2025-03-31-accounts - Sing Inside

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Annual Report and Accounts 2024-25

Reference information

Charity name : Sing Inside Registered CIO number : 1182678 Registered address : International House, 12 Constance Street, London, E16 2DQ

Trustees

Edward Smyth (Chair, appointed 03.09.2021) Áine Jackson (appointed 7.12.2020) Jonathan Schranz (appointed 02.05.2024) Giverny McAndry (appointed 02.05.2024) Sir Nigel Poole (appointed 28.09.2024) Sylvia Cullen (appointed 28.09.2024) William Evans (appointed 28.09.2024)

Nigel Rothband (Chair, resigned 30.06.2024) Andrea Brown (resigned 30.06.2024) Jenny Mercer (resigned 02.05.2024) Jonathan Wood (resigned 02.05.2024) Claudia Vince (resigned 25.09.2024)

Structure, governance and management

Sing Inside was registered with the Charity Commission in England and Wales as a charitable incorporated organisation (CIO) on 28 March 2019 with registered charity number 1182678. Sing Inside's governing document is its constitution (last updated March 2019). The trustees confirm that the financial statements comply with the requirements in section 24 of Sing Inside’s constitution and with section 133 of the Charities Act 2011 which permits non-company charities to prepare receipts and payments accounts provided the charity’s gross income does not exceed £250,000.

Our Objectives

The objects of the charity are for the public benefit and, as set out in the charity’s constitution, are:

To advance the education of the public in the art of music by:
Conducting choral workshops in UK prisons and holding facilities and promoting music and the performing arts for all who live or work within a prison setting using volunteers drawn from UK universities and local choirs;
Training and developing the musicianship and educational leadership skills of volunteers drawn from UK universities and local choirs to support workshop delivery.

Vision

Group singing in all prisons that builds positive connections, wellbeing, confidence and joy.

Mission

We run group singing workshops and choirs in prisons that are enjoyable, inclusive and build people’s confidence.

We work with community music leaders from local areas to deliver high-quality, positive group singing workshops.

We develop area committees of volunteers to promote our work in local communities, build connections with choirs, universities and prisons and raise funds from the community.

We recruit volunteers from the local community to join us on our visits to build positive connections with people from inside and outside prison.

Public benefit

The charity's main activities and achievements are described in the sections below. The board of trustees is satisfied with the performance of the charity during the year and in planning the activities the trustees have had regard to the Charity Commission's guidance on public benefit.

Message from the Chair

I had big shoes to fill as the new Chair of Sing Inside: Nigel Rothband who stood down in this reporting year oversaw our transition from student organisation to charity; and then the restructure of the charity from volunteer-led to professional. It is therefore largely thanks to his stewardship – and the leadership of CEO Sam Hawksley – that you will read in this report of Sing Inside’s biggest year yet.

Because we are a relatively young charity, a number of our first set of trustees reached their termlimit simultaneously. I want, then, to put on record the gratitude of the current Board and staff to Nigel, Andrea, Jenny, Jonathan, and Claudia. In their place we welcomed Sylvia Cullen, Sir Nigel Poole, Will Evans; and Giverny McAndry and Jon Schranz, neither of whom are new to Sing Inside having been there at its very inception as a student society in Cambridge. This is a very strong Board and Sing Inside remains in safe hands.

We have continued to invest in our staffing and develop new projects in new prisons – all to bring group singing to those in prison who need it most. We are delighted from the participants’ feedback that our workshops increase their wellbeing and confidence, and that they have fun and develop positive connections with others.

You will read below of the excellent 10[th] Anniversary Concert held at St James’s Piccadilly, organised and compered by outgoing Chair Nigel. It was a privilege to be there and to speak; but more than that it was a privilege to be reminded of what an astonishing impact our relatively small charity has, both on people in prison and on the volunteers who share their love of singing with those for whom joy, fun

and, indeed, music, are in short supply.

Edward Smyth,

Chair of Sing Inside

Staff & Trustees

Trustees Annual Report 2024-25

Annual Impact

95% said they feel more part of a community

100% said they felt included

81% said the workshops made them feel more confident working with others

100% said the workshops were fun!

