2023-12-31-accounts

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Ham Farm Festival

Annual Report and Accounts for the period 4th May 2023 until 31st December 2023

Ham Farm Festival Report of the Trustees for 2023

Reference and administrative details

The charity is named the Ham Farm Festival Charity number: 1202940

Trustees

Emily Correa Francisco Correa Mark Gilbertson Deborah Willington Myriam Gamble

Operational address and registered office

Ham Farm Cottage, Emersons Green Lane, Mangotsfield, Bristol

Independent examiner

Financial records were all examined in detail and signed off by independent accountant Roberta Sunderland in January 2023.

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Ham Farm Festival Report of the Trustees for 2023

The charity

The Ham Farm Festival first took place in July 2021 as a private venture by Emily and Francisco Correa. After another successful episode in July 2022, a charity was established in May 2023 in order to formalise its structure, improve funding opportunities, and ensure that the public benefits that had been at the heart of it since the beginning would be more formally realised and recognised.

Structure, governance and management

The charity is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation based in England whose only voting members are its trustees. The CIO was incorporated through a constitution on 4th May 2023. The trustees for the period are Emily Correa, Francisco Correa, Mark Gilbertson, Deborah Willington, and Myriam Gamble. The membership and activity of the trustees and their powers are regulated by the charity’s constitution.

The artistic directors and operational managers of the charity are Francisco and Emily Correa. Any payments to them made with respect to these duties or other activities such as performance are explicitly accounted for and the circumstances under which payments may be made to them is governed by the CIO’s constitution and an explicit policy. Mark Gilbertson, Deborah Willington, and Myriam Gamble do not receive any benefit or payment from the CIO.

The formation of the CIO has enabled the development of robust policies for all aspects of the festival, including safeguarding policies and the appointment of an official safeguarding officer from our trustees, an evidence of artistic integrity policy, an equality, diversity and inclusion policy, and a formal premises lease agreement.

There are no exemptions to disclosure and there are no funds for which the CIO is the custodian trustee.

Objectives and activities

The object of the charity is for the public benefit, to promote and advance education in, and the public’s appreciation of, music and other arts, in particular, but not exclusively, by the presentation of an annual music festival in South Gloucestershire.

The activities of the CIO centre on the main summer Festival, also known as Ham Farm Festival, which took place 28th-30th July 2023. The programme was a mixture of workshops, family and community concerts, and high-quality professional musical performances of a variety of musical genres. In addition there were professional recitals in care homes around South Gloucestershire. A full programme is attached. In addition to the main summer festival, the charity partnered with the local music hub (WEMA, formally South Glos Music Hub) to put on a concert in April, featuring a showcase for thirteen of their students before a professional group headlined the evening.

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Ham Farm Festival Report of the Trustees for 2023

For this year, experience from the previous festivals allowed further development of the festival’s programme. World-class professional concerts were separated from amateur community groups as our research shows that the demographic who come to these two kinds of concerts is completely different. We established the format of double-bill professional evening concerts, with provision of food in the interval between concerts, and keeping daytimes for workshops and community groups. A further successful innovation was holding the festival in a marquee, which removed a large amount of risk for the festival and mitigated the effects of poor weather for this year’s festival. The marquee was financed by a no-interest loan, which the festival will repay over the next 5 years. There is now a formal agreement with respect to using the premises of the festival.

Achievements and performance

The festival was very successful, achieving progress in delivering the CIO’s objectives:

• There was increased visibility and reach for the festival - shown clearly in ever increasing mailing list numbers, and followers on social media

• 70% of the audience were from BS16 ,fulfilling the festival’s role as a service to the local community; however, the offering was sufficiently strong to be able also to attract audience members from as far away as London and New York, as well as all postcodes from South Gloucestershire.

• The workshops, which were free, were sold out and had waiting lists, showing high demand for them; however, bad weather led to some no-shows, which was disappointing for those on the waiting list who could have come, resulting in the decision to charge a nominal ticket price for all limited-number workshops next year.

