## **The Annual Report of the Trustees of Rural Reels for the period** 

## **August 2024 – August 2025** 

## **Introduction** 

Rural Reels is a Partnership of village halls in Worcestershire who have the common aim of bringing cinema to our local communities. 

## **Overview** 

Rural Reels partners organise film showings to bring people together in their community. The film evenings are social events where people can enjoy seeing a film on the big screen in a warm and friendly environment.  Ticket prices are modest, the average being just £5.00.  Most venues have an intermission  during  the  film  allowing  film  goers  time  to  socialise  over  reasonably  priced refreshments. 

## **Expenditure** 

Income is raised through a small levy charge based on audience numbers at each performance. This is in addition to the cost of the film licensing fee each hall pays through our support partner Arts Alive. 

This year these funds have been used to pay for the insurance for our mobile film kit, new banners for partners and to provide a grant of £500 towards a new projector as part of an upgrade of equipment. 

## **Activities** 

During last year we held 107 showings of 60 different films with a total audience across our venues of just over 3000.  A wide variety of films have been shown including foreign language (Driving Madeleine), drama (Conclave) and children’s (Paddington). One of our partners took part in the Borderlines Film Festival which runs across Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Shropshire and the Welsh Marches and also showed National Theatre screenings. 

Overall audience numbers have been down this year but our venues continue to provide a valuable social service for our rural communities. 

In order to keep costs down and be more environmentally friendly we set up a WhatsApp group for members to quickly check whether other partners have film disc that they can share. We are also continuing to increase the number of films we show via distributor download rather than disc. 

## **The future** 

Two new halls have joined our partnership this year bringing our total to eighteen venues. Both used our mobile equipment during trials to judge whether showing films would be viable and one has now, with the help of grants, installed a full cinema system in their hall. 

We are always looking at ways to increase our profile in order to reach a wider audience and will be launching our new website in the next few weeks. 

Sheena Walsh 

Chair Rural Reels 



|**Rural Reels**||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|**Charity Number 1165731**||||||||
|**Accounts for year ending 1 August 2025**||Income||||Expenditure||
||**Bank Balance brought forward**|||4081.66||||
|Voluntary Income||||||||
|Grants||||||||
|||||||||
|General Fundraising/Levy||||345||||
|||||||||
|Donatons||||||||
|Investment Income||||||||
|Charitable Actvites||||||||
|General upkeep and running costs|||||||30|
|Donatons||||||||
|Banners|||||||49.98|
|Insurance|||||||163.69|
|New Equipment|||||||500|
|Equipment Repairs||||||||
|Present|||||||42|
|Zoom meetngs|||||||28.84|
|Governance Costs||||||||
|Accountancy||||||||
|Debtors||||||||
|Trade||||||||
|Creditors||||||||





814.51 

## Trade 

Cash at Bank and in hand 

Petty cash Bank 

0 3612.15