TRUSTEES ANNUAL REPORT 16[th] November 2024 - 17[th] June 2025 ## **SECTION 1** Charity Name: The Story Works (South) Charity Registration Number: 1194175 Charity Registered Address: 10 Bridge Road, Lymington, Hants, SO41 9BY Trustee Names: Dee Hughes (Head of Trustees) Elisabeth Moss Laura Campbell Sean Maudsley-Barton Tom Stone Craig Rickard ## **SECTION 2** The day-to-day work was overseen by Elisabeth Moss from September 2024 to April 2025 in her role as Charity Manager. At the time of writing Elisabeth’s charity visa has expired and she has returned to the US. Taking over the role of Charity Manager will be Martina Mohr, a German national, who will be working for The Story Works on a charity visa for the next twelve months. All aspects of the charity will transfer to Martina’s control, and she will liaise with Elisabeth from time to time, who will be able to support and guide her where she can as Martina comes to understand the workings of the role. All charity work related to the website and social media is handled by Elisabeth Moss and Sean Maudsley-Barton. Volunteers are recruited in one of four ways: - Through an advertisement on the SUBU (Student Union Bournemouth University) website. - Through an advertisement on the AUBSU (Arts University of Bournemouth Student Union) website. - Through an advertisement on the CAN (Community Action Network) website. - Through student identification via both Dee Hughes and Tom Stone at BU - (Bournemouth University) and Vincent Larkin at AUB (Arts University of Bournemouth). Trustees are recruited through word-of-mouth, and we have recently had two trustees step down, Ali Sparkes and Emma Scattergood. With Elisabeth becoming a trustee we now have a full complement of six trustees. Should any trustee wish to step down we have volunteers ready to fill the vacancy. ## **SECTION 3** Throughout the year The Story Works (TSW) sole objective is to deliver structured story-writing and creative workshops for local children within the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) area. TSW is situated on the Bournemouth University campus, so children who may otherwise never experience or understand what a university is are afforded the opportunity to experience for themselves the reality of such an environment. Workshops run on Wednesday afternoons and are led by the volunteers, primarily students at Bournemouth University or Arts University Bournemouth. During her time with us Elisabeth was successful in starting the process of recruiting volunteers from the local community and we hope to be able to continue to attract members of the local community. The schedule of workshops runs from early October until the end of April. We are currently only able to deliver workshops during those dates as we rely on student volunteers and beyond those dates our student volunteers are often not available. The workshops we run are for classes of thirty children from local schools that we have recruited with help from our connection with the BCP’s Cultural Hub program. To introduce ourselves to new schools, we have had a short promotional film made by media production students at Bournemouth University. This film is available on our website which we direct potential schools to look at with a view to understanding what it is we are offering. Our recruitment by BCP to be a part of the annual Arts by the Sea Festival has also enabled us to make contact with new schools. Predominantly we deliver workshops for children in the 7 – 11 age range. In previous years we have delivered workshops for children in the 12-18 years of age category. Zine workshops have been run for classes of up to a maximum of ten children. All workshops are volunteer led and so the zine workshops were not part of our programming for the 24-25 year due to no suitable volunteers being able to run the workshops. In its place we experimented with a comic strip workshop for secondary school aged students, and this was a huge success. It is planned to increase the number of workshops we deliver during our next delivery year. A four-week structured songwriting workshop took place in a local secondary school run by our trustee Elisabeth Moss. **SECTION 4** The Story Works charitable purpose is as follows: _‘To advance education for the public benefit in writing and reading in all its forms by providing, in particular, but not exclusively, opportunities in storytelling and creative writing for children and young people.’