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2020-09-30-accounts

The Raze Collective

Charity Registration No.1167655

Report and Unaudited Financial Statements Year ended 30 September 2020

The Raze Collective

Status: Charity Registration No.1167655 The Raze Collective is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation Govening document: (CIO) registered on 16 June 2016 governed by its trust deed. Registered Office: 84 Bethune Road London N16 5BA Shruti Soni ACCA Independent examiner: Shruti Soni Ltd Chartered Certified Accountants 117a St. John's Hill, Sevenoaks TN13 3PE

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The Raze Collective Charity registration number 1167655

Trustees Report for 18 months ending 30 September 2020

Introduction

The Raze Collective is a charity that supports, develops and nurtures queer performance in the UK. Raze was established in 2015 as a charity to support and develop LGBTQI+ (queer) performance and performers. It is called ‘raze’ as it was founded in response to the many queer venues that hosted closing down (i.e. being razed) and the knock-on effect this was having on queer performers and the provision of queer performance for the benefit of the public more generally.

We work by bringing together people and organisations working in different aspects of the queer performance community, including performers, producers, promoters, directors, venue owners, academics and audience members. The charity protects and promotes queer performance for everyone through events, workshops, artist development and commissioning new work. Find out more at www.razecollective.com

Charitable Objects

Our charitable objects are as follows:

Board of Trustees

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Board Observers

Staff

CHAIR’S REPORT

The Trustees present their annual report and financial statements for the year ended 30[th] September 2020. This is also a Directors’ Report required by s417 of the Companies Act 2006 and all trustees are directors. The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with the accounting policies set out in note 1 of the accounts and comply with the charity’s governing document, the Charities Act 2011, and 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 published on 16 July 2014 (“SORP”).

This report covers a substantial body of diverse activities across live performance and digital live performance, as was required after the World Health Organisation declared a global Covid-19 pandemic on 23 March 2020.

Our reporting period was changed in 2020 in order to better match our funding and programming cycles, availability of staff to undertake financial reporting work, and to accurately capture the increase in size of the organisation and deliver on the increased reporting requirements over the previous year. For 2019-2020 the reporting year was extended by 6 months to cover 18 months to September 2020. In future, financial reporting will cover the periods October to September each year.

Public benefit

The Trustees have referred to the guidance contained in the Charity Commission's general guidance on public benefit when reviewing the Charity's aims and objectives and in planning its future activities. In

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particular, the Trustees consider how planned activities will contribute to the aims and objectives that have been set.

Related party relationships

The Charity has considered the disclosure requirements of the SORP for related party relationships. The Charity has no related party connections with other organisations. The Trustees consider that the members of the Board of Trustees and their close connections to be the only related parties of the Charity. All Trustees give their time voluntarily and receive no benefits from the Charity of any kind. No expenses were claimed from the Charity by any Trustees in the reporting year. Trustees are required to disclose all relevant interests and register them with the Chair of Trustees and to withdraw from decisions where a conflict of interest arises.

Managing risk of harm

In carrying out the charity’s purpose to achieve public benefit the trustees have managed risk of detriment or harm to the charity’s beneficiaries or to the public in general (which they feel is minimal). This has been achieved by identifying such risks where possible, minimising them and making sure any harm that might arise is of a minor consequence to the carrying out of such purpose.

Going Concern

After making appropriate enquiries, the Trustees have a reasonable expectation that the Charity has adequate resources to continue in operational existence for the foreseeable future. For this reason, they continue to adopt the going concern basis in preparing the financial statements. Further details regarding the adoption of the going concern basis can be found in the Accounting Policies.

Financial Position

Total receipts for the 18 months to 30 September 2020 were £111,450, an increase of £86,150 on the previous year (12 months) from £25,300. Of the total receipts £90,536 (2019: £13,494) were from restricted grants. Total payments for same period were £42,435, an increase of £25,921 on the previous year from 16,514. Of the total payments £24,799 (2019: £8,485) was from restricted grants. The charity had net receipts during the year of £69,015 (2019: £8,786). Unrestricted cash funds of £7,135 (2019: £3,857) and restricted cash funds of £70,746 (2019: £5,009) are held as at the year end. Due to the increase in the size of the organisation during the reporting period, a process of accumulating restricted reserve funds is in place and £10,000 will be allocated by the end of July 2021, in line with the reserves policy.