• Attendance for evening double-bills was good and ticket sales balanced the books. Bad weather led to fewer than we would have liked at the drop-in non-ticketed daytime concerts. Financially it makes no difference how many come to these free daytime concerts, but we wanted the marquee to be full to make a great audience for the community groups playing, and to show people are taking advantage of the free music on offer at the Festival. Due to the adverse weather we averaged 25-30 audience members per drop-in concert, where we would have liked 50-70.

• Audience diversity was explicitly considered by programming Latino events (Bullerengue, choro and Lucas Saboya), and advertising these to the Bristol Latino community through social networks and partnerships with appropriate organisations. The proportion of ethnic minorities attending was 14%, which is significantly higher than the average for the county (9% from 2021 census data), showing success here.

• Diversity of role models - we featured over 50% female headline artists, black and Latino headliners, and a disabled performer for the first time. We worked hard to represent diversity in our programming and advertising, as well as in the styles of music we offered, and achieved a brilliant showcase of the diversity of the music industry as a result. The musicians are featured on all posters and flyers, which are seen by many thousands of people, so even people who do not come to the festival are affected positively by the diverse role models represented on our posters.

Public benefits of activities

The trustees have had regard to the Charity Commission’s guidance on public benefit.

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Ham Farm Festival Report of the Trustees for 2023

• Providing world-class concerts in an area where little high-quality live music happens.

• Encouraging people to come to concerts who rarely go to concerts otherwise, by being local, affordable, programmed at earlier times of day (good for families or parents of small children, of which there are many in the area)

• Encouraging people to discover and connect with new types of music, broadening their musical horizons, through deliberately cross-genre programming

• Varied workshops aimed at all ages, and at different types of day, all heavily subsidised or free to attend, have attracted participants aged from 3 to 80, from the local area and from Bristol. These are often sold out and move to waiting lists, showing the high demand for inclusive, interactive and affordable musical workshops in the area.

• Taking the festival to people who cannot attend with world-class professional concerts at care homes (subsidised by the festival to make this possible)

• inclusive programming including a specialist autistic-friendly concert and free drop-in day time concerts.

• Collaborating with local music hub to directly involve - and indeed programme - youths and teenagers, who are notoriously hard to engage with community activities: indeed involving this age group was a main objective of Emersons Green Town Council this year which we helped them to achieve.

• Sense of pride in the area for local residents, as this music festival puts Emersons Green on the map and draws people from further afield, creating a buzz around the area.

• Free ticket policy for people who need it, included giving many tickets to Ukrainian refugees living in the area, which was organised in collaboration with the local Ukrainian hub.

• Paid opportunities for young people to work on the festival as a first work experience:- we gave ten teenagers aged 14-17 jobs, which gave them a sense of independence, something productive to do after exams, and practical work experience (e.g. using card readers, checking tickets, customer relations). The job also provided these youths with references and something for their CV when looking for other jobs. The festival did not use volunteers this year aside from its own trustees.

Financial review

The CIO receives income from grants and ticket sales with some drink sales during events. The CIO is - and always will be - heavily reliant on successful funding bids, as ticket sales alone will never pay for the festival due to the gap between what the arts cost and what the public will pay for a concert. There were successful grant funding applications both to South Gloucestershire Council and to Emersons Green Town Council, and a good relationship has been established with the local town council for ongoing partnership and funding .

These funding bids took place, and all moneys were received, by April 2023, before events were advertised and tickets went on sale, ensuring that the final programme for the Festival could be determined based on the security of the grants already received, with relatively small risk coming from variable ticket and drinks sales (only foreseen as 1/4 of money needed).

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Ham Farm Festival Report of the Trustees for 2023

The CIO was able to achieve a neutral year financially. The CIO cannot accumulate reserves as this would not be allowed by the grant-making policies and any surplus would be liable for claw-back by the granting bodies. It is a point of principle for the CIO that it does not exploit the people who contribute to the festival and that the financial result was achieved by paying all professional musicians and sound engineers professional rates for every event (always at least Musicians’ Union rates).

