Trustees’ Annual Report for the period
From 18/11/2019 To 31/12/2020
Charity name: &Piano
Charity registration number: 1186398
Objectives and Activities
| SORP reference | ||
|---|---|---|
| Summary of the purposes of the charity as set out in its governing document |
Para 1.17 | To advance the education of the public in, and promote the understanding, appreciation, composition and performance of live music, and thereby the advancement of the arts, culture and education for the public benefit |
| Summary of the main activities in relation to those purposes for the public benefit, in particular, the activities, projects or services identified in the accounts. |
Para 1.17 and 1.19 |
&Piano produces concerts and events featuring professional, skilled musicians, to promote live music of a high standard, and encourage more engagement with live music in and around the areas that we operate. We charge low ticket prices to ensure that our events are accessible and approachable as possible. We pay our performers fairly, and typically employ artists with a connection to the local region, helping to celebrate homegrown talent. We offer some of our performances online for free, to encourage wide access and engagement with our work. |
| Statement confirming whether the trustees have had regard to the guidance issued by the Charity Commission on public benefit |
Para 1.18 | Trustees have had regard to the guidance issued by the Charity Commission on public benefit. |
Additional information (optional) You may choose to include further statements where relevant about:
SORP reference Para 1.38 Policy on grant making
Para 1.38 Policy on social investment including program related investment Para 1.38 Contribution made by volunteers Other
Achievements and Performance
| SORP reference | ||
|---|---|---|
| Summary of the main achievements of the charity, identifying the difference the charity’s work has made to the circumstances of its beneficiaries and any wider benefits to society as a whole. |
Para 1.20 | • Provided performances opportunities to 10 talented young musicians from around Huddersfield and Calderdale, in our Young Musicians Showcase which has received over 2500 views online and reached people all around the world. • Produced an online alternative to our traditional festival, featuring two full-length live-streamed music performances, and our first panel discussion about music issues in the North of England. • Multiple video collaborations of performances for our online platforms, including a recorded performance at Huddersfield Town Hall. • Provided paid performance opportunities to 4 local professional musicians despite the COVID-19 pandemic. • Had over 6000 views in total through our Facebook and Youtube platforms for all of the online content that we have produced and created throughout the year. &Piano is a newly-established music festival, which was launched in 2018 to promote and celebrate live music to people in Kirklees and the surrounding areas. We offer performances from professional musicians of the highest standards who |
have a connection to Yorkshire and the North. We typically host our concerts in Slaithwaite, Huddersfield, but look to be able to eventually offer performances in different venues around Kirklees and Calderdale. We aim to help support & maintain Huddersfield’s reputation as a town with an excellent musical reputation, offering more opportunities for Kirklees’ established community of music fans to listen to chamber music in an intimate environment, whilst also actively developing and engaging a new generation of audience members. We aim to deliver: performances in informal environments, interesting spaces and different locations, family events to help inspire the next generation to enjoy listening to live performance, and workshops and masterclasses for young and developing musicians. Despite 2020 being a challenging year for everyone as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and despite it being our first year as a CIO, &Piano has managed to deliver and achieve a remarkable amount of work to serve its purposes as a charity. Having had to cancel a special fundraising concert in April, which would have featured reputable local singers, singers from the Chorus of Opera North, and young singers from RNCM, University of Leeds, Hull and Huddersfield, we quickly devised an innovative livestream event featuring local young musicians in the middle of the first UK lockdown. This event was free to watch on Facebook and Youtube, providing a valuable platform for 10 talented young musicians to perform as part of, at a time when most performances opportunities had been cancelled. It also provided much-needed entertainment to our supporters in and around the Kirklees and Calderdale region, and beyond. We had 160 people watching live during the event, and the showcase has now received over 2700 views collectively between Youtube and Facebook. This has since helped &Piano establish a strong online presence and has demonstrated itself to be a powerful way of reaching a wider audience than our traditional concerts. It has also allowed us to start to establish strong relationships with music-education providers, as we built ties with our local music education hub
Kirklees Musica, and Sixth Form Greenhead College’s Music Department. “Superb hour and half of great music by young musicians, inc piano accompaniment.” “I REALLY enjoyed the live stream tonight - fabulous young musicians without exception.” While the spread of COVID across the country had reduced through Summer and into September, it was still very difficult to plan and deliver traditional live concerts. We shelved our planned September festival – promising to invite the booked artists back when we were next able to host our events – and aimed to explore livestreaming further by offering a series of performances, streamed with no audience. We were able to organise a digital alternative to our festival. We held our first successful discussion on Facebook, with a panel of notable local arts professionals and also welcomed Tracy Brabin, MP for Batley and Spen and Shadow Secretary for Cultural Industries. “This is really interesting to hear things from your points of view!” Despite some technical challenges, we managed to overcome them to provide two 1hr online performances of music reflecting on the extraordinary events of 2020. Our first event featured a piano trio featuring Manchester-based cellist Polly Virr and Leeds-based violinist Tom Greed, which featured our first programmed piece by an Asian composer – Ryuichi Sakamoto, and also by a black female composer - Xenobia Powell Perry. Then, the following week, Bass-baritone Neil Balfour (one of our planned 2020 festival artists) offered a varied programme of classical and musical theatre songs, and operatic arias. “It's been a wonderful thing you have done and provided” “Loved the music and Chris’s piano playing and Neil’s voice were wonderful”