The Charity’s net receipts for the period were £42,435, details of which are shown in the Statement of Financial Activities. This includes payments for artistic and creative costs of £26,599, production and management costs of 15,039 and £797 on office expenses.

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Reserves Policy

The Trustees approved a new reserves policy in the reporting year, acknowledging that the reserves should only be used in relation to strategic actions, and that they should be maintained at a level to cover the following financial year’s budgeted minimum operational costs, with ability to maintain current staffing levels for a 3-month period, calculated to be £10,000 in addition to any other unrestricted funds available.

Due to increase in the size of the organisation over the period reported here, the Charity did not have reserves allocated at the end of the previous reporting period. However, the accumulation of reserves to the value of £10,000 has been approved in our recent successful application to Arts Council England’s Culture Recovery Fund and will be in place by July 2021.

Remuneration policy for key management personnel

The remuneration of all staff is reviewed annually. The Trustees review the remuneration of key management personnel, and draw on their knowledge of the sector, the formal appraisal process, and common practice in other charities of similar size, to ensure that the remuneration set is fair and not out of line with that generally paid for similar roles.

Principal Funding Sources

These are:

ACTIVITIES

Period 01 April 2019 - 31 December 2019

Overall 2019 was a year of significant growth for the Raze Collective, in which the Collective’s activities expanded and partnerships strengthened. It was a year of capitalising on the work undertaken since Raze was founded. Throughout 2019 our trustees supported our ongoing strategy working towards sustainability and an increase in outward facing activities. We supported emerging performers through our commissions process and diversified our approaches to connect queer performers, venues, producers and festivals.

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Raze continued our partnership with Southbank Centre throughout the year. Based on the success of the Raze Collective takeover weekend in 2018, and instead of engaging artists directly through Raze for a festival as in 2018, Southbank ‘queered’ their programming throughout 2019 with programmes of events across Southbank venues (including the Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Hayward Gallery) involving Raze Collective members.

This ongoing collaboration stimulated a move towards investigating the provision of queer live music and we programmed two events for Southbank in this new area of audience development. The first of these, Raze by the River (July 2019) was an acoustic live music night in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the success of which has provided the basis of our ongoing interest in establishing a regular queer acoustic live music night. We also worked on an exciting collaboration with the Philharmonia Orchestra as part of the Weimar Berlin: Bittersweet Metropolis series at Southbank Centre (September 2019).

We programmed performers at the Care in Decompression Party at Camden People’s Theatre, as part of The Sick of The Fringe (April 2019).We also successfully produced our initiative for the professional development of queer performers, Raze Up (March - July 2019) for which we received Arts Council England funding and commissioned four new queer performance works. This funding allowed the opportunity to expand our work beyond London, and on to Derby, Oxford, Cambridge and Manchester. For this activity we partnered with Waterside (Manchester), Oval House (London), Cambridge Junction, Old Fire Station (Oxford) and Derby Theatre including workshops run by established queer performers for emerging performers and showcases of the work of our commissioned performers. The extraordinary response to our call out for commissions saw our panel of experts consider 94 applications, a breakdown of which can be found within this report. We plan to revamp this initiative and apply for funding in 2020 and have received interest from the following organisations to collaborate and tour with; Bitten Peach, CBC, Shout Festival, Curious Festival, In Good Company, Mothers Ruin.

Our partnership with Sink the Pink resulted in a second year of Raze Collective hosting performers at their inaugural annual street party (September 2019). East Creative (the producing organisation for Sink the Pink) continues to provide strategic and programming support to Raze Collective.

Due to the interest in live music events identified by our stakeholders, we collaborated with Matchstick Piehouse on Raze Live (November 2019) for a follow up event, and due to audience demand and interest from queer musicians we sought grassroots music funding in partnership with Matchstick Piehouse for a regular queer acoustic live music night in 2020. This project did not materialise as a result of the COVID19 pandemic.

