May, the film was screened alongside other works as part of the event 'Anne Bean: In Search of the Miraculous' at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival. Set in late medieval Italy and Essex, Haukebodde Hacoud Hacwod Aukud draws on diverse imagery to depict a world in a state of flux. This world is populated with strange objects and characters: oversized pilgrim badges, a mystic-activist saint and talking maiolica pots. The film is full of sculptures, backdrops, structures and costumes made with makeshift materials, and the cast are all non-actors.
In February 2023, Birmingham Critical Film Forum (co-delivered by Seán Elder ) invited curator and researcher Ian Sergeant to programme their second event in partnership with Birmingham Art School. The event presented a screening and discussion with Ladywood based filmmaker Yonatan Tiruneh. Tiruneh has produced a short film and led a series of engagement projects with local young people about Tower Ballroom, at Edgbaston reservoir. The discussion focused on notions of identity and belonging in relation to place. In addition to Yonatan’s film there was also a screening of Paradise Circus , (1988), directed by Heather Powell, a film made with Birmingham Film and Video Workshop that reflects on the way Birmingham, and by extension the post-war city, is perceived by the women that live within it.
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Stuart Croft Foundation
Trustees' report (continued) for the year ended 30 September 2023
Achievements and performance continued
In March 2023, Vivid Projects in Birmingham hosted all ripe fruits presents 'Landing Strips' , a screening curated by Candice Nembhard for Landing Strips , as the third edition of Birmingham Critical Film Forum. This event brought together work by Kondo Heller and Yasmyn Nettle ; two artists working in the medium of film, moving image and collage to explore meditations on family, community and home. The evening included a discussion with Nettle and the curator, Candice Nembhard . all fruits ripe is an independent, nomadic events series for queer, Black/Global Majority filmmakers. It was founded in 2019 by writer, artist-curator and archivist Candice Nembhard (okcandice).
Following the production of The Bang Straws , Michelle Williams Gamaker went on to be awarded the Film London Production Award for short film Thieves , which was a sequel to The Bang Straws. Thieves premiered at South London Gallery in March 2023 as part of Williams Gamaker’s solo exhibition Our Mountains Are Painted on Glass .
Myrid Carten has continued to develop No Place Like Home , a film which contrasts an observational documentary approach with formally cinematic experimental sequences to explore the fragile nature of home. The film has received further funding from Screen Ireland, New Dawn Film Fund, Netherlands Film Fund and the BFI. It was selected for the IDFA Forum in 2021. It is being developed into a feature documentary, produced by Roisin Geraghty and Tadhg O'Sullivan for Inland Films and is due to be completed in 2024.
Grzegorz Stefański was awarded the 2020 SCF Education Award to develop moving image work that investigates the subject of home, memory and ambiguity of care-violence dynamics in family structures, in collaboration with a crew of professional creatives including Director of Photography Rosie Taylor. In 2023 a residency and exhibition at the Tokyo Art Space has continued that work.
Communications and public outreach
The Stuart Croft Foundation’s website (www.stuartcroftfoundation.org) received over 7,400 unique visitors from 1st October 2022 to 30th September 2023, which is 14% less than the previous year (8,600 unique visitors in 2021/22). However, visitor numbers on the website have stabilised since the 60% decrease after 2020-21, which was the year the most recent SCF Awards and ‘Questions’ events took place. In contrast, engagement on Facebook and Instagram has increased with reach increased by 182% and 32% respectively, and profile visits increased by 1,600% and 55% respectively, and 102 new Instagram followers. This engagement on social media peaked during the crowdfunding campaign, from mid-November to early December 2022.
We have continued to carry out a simple marketing strategy that focuses on highlighting the Stuart Croft archive, celebrating the impact of the SCF awards, and promoting any events or activity associated with the Foundation, with an aim to increase the breadth and diversity of our networks engaging with our work. This has been carried out through our website, newsletter and social media channels.
Plans for the future
Over 2023-2024 the Foundation’s energies will be mostly directed towards seeing the completion of plans for a printed publication, and a major retrospective exhibition, of Stuart Croft’s work. The publication is scheduled to be launched in April 2024, with an event at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. The exhibition will take place at Leeds Art Gallery, opening in Winter 2024 and running until Spring 2025.
Financial review
The trustees confirm that, so far as they are aware, there is no relevant examination information of which the charity's Independent Examiner is unaware. They have taken all the steps that they ought to have taken as trustees in order to make themselves aware of any relevant information and to establish that the charity's Examiner is aware of that information.
The trustees continue to adopt a cautious approach towards the guardianship of the Foundation’s financial resources. Most of the Foundation’s financial resources during 2022-23 were derived from its inheritance from Stuart's estate, alongside £371 in building society interest and £3,215 (plus Gift Aid yet to be claimed) from a small-scale crowdfunding campaign. The trustees' caution results from the one-off nature of the inheritance and the absence of any certainty about additional funding.
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Stuart Croft Foundation
Trustees' report (continued) for the year ended 30 September 2023
Financial review continued
All of the Foundation's funds were maintained at all times during 2022-23 within the compensation cover provided by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. In addition, as part of the Foundation's effective stewardship of its financial resources, cash flow is monitored on a day-to-day basis, and cash flow and other financial information are reported to trustee meetings. All expenditure is approved by the trustees. The processing of any payment out of the Foundation has to be authorised by two trustees.
