2025-12-31-accounts

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Ham Farm Festival

Annual Report and Accounts for the period 1st January 2025 until 31st December 2025

Ham Farm Festival Report of the Trustees for 2025

Reference and administrative details

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

Trustees

Myriam Gamble Emily Correa Francisco Correa Mark Gilbertson Philip Bunce

Operational address and registered office

Ham Farm Cottage, Emersons Green Lane, Mangotsfield, Bristol BS16 7AT

Independent examiner

Financial records were examined in detail and signed off by independent accountant Roberta Sunderland in January 2026.

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Ham Farm Festival Report of the Trustees for 2025

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. Since the formation of a charity there have been successful editions of the summer festival in July 2024 and July 2025. In addition, the charity has also put on some independent concerts during the school year, working with local schools and the music hub to provide professional music experiences for local schoolchildren.

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. Initially the trustees for the period were Emily Correa, Francisco Correa, Mark Gilbertson, Myriam Gamble, and Deborah Willington, and in September 2024 Deborah resigned as trustee and was replaced by Philip Bunce 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, Philip Bunce, and Myriam Gamble do not receive any benefit or payment from the CIO.

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. These are kept under review. The reserves policy was revised over the year to enable more flexibility and the safeguarding policy developed further.

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 during the year centred on the main summer Festival, also known as Ham Farm Festival, which took place 25th-27th July 2025. The programme was a mixture of workshops, family and community concerts, and high-quality professional musical performances of a variety of musical genres. A popular and successful addition, particularly from the point of view of inclusion, was a family ceilidh. The festival offered a wide variety of musical events and the artistic directors were able to present a high quality programme with

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Ham Farm Festival Report of the Trustees for 2025

a balance between genres and the level of challenge presented to the audience. A full programme is attached. Ticket sales were very good: the evening events came close to capacity, with around 100 tickets sold each night, and the daytime events were well-attended by people from every age group.

In addition to the summer festival, the charity also held several other in-year events:

• March 2025: Resound School Outing Concert. This was a concert given in the Resound Church in Emersons Green, where past festival players and rising stars Eleanor and Gus gave a concert to an audience of 210 children from local primary schools. The concert was then linked to educational activities, completed in the schools. The charity is grateful for funding for this event from the Paragon Music Trust.

• March 2025, Flute Discovery Workshops. One of our artistic directors, Emily Andrews (Correa), a professional flautist, went into 2 local primary schools and performed a day of musical workshops for 90 year 2 pupils.

• April 2025 Young Performers’ Spotlight concert in collaboration with West of England Music and Arts. For this there were 30 mins of young people performing before an interval and then a one hour performance from Iyatra Quartet, a world-class alt folk group which performed in the 2021 festival.

• May 2025 Fundraising concert. Ten different professional and semi-professional performers volunteered their time to put on this concert, in order to raise the final funds needed to run the summer festival. Entrance was free, but there was a bar and donations were invited from the audience. The event was very full, with excellent feedback, and raised over £1000 for the summer festival.

In all of these events the charity has forwarded its objectives of providing high-quality but accessible, diverse music in an area where there are very few opportunities to experience it, and in advancing the public’s education and appreciation of new genres/types of live music.

Achievements and performance

The objectives for 2025 were as follows.

• Continuing to build our audience base, mailing list numbers and followers . Mailing list started the year at 343 and ended at 354. However, we installed more protection against bot sign-ups in September, and deleted 80 dud accounts as a result, so true growth was 263 to 354, an increase of 35%. Facebook and Instagram followers increased steadily during the year, with good engagement on our posts.

However, the true growth in audience base was the number of local children reached through our new work with schools this year - from 60 in 2024 (just the Flute Discovery workshops to two forms of children) to 340 in 2025. These are very local children, experiencing high quality classical music often for the first time.

• Continuing to build audience trust The event was close to capacity in the evenings and many people in attendance commented (either in person or through our feedback form) that they didn’t know what to expect from the evening or performance, showing that people are coming due to trust in our Festival and the quality of events we put on, rather than following a particular group or genre.

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Ham Farm Festival Report of the Trustees for 2025

This is exactly where we want to be, so that we can continue to programme creatively, mix genres in our evenings, and encourage our audiences to discover new music as well as hear what they enjoy.

