2024-03-31-accounts

Company number: 01468164 Charity Number: 279184

Shape London

Report and financial statements For the year ended 31 March 2024

Shape London

Contents

For the year ended 31 March 2024

Reference and administrative information ...................................................................................... 2 Trustees’ annual report .................................................................................................................. 4 Independent auditor’s report ....................................................................................................... 44 Statement of financial activities (incorporating an income and expenditure account) ................... 48 Balance sheet ............................................................................................................................... 49 Statement of cash flows ............................................................................................................... 50 Notes to the financial statements ................................................................................................. 51

Shape London

Reference and administrative information

For the year ended 31 March 2024

Company number 01468164 Country of England and Wales incorporation Charity number 279184 Country of England and Wales registration Registered office Buckinghamshire New University High Wycombe Campus and operational Queen Alexandra Road address High Wycombe HP11 2JZ Trustees Trustees, who are also directors under company law, who served during the year and up to the date of this report were as follows: Tony Heaton OBE Chair James Hodgson Vice Chair Jon Tibbits-Smyth Treasurer Robert Davies Adeolu Adesola Resigned 13/3/24 Owen Kimm Jennifer Clarke Michelle Duxbury Amanda Stewart Jonathan Dunicliffe Key management David Hevey Chief Executive personnel Jeff Rowlings Head of Programme Bankers CAF Bank Ltd 25 Kings Hill Avenue Kings Hill West Malling Kent, M19 4TA HSBC Lion House 25 Islington High Street London, N1 9LJ

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Reference and administrative information

For the year ended 31 March 2024

Solicitor Bates Wells Cheapside House 138 Cheapside London EC2V 6BB Auditor Sayer Vincent LLP Chartered Accountants and Statutory Auditors 110 Golden Lane LONDON EC1Y 0TG Accountants Peters Elworthy & Moore (PEM) Chartered Accountants Salisbury House Station Road Cambridge CB1 2LA

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Shape London

Trustees’ annual report

For the year ended 31 March 2024

The trustees present their report and the audited financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2024.

Reference and administrative information set out on pages 2 and 3 form part of this report. The financial statements comply with current statutory requirements, the memorandum and articles of association and the Statement of Recommended Practice - Accounting and Reporting by Charities: SORP applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with FRS 102.

CHAIR’S REPORT

Foreword

I am delighted to share this report on the continued development of Shape and our activities that support our aims and values.

We are known domestically and internationally as Shape. Our registered name is Shape London, which is a legacy of the different environment that prevailed when we were first established. It is important to emphasise that our activities encompass all parts of Great Britain and that reach has always been an integral feature which has helped build Shape’s reputation.

2023/24 sees Shape enter the new Arts Council England (ACE) funded National Portfolio Organisation cycle, for which we thank ACE as one of our major funders. Shape continued our Hybrid models into this year, this meant exploring how the behaviour of our users and audiences were changing as disabled people remain disproportionately marginalised by the Covid pandemic resulting in the large-scale migration by those disabled users and creatives to being more digital and online in their consumption and creation patterns. At the same time, predicting and supporting/encouraging walk-in audiences remains a challenge. Consequently, our online audiences have grown exponentially with some of our tools, such as our Social Model of Disability animation being viewed a third of a million times.

Highlights from Programme

The NPO Programme, like Projects, continues to be a central powerhouse for Shape, driving wideranging commissioning, creating major outputs and showings, and growing audiences that number in the millions. Amidst a Programme that includes so much, such as the Shape Open and Emergent, I have chosen to drill down into the ARA, as one among many examples of successful Hybrid projects:

Adam Reynolds Award (ARA)

The Adam Reynolds Award was awarded to James Lake, a disabled artist working in both physical (cardboard) and digital media. In awarding James a £10K bursary we were delighted to be able to support production and commissioning of a new artwork, developed in partnership with Hot Knife Digital Media, with whom we have collaborated in recent years to support a raft of ground breaking digital projects.

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ARA Shortlist

Working with three disabled artists who have experience with animation, our aim this year was to give wider context to James Lake’s animation work, diversify the profile of ARA artists, and give the selected artists support and exposure to help sustain their careers. Tilly PM is an artist we worked with through selecting her for a disabled digital artist call out run by Arebyte On screen; Ernie Maltby is known to us as a Shape Open alumnus and Djofray Mukumbu is an artist we came to know through exchanges with Studio Voltaire, London, where he was receiving support as artist-in-residence. Each helps us meet our aims by giving voice to the disabled diaspora and drawing on diverse social engagement. We linked the artists with a view to building their networks and cementing ideas and approaches to the theme of ‘Paradise, Lost’.