HMRC accepts the Foundation as a charity for tax purposes. Its income is not therefore liable to taxation. It claims and receives gift aid against tax on suitable donations. Its incorporated status makes it advantageously eligible for certain investments that would otherwise not be available to it.
The Foundation holds no funds on behalf of others.
The net payments for the year were £6,792.
Funds were spent on activities to promote public access to the Stuart Croft archive; initiating work towards a publication on Stuart’s work; together with administration and running costs. There are no funds in deficit. During 2022-23 a current account was held with Barclays Bank, and a savings accounts with Market Harborough Building Society.
Reserves policy
Whilst reserves ordinarily exclude expendable endowment funds, they have been included as part of the reserves in this statement, on the basis that they are readily available for spending. Total funds held at bank by the Foundation on 30 September 2023 were £56,545. Liabilities amounted to £1,364, and so free cash reserves totalled £55,181, with all funds being held consisting of expendable funds.
Approved by the board of trustees on 20/02/2024
LG Thomas (Trustee)
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Stuart Croft Foundation
Independent examiner's report to the trustees of Stuart Croft Foundation
I report to the charity trustees on my examination of the accounts of the CIO for the year ended 30 September 2023, which are set out on pages 8 to .
Responsibilities and basis of report
As the charity trustees of the CIO you are responsible for the preparation of the accounts in accordance with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011 ('the Act').
I report in respect of my examination of the Trust's accounts as carried out under section 145 of the 2011 Act. In carrying out my examination I have followed all the applicable Directions given by the Charity Commission under section 145(5)(b) of the Act. Whilst an independent examination is not required under section 145 of the Act, the trustees have opted for this type of scrutiny.
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:
1 accounting records were not kept in respect of the charity as required by section 130 of the Charities Act; 2 the accounts do not accord with those records.
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.
Katy Sargeant ACA
02/04/2024
West Yorkshire Community Accountancy Service CIO
Stringer House 34 Lupton Street Leeds LS10 2QW
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Stuart Croft Foundation
Receipts and payments account for the year ended 30 September 2023
| Notes 2023 2023 Unrestricted Endowment funds funds £ £ Receipts Donations (2) 3,215 - Interest - 371 Total receipts 3,215 371 Payments Administration 4,359 - Awards 1,000 - Accountancy and independent examination 264 - Internet hosting web development 1,355 - Project costs 3,400 - Archiving, storage, maintenance and reflection - - Total payments 10,378 - Net receipts / (payments) (7,163) 371 Fund balances brought forward 16,514 46,823 Fund balances carried forward (3) 9,351 47,194 |
2023 Total funds £ 3,215 371 3,586 4,359 1,000 264 1,355 3,400 - 10,378 (6,792) 63,337 56,545 |
2022 Total funds £ 101 101 2,752 - 264 415 - 1,000 4,431 (4,330) 67,667 63,337 |
|---|---|---|
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Stuart Croft Foundation
Statement of assets and liabilities
| as at 30 September 2023 2023 2023 Unrestricted Endowment £ £ Cash funds Barclays Bank 9,351 21,555 Market Harborough Building Society - 25,639 Total cash funds 9,351 47,194 |
2023 Total £ 30,906 25,639 56,545 |
2022 Total £ 38,069 25,268 63,337 |
|---|---|---|
Assets retained for the charity's own use
Documents from the private archive of Stuart Croft were professionally catalogued, and made accessible within the BFI National Archive from September 2019. Public access to the BFI National Archive was restricted in March 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and slowly resumed as restrictions eased in 2021.
| Liabilities Accruals Other creditors |
2023 £ 300 1,100 1,400 |
|---|---|
The financial statements were approved by the board of trustees on 20/02/2024
LG Thomas (Trustee)
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Stuart Croft Foundation
Notes to the accounts
for the year ended 30 September 2023
1 Accounting policies
Basis of accounting
The trustees have taken advantage of section 133 of the Charities Act 2011 and have prepared the accounts on a receipts and payments basis.
There has been no change to the accounting policies since last year.
No changes have been made to the accounts for previous years.
Taxation
As a charity the organisation benefits from rates relief and is generally exempt from income tax and capital gains tax but not from VAT. Irrecoverable VAT is included in the cost of those items to which it relates.
Fund accounting
Unrestricted funds are available for use at the discretion of the trustees in furtherance of the general objectives of the charity.
Endowment funds represent those assets which must be held permanently by the charity, principally investments. Income arising on the endowment funds can be used in accordance with the objects of the charity and is included as unrestricted income unless restrictions have been imposed by the donor. Any capital gains or losses arising on the investments form part of the fund. Investment management charges and legal advice relating to the fund are charged against the fund.
Further explanation of the nature and purpose of each fund is included in the notes to the accounts.
2 Related party transactions
Trustee expenses
No trustee received any expenses during this year or the previous year.
Trustee remuneration and benefits
No trustee received any remuneration or benefit during this or the previous year.
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