These paid performance opportunities were incredibly valued by the performers, all of whom had not had the opportunity to perform since March, and despite our technical challenges, the feeling of performing to an audience gave our performers that feeling they missed so much, after months of being confined to their homes and making recordings – performing at their best to an audience who were watching live. We were able to provide one final performance opportunity to another musician just before the end of the year, and, learning lessons from our previous livestreams, produced two short performances for the Christmas season. We were extremely fortunate to be granted the use of the grand, currently-dormant Huddersfield Town Hall, which helped us to remind people of one of our fantastic local landmarks and performance venues. Soprano Ann Wilkes and Artistic Director Chris Pulleyn performed an extract from Handel’s Messiah, (a homage to the typically annual Huddersfield Choral Society performance in the town hall), and ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’. These were both extremely well received and reached about 1800 views and 1600 views respectively between Facebook and YouTube, with a number of people sharing them widely across social media, and receiving a number of glowing comments about the standard of the performances. “Beautiful. I don't think I've heard such a delicate interpretation before. Very apt.” “This is absolutely exceptional.” Despite all of the unexpected challenges that 2020 brought, &Piano has done remarkably well creating and offering a substantial number of online performances, all accessible to watch for free. Still so young in our development as an organisation, we have tried to make all of our content this year serve our objectives: to be approachable and relevant, particularly with the regional community that we are based within, and hope that it will help raise our profile and encourage further community engagement when we can once again offer live-music - performance with in person audiences.
Additional information (optional) You may choose to include further statements where relevant about:
| Achievements against objectives set |
Para 1.41 | |
| Performance of fundraising activities against objectives set |
Para 1.41 | |
| Investment performance against objectives |
Para 1.41 | |
| Other |
Financial Review
| Review of the charity’s financial position at the end of the period |
Para 1.21 | &Piano officially became a Charitable Incorporated Organisation from 19th November 2019. Having made a small loss in its second festival in 2019, &Piano began its first financial period as a CIO with a small amount of £130 in the bank. Despite a challenging year, due to the organisation’s creative efforts and determination, combined with our new ability to raise money through donations as a charity, we finished the year with a small surplus of £796. In a normal year, &Piano typically organises three/four concerts featuring professional singers and instrumentalists. We would normally expect to generate around £2000 in ticket sales, with average attendance at our concerts around 60 people currently. We aim to make our ticket prices as affordable as possible, with an average price of £12, and with a focus on engaging with young audiences we offer £5 tickets to Under 30s and our Family events are also heavily subsidised. The primary goal as a newly established charity was to start to raise funds to help build up a small reserve, in order to ensure more financial stability and security to the festival, with a goal to ensuring that &Piano had enough funds in reserve to remain financially viable in the event of being able to cover costs and expenses through ticket sales from events – if a festival was cancelled, or in a year with poor ticket sales. The COVID-19 pandemic meant we were prevented from our initial fundraising plans, and we shelved our planned festival in September. However, our efforts in producing online events throughout the year successfully helped us to maintain a level of attention and interest in the festival, encourage donations to help support the festivals development post-pandemic, and help establish our ’88 Keys friends scheme’, which would encourage supporters to sponsor a piano key by making an annual fixed donation starting from £10. On the strength of our online efforts, over the course of this year we have welcomed 36 friends, many of whom have made |
|---|---|---|
donations greater than £10. These regular donations will be a great help to support some of our core costs, hopefully helping us to build a small reserve of funds in the event of an untoward or unexpected event that jeopardises the future of the festival, while also helping to provide us with some financial security that will allow us to grow and develop the festival. In addition to our friends’ scheme (and despite not being able to offer any ticketed events), on the strength of the online events we produced, we received just under £1000 in one-off donations. In a very difficult year for the performing arts sector, these donations have allowed us to provide paid performance opportunities to a number of musicians, as well as finishing the year with a stronger bank balance, which will help us to invest in our next programme of events in 2021. We anticipate that 2021 will still be a challenging year. The Trustees and Artistic Director have all agreed it is sensible to monitor the state of the pandemic, and the progress of the vaccination rollout, postponing a full &Piano festival of concerts until April 2022 at the earliest. We want to continue offering music to our community and beyond. We plan to offer our 2nd Young Musician Showcase online, as well as some professionally produced music performance videos, before preparing for what we hope will be a return to in-person performance, with a planned Opera/Musical Theatre Gala in September. Our challenge financially will be to make sure we can generate enough funds through donations and other means, in order to be able to produce our online content. We want to continue offering paid opportunities to local musicians, while trying to reach as many people as possible (not implementing a paywall) to help maintain interest in the festival and grow our audience. But we also need to make sure that we have enough funds at hand in order to be able to organise and prepare for a return to live performance with a planned Gala concert in September - and onwards as we begin to prepare for an exciting and ambitious programme of events in 2023 for the Kirklees Year of Music.