_ To fulfil the above, we facilitate and run structured story-writing workshops for children between the ages of 7-18. These creative sessions are guided by a design that allows for the children to engage with their imaginations in a supportive environment. These workshops have been overwhelmingly successful, and in response we have been provided with glowing testimonials from students and teachers who have attended our workshops. To gather data and a sense of the children’s response to the workshops we have produced a feedback sheet which every child completes on the conclusion of the workshop they have attended. The feedback sheets prove overwhelmingly positive results: over 95% of participants have rated our workshops as an 8/10 or above. We have begun to collate the children’s feedback into a database, and we have designed a new teacher’s feedback survey. This will provide both feedback on how we can continue to grow and will collect data on the children we serve, including EHC plan, pupil premium, and the number of children on free school lunches. ## **SECTION 5** The charity’s balance as of 17[th] June 2025 £3,164.96 The charity has no debts. Income has been derived from community work on BCP projects and the selling of a book and calendar. As we have been entirely volunteer run and utilise the University’s free spaces, we have not needed to rely on funding in the past. ## **SECTION 6** The only funds the charity maintains are those in the charity’s bank account, and as Head Trustee, Dee Hughes is tasked with maintaining the account. We were kindly given a £5,000 donation from Bournemouth University in the Fall of 2023, and this sum has meant that our bank balance is healthy. We annually pay for Public Liability insurance and our website domain name fee, which total to approximately £240. Our only other guaranteed, recurring payment is for DBS checks granted to our volunteers (£11.28 raising to £11.50 per volunteer). We presently have two outstanding payments to make, book related costs (approx. £550 includes final payment to illustrator and printing costs) and a £50 fee for green screen CGI work carried out by one of our volunteers. Funding has recently been secured through our involvement in the BCP Arts by the Sea Festival and Bitesized Festivals, in which our volunteers designed activity sheets that were used at workshops. Our hope is that we will be considered for future projects, and this may become an annual revenue stream. Revenue has also been generated through sales of our recently published charity book and charity 2025 calendar; using artwork produced in workshops, one of our volunteers designed a 2025 calendar/family planner, which has been printed and made for sale on the website and in the BU shop. The success of the first book we published, The Suspect Smell, by Tom Stone (a trustee) resulted in our decision to publish a second book in the summer of 2025. One of our AUB illustration volunteers, Oleksandra, will be illustrating a children’s picture book for sale at events we attend and the website. This year we launched a new green-screen workshop, in which groups of 15 children (ages 7-11) write, act out, and film an original production, assisted by media faculty and volunteers from Bournemouth University. Despite the success of these workshops, we will not be able to continue to deliver them in the 25-26 year due to Tom Stone’s workload as a lecturer being too great. One of our limitations as a charity is our workshop timespan: we are largely inactive in the summer months due to our student volunteers being unavailable. We seek to become a twelvemonth operation as we recruit volunteers outside of the universities and form new connections. This is an ongoing ambition. Our involvement in the bi-annual Writing Our World (W.O.W.) conference has also opened up possibilities for cross-collaboration with other organisations throughout the year and two trustees, Dee Hughes and Tom Stone will be attending the 2025 conference in Stockholm. The Story Works is not tied to the school curriculum or any curriculum, so we allow the children who attend our workshops a freedom they do not have in formal education. This creative freedom allows children to avoid the barriers to learning that they experience at school. What we offer is a starting point for a lifelong learning journey with no specific direction other than providing an agency to each child they may not attain at school. Having now successfully delivered workshops for four years, we have come to realise that the charity benefits not only our workshop attendees but the volunteers themselves; by empowering our volunteers to lead sessions and contribute their own ideas for workshops, we are encouraging children and volunteers (university students and those outside of a university) alike to champion their own voices and to pursue lifelong creative writing and thinking. By bringing together these two communities of practice we hope to nurture both learning and the development of lifelong creative and communication skills. THE STORY WORKS – Registered charity number 1194175 ANNUAL ACCOUNTS 1/9/2024 – 17/06/2025 OPENING BALANCE £2,833.00 INCOME: BCP Arts by the Sea Festival Book Sales Calendar Sales BCP Cultural Hub Workshops £5,188.4 9 EXPENDITURE: Access Insurance Website Domain Fee Workshop Supplies – Lymington Printers DBS Checks Illustrator Designs (T-shirts) Labour & Transportation for BCP Cultural Hub Workshops Labour for BCP Arts by the Sea Festival Events T-shirt printing (50) Calendar printing, book printing, and Alice payment £4,856.5 2 Year End Balance £3,164.96