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www.pwb.ngo

Performers Without Borders - Annual Report

1st July 2020 - 30th June 2021

Charity Number (CIO - since July 2019): 1182403 Previous charity number: 1121236 Established: July 2007

www.pwb.ngo

Legal and Admin Info
Headline Figures & Impact
Charity Objects and Vision
Brief History
Operations Summary
Financial Summary
Future Plans

1. Legal and Administrative Information

Trustees

Name	Office (ifany)	Comments
Claire Bader	Chair	Appointed at AGM6th Oct 2019
George Massey	Treasurer	Appointed at AGM6th Oct 2019
EmilyBall	Secretary
Jonathan Forbes	Founder
Mathew Morris	Founder
Liz Stones	MEARL Adviser

Upgraded to CIO July 2019: # 1182403 Previous Charity Number: 1121236

Principal Address: 52 Old Hospital Lawn, Stroud, UK GL54GA

Contact Address: 72 Peterborough Drive, Netherton, Liverpool L305QP

Banker s: Lloyds Bank, 25 Gresham St, London, UK EC2V 7HN

– 2. Headline Figures Our Impact

In operation since 2007 having completed 30 International Tours over 13 years in at least 6 different countries. Since founding PWB-UK in 2019, we have delivered 2 major funded projects in the UK and several other smaller projects.

PWB-International : In 2020-2021 we were prevented from delivering any of our International Projects due to Covid. However in 2019-2020 we delivered 123 international workshops .

PWB-UK : We were also restricted in what we could deliver in the UK this year. But we did manage to deliver 2 online UK seminars using 2 workshop leaders involving 0 funded hours and reaching 60 participants*. These were online seminars to current Circomedia students and a talk to international youth circus leaders at Circus Works Un-conference.

We also coordinated an online cabaret and raffle in partnership with Spinning@ raising around £1000 to a community of over 300!

Our Volunteers kept busy by supporting global social circus news online via social media, gathering blogs of past PWB volunteer stories, raising money through online dance classes and an online show to 200+ vulnerable Indian children as part of Zoomtastic Circus with Lifskool in Kerala.

We were also busy supporting some of our Indian students online with mentoring. One of these achievements was helping them to start teaching flow workshops online to their community and other Indians. Three of them also went on a monster 100km unicycle ride and raised £2205 for workshop equipment and a mini tour that we are planning on doing post covid.

These are the total number of participants in each workshop, not the number of different children reached because some children would have attended multiple workshops.

TURNOVER: July 2019-2020 = £29,773 (restricted £17689, unrestricted £12085) July 2020-2021 = £9450 (restricted £2097, unrestricted £7353)

UK Grants Received: Awards for All - Jan 2020 - £9660; delivered Autumn 2021

3. Charity Objects & Vision

Vision: To teach performance arts and circus skills to disadvantaged young people in the UK and Internationally in order to contribute to improving their physical and mental wellbeing.

Charity Objectives: To advance in life and relieve the needs of children and young people in such parts of the world as the trustees shall determine, and in particular those who are socially and/or economically disadvantaged, including by physical or mental disabilities through:

(a) the provision of recreational and leisure time activities in the performing arts and circus skills provided in the interest of social welfare, designed to improve their conditions of life;

(b) providing support and activities which develop their skills, capacities and capabilities to enable them to participate in society as mature and responsible individuals;

(c ) raising awareness of the positive psychological and physical impact of training in, and experience of, performance arts and circus skills for children and young adults.

4. Brief History

In 2007 Matt Morris (Trustee Treasurer) and Jonny Forbes (Trustee Chair) launched Performers Without Borders (PWB) with the first tour of India in 2008 with 8 volunteers and we have returned every year since then. In 2013 Rob Thorburn led the first PWB Nicaragua Tour, followed by Sierra Leone’s only tour in 2014 led by Peter King. Kenya was added to the regular tour list in 2016 led by Abi Cooper. In the meantime Francesca Dunford and Jess Herman, PWB tour regulars, have done short tours to Calais and Dunkirk bi-annually for which we have collected data for the last 2 visits. All these International Tours were ably Managed by long time PWB stalwart Emily Ball, who is now a Trustee (Secretary).