Highlights from Projects

The projects are led by Shape CEO David Hevey and attempt to pioneer new ways of showing the world as we live now. They include:

Disability Arts Movement (DAM) IN VENICE

With major funding from ACE and significant support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF), this project pushed on with designing, curating and planning the exhibition and associated elements for its landmark launch in Venice that went live in April 2024.

National Disability Movement Archive and Collection (NDMAC)

With major funding from the NLHF, this landmark heritage collection began taking in and digitising key collections from civil rights activists from within the Disability Rights Movement, telling the heritage story of the individuals who helped in realising specific rights for all disabled people, telling the heritage story of how they achieved the (albeit flawed) framework of the Disability Discrimination Act some thirty years ago.

National Disability Arts Collection and Archive (NDACA)

NDACA continued its powerful online and walk-in presence, with the NDACA-commissioned Social Model Animation achieving some third of a million views to date. NDACA also continued to be picked up by US and UK users, with several high-profile American universities pulling the NDACA resources into their learning modules.

Transforming Leadership (TL)

This project completed its final year and saw the cohort realise nearly £1M in new funding, as a result of the Hybrid combination of radical culture and new business models brought into the TL project by Project Director David Hevey.

Overall Shape Operations

This was a year in which we also continued our remote and flexible working; the economic and organisational effects of the Coronavirus pandemic continue to be felt by all in the creative sectors and particularly disabled creatives and users. Our staff continue to remote-work as we adapt to these new realities, new stories and new ways of delivering. Shape’s governance continues to focus on the operational efficiencies that can be achieved through on-line meetings, with full

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board and sub-committee meetings being held on Zoom. We have a lean and nimble structure and seek to maximise the value and effect of our work.

As always this Chair’s Report is just a brief introduction to our activity, the detail is fully covered in the following pages of this report and I urge you to read and reflect on how Shape continues to deliver, pioneer and model how to make relevant creativity and arts, through a total and ambitious approach to disability arts, and what that means in the 21[st] Century. This, and our history, is what I believe makes Shape Arts such a vital organisation in our sector - by identifying and nurturing disabled artists, inspiring the wider community to recognise and respond emotionally and intellectually to their work and achieving wide influence through the cultural and creative sectors in the UK and abroad.

On behalf of the Board, we thank and acknowledge the support of all our creatives, funders, partners, freelancers, digital estates builders, users, and audiences, without whom none of this work would be possible.

I also want to thank the Board of Trustees for its continuing support in the governance of Shape and finally, I want to express our thanks to the dedicated Shape staff, freelancers and wider creative teams, led by our CEO, David Hevey who continue to drive this vital work forward.

Tony Heaton OBE

Objectives and activities

Shape's main operational activities and those we aim to help are described below. All our charitable activities focus on the positive promotion of disabled people and are carried out to further our charitable purposes for the public benefit.

Shape’s Vision – what we are working towards

Inspiring and inclusive arts, creative and cultural sectors, accessible to all.

Shape’s Mission – how we will make it happen

By promoting great art, open culture and inclusive practices, knowledge and learning to ensure that disabled people have active and influential roles in arts and culture - as leaders, artists and creatives, participants and audiences, and as part of a skilled workforce.

Shape’s Strategic Aims are to:

Work with cultural sector organisations towards promoting greater accessibility and inclusion – opening talent and audience pathways.

Raise the aspirations of disabled people wanting to work and lead in the cultural sector, providing high quality, accessible learning and development opportunities to support their careers.

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Support disabled artists and creatives to achieve excellence and inspire a new generation of artists to emerge.

Improve the public perception of disabled artists and raise their profile across the UK and internationally, to diverse and growing audiences.

Lead with landmark and influential “game-changer” projects to build our creative and cultural reach and continue to pioneer the way for disabled and diverse people who face barriers.

We deliver these aims through focusing on the following key areas:

Arts and Partnerships – developing opportunities for disabled artists, children and young people. Audiences and Engagement – broadening arts inclusion and engagement. Skills, Diversity and Leadership – including access, consultancy and training.

We report on our activities under these headings.

In working towards these aims, in 2023/24 we delivered a range of diverse projects and programmes supporting disabled creatives across age groups and career stages, across the UK and internationally, which we report on in the achievements and performance section.

Values – the foundation of our beliefs and guiding purpose:

Inclusion - we value access, diversity, establishing the grounds for advocacy and taking part.

Ambition - we value aspiration, growth, future, unlocking potential, the will to improve and be better, seek improvement.