The greatest risk to the charity is low ticket sales, especially as many people are reluctant to book tickets in advance and this seems to be an increasing trend. (Should funding bids be unsuccessful this would be known in advance and the festival activities could be scaled back to take account of the more limited funds than anticipated - plus more funding bids/ fundraising events could be done as well). Should there be a shortfall due to low ticket sales, the artistic directors have agreed to defer any payments that would be due to them, including the repayment of the marquee loan mentioned above, and extension of the loan for an extra year if necessary.

Beneficiaries of the CIO activities

The staging of the music festival is the central activity of the CIO. A principal group of beneficiaries is the people who attend the concerts. Though there are strong professional music performances available in Bristol and Bath, they have limited benefit for South Gloucestershire residents as travel and parking are difficult and the tickets expensive (over £50 for a stalls seat in the Bristol Beacon) requiring a high degree of commitment for people to attend them and knowledge about whether they may enjoy a particular event. Many people live in South Gloucestershire, but there is little means by which they can develop involvement in music; hence the CIO's aim to promote and advance education in, and the public’s appreciation of, music and other arts in South Gloucestershire.

The festival brings the benefits of music beyond those who can already regularly encounter it: those with limited mobility can experience professional music, as well as those in care homes who have no mobility at all. Families have the ability to attend events together and this is greatly aided by the informal nature, and early hours of the events on offer. Those who are learning to play an instrument or do so on an amateur basis are encouraged both by attending and performing, while the CIO actively provides to children and adults the opportunity to make music through workshops, and for teenagers and amateur adults through specific performances. The CIO purposely programmes inclusively and has inclusive events, especially for autistic and SEND people. Even when people in South Gloucestershire cannot attend in person there is a benefit for them and for South Gloucestershire to know that these events are taking place locally and their involvement is supported by the CIO through Facebook, Instagram and twitter posts, with our live updates, bits of concerts shared live, audience feedback, and photos.

As well as the audiences, the CIO also actively benefits professional performers and technicians through the concerts and ensuring that they are paid proper fees: this is a

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Ham Farm Festival Report of the Trustees for 2023

material support to the arts. Local teenagers also benefit from being employed on paid work experience either flyering or as stewards during the festival.

Objectives for 2024

• Continuing to build our audience base, mailing list numbers and followers.

• Further strengthening our relationship with the local town council and unitary authority as well as other potential funding bodies. The CIO wants to ensure that it delivers an event which enriches the area and appeals to all cross sections of the local population as well as drawing people from further afield.

• Working with local hospitals and schools to strengthen our outreach work.

• Establishing the right pricing policy which encourages people to pay more to support the arts if they are able to while subsidising very cheap tickets for people who cannot afford more.

• Establishing an easy donation method for well wishers, and benefiting from gift aid on donations received - this year the CIO was setup too late to establish and utilise a policy for donations as part of the funding model.

• Improving the festival bar, both aesthetically and the options on offer, and pricing appropriately so that people buy drinks from us by preference. This should be an excellent extra revenue stream and there is scope to increase the revenue through better pricing.

• Create a volunteering policy and harness the power of local well-wishers to create a team of local volunteers to help with the event.

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Sheet1 Ham Farni Festival Income Expenditure Summary 2023 INCOME are home concert 5ub5idy donatioDs gift aid external money in (artists CD5) iio £875.17 £211.27 £104.19 1tr21.39 £7.IKJI. £3.737.57 1.1060.$9 ticket sales XPÉNDITURE Artist fees Arti%t (￿d ¢quiprn¢nt External money out (artist CD sale51 Food altd drinks St(￿k for ￿le insurJnc¢ loan repayment miscellaneous expenses overheads printing publicity rc¥carch £6.941.47 147 £586.IM £104.19 £978.05 £312.00 31X) £505.31 £27.(M) £270. £1)6.55 51.3 £90.00 £2,033.14 £1.1.242.0S vcnuc NET PROFITILOSS DURING YEAR £191AO Blnce o (Ilm112023 NLt ProfiVL05¥ during y¢aT Balinte 0• 0511212023 Prepared hy Tr￿￿tee and TreLWfEr Emity Correa on 2410112024 Indepfjnd￿ty review￿￿ by Roberta Sund8rfarnl AcAfA P8g8 1