In January 2018 PWB-UK was launched with Peter King contracted to manage its development. The idea being that it would allow us to recruit a different variety of volunteers and access different funding streams, especially UK Trust Funds (and we have already had some success on this front). In the summer of 2018 three taster workshops were delivered to new UK partners dealing with visually and aurally impaired young people. In 2019 we have delivered 8 workshops to a special needs school under the NSC grant (see: www.pwb.ngo/our-impact). In 2019/2020 PWB transformed to a CIO with a refreshed board of Trustees. We received a grant from Awards for All in January 2020 to teach Looked After Children in the Blackburn area circus skill but because of the arrival of Covid 19 restrictions in March 2020 we have had to delay delivering that programme until Autumn 2021, as well as suspending our 2021 & 2022 Tours. In 2021 Gina joined the team - as our Social Media and Fundraising Manager. For more see: https://www.pwb.ngo/our team/

Jonny – Founder India 2008

Matt – Founder India 2011

Rob and Emily Nicaragua 2013

Abi

India 2013

Jess and Chez Calais 2018

Pete Sierra Leone 2014

5.Operations Summary

PWB delivers high quality circus skills and performance arts workshops and shows in the UK and internationally. We have 3 part time contracted managers and everyone else is a volunteer. We advertise for volunteers for our international tours every year between May and July (when they start running again post-pandemic). Our UK operations only operate with funding where we try to pay our workshop leaders an average industry rate for their work.

5.1 - PWB-International (P-Int)

Each year we usually support about 20 volunteers to go on tours to India, Nicaragua and Kenya from around January to March. We work with local partner organisations (POs) to deliver a series of circus skills workshops to the orphans and vulnerable children in their care. We help them create their own performance which is delivered to the local community at the end of the project. Due to political unrest in Nicaragua we have switched to supporting local performers to deliver 4 x one week mini-tours throughout the year instead where possible.

Due to Covid19 uncertainties we have decided to cancel our 2021 & 2022 Tours and focus on fundraising instead. Please see below for a list of Tours from previous years and their impact. For more details (photos, videos and blogs) of the tours please see: https://www.pwb.ngo/our-tours/

TOUR	# Sessions	PWB Hours # attended	# shows # audience # PWBers
Calais and Dunkirk May 2019 Calais and Dunkirk Nov 2019 Nicaragua Oct 2019 Greece Nov 2019 Kenya 2020	7 10 20 15 32	15 134 19 154 36 96 18 1500 75 458	2 238 2 2 39 6 2 73 2 4 610 4 4 180 6
India 2020	39	84 3182	13 2380 6
TOTALS 123		247 5524	27 3520 26

Team Kenya 2020

Team India 2020

Team Greece 2019

Calais and Dunkirk 2019

5.2 - PWB-UK (PUK)

Since January 2018 PUK has been delivering free taster sessions to Partner Organisations in the UK, such as the Royal Society for Blind Children in London, the Manchester Deaf Centre and St Vincent’s School for the Visually Impaired in Liverpool delivered by Jamie Moore and Peter King. We are continuously applying for grants with suitable Trust Funds and happy to talk to any new POs or fundraising streams.

– Swiss Cottage School for Special Needs Project funded by Network for Social Change

£7,200

In March 2019 we also received funding from the Network for Social Change (NSC) for Jamie Moore to run 8 weeks of circus skills workshops with Swiss Cottage Special Needs School that were delivered from May to June 2019. The grant also supported Peter King to evaluate the impact of our work.

At the first and last workshops, Before and After questionnaires were completed by the participants. Additionally, at the last workshop, 8 participants were audio interviewed, some Adult Helper feedback videos were made and Adult Helper Questionnaires were completed in order to assess the impact of our work.