Creativity - we value innovation, seeing the world differently, expanding boundaries, taking risks, challenging convention, valuing beauty and lifting life above the ordinary.

Excellence - we value inspiration, being the best you can be, being judged on merit, having an end point to work towards, doing things the right way, professionally.

These values inform and drive our key strategic aims, detailed in their own section below. Our values are enshrined in all we plan, think and do.

The main objectives and activities for the year were focused upon delivery of our committed programme responding to disabled artists’ needs and the needs of the arts creative and cultural industries. Shape works with the ACE as a National Portfolio Transfer Organisation (NPOT) and contributed to the ACE’s ‘Let’s Create’ strategy of supporting Great Art and Culture for Everyone.

The financial statements do not include the intangible benefit from the hours given by the Trustees of the charity to its governance and management. Shape records its sincere appreciation of this benefit.

The Trustees review the aims, objectives and activities of the charity each year. This review looks at the charity’s achievements and the outcomes of its work in the reporting period. The Trustees review

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the success of each key activity and the benefits the charity has brought to those groups of people that it is set up to help. The review also helps the Trustees ensure the charity's aims, objectives and activities remained focused on its stated purposes.

The Trustees have referred to the guidance contained in the Charity Commission's general guidance on public benefit when reviewing the charity's aims and objectives and in planning its future activities. In particular, the Trustees consider how planned activities will contribute to the aims and objectives that have been set.

Achievements and performance

The charity's main activities and those it tries to help are described below. All its charitable activities focus on delivering our strategic aims and are carried out to further Shape’s charitable purposes for the public benefit. The report sets out key achievements delivered through the three main areas of activity identified above.

Arts and Partnerships: Developing opportunities for disabled artists

Adam Reynolds Award (ARA)

The 2023 recipient of the ARA was James Lake, an artist whose work we have had the pleasure of exhibiting through the Shape Open and Shape Collection, and whose practice we have appreciated and followed for over a decade. In awarding James a £10K bursary we were delighted to be able to support production and commissioning of a new artwork, developed in partnership with Hot Knife Digital Media.

The commission gave James, known predominately as a sculptor working with cardboard, the opportunity to work with the process of moving image, storytelling and digital manipulation, resulting in a short animated film. Over several months, James translated the texture of his sculptural work into a digital environment, marking an evolution of his practice that aimed not only to provide an opportunity for creative and professional development, but to reach new audiences, refine his craft, and bring his sculptures to life.

Responding to timely concerns around the cost of living, climate emergency, and social isolation, James’ work in progress - premiering in 2024 - marked the latest in a series of ongoing collaborations between Shape Arts and Hot Knife Digital Media in which the potential of creative technology to provide improved access to culture is harnessed, continuing both organisations’ experiments in this emerging artistic field.

In our press release, Jeff Rowlings, Head of Programme, Shape Arts, said: “James Lake is an artist whose acclaimed practice has made an impression on the Shape team for years, with a rare craftsmanship that uses cardboard to bring to life people and gestures in moments of pure sculptural alchemy. We are thrilled to make James our 2023 Adam Reynolds Awardee, and to have

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the chance to work with him on a moving image project that will take the sculptural process into a different reality, and in the process connect new audiences to James’ talent and ideas.”

James Lake, artist, said: “It feels significant to be recognised in the same company as previous awardees. As an artist, I’ve been individually working for some time to create small inroads to supporting disability art and inclusive practice, however, the opportunity to collaborate and use the core ingredients of my practice to create a new body of work is momentous. I’m excited to see how my analogue practice is translated and strengthened through digital techniques. Shape Arts has been an enormous source of professional support and encouragement, sharing experience and knowledge.”

James works with cardboard as a sculptural medium largely from favouring its recyclability, affordability, and availability. Producing sculptures which echo the detail and depth found within more ‘traditional’ practice, James’ work reflects ongoing economic and environmental upheaval in a search for common truth and the quiet humanity of small details, ordinarily drowned out by the noise and brightness of contemporary culture. By transforming the utilitarian and overlooked cardboard box into a sophisticated and elaborate artistic medium, James converses with the materiality and precariousness of a creative career. He also exposes the practicalities of making work with a physical impairment. Through exploring the textures, layers, and properties of cardboard as medium, James’ own dyslexic approach to problem-solving and communication is not just exposed but celebrated. James regards the sharing of his work as a method to break down barriers for others, too.

https://www.shapearts.org.uk/Blog/2023-ara-james-lake

James titled the resulting film ‘Another Day’: Tucked away in the modern city are lonely lives, marked out by dreary habits and routines, propped up by hopes, dreams and fantasies. And sometimes art. And what props up the artist but an endless searching? Sifting through days and meals for the idea, the belief … the thing half-noticed, half-felt, half-recalled … until sometimes it comes. The spark, the moment when talent draws invisible engines into play. The moment when low goes high and even the dullest of materials may shine; and come forth. Exploring the world of hand-modelled craft and sculpture through digital animation, this tender and uplifting film explores the transformative nature of creativity through the eyes of a disabled man living at the edges of a world which threatens to entirely pass him by.