| Statement explaining the policy for holding reserves stating why they are held |
Para 1.22 | The charity currently has no formal reserves policy. |
|---|---|---|
| Amount of reserves held | Para 1.22 | The charity currently has no formal amount of reserves held. |
| Reasons for holding zero reserves |
Para 1.22 | The charity should look to develop a policy to establish how much should be held in reserve, and how they should go about building this reserve. |
| Details of fund materially in deficit |
Para 1.24 | N/A |
| Explanation of any uncertainties about the charity continuing as a going concern |
Para 1.23 |
Additional information (optional) You may choose to include further statements where relevant about:
| The charity’s principal sources of funds (including any fundraising) |
Para 1.47 | |
| Investment policy and objectives including any social investment policy adopted |
Para 1.46 | |
| A description of the principal risks facing the charity |
Para 1.46 | |
| Other |
Structure, Governance and Management
| Description of charity’s trusts: |
||
|---|---|---|
| Type of governing document (trust deed, royal charter) |
Para 1.25 | Constitution |
| How is the charity constituted? (e.g unincorporated association, CIO) |
Para 1.25 | Charitable Incorporated Organisation |
| Trustee selection methods including details of any constitutional provisions e.g. election to post or name of any person or body entitled to appoint one or more trustees |
Para 1.25 | New trustees are appointed by a quorum of existing trustees. |
Additional information (optional) You may choose to include further statements where relevant about:
| Policies and procedures adopted for the induction and training of trustees |
Para 1.51 | |
| The charity’s organisational structure and any wider network with which the charity works |
Para 1.51 | |
| Relationship with any related parties |
Para 1.51 | |
| Other |
Reference and Administrative details
| Charity name | &Piano |
|---|---|
| Other name the charity uses | &Piano Music Festival |
| Registered charity number | 1186398 |
| Charity’s principal address | 15 Siskin Gardens, Huddersfield, HD4 7FB |
Names of the charity trustees who manage the charity
| 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 |
Trustee name | Office (if any) | Dates acted if not for whole **year ** |
Name of person (or body) entitled to appoint trustee (ifany) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Peter Sunderland | Chair | |||
| Isabel Chadha | ||||
| Marc Dunleavey | ||||
| Heidi Johnson | ||||
| Jennifer Pulleyn | ||||
– Corporate trustees names of the directors at the date the report was approved
Director name
Name of trustees holding title to property belonging to the charity
Trustee name Dates acted if not for whole year
Funds held as custodian trustees on behalf of others
Description of the assets held in this capacity Name and objects of the charity on whose behalf the assets are held and how this falls within the custodian charity’s objects Details of arrangements for safe custody and segregation of such assets from the charity’s own assets
Additional information (optional)
Names and addresses of advisers (Optional information)
Type of Name Address adviser
Name of chief executive or names of senior staff members (Optional information)
Exemptions from disclosure
Reason for non-disclosure of key personnel details
Other optional information
Declarations The trustees declare that they have approved the trustees, report above. Slgned on behalf of Ihe char. 's trustees Slgnature(s) Full name(s) Posltlon (eg Secretary, Chalr, etc) Date .26. o). ZOZI
&Piano Music Festival Charity Number: 1186398 A. Payments and Expenses for Year Period from 1811112019 - 3111212020 Receipts Unrnstrlcted Funds Total Funds 2019 (pClo) Funds Tickets Sales 49 25 1703 IndNidual Donations 1481 1427 114 Gift Aid 240 240 Event Sponsorship 150 Totsl Receipts 1770 1770 1967 Payments l Artist Fees 420 420 10 Venue Hire 185 510 Equipmenulnstrument Hire 50 70 Refunds 25 25 Ticket Sales Fees 58 Donation Fees Office Supplies 58 51 Web/Domain Hosting marf(etlnAdvert•$lng 138 45 79 113 2781 Insurance Total Payments 1025 1025 2125 Net of receipts 745 745 158 Cash funds at stsrt of period 129 129 289 ' Cash funds at period end 874 874 131
Unrestslcted Total Funds Funds 1. Cash Funds Cash in bank Cash in hand 78 78 874 874 Declaration Signed on beh h charity's trustees Signatu Full name Date 2&.01202