In addition, our feedback form showed 37% of attendees coming due to word of mouth, which shows a continued high level of audience trust.

• Further strengthening our relationship with the local town council and unitary authority and foster further links with 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. We now have a very strong relationship with Emersons Green Town Council, and have become a key item in the Town Council’s yearly calendar: Indeed we have started discussions with them about being a regularly funded charity, rather than applying for funding each year as we have in the past.

• Continue our work with local hospitals and care homes , ensuring we continue to bring music into the community to those who cannot access it. Unfortunately this did not happen this year, due to a shift in priorities to working more locally, within Emersons Green, Mangotsfield and Downend (where there are no hospitals, and no interested care homes). This shift of focus was driven by our funders - South Glos council stopped their funding, meaning our sole funder was Emersons Green Town Council, and, as most of our audience is hyper-local as well, we serve both our funders and our audience by concentrating our effort and resources locally.

• Scale up our work with schools during the year, outside our main Festival time, by working with all four local schools . See the point above. The resources and effort which we used to put into care home and hospital concerts was instead concentrated on local schools, directly benefitting 340 local schoolchildren during the year, and strengthening our relationship with local schools’ senior leadership teams.

The Resound concert outing was a huge success, due to be repeated in 2026 with direct funding from Emersons Green Town Council, and the Flute Discovery Workshops reached 90 year 2 children with a hands-on, interactive and memorable professional musical experience.

• Continue monitoring the pricing policy. Ticketing pricing worked well with attendance close to capacity for the evenings, very positive feedback about pricing from the audience, and no evidence of abuse of the flexible pricing policy. The higher ticket price was raised by £2 to £24 and it did not seem to put off anyone who was willing to pay this ticket tier. Indeed, the number of people choosing to pay for full price tickets enabled us to exceed our expected evening ticket income of £3300 by £1188, putting the charity in an excellent financial position after the festival finished.

• Continue development of a donation method for well wishers and benefiting from gift aid on donations received, as well as working on ways to encourage the public to donate where possible after free or low cost daytime events.

We put in place a JustGiving account, linked to from our website and from QR codes at the festival, and received some donations via this route as well as in cash or card at our events.

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Ham Farm Festival Report of the Trustees for 2025

For the first time we ran a fundraising concert in May, where performers donated their time, and the public attended for free but were encouraged to donate to cover the final amount needed for our summer festival. This concert raised over £1000 including gift aid - which put us in a comfortable position for our festival - and was so successful that it will be repeated in 2026 as a key part of our fundraising effort.

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

• Consider measures to improve the access to the festival for those of limited mobility. The introduction of a ramp to the marquee worked very well.

• Working on audience diversity through marketing strategies, partnerships with ethnic minority groups in Bristol, programming to attract a diverse audience, and geographically strategic advertising where possible.

Our Festival attendees this year were 94% white, showing we still have work to do to appeal to a racially diverse audience. However, all ages were very well represented, and 12.5% of attendees came with a group containing someone with special needs or a disability, showing progress on our inclusivity.

• Diversity of role models - while working within the boundaries laid out by our Artist Selection Criteria, our Artistic Directors will continue to consider the ethnic diversity of musicians booked for Ham Farm Festival. We continue to progress at doing this and ensuring that our programmed musicians are diverse. We continue to check that our posters and flyers for our main summer festival (which go to 8000 local households) feature musicians from ethnic minorities.

Public benefits of activities

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

• 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, and programming at earlier times of day (good for families or parents of small children, of which there are many in the area).

• Enabling 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 times of day, all heavily subsidised or free to attend, have attracted participants from 3 - 80, from the local area and from Bristol. These were well attended, enjoyed and appreciated, showing the demand for inclusive, interactive and affordable musical workshops in the area.

• Taking the festival to people who may not have access to high-quality live music concerts. This was done particularly through our work with schools, reaching children whose families are not interested in live classical music, and who otherwise would not be exposed to concerts therefore.

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Ham Farm Festival Report of the Trustees for 2025

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

• Direct involvement and programming of youths and teenagers, who are notoriously hard to engage with community activities, through collaboration with the local music hub, WEMA. This is aligned with a main objective of Emersons Green Town Council.

