2021-03-31-accounts

Twitter: @RationaleArts Email : [e-mail]

Rationale Arts Yearly Report: 2020 -2021

Trustee’s:

Vignesh Murali (Chair) Author

Jason King

Chris Morris

Employee’s:

Nathan Geering – Charity Director

Rationale Arts RCN: 1181681

Twitter: @RationaleArts

Email : [e-mail]

1. Mission Statement

Rationale Arts is a registered charitable arts organisation with the key aims to promote, improve, and maintain public education and appreciation of the arts. Specifically, but not exclusively the art of dance, music, and theatre.

We aim to achieve our mission mainly through 4 avenues.

• Community engagement: We work with communities on topics they feel are relevant to them and develop bespoke arts packages to tackle specific issues the community faces.

• Theatre: We pride ourselves on creating professional standard accessible theatrical productions that are created in consultation with the communities we are trying to engage with.

• Injury Prevention : We deliver special courses to people with visual impairment that incorporates b-boying (Breakdance) as a means of injury prevention to improve spatial awareness.

• Workshops: We offer a variety of artistic workshops including:

• Theatre Skills

• Hip Hop Dance

• Contemporary Dance

• Desk jockey’ing and Music Production

2. Background

Rationale Arts officially received charity status in February 2019 from the charity commission. Our first board meeting took place on the 2[nd] of April 2019. The Trustee’s went through a rigorous process of setting up a Bank account etc subsequently and it was not until end of May 2019 that we were able to make our first funding bid to the National Lottery. During the initial period we set up various social media platforms on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to develop a presence and promote the work we were aiming to do. We also reached out to various stakeholders locally with the aim of building relationships and creating pathways to achieve our mission.

3. Review of 2020-21

Due to Coronavirus Pandemic, there was a significant downturn in the charity’s activity at the beginning of the financial year. UK went into Lockdown in March 2021 which significantly affected the charity activity; however, we were determined to adapt to the situation and carry on with our mission to make art accessible albeit in a more innovative way.

3.1. Injury prevention courses

We were successful with our funding bid of £20,000 to the Postcode Lottery to deliver our state-of-the-Art Injury Prevention course, due to the pandemic we created online accessible content for people with visual impairment and begun to transfer our face-to-face content to online content, we have successfully delivered online injury prevention courses to people with visual impairment across the country. When asked about our Virtual Sessions, one of our students replied:

Rationale Arts RCN: 1181681

Twitter: @RationaleArts

Email : [e-mail]

This is a great opportunity for anybody who is blind or lives with a visual impairment, or for anyone that has general accessibility issues. Coming from someone who has had multiple break sessions over Zoom now I can 100% recommend it to anyone that is looking to improve their spatial awareness, learn something new, keep fit and challenge themselves in a completely new way. Even if you aren't a Dancer, it is a really cool, accessible and safe way to get you back moving and on your feet.

Rachael Storey

Virtual Session Student

We will continue to deliver this online visual impairment course until April 2021.

3.2. Workshops

We have collaborated with Bluebell Wood Hospice and delivered hip-hop handplay and smashing street art sessions both face to face and virtually. We were also involved in with Bluebell Wood for their bonfire night and Christmas Elf performances which were heavily featured in the local media.

3.3. ACT’s of creativity

We were granted £10,000 funding by Derbyshire County Council to create content for our ACTs of Creativity initiative which we will be rolling out to 4 schools in the Bolsover area from April 2021 onwards. Through the ACTs of Creativity promotional material, we were able to employ and mentor people of colour on artistic film making.

3.4. Blackfest

We formed a partnership with Blackfest to deliver dance sessions to people with Disabilities between January 2021 and March 2021.

3.5. Trust in Care

Following on from our first pilot Theatre production working in partnership with Derbyshire Council and Derby Theatres in February 2020 we worked with young people in care and people with disabilities throughout the year to finalise our Trust in Care theatre production which will have its first official performance in June 2021 at the Crucible theatre in Sheffield.

The show features one of the young people with visual impairment that we delivered our injury prevention course as the main character. Trust in Care combines Hip-Hop, Street dance, Interactive Projection, beatboxing and Poetry to tell the dynamic story of two siblings trying to navigate their way through the care system. Along the way, they meet foster carers and creative mentors that help them reflect on what it means to be a family and trust new people who enter their lives. With a diverse cast of performers who are disabled and non-disabled as well as performers from LGBTQ communities and culturally diverse backgrounds, Trust in Care will deliver on so many levels. The production was created with young people in care as the artistic consultants and provides an emotive insight into the lived experience of looked after children and young people.

Trust in care is truly a culmination of all the work the charity has been involved in since its inception in 2019 and we look forward to developing the show and going on a national tour in the coming years.

Rationale Arts RCN: 1181681

Twitter: @RationaleArts Email : [e-mail]

4. Other Activities

• We further developed a state-of-the-art website showcasing our work which can be accessed at www.rationalearts.com.

• We invested in equipment to provide workshops; this equipment will serve the community well in the years to come.

• We gained national recognition for our work with one of our visual impaired students being featured on BBC’s Strictly it takes two.

• We had several media outputs during the year which can be found on our website. https://www.rationalearts.com/media-articles-press-pr

5. Finance Accounts

During the financial year 2019-20 the Charity received a total income of £10,751 and had total expenditure of £8,949 which left a surplus of £1,802. During the financial year 2020-21 the Charity received a total income of £35,005 and had a total expenditure of £24,027 with a total surplus of £12,781 (which includes monies carried over from the previous year). Most of the surplus was created as we are still delivering some of work which we were granted funding for and unpaid invoices for delivering the Injury prevention course and Trust in care. Any Surplus is used towards the running costs of the Charity such as Insurance and other relevant subscriptions.

Since our inception as a Charity, we have managed to raise £45,756 to ‘ make art accessible’ .

Rationale Arts RCN: 1181681

Twitter: @RationaleArts

Email : [e-mail]

6. Summary

Overall a very successful second year despite the Pandemic in which we created some further inroads into our mission and built some sustainability into the Charity functions. We have gained national recognition for our projects and we have several partnerships lined up for 2122 and when able we will be returning to delivering more face-to-face content.

Rationale Arts RCN: 1181681