70% said the workshops had improved their wellbeing

97% said the workshops made them feel more confident meeting new people

Participant Quotes

Gave my mind body and spirit a boost. Really enjoyed the day. The volunteers were fantastic and motivated us all to do our best.

You made us all feel part of a team. The singing made my mental health grow stronger.

Singing put a smile on my face, relieved stress and helped us remember we’re human.

Partners Feedback

It was great to see everyone singing, laughing and smiling on the stage and for a second they made us forget we were in prison - Chaplain, HMP Whitemoor

Sing Inside events at HMP Humber have been very successful and we look forward to further collaboration. Learners have enjoyed the singing but also the sense of teamwork and community that the projects encourage and facilitate. - Education Manager, HMP Humber

I have always found Sing Inside to be great to work with. Very understanding of the constraints of the custodial setting and professional in their approach to security. - Chaplain, HMP Long Lartin

Sing Inside work patiently and creatively to run events within a challenging environment. The preparation and running of the day is always smooth and all enjoy the performances- Regional Manager, Forward Trust

10[th] Anniversary Concert

2024 marked the 10th Anniversary of Singing Workshops in Prisons. Whilst the charity was formed in 2019, students from Universities of Cambridge first began delivering workshops in 2014. We were delighted to celebrate this milestone by welcoming Sing Inside volunteers and supporters over the last 10 years together for a concert at St James Church, Piccadilly in London on 25th September 2024. Over 100 people attended with the event compered by our outgoing Chair of Trustees, Nigel Rothband. We were treated to wonderful performances from small choral ensembles, solo musicians and pop and soul acts with many of the performers having previously volunteered for singing workshops through ourselves. We would like to thank all of the performers, guests and volunteers who helped us celebrate the last 10 years and were delighted to raise £7,916.

Performers at 10th Anniversary Concert

Overview

Sing Inside has had our most impactful year yet as we continued to grow and expand our operations across the country. We have had a 116% increase on last year’s activity from 18 visits

in April 2023 to March 2024 to 39 visits within the last year. We continued to invest in growing our staff team and operational capacity to facilitate more work in prisons at a breadth across the country. We have recruited local freelance workshop leaders with strong connections with local community choirs and Universities, ensuring a balanced multi-generational volunteer team recruited to participate in the workshops.

Throughout the last year, we have worked in 9 different prisons and secure settings over the last year delivering 35 singing workshops. Geographically these have been spread across England in the North-East, North-West, SouthEast, East and West of England in: HMP Long Lartin, HMP Humber, HMP Holme House, HMP Haverigg, HMP Bullingdon, HMP SEND, George Mackenzie House, HMP Coldingley and HMP Whitemoor.

Challenges

The last year has seen many challenges within prisons with overcrowding, political and policy changes. Our operations have been affected by this with prisons cancelling 7 workshops, representing 15% of our total planned workshops. Reasons include emergency situations within prisons and general lack of staff capacity to accommodate our delivery. We have continued to build close connections with prison staff to further clarify roles and expectations and we remain flexible to adapt to the changing prison environments.

This year some prisons have begun to change their policies on security vetting for volunteers. This presented problems for our workshop models and we have responded by building a database of pre-vetted volunteers in local areas and starting the vetting process earlier to minimise disruption.

Volunteers

We are very grateful to the 123 volunteers who have supported our choirs and workshops over the last year. Our

Staff & Volunteers at HMP Humber

participants in prison regularly feed back that they made new friends and built positive relationships with people outside of prison, making them ‘feel human’ and ‘normal’ again.

We conducted our annual Musical Leadership Training in partnership with the Community Music programme at Oxford University and trained four individuals in leading singing workshops in a prison setting. All four of these then went on to a visit at HMP Long Lartin to put their skills into practice and lead elements of a singing workshop, such as small rounds and warmups.

Over the year 239 volunteers signed up to attend our events and we were able to take 123 volunteers into prison with us. Sometimes visits are oversubscribed, volunteers can drop out last minute and sometimes we have to decline applications due to location, travel costs or lack of availability for volunteer safety briefings for example.