Emerging performers within the collective established shows that have toured to festivals and venues including Edinburgh Fringe festival, VAULT festival, Old Fire Station (Oxford), The Albany, Roundhouse, Camden People’s Theatre, HighTide Theatre, Battersea Arts Centre, Soho Theatre and The Gate Theatre.

Funding enabled us to continue work with our Project Manager and an Operations Manager on an ad hoc basis, and to employ an ad hoc producer. Without such support, our portfolio of high-profile events

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and ongoing plans to continue supporting queer performance throughout England would not have been realised.

Summary of activities 01 April 2019 – 31 December 2019

Period 01 January 2020 – 30 September 2020

Raze Collective was set for a year of targeted artist development, commissioning and showcase activities with partner organisations and venues as well as a period of substantial organisational development when the global Covid-19 pandemic was announced, significantly altering our planned activities and capacity.

In January 2020, Raze Collective received Arts Council England Elevate funding, to act as the lead organisation for a Queer Arts Consortium (QUAC), involving And What? Queer Fringe Festival, Fringe! Queer film festival and Cocoa Butter Club. This substantial funding of £100k over two years will be used to establish each organisation with their own management structures and to centralise the administration functions of each organisation, allowing each partner organisation to focus more closely on pursuing further funding opportunities to increase their sustainability, and greater focus on innovative queer arts. QUAC is managed by a partnership board involving a representative from each organisation and is in the process of recruiting an independent Chair who will report to the Raze Collective Board. In addition to leasing a shared space and hiring a shared manager, QUAC will provide opportunities to further collaborate with other queer arts organisations and a CRM will be set up to provide a database of performers, venues, festivals and allied professionals including producers, stage managers and technicians.

QUAC was officially launched at Shoreditch Town Hall on 23 January 2020 alongside partner organisations, with the project due to commence in March 2020.

The announcement of the global pandemic delayed the commencement of QUAC activities by six months, and activities started on this project in October 2020, and will thus be included in next year’s return.

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Our Queer Clash Diary and Razed and Confuzed event, scheduled to take place at the end of March 2020, was cancelled with the announcement of the national lockdown.The indefinite closure of the arts and culture sector forced our organisation into a period of intensive advocacy for Collective members who faced financial instability due to the government-mandated lockdown measures. Our priorities were to find ways to provide ongoing employment and development opportunities within the sector. This required us to hold off plans to re-vamp our Raze Up programme, which we re-imagined into other programmes to accommodate mandatory social distancing and produce digital work.

Despite the challenging context, we provided significant sector support, creating an Emergency Fund for Queer Performers, which funded 22 artists impacted by Covid-19 April 2020. We were beneficiaries of Wolfgang Tillmans’ #2020SolidarityFund, which provided artworks in exchange for donations to various LGBTQI charities. We also provided commission, employment and development opportunities. We have used the circumstances to develop and diversify our producing capacity to include digital production, and we benefited greatly from a partnership with Something To Aim For to provide online productions during this time. This partnership has resulted in Raze Collective’s Razed and Confuzed Goes Digital 1.0 (June 2020) and plans for a Razed and Confuzed Goes Digital 2.0 programme.

As we experimented with different forms of making work online, and due to feedback from Collective members on what they would like to see, we ran a highly successful Poetry, Performance & Power online event (August 2020). During this time we also focused on advocacy and support, as well as making significant plans for the forthcoming year.

Summary of activities 01 January 2020 – 30 September 2020

Income during the period under review was £111,450 (2019: £25,300) and expenditure was £42,435 (2019: £16,514).

TRUSTEES' RESPONSIBILITIES IN RELATION TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

The Trustees are responsible for preparing a Trustees’ Annual Report and Financial Statements in accordance with applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).

The law applicable to charities in England and Wales requires the Trustees to prepare financial statements for each year which give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the Charity and of the

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incoming resources, and of the application of resources, of the Charity for that period. In preparing the financial statements, the Trustees are required to:

The Trustees are responsible for keeping proper accounting records that disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the financial position of the Charity and to enable them to ensure that the financial statements comply with the Charities Act 2011, the applicable Charities (Accounts and Reports) Regulations, and the provisions of the Charity's governing document. They are also responsible for safeguarding the assets of the Charity and taking reasonable steps for the prevention and detection of fraud and other irregularities.