Throughout the project, James guided the way the characterisation should develop from a disabled perspective, as well as how the mechanics of movement and materials should take place from the perspective of a sculptor. Through an extensive iterative process, Hot Knife brought James’ cardboard mouldings and models into life using digital techniques that expertly mimic the textural feel of stop motion animation. This is achieved in part by reducing the number of frames shown, whilst maintaining a naturalness of gait, poise and expression.

Reflecting on this, James said: ‘It worked really well for me. And I think because the whole the whole experience was so kind of unique to anything that I had up until that point. People will be surprised that I'm making an animation because I've really stepped out of what they know me for.

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It has all the elements that I would have wanted. It has a disabled protagonist. It has some social undertones to it, which you can either engage with or you don't have to. And it works so well in terms of its capacity to be accessed by all age groups. Anybody that might consider themselves to be able bodied or disabled could access it.’

Towards the end of the project, Shape worked with the collaborators to create ‘making of’ materials to share with the wider community of disabled creatives and artists, providing them with insights into the processes involved, which we hope some find useful and giving them confidence to try out techniques which are new to them, as James did during this project. For example, illustrating the process in which a 3D object gets scanned into being a 2D digital model which is then changed through computer generated imagery to restore a 3D feel, with texture and physicality an important focus. The ‘making of’ films alternate between the artist and digital developer observations on processes, to highlight key learning points as well as describing some of the techniques involved; and encourage other creatives lacking in digital skills to consider collaborations where they can harness their talents in new ways. https://www.shapearts.org.uk/blog/another-day-making-of-part-i https://youtu.be/_epcUo6PGMI

ARA Shortlist

Working with three disabled artists who have experience with animation, our aim this year was to give some context to James Lake’s animation, diversify the profile of ARA artists, and give the selected artists support and exposure to help sustain their careers. Tilly PM is an artist we worked with through selecting her for a disabled digital artist call out run by Arebyte On screen; Ernie Maltby is a Shape Open alumnus and Djofray Mukumbu is an artist we came to know through exchanges with Studio Voltaire, London, where he was receiving support as artist in residence. Each helps us meet our aims around giving voice to disabled diaspora and drawing on diverse social engagement. We linked the artists with a view to building their networks and cementing ideas and approaches to the theme of ‘Paradise, Lost’.

Through a series of discussions, we supported the three Shortlist artists to reach the final stages of their commissioned work, and spent time liaising with them on best approaches to creating accessible versions of their films. We decided that because each film had its own unique identity and voice, that we would not combine them in a three act film but produce and publish them independently. Accordingly we now have four films at the end of the overall ARA programme, with increased opportunities to reach new audiences through considering segmentation and the criteria of screening and film festival events and exhibitions.

Peel – Tilly PM: What is left behind through our shed skin, what tales and truths do these tell? Humour and fear are delicately entangled in this poetic story inspired by Scottish and Irish folklore. Taking the viewpoint of a selkie, a creature able to move between seal and human forms, it draws on traditions where the fisherman might take the selkie’s skin in order to keep her in the human form he desired, but could not stop her longing for the sea. Using photography as well as

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fragmented papery and fish scale collages, Tilly PM explores the ancient roots of storytelling that surround water locked land, and grapple with the mortality of the sea.

The Voice – Djofray Makumbu: I’m an artist. I can do this. Is that what you tell yourself? Moody lo-fi music, puppetry and clay modelling combine in a personal and touching story of a talented young artist with imposter syndrome. Dwelling on the implications for his mental health, the artist records his struggle to contain the pressure of competing inner voices, whilst striving for a pathway out of drudgery and oppression.

Vyhod/ Exit – Ernie Maltby: A surreal and kaleidoscopic meander through strained memories of prevailing state complicity, by a UK-based emerging artist & film maker. Reflecting on growing up in Russia, feelings of home & healthcare enmesh in echoes of planned negligence, conditioned immunity to war and erasure of communities. Scavenged materials, whirring scraps of machinery and interrogatory lighting are forged to life in corners of domesticity against a boiling musical score to create a modern fairytale.

We look forward to all four films developed through the Adam Reynolds Award 2023, generously supported by Garfield Weston Foundation, being launched publicly in the autumn of 2024.