Volunteers at HMP Coldingley

Ambassadors Programme

We have grown our Ambassadors Programme, which was run in 3 prisons (HMP Long Lartin, Holme House and Humber) to recruit steering groups of prisoners to plan, support and deliver the musical workshops. This is to elevate the voice of prisoners being able to design and where possible deliver the interventions

Some prisoners have been trained to lead small elements of the workshop such as warm-ups

and teaching parts of the song, others have taken on roles of planning, logistics and promotion and engagement of other prisoners. The programme has gone more successfully in Long Lartin which has had a more stable prison population over the last year, meaning we have been able to work a consistent group. We look forward to continuing to develop this approach over the next year in prisons where the likelihood of us working with the same prisoners over a longer period is higher.

Volunteers at HMP SEND

Additional disclosures required for CIOs

The Charitable Incorporated Organisations (General) Regulations 2012 do require the following information to be given by way of note:

a) Particulars of any guarantee given by the CIO, where any potential liability under the guarantee is outstanding at the date of the statement of assets and liabilities;
b) Particulars of any debt outstanding at the date the statement of assets and liabilities which is owed by the CIO and which is secured by an express charge on any of the assets of the CIO.

It is noted for Sing Inside that there was nothing to disclose in respect of either a) or b).

Future Development

Volunteers at HMP Long Lartin

Looking to the year ahead, we have exciting plans to launch local area committees of volunteers to increase our partnerships with local choirs, universities and generate more community fundraising and local pools of established volunteers. This will continue to enable Sing Inside to grow across the country and operate at scale.

Feedback with prisons and our participants consistently requests us to come in more regularly, even weekly where possible. To respond to this, we were able to secure small seed funding and look forward to launching our first weekly choirs in North-West England in early 2025. We are excited about this new programme which we hope will deliver even greater impact building confidence and wellbeing in our prison participants and building stronger positive social connections with one another and our volunteers attending the choirs.

Reserves Policy

Reserves are that part of a charity’s unrestricted funds that is freely available to spend on any of the charity’s purposes. Sing Inside maintains free unrestricted reserves:

To provide a level of working capital that protects the continuity of our core work.
To provide a level of funding for unexpected opportunities.
To provide cover for risks such as unforeseen expenditure or unanticipated loss of income .

The board of trustees will review the above criteria with reference to Sing Inside’s business plan and determine the target level of free reserves to meet these commitments. The basic target level of reserves to be reviewed annually is six months of operating expenditure to allow for a managed wind-down if necessary.

At present, the board are maintaining free unrestricted funds of £33,999. Our current level of reserves represents 10 months of the charity’s annual expenditure, which exceeds the target level of reserves of 6 months expenditure of £20,799.

10th Anniversary Concert

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		Independent examiner's report on the accounts
Section A Independent Examiner’s Report
Report to the trustees On accounts for the year ended Set out on pages Responsibilities and basis of report	Sing Inside CIO 31/03/2025 Charity no (if any) 1182678 10-11 I report to the trustees on my examination of the accounts of the above charity (“the Trust”) for the year ended31 / 03 / 2025.

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 Trust’s accounts carried out under section 145 of the 2011 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 I have completed my examination. I confirm that no material matters have come statement to my attention in connection with the examination (other than that disclosed below *) which gives me cause to believe that in, any material respect:

the accounting records were not kept in accordance with section 130 of the Charities Act; or
the accounts did not accord with the accounting records; or
the accounts did not comply with the applicable requirements concerning the form and content of accounts set out in the Charities (Accounts and Reports) Regulations 2008 other than any requirement that the accounts

Signed: Name: Relevant professional qualification(s) or body (if any): Address:	give a ‘true and fair’ view which is not a matter considered as part of an independent examination. 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. Date: 5/11/2025	give a ‘true and fair’ view which is not a matter considered as part of an independent examination. 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. Date: 5/11/2025
		5/11/2025

	Gracian Daniel-Sam

	ACA – Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW)

	61 Plodder Lane
	Bolton
	BL4 0BX
Section B Disclosure
Give here brief details of any items that the examiner wishes to disclose.