The workshops were delivered on time and within budget and achieved their predicted goals. The participants reported enjoying the workshops and benefiting a lot from them. Although the Participant Questionnaires yielded ambiguous results, the Adult Helper Questionnaires & Video Interviews & Participant Audio Interviews confirmed that learning circus skills was widely accessible and inclusive and good for the participants physical and psychological wellbeing. In general, the evaluation found evidence that the workshop series improved the participants physical coordination, their confidence, sociability and positive outlook, as well as giving them a new enjoyable hobby to practice in the future. For more see:

https://www.pwb.ngo/pwb-uk/ & https://www.pwb.ngo/swisscottage/

Looked After Children Blackburn – Awards for All Grant £9,660

On 25[th] Oct 2019 PWB delivered a free taster session at Blackburn With Darwen (BwD) Children’s Services Participation Relaunch Event, attended by Looked After Children (LAC) and associated professionals. It proved popular and we conducted a survey asking 18 participants their opinion and their perception of the proposed project’s likely benefits. Here is the highlight of the results:

When asked if there was a need for this project, on a scale of 1-to-5, the average response was about a 4 (“yes a lot”). Additionally, each respondent identified on average 3 benefits for participants, including: physical, mental/respite, social, confidence/self-esteem, new skills and fun.

For more on this evaluation please see: https://www.pwb.ngo/blackburn/

This feedback was used to support an Awards for All grant application for PWB to work with BwD Foster Carers Association, the Bureau Centre for the Arts and the Children’s Services Department of BwD Borough Council to provide circus arts instruction to disadvantaged kids in the area, We received an Awards for All grant in Feb 2019 but so far have been unable to deliver any of it due to Covid19 restrictions. We delivered this programme in Autumn 2021 with the full details in our report at the link above.

The table below lists our main impact figures for the last two years. But please see our website for - more details of our work in the UK: https://www.pwb.ngo/pwb uk/

TOURS	# Sessions	PWB Hours # attended	# shows # audience # PWBers
PUK 2018-2019	7	19 62	6 69 6
PUK 2019-2020	11	25 380	5 152 8
TOTALS 18		44 442	11 221 14

6. Financial Summary

PWB-HQ is mainly funded by individual donations via our small donations fundraising network – the FAB500 (www.pwb.ngo/fab500) which raises about £500pm which is about £6000py. The remainder comes from Events or General Giving (EGG) which varies from year to year but averages out at about £3000 per year. We aim to keep around £10,500 in reserves.

Apart from that our only other income stream is restricted from Grants or one-off workshops for PWB-UK or from what our volunteers raise to go on their tour. The latter averages out at about £1000 per volunteer and is used to pay for their accommodation, food and travel costs whilst on tour and totals around £11,000py. Flights, vaccinations and travel insurance are all paid directly by our volunteers and the tours usually break even every year although we allow for about £2000 for Tour Coordinator costs. This year the tours didn’t run so our annual turnover is much lower.

This year our restricted income was significantly increased by the Awards for All grant for £9660, which was delivered in the next financial year in Autumn 2021 and will feature in next year’s annual report – although the report is available now at this link: www.pwb.ngo/Blackburn

The company is entitled to the exemption from the audit requirement contained in section 477 of the Companies Act 2006, for the year ended 28 February 2015. Members have not required the company to obtain an audit, since no member of the company has deposited a notice, pursuant to section 476, requiring an audit of these accounts.

The directors acknowledge their responsibilities for ensuring that the company keeps accounting records which comply with section 386 of the Act and for preparing accounts which give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the company as at the end of the financial year and of its incoming resources and application of resources, including its income and expenditure, for the financial year in accordance with the requirements of sections 394 and 395 and which otherwise comply with the requirements of the Companies Act 2006 relating to accounts, so far as applicable to the company.

These accounts have been prepared in accordance with the special provisions relating to small companies within Part 15 the Companies Act 2006.

The accounts were approved at the AGM by the Board on 9[th] Dec 2021.

20/12/21

Claire Bader

Chair of the Trustees

Charity Number: 1121236

Independent Examiners report not required this year as turnover is under £25,000

7. Future Plans

Writing this in Dec 2021 before submitting our accounts to the Charity Commission we can say that all future International Tours are still on hold and the 2022 tours will not be going ahead due to Covid19 and the new variants. We have managed to deliver our Awards for All grant in Autumn 2021 and are applying for future funding, although with the rise of the Omicron variant of Covid19 this makes everything very uncertain again. Fundraising in this climate is proving extremely difficult and we had switched into a hibernation mode in Jan 2021 where we had cut down on as many internal expenses as possible. At the AGM on 9[th] Dec 2021 PWB appointed a new manager, Jamie Moore, who will bring fresh energy into the role and applying for funding for further projects.

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