Shape Open

Inviting artists to respond to the theme of Open All Hours, our annual exhibition call out attracted 237 applications from around the UK and internationally, including various parts of Europe, Canada, Algeria, Japan, South Africa, India, Singapore, Nigeria, New York, Philippines, Iowa, Peru, China, Taiwan, Malasia, Connecticut and Florida. Selected works were shown at the 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning gallery space, where we used all three display areas, exhibiting the work of 18 artists, of which two of the works were new commissions.

Our panel included Open alumnus April Lin a disabled artist and curator whose work ‘interweaves strands of auto-biography, documentary, queer ecology, and new media’. April brought valuable expertise in the areas of film and media based work which was beneficial given the high numbers of works submitted in those disciplines. The final selected group of artists represented the diversity of the applicant group in terms of class, gender, ethnicity and regionality, and over 90% identify as disabled. This is of note given that 20% of applicants identified as non disabled – and the selected works were chosen on merit alone.

The two commissioned works reinforced the curatorial approach to the space which has a long street facing window and also provided an opportunity for live performance, which took place on the opening night and was recorded for later broadcast. A bespoke website also catered for audiences who are unable to attend the gallery in person. It was great to see such a wide variety of submissions, many of whom were Shape alumni of programmes such as the Open or ARA.

We launched a private view event, complete with live performances by Samiir Saunders and Simon Raven on 9 January 2024, with the exhibition running from 8- 21 January, attracting over 2,000

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walk in visitors and over 3,000 online, including through the bespoke website https://openallhours.online/

The artists selected for this year’s exhibition, titled Open All Hours, are set out below:

Mike Bamgbala loves to create, particularly if it involves illustration or painting. Offering escape from the constraints of modern society we are all subjected to, Mike’s creative practice is influenced by music and animation.

Eskild Bec has been working with art since he was a teenager. Trained as a graphic designer in Copenhagen, and later in restoration, Beck has worked professionally in museum settings on design, curation, and collection care alongside his own creative practice.

Uma Breakdown is a disabled artist, writer, and award-winning game designer living in Gateshead, UK and interested in animals, horror, and queer feminist literature. Everything they make is about some combination of love, grief, hallucination, and an excess of joy. With artist Belladonna Paloma, Uma makes video games about the divine and occult providence of transfemme existence. Recent projects include The Speculative Dismemberment of Agent Leon Kennedy for Market Gallery (Glasgow, 2022), Hinterlands at Baltic (Gateshead 2022), The Joy of Destruction for Backlit (Nottingham, 2023), and Uma’s first solo exhibition Earth A.D. co-commissioned by and touring across Wysing Arts Centre (Cambridge, 2022), FACT (Liverpool, 2023), and Quad (Derby, 2024).

Emmy Clarke is a queer, autistic writer and poet based in rural Shropshire. Their work has been featured in publications such as Lucent Dreaming, Bent Key’s ‘Ey Up Again’ and VAINE Magazine. In 2022 they founded children’s magazine Changeling, which features solely neurodivergent artists and writers.

Fatma Durmush lives and works near Peckham, London. She has supported her creative practice with manual labour, catering, and retail work, a busy and tiring lifestyle which abruptly halted when Fatma was stabbed. Following this incident, Fatma decided to direct her usual graft toward a Bachelor’s Degree and subsequently a Master’s, affording her time and space to expand her artistic work.

Yasmeen Fathima Thantrey is an emerging artist and recent graduate from the Royal College of Art, where she pursued her MA in Contemporary Art Practice: Public Sphere. With a passion for exploring identity, the body, and diaspora, their art aims to navigate these complex themes through an intersectional lens. Drawing upon critical race and feminist theories, she situates her lived experiences within a broader societal context, inviting viewers to engage in a dialogue that transcends cultural boundaries. A firm believer in the lived experience as research, their practice encapsulates a desire to understand the complexities of the self and its interconnectedness with the broader world.

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Charlie Fitz identifies as a sick and disabled socially-engaged artist, interdisciplinary creative, and medical humanities postgraduate researcher. She is a co-founding member of Resting Up Collective and a co-director of the remote artist studio TRIAD³. Fitz’s work is rooted in narratives and representations of illness, disability, and trauma. She explores tactile materials such as paint, textiles, and clay, as well as digital elements like digital collage, drawing, film, and photography. Since 2019, her work has been exhibited in eleven group shows in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Cincinnati, and online. In 2023, she was the artist-in-residence at Wigwell Lodge for Photoworks and Ampersand Foundation. The same year, she received an Unlimited development grant and was commissioned by Unlimited and Doorstep Arts as part of the collaborative touring network to create a film piece for Touretteshero’s Burnt Out In Biscuit Land tour.

