## **Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir Annual Report for 2020**
As for most organisations in Ministry and Music, indeed most of the world, 2020 was an extremely challenging year. From mid-March onwards until the end of the year and beyond, almost all of our usual music-making was cancelled, postponed or put on hold as our members struggled with the varying degrees of lockdown and illness that the covid-19 pandemic brought in its wake. And yet in some ways 2020 was probably our best year yet.
The year began for Soul Sanctuary at the end of January with the filming of _The Night Watchmen’s Nativity_ , our telling of St Luke’s Nativity through the eyes of his “shepherds” using the media of spoken word, sung scripture and gospel music – all originally written by SSGC members except the four songs which were our arrangements of gospel and soul standards. As the year brought its events – the pandemic and the heroic role played by those with lower-income service jobs, BLM – our film became more and more pertinent, so that Sky TV bought it for Sky Arts and broadcast it in December. We are planning two additional Christmas pieces, _Mary’s Nativity_ and _The Three Kings_ , to add to _Night Watchmen’s Nativity_ to form a Christmas Trilogy.
Our last live events as a choir before lockdown were a full rehearsal for our first _Soul At St James (S@SJ)_ , our planned monthly outdoor event witnessing to core values of love, peace and community aimed at those outside the Church, and a recording for BBC Radio 2’s _At The Foot Of The Cross_ , broadcast on Good Friday.
As Lockdown started to bite in March, in common with all other choirs and orchestras we started to perform and record separately at home using whatever technology we all had (often just phones, tablets and laptops). For Easter we released our first home recording on YouTube on Easter Sunday, a cover of _The Prayer_ , with a zoom-style video. For Pentecost, we followed with a cover of Israel Houghton’s _Rise Within Us_ , also released on YouTube, with an original animation.
With the brutal killing of George Floyd at the end of May and the subsequent BLM protests, we decided as a choir that we wanted to do our first _S@SJ_ online with the theme of _Standing Up To Racism_ , again using the media of spoken word and song, but also including poetry, conversation and montage. What emerged was a one-hour YouTube film of which we are proud and which (alas) is likely to have a long shelf life.
In September we were contacted by Mica Paris, Britain’s premier soul singer, asking us to be the choir on her forthcoming maiden gospel album, _Gospel_ . A benefit concert in which we had backed Mica in November 2019 had gone very well; her invitation to the album was a tremendous accolade for us. Alas pandemic restrictions prevented her from hiring the whole choir, which she had wanted to do. As well as recording the album itself, there were several promotion appearances, including on BBC TV’s _Songs Of Praise_ at Christmas.
We were also honoured to take part in the House of Parliament’s Online Carol Service alongside our friends from St Martin in the Fields.
So in spite of 2020’s very real challenges for our members, we enter 2021 with optimism, looking forward to taking several projects ahead – _S@SJ_ , _Mary’s Nativity_ , cooperation with St Martin in the Fields - once we are able to sing together again without restriction. Most of our focus will be on _S@SJ_ , which will require an
unprecedented level of commitment from us if it is to fulfil its potential as a major London destination event.
Our finances remain stable, owing to donations from one of our board members, which are made to ensure that there are always cash reserves of at least £2000 in SSGC’s bank account (SSGC still wishes to broaden its funding base so as no longer to be reliant on this one donor on a 2/3 year view). Our expenditure in 2020 was not far below that of 2019 (£24k vs £28k) primarily owing to the production expenses of _Night Watchmen_ (£12k). 2021’s numbers will be helped by a payment from Sky TV via our production company of several thousand pounds; this is not reflected in 2020’s balance sheet because we do not know what our net proceeds will be.