The Trustees are responsible for the maintenance and integrity of the Charity and financial information included on the Charity’s website in accordance with legislation in the United Kingdom governing the preparation and dissemination of financial statements.

DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION TO THE EXAMINERS

In so far as the Trustees are aware:

There is no relevant information of which the Charity’s examiners are unaware; and The Trustees have taken all steps that they ought to have taken to make themselves aware of any relevant audit information and to establish that the auditors are aware of that information. The Trustees are responsible for the maintenance and integrity of the corporate and financial information included on the Charity's websites. Legislation in the United Kingdom governing the preparation and dissemination of financial statements may differ from legislation in other jurisdictions.

PLANS FOR 2020-2021

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Summary

Raze has contributed significantly to the arts landscape of England and particularly in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite the pandemic, we have continued to unearth and champion the work of marginalised performers and performance collectives, and provide opportunities through our digital commissions.

In addition, we continue to capitalise on the many collaboration offers that we regularly receive, including collaborations with large and small venues and organisations, charities, universities, privately owned enterprises, producers and the performers themselves. We have further live and digital events and commissions planned

Thanks to receiving Elevate funding, we look forward to a further two years of growth and collaboration to continue to support a sustainable queer performance landscape across the country.

APPROVAL OF THE REPORT

This report was approved by the Board of Trustees on 18[th] May 2020 and signed on their behalf by:

Rebecca Tadman - Chair, Board of Trustees

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Independent Examiner’s Report to the Trustees of The Raze Collective

I report to the charity trustees on my examination of the accounts of the charity for the period ended 31 December 2020 which are set out on pages 13 and 14.

Responsibilities and basis of report

As the charity’s trustees 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 charity’s accounts carried out under section 145 of the 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 Act.

Independent examiner's statement

I have completed my examination. I confirm that no 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 Act; or 2. the accounts do not accord with those records; or

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.

Shruti Soni FCCA FCIE Date:

Shruti Soni Ltd ● Chartered Certified Accountants 117a St. John's Hill, Sevenoaks TN13 3PE

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The Raze Collective Charity Registration number 1167655

Receipts and payments accounts

For the 18 months period ended 30 September 2020

01/04/2019 to 30/09/2020 01/04/2019 to 30/09/2020 01/04/2019 to 30/09/2020 01/04/2018 to 31/03/2019 01/04/2018 to 31/03/2019 01/04/2018 to 31/03/2019
Unrestricted
funds		 Restricted
funds		 Total funds Unrestricted
funds		 Restricted
funds		 Total
funds
£ £ £ £ £ £
Receipts
Arts Council England grants - 90,536 90,536 - 13,494 13,494
Donation 6,000 - 6,000 2,071 - 2,071
Paypal donation 2,338 - 2,338 9,735 - 9,735
Income from performances and activities 12,576 - 12,576 -
Total Receipts 20,914 90,536 111,450 11,806 13,494 25,300
Payments
Artistic and creative (commission and fees) 14,270 12,329 26,599 4,620 4,600 9,220
Production, management and design 3,197 11,842 15,039 2,967 3,885 6,852
Website and office expenses 169 628 797 442 - 442
Total payments 17,636 24,799 42,435 8,029 8,485 16,514
Net of receipts/(payments) 3,278 65,737 69,015 3,777 5,009 8,786
Transfer between funds - -
Cash funds last year end 3,857 5,009 8,866 80 - 80
Cash funds this year end 7,135 70,746 77,881 3,857 5,009 8,866

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The Raze Collective

Statement of assets and liabilities

at the end of the period 30 September 2020

Unrestricted Restricted
Details funds funds
£ £
Cash at bank and on hand 7,135 70,746
Creditors 1,400

Signed by one or two trustees on behalf of all the trustees

Signature Print Name
Rebecca Tadman		 Date of
approval
18.05.21

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