• 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. Emersons Green Town Council gave Ham Farm Festival a whole page spread in their Annual Town Meeting booklet, showcasing highlights of the year from the Town Council’s perspective. They also invited our Artistic Directors to speak at the meeting on 30 April 2025, showing the great pride the town council feels in the work the charity is doing for the local community, as well as in their partnership with us.

• Access for all to high-quality music with a pay-what-you-can cheap ticket tier and an e-mail-and-ask policy for those who feel that this may still put the festival beyond their reach.

• Paid opportunities for young people to work on the festival as a first work experience: We gave jobs to thirteen young people aged 14-17, 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. There was very high demand for these opportunities, and the application and interview process was a useful learning experience for everyone who applied, even those who were not ultimately offered work.

Financial review

The CIO receives income from grants, ticket sales, and individual donations including gift aid. There is also some income from bar sales during events. The CIO is - and always will be - heavily reliant on successful funding bids, as ticket and drink sales alone will never pay for the festival due to the ever-increasing gap between what the arts cost (increasing with cost of living) and what the public will pay for a concert (lowering with cost of living crisis).

However, the funding landscape is very challenging with local authority budgets being very much squeezed and there being high demand for financial support of the arts. While the charity was affected by the closure of the South Gloucestershire Council Area Wide Grant scheme which has provided funding for the past 4 years, this was offset by a larger grant from Emersons Green Town Council, with whom the charity has an excellent ongoing partnership. Though funding has been precarious, the artistic directors have been able to ensure that the charity’s costs have been covered at each point of the year and the charity has been able to adapt to the funding environment.

The CIO has been able to grow direct income to the charity in proportion to the turnover and the year end balance has improved over the year without any mitigation measures having to be invoked. Ticket pricing worked well and the refreshments receive good feedback and are making a significant contribution to income.

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

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Ham Farm Festival Report of the Trustees for 2025

sound engineers professional rates for every event (always at least Musicians’ Union rates) - with the exception of the fundraising concert in May, where musicians chose to donate their time to the cause.

The greatest risks to the charity are failure to secure grants within a currently constrained funding environment and low ticket sales, especially as many people are reluctant to book tickets in advance and this seems to be an increasing trend. In mitigation of these risks:

• 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.

Objectives for 2026

• Continue the ceilidh as a yearly event.

• Clarify the split between world-class professional music in the evenings, and community music events in the daytime. This will involve moving the ever-popular choro roda to a daytime event, as well as clear advertising.

• In addition to the point above, investigate the possibility of crossover audience between daytime and evening.

• Attract a new trustee with skills in project management and/or employment law.

• Improve social media coverage during the festival, and afterwards.

• Further develop audiences and encourage more diversity in our audience, while retaining our local audience.

• Further develop and embed the Resound project, continuing to work with local primary schools and their leadership teams.

• Better/clearer car parking for festival attendees.

• Further develop and embed the Young Performers’ Concert and move to the larger Resound Church building. Try to attract some more local young performers.

• Develop the youth offering at Ham Farm Festival, in collaboration with Emersons Green Town Council.

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Ham Farm Festival Income Expondilurn Swmnary 2025 INCOME Lk)nalk)ns £1.959.06 £472.78 Gfft Aid Grdnts and fvnding FLyJd and Drink sale £8,852.00 £1,650.82 £5,926.88 Ticket ine()me £18,861.54 EXPENSES Artbt loes £8.956.80 £793.75 £1.211.71 £eJ)2.96 Equlpm8nt Focd and drink sloc RunniTrJ costs Loan repayment M15¢ellaneous overheads £412.50 £300.00 £250.61 £238.70 £277.50 knling publidty venue hlre £840.00 £787.50 £3.455.17 £1&327.00 GAIN (OR LOSS) IN RESERVES DURING YEAR Year stsrt balance £757.06 Gain loss) in ￿ServeS during year Flnlshlng 8alanGg as on 3111212025 £534.54 £1.291.60 Prepared ty Emily Correa. Trustee and Treasurer, 8th January 2026 IndeperKlenty rewe￿￿ by Rc￿￿1￿ suThJerla￿d ACMA