Miko Giedroyc, Board Member and General Manager Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir February 1[st] , 2021
**Charity Name No (if any) Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir 1176630**
## **Receipts and payments accounts**
## **CC16a**
**For the period** Period start date Period end date **To from** January 1st 2020 December 31st 2020
## **Section A Receipts and payments**
|**A1 Receipts**|**Unrestricted**
**funds**
**to the nearest £**|**Unrestricted**
**funds**
**to the nearest £**|**Restricted funds**
**to the nearest £**|**Restricted funds**
**to the nearest £**|**Endowment**
**funds**
**to the nearest £**|**Endowment**
**funds**
**to the nearest £**|**Total funds**
**to the nearest £**|**Total funds**
**to the nearest £**|**Last year**
**to the nearest £**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Donations by1485 Charitable Trust|**10,000**||**-**||**-**||**10,000**||**25,000**|
|Performance & RecordingFees|**3,375**||**-**||**-**||**3,375**||**13,067**|
|CD Sales|**64**||**-**||**-**||**64**||**364**|
|Other|**700**||**-**||**-**||**700**||**125**|
||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**|
|Donation byMGDG & DAUJ|**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**||**15,000**|
||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**|
||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**|
|**_Sub total_**_(Gross income for AR)_|**14,139**||**-**||**-**||**14,139**||**53,556**|
|||||||||||
|**A2 Asset and investment sales,**
**(see table).**||||||||||
||**-**|||||||||
||**-**||||||||**-**|
|**_Sub total_**|**-**||||||||**-**|
|**_Total receipts_**
**A3 Payments**||||||||||
||||||||||**53,556**|
|||||||||||
|
"NightWatchmen'sNativity" Prodn Exp|**12,025**||**-**||**-**||**12,025**||**-**|
|All Other Performers' Fees|**6,962**||**-**||**-**||**6,962**||**21,142**|
|PR/Comms/Social Media|**3,564**||**-**||**-**||**3,564**||**5,102**|
|Other Bought-In Services|**1,424**||**-**||**-**||**1,424**||**2,002**|
|Other|**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**||**5**|
||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**|
|Transfer to MGDG & DAUJ|**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**||**15,000**|
||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**|
||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**|
|**_Sub total_ **|**23,975**||**-**||**-**||**23,975**||**43,251**|
|||||||||||
|**A4 Asset and investment**
**purchases, (see table)**||||||||||
||**-**|||||||||
||**-**|||||||||
|**_Sub total_ **|**-**||||||||**-**|
|**_Total payments_**
**_Net of receipts/(payments)_**
**A5 Transfers between funds**
**A6 Cash funds last year end**
**_Cash funds this year end_**||||||||||
||||||||||**43,251**|
|||||||||||
||**- 9,836**||||||||**10,305**|
||**-**||||||||**-**|
||**13,268**||||||||**2,963**|
||**3,432**||||||||**13,268**|
## **Section B Statement of assets and liabilities at the end of the period**
|CCXX R1 accounts (SS)
**Categories**
**B1 Cash funds**|1
Barclays Bank Current Account
**Details**
**_Total cash funds_**
(agree balances with receipts and payments account(s))|**Unrestricted**
**funds**
**to nearest £**
**3,432**
**-**
**-**
**3,432**
OK|01/02/2021
**Restricted funds**
**Endowment**
**funds**
**to nearest £**
**to nearest £**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
OK
OK|**Endowment**
**funds**
**to nearest £**|
|---|---|---|---|---|
|||||**-**|
|||||**-**|
|||||**-**|
|||||**-**|
|Signed by one or two trustees on
behalf of all the trustees
**B2 Other monetary assets**
**B4 Assets retained for the**
**charity’s own use**
**B5 Liabilities**
**B3 Investment assets**|Signature
**Details**
**Details**
**Details**
**Details**|**Unrestricted**
**funds**
**Restricted funds**
**to nearest £**
**to nearest £**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**Fund to which asset**
**belongs**
**Cost (optional)**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**Fund to which asset**
**belongs**
**Cost (optional)**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**Fund to which**
**liability relates**
**Amount due**
**(optional)**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
Print Name
MichalGDGiedroyc|**Endowment**
**funds**
**to nearest £**|
|---|---|---|---|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**Current value**
**(optional)**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**Current value**
**(optional)**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**When due**
**(optional)**|
|||||
|||||
|||||
|||||
|||||
|||||
||||Date of approval|
|||MichalGDGiedroyc|February1st2020|
|||||
CCXX R2 accounts (SS)
01/02/2021
2