## **Chapel Arts Annual Report 2021-2022** ## **Trustees’ Annual Report for the period** **From 1 May 2021 to 30 April 2022** **Charity name: Chapel-en-le-Frith Arts (known as Chapel Arts)** **Charity registration number: 1178080** **Charity Address:** 29 Market Street, Chapel-En-Le-Frith, HIGH PEAK, Derbyshire, SK23 0HP ## **Objectives and Activities:** The objectives for which the charity was established are: _To promote and encourage public participation in, and appreciation of, the arts in CHAPEL-EN-LE-FRITH and its surrounding communities, in particular, but not exclusively, by the organisation and production of community arts festivals, workshops, events and performances._ Chapel Arts meets these objects by running art and craft workshops; a writing group; spoken word evenings; musical and dramatic performances; a regular film night; and an annual short story competition. We seek to conform to the Charity Commission’s guidance on public benefit by ensuring all activities are available to the people living in and around Chapel-en-le-Frith and are widely advertised. Any charges are kept to the minimum needed to defray costs or are offered free of charge, although donations are welcomed. **Governance and Management:** |**Trustee Name**|**Position Held (if any)**|**Date appointed or resigned if**
**during current year**| |---|---|---| |Anne Cawthorn||| |Mark Henderson||| |Carol Jones|Treasurer|| |Charles Pickering|Chair|| |Simone Pottage||| |Christopher Sizeland||| ## **Volunteers:** Chapel Arts is run entirely by volunteers, including its trustees, and has no paid employees. The trustees are extremely grateful for the help and support provided by our loyal band of volunteers. They devote many hours to our activities and without their contribution Chapel Arts would not be able to function. Sue Stringer, a volunteer, sits on the Management Committee alongside the trustees and acts as our Minutes Secretary. Thanks to Sue for her help. ## **Achievements and Performance:** Chapel Arts had a generally successful year in 2021-22 despite the continuing problems caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, although we did incur a small financial deficit. We were determined to return to our activities as soon as possible once restrictions were eased. However, cautious decision making and concern for people’s safety led us to resume faceto-face contacts only when we judged the risk to be very low. ## **Performing Arts** : Performing Arts decided in November 2021 that we would rebook _The Tree of Crows_ to perform in March 2022; their booking for summer 2020 had been cancelled. Shortly before the event, Russia invaded Ukraine and the DEC issued a Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal. Chapel Arts therefore proposed that the event be turned into a fund-raising concert. _The Tree of Crows_ endorsed the proposal enthusiastically and waived their performance fee. The Parish Council also helped by waiving the cost of hiring the Town Hall, while individuals and local businesses donated raffle prices and sponsored the printing of posters etc. The event incurred no expenditure for Chapel Arts. The evening was a huge success, with over 80 people in attendance, and raised just over £1450 for the Appeal. Chapel Arts would like to thank everyone involved in this achievement. ## **Film Group:** Following the end of the last lockdown, people have gradually started to return to the film group at Rems. The audience is mostly older people, so several have chosen not to return as they are considered vulnerable to Covid infection. During this period, we have successfully partnered with Chapel Players and started to show some films at the Playhouse, starting in April 2022. The aim is to capture a different audience, and it allows us to show both children’s films and musicals. We have offered free tickets to Little Cherubs, a local charity supporting parents and families experiencing financial hardship, which is in line with our charitable objectives. ## **Short story competition:** This year’s title for the 1000 word short story competition was _Isolation._ As always, the competition was open to everyone in the Chapel-en-le-Frith area but it was decided to spread the net wider in an effort to increase entries. To encourage uptake we increased the prize money for the adult winner to £100 and for the secondary (11-16 age range) winner to £50, while keeping the prize for the junior winner, 7-11 years, at £25. Prizes for runners-up were also added to the scheme.To fund the increase in