Paul Fletcher first discovered photography after ending his career as an architect. In 2016 he had reached an impasse: surrender to the culture of property-for-profit, abandoning his belief in an architecture-for-people, or end his practice. Paul sacrificed his professional status, not his beliefs, ending his career as an architect, with no idea what to do next. He began walking London with a camera, coming to terms with the end of one career and a worsening chronic mental health disorder. He shot every day from summer 2016 to early 2017. He resumed daily photo-walks during the 2020 lockdowns and began to understand photography as a medium for visual storytelling and a way to cope and live with a bipolar disorder. Paul does not consider himself either artist or photographer. Just someone who wanders, camera in hand, led by an innate and insatiable curiosity. Capturing happenstance moments along the way.

Lan ‘Florence’ Yee is a visual artist and cultural worker based in Tkaronto/Toronto & Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal. They collect text in underappreciated places and ferment it until it is too suspicious to ignore. Lan’s work has been exhibited at the Darling Foundry (2022), the Toronto Museum of Contemporary Art (2021), the Textile Museum of Canada (2020), and the Gardiner Museum (2019), among others. They co-founded the Institute of Institutional Critique with Mattia Zylak in 2019 and the Chinatown Biennial with Arezu Salamzadeh in 2020. They obtained a BFA from Concordia University and an MFA from OCAD U. Lan has been awarded grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Council for the Arts, and the Toronto Arts Council. They are a recipient of the William and Meredith Saunderson Prizes for Emerging Artists (2023).

Yarden Fudim is an artist based in London, currently in her final year of BA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, UAL. Fudim draws inspiration from the activities and experiences of everyday life. Employing painting, drawing, and sculpture as her chosen mediums, Fudim investigates the delicate balance between ordinary existence and the unsettling concept of a world in turmoil. Fudim’s work serves as a reflective mirror, capturing the intricacies of the human experience. This extends an invitation to viewers to contemplate the intricate web of emotions, relationships, and desires within the context of the contemporary socio-economic and political era.

Through art, Fudim encourages the audience to question, reflect, and discover a glimmer of hope amidst the prevailing chaos.

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Carole Lee is an artist who has worked in the Project Ability ReConnect studios for over fifteen years. Project Ability is a support studio in the city centre of Glasgow. Carole’s aesthetic focuses on pattern and line, creating compositions saturated with the motion of life and people. Carole’s paintings and drawings can take months to complete and are densely filled with characters from all walks of life. Her work captures the hustle of city life and the many personalities that make up our diverse society. They show the social side of a cosmopolitan city like Glasgow, and highlight the busyness and closeness one finds themselves surrounded by. She paints scenes of Glasgow but they could be from anywhere.

Oliver McConnie’s work explores the contemporary subversive potential of printmaking, which is traditionally associated with satire and political commentary. As such, his prints employ the grotesque, historical symbolism, and modern social mores to form a critique of the contemporary political environment. Etchings, in their scale and intensity, create a strong sense of looking into something, a cave, another world; this fits with the origin of the term grotesque which is ‘looking into the grotto’. Drawing on this quality and without employing reductive irony McConnie wishes to produce parodic prophecies of the immediate present and future.

Tracey Payne works in sculpture, installation, and video. She is interested in making objects and filling spaces where people will be alarmed and will laugh. Payne’s work is concerned with slapstick, silliness, accidents, surprises, standing up, and falling down – knowing how and who to trust. Around the edges and in the gaps is where she believes we live our lives. For Tracey, it all seems so permanent, monolithic, unshiftable, until things start to move, from without substance.

Jamila Prowse is an artist and writer, propelled by curiosity and a desire to understand herself through making. Informed by her lived experience of disability, mixed race ancestry, and the loss of her father at a young age; her work is research driven and indebted to Black feminist and crip scholars. She is an active participant in a rich and growing contemporary disabled artistic community and has been ongoingly researching, programming and creating around cripping the art world, since 2018. Self-taught, Jamila is drawn to experimenting with a multitude of mediums in order to process her grief and radical hope. Currently articulating through moving image, painting, photography, textiles and performance, she is a member of Open School East 23-24. Previous exhibitions, screenings and talks include Somerset House, South London Gallery, Studio Voltaire (London, UK) and Hordaland Kunstsenter (Bergen, Norway). Her writing has appeared in Frieze, Art Monthly, British Journal of Photography and elsewhere. She is currently working on her first novel.