costs we introduced a £5 entry fee for adults and £3 for the secondary age range; junior submissions remained free of charge. To encourage more entries, a trustee sponsored advertisements in several national literary magazines and journals. Unfortunately, even this generous gesture did little to improve the intake of entries, though the quality of submissions was very high. The work of some of the winners can be seen on our website. In view of the poor response to widening access to entrants, the Board will review whether to continue with the competition. ## **Creative writing:** The group members of previous years have remained with us and three new members have joined. Some members have works in progress (memoirs, novels, short story collections, poems) and we’ve worked together to encourage and support those endeavours. There have been three publications by members of the group. Also, five of us submitted entries to the national “short horror fantasy fiction” run by Fantastic Books Publishing. There were hundreds of entries from around the UK, and the best 25 chosen by the judges are to be published as an anthology in October 2022. Three of the chosen 25 were from our group; they included the first and second prize winners. We look forward to the anthology! The year 2021 was the sesquicentenary of the opening of the Pavilion Gardens in Buxton, so as our contribution to the Buxton Festival Fringe in July we composed poems, short prose pieces and a play sketch on the theme of the Pavilion Gardens. Because Covid restrictions made public performance a dubious endeavour, we recorded our work on four YouTube videos and also published the collection on the Chapel Arts website, both formats available free of charge to the public – including, of course, visitors to the Buxton Festival. During the 2021-2 winter sessions we continued with positive critiques and support for our various works in progress, and we maintained our usual practice of setting writing exercises on single themes during classes and for (voluntary) homework. These exercises are designed to develop particular writing skills and also for enjoyment, and appreciation of them is unanimous. One drawback with our arrangements to date concerns the timing of the winter series of ten fortnightly sessions. We’ve run these from September through to February with a fiveweek break over Christmas and New Year. However, the winter weather and road conditions, and the need to travel after dark during December and January, deter some members from attending. We are therefore considering a division into 2x5 sessions, to be run September-November and March-May, as from 2022-23. ## **Spoken Word Evenings:** We were still restricted in meeting in large numbers at the beginning of this period because of Covid-19. Following our normal pattern of meeting every two months we would have been due a meeting at the end of May. As the Glossop Bookfest group wanted to have a Spoken Word Zoom meeting we decided to support this event instead. Chapel Arts provided their Zoom account for the event, which was held on 27th May. The event was quite well attended from the Glossop side, but despite an email to our existing group, only two of us attended the online event. During this period of meeting sometimes online and sometimes at Rems, people have attended from Glossop, Hazel Grove, Tideswell and of course Chapel itself. Despite the slight easing of lockdown restrictions, many events were still cancelled over the summer and there was still trepidation about meeting in larger groups. Therefore, the first time we met face to face at Rems was on 7th October. Eight people attended; quite a good number. At the November meeting there were only six people. In January, owing to the adverse weather and rising Covid numbers, we switched to a Zoom meeting, which was attended by five of us. We finished off this period with a meeting on the 7th April 2022 at Rems. Covid numbers were rising again and lateral flow tests were encouraged, but Gareth Jones (owner of Rems) introduced the local screen writer Neil Mckay, who came along to the second half of the meeting. It was a good opportunity to invite Neil to our Buxton Fringe events planned for July. We will continue to arrange the Spoken Word evenings approximately every two months, and as we are happy with our small group of regular speakers, the aim now is to try to attract more audience members. We find that advertising via flyers at events such as film night is quite effective because they reach an immediate target audience. Posters around the town, and Facebook advertising, which reaches the “Growing up in Chapel-en-le-Frith” Facebook page, is also good. ## **Visual Arts and Crafts:** The committee would like to record its thanks to Val Vernon, a valued committee member, who ably co-ordinated the Arts & Crafts area from the inception of Chapel Arts. Val has found it necessary to step down because of changing family circumstances. We will miss her efforts on behalf of Chapel Arts. We are now conducting a search for a successor to take on this important role. ## **Mustard Seed:** With the loss of our Arts & Crafts Co-ordinator, Chapel Arts felt unable to meet its obligations under the Memorandum of Understanding with the Mustard Seed. The MoU has been terminated by mutual agreement. ## **Art show 2021:** The 8th Annual Open Art show planned for Autumn 2021 could not take place because no one was available to co-ordinate the work. ## **Art group @Mustard Seed:** As these activities had been organised and run by the Arts & Crafts Co-ordinator prior to the lockdown closure, they have not been reinstated. ## **Watercolour Course** A local artist and teacher was commissioned to run a ten week Introduction to Watercolour course from September to December. Nine participants signed up for the course. Unfortunately, the course was disrupted both by inclement weather and by the tutor falling ill with Covid. However, it was completed with the postponed sessions taking place in January. Feedback from the participants was favourable but, unfortunately, the income fell slightly short of the expenditure. Further courses will be considered if the search for an Arts & Crafts Co-ordinator proves successful. ## **FINANCIAL REVIEW:** ## **Brief Statement of the Charity’s Policy on Reserves:** The Charity employs no staff, nor does it rent permanent offices. Therefore, the Charity does not need to hold significant reserves. Cash reserves are regularly reviewed. The Charity holds sufficient cash to cover six months of central costs, such as public liability insurance and web-hosting, plus amounts to cover any outlay committed to planned events, to replace equipment, or to meet any unforeseen expenditure. ## **Further Financial Review Details:** At the end of the of the financial year 2020-2021 we had cash funds of £5616, but at the year end 2021-2022 this had fallen to £5170, a reduction of £469. The finances of the Charitable Trust remain healthy despite this reduction in reserves. Many activities generated a surplus despite small losses in two areas. A further £89 will be recouped in 2022-2023, when we will receive a grant covering the cost of the Blu-ray player. The major cause of the deficit was a significant increase in the cost of our Public Liability Insurance and the continued need to use Zoom for some activities, including committee meetings, which entails licensing costs. We are seeking other providers for our PLI. CHARITY ACCOUNTS (1 May 2021- 30 April 2022) CHARITY COMMISSIO FOR ENGIAND ANO WAIE Receipts and payments accounts CC16a Forthe perlod To Section A Receipts and payments Unrestri¢*d turOs Enth)¥vment funds ds Toialfunds Last¥4ar tothe￿￿rest tothne4rest£ to￿*￿rest£ tothE tothp ￿Test* A1 R•c•lpts P8rformanceArts Film Night Ea5yFund_Raising LileiaryArts Art& Craft Short Story Competbon Bank Compensalon 1,906 1.906 487 110 710 19 540 450 83 460 750 ARI 3A66 3A66 1,589 N2Assetand Investment￿*$. {Seeta￿tI. Sub Toralrncepts 3A66 3,466 A3P Pèrformanc8Arts Film Night Ea5yFund_Rai51ng LileiaryArts Art& Craft Central Administrthon Short Slory Comp&btion f,8B6 1￿86 416 500 678 300 416 500 678 300 365 388 3,823 3,823 743 MAssetand investment pu￿haSe5.Isee I￿￿e) 89 Sub wra 89 3,912 3.912 743 Net0frecepr￿￿ayments1 . A5Transfgrs b•tsv••nfunds A6Ca517funds ￿ yearend Cash fvnds thisyeprend 5,616 5,616 5,170 4,770 5.616 Section B Statement of assets and liabilities at the end of the period UiirMr¢kngd lunth ETrdo¥wngnl funth fund• B1 CaBh funds Nglwest Current Acc 5,152 18 Pèlly Ca8h rfAalcash lunds 5,170 Ur•rttiik4od EThdo¥An•Tht D￿al B2 Oihw monthwy •&8•ts l• xthl C•i¢l•p*•n4 B3 Invejtment •&sets l• *thlL* l•pti•n B4 Assels retalTred forthe charly's own Film Proiedion & Sound System Blu Ray DVD Playet Unresltided 2,128 du Delai IBpti•n B5 Ll•bllltl89 byonè 01 Print Namq Date ol ## **DECLARATION** The trustees declare that they have approved the trustees’ report above. Signed on behalf of the charity’s trustees: Signed: Charles Frederick Pickering ## Chair Signed: Carol Ann Jones Treasurer Date: 7 November 2022