Simon Raven [is a graduate of] BFA Ruskin School of Art, Oxford (1999); and MA Sculpture, Royal College of Art (2002). His artistic practice in performance, video, and cartoon-drawing is informed by lived experience of late-diagnosed bipolar 2. Bipolar (or manic depression) is characterised by fluctuations between lucid, hypomanic, and depressive states which can radically alter artistic ability and temperament. Simon’s experience informs his artistic practice as an auto-ethnographic engagement with disability identity, art, and theory. For the past twenty years he has taken part in

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and curated disability-identified exhibitions, residencies, and events; in 2012 he was awarded Shape’s Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary (now ARA).

Samiir Saunders is a multimedia poet from Birmingham working in spoken word, alternative hiphop, and performance art. Samiir’s work aims to arm individuals and communities with the tools to be curious, compassionate, and vulnerable in their everyday lives. Samiir often explores themes such as grind culture, isolation, shame, (mis)communication, intimacy, and the Internet. Samiir’s work has featured at Ikon Gallery, Jerwood Space, La Gaîté Lyrique, Channel 4 Random Acts, BBC Words First, Vivid Projects, Wales International Film Festival, Tramlines Festival, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Supernormal Festival, and Outfest.

Josie Rae Turnbull is a multi disciplinary artist and art facilitator, currently based in London. She completed her MA in Fine Art and Science at Central Saint Martins in 2022, following a number of years living in Ho Chi Minh City. Her MA work across textiles, sculpture, printmaking and lensbased media was impelled by research into absurd, fabulist ‘case studies’ of animal protagonists revealing human failings. Throwaway consumer tat is refashioned through bricolage and material glitches. The life cycles of various industries, and their uncanny fall-outs, are reconstituted through a visual language led by artificial colour relationships and material glitches. She is fascinated by a feature common to aesthetics of microscopic imaging, and the concept of the hyperreal – that of using the ‘absolute fake’ to better see the ‘real’ thing.

Diana Zrnic is an emerging London-based artist. She graduated with Distinction from the MFA Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2021. She completed a BA in Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 2018. Her artworks have been shown in group and solo exhibitions internationally, including Saatchi Gallery (London), Mestrovic Pavilion (Zagreb), coGalleries (Berlin) and House of Ebata (Tokyo). In 2022, she had a solo show at The Stone Space and was an artist in residence at Unit 1 Gallery/Workshop. In 2023, Southwark Council commissioned her to create a permanent public artwork for the Camberwell train station.

For the onsite exhibition, we ensured the artworks were curated in as accessible a way as possible, with braille text, audio description, online hosting and British Sign Language provided in prerecorded format as well as live to support the launch night performances. The gallery had excellent window frontage to curate a 24/7 window display. Multiple access formats were made available via a catalogue and sharable materials; we had disabled volunteers as well as gallery staff to carry out invigilation. Audiences were highly diverse, in line with previous Shape Opens- the gallery’s local artist community (and in house curatorial team) are BAME communities. We conducted a survey using the same evaluation structure as we have in the previous few years, where we were pleased to see scores elevating, especially for peers (professional arts reviewers)– we appreciate as well that last year’s was an online exhibition only and so did not have the physical appeal or range of experiences as this year’s.

Audience, artist and per reviewer feedback included:

“Really enjoyed ‘9-5’! Visualisation of the poem captured its mood well”

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Shape London

Trustees’ annual report

For the year ended 31 March 2024

“Loved the Spoons film. Really effective visualisation. Overall lovely and thought provoking”.

“Very accessible show with some interesting pieces”

“Appreciate the large print programme - loved the show too!”

“This made me feel really okay about life, which I haven’t felt for a while!”

“Love the gallery space - the curation, interval and work displayed allowed me to rest even among such intense subjects (spoons and crip time especially). Amazing and diverse collection of art.” “The criticism of grind culture being so explicitly depicted and analysed from so many different perspectives was really thought-provoking. The work was innovative and diverse and the exhibition on a whole was vibrant and filled with radical love.”

“Really enjoyed Samiir's performance at the private view. The install process was also really relaxed, stress free and supportive which was super appreciated.”

“The exhibition worked well in the space; you can always think of other works that could have been selected but that would mean thinking about a different show done in a different way” “Accessibility: gallery close to train station and easy to find, ground floor, lots of natural light. I appreciated that there was no glare or loud noises. I don't read Braille but was pleasantly surprised to find a transcript in Braille. Curation was thoughtful, uncluttered and restful, providing an antidote to the intense content of the artists' work. I have been to many exhibitions with challenging content, so themes in general were not new or surprising to me. Right amount of selected artwork, more would have become overwhelming, I think. I liked the variety of mediums presented: it was a broad spectrum of practices.”

“Reflects what is going on in society when experiencing how we live our lives as a disabled people or if you have mental health challenges. Life feels demanding and this comes across in the exhibition well. I felt I could relate to the theme and to some of the artists responses within the subjects.”

Emergent

We were pleased to continue a second year of this new Shape-led partnership with Baltic, Gateshead, designed to tackle the isolation and marginalisation of early career disabled creatives in the wake of the pandemic and disruptions to the arts sector ecology. This project also supports one of our key organisational aims of bringing on a new generation of exciting artistic talent. Following a successful call out campaign, we were pleased to receive another strong pool of applicants for the Emergent programme. As with 2022, we received around 100 applications, from which one main awardee and a shortlist of four artists were selected by the Shape and Baltic programme teams. 2023's Emergent residency and bursary was awarded to Emma Bentley Fox. A full list of artist biogs are given below:

Emma Bentley Fox is a socially-engaged arts practitioner, with a multi-disciplinary approach to art-making. Her practice centres community building and collaborative working to generate moments of joy, healing, intimacy and kinship. Co-founder of Party Mom Society (Leeds, 2018) she has documented, produced and performed in, alternative/inclusive queer nightlife spaces that centre non-conforming Queer experiences.

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Shape London

Trustees’ annual report

For the year ended 31 March 2024

Belladonna Paloma is an artist, poet & witch living in Shetland, UK. She paints, tattoos, writes poetry, and makes computer games. Her work is into listening to faeries, how divination disturbs linear time, grief rituals, toilets and necromancy. Bella makes artwork primarily as acts of devotion. Most recently this devotion has been centred on the boglands of Shetland, and wetlands more generally, continuing her deep interest in the politics of waste.

Joud Fahmy was born in 1994 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Her practice involves Exploring Women voices and expression through the translation of concepts such as family dynamics and gender roles into tangible works of mixed-media sculptures and audio-visual productions. She is interested in initiating dialogues between the traditional and modern and her artwork aims to transcend societal barriers and limitations by being a catalyst for shifting meaning and reshaping culture.

kARTa Kaur works predominantly with clay, but also uses other media, including photography. Her thematic explorations include verticality and horizontality as metaphors for states of wakefulness/sleep, function/dysfunction, presence/oblivion, health/sickness and the in-between state of not being fully alive nor dead.

Linny Venables is a visual artist based in Liverpool, working in sculpture, installation, curation and facilitation. Linny experiments with kiln-formed warm glass processes as a form of therapy. Slumping, extruding and manipulating glass in to fluid, colourful, slime like shapes.

Between September 2023 and March 2024 we met with Emergent artists during fortnightly sessions facilitated by zoom and note taking. For Emma Bentley-Fox, the focus was on her onsite residency, after which we provided support with making a grant application. The cohort were supported with ongoing IAG and assistance with the development of new grants and exhibitions. In addition we paired the artists with external mentors with expertise and experience they could draw upon over a series of conversations. These included Tony Heaton OBE (Shape Chair and sculptor), Emergent alumnus Ker Wallwork, Abbas Zahedi, Lindsey Mendick and Jenny Tipton. We selected the Emergent cohort in part on grounds of their potential to move successfully to the next stage of their career, in whichever form this may take, and being connected to mentors has proven to be an excellent way of helping the artists appreciate a wider context in which they may be working, as well as gaining insights into how to get there. It is also an effective way to help the artists expand their networks in a considered and natural way, without merely signposting them towards networking events, which is often a counterproductive suggestion.

We are very grateful to Emma Dean and the team at Baltic for all their support with the onsite residency and for Emma’s curatorial feedback sessions for the wider cohort. During her autumn residency, awardee Emma Bentley-Fox showcased new work in progress to invited guests who attended a studio sharing. Emma’s initial feedback about the residency opportunity was very positive: “I really had the best time, it was great. I'm definitely still digesting it but just like really loads and loads of new stuff, new people, new ideas and new ways of working … it feels like it's gonna be a really big game changer for me.”

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Shape London

Trustees’ annual report

For the year ended 31 March 2024

Emergent, for some of the artists, has provided them with the first access support they have ever had, and as with other disabled artists, we encouraged them to write access support into their bids so that they have an opportunity to gain confidence in asking for this support, and structure a framework of support around themselves so that they are not left wanting when the Emergent year is over.

“I really appreciate it … honestly I have worked in the arts for so long and I've never had any sort of support as an artist, it's just crazy how long that that's gone on for. I've asked for stuff and it's nothing's ever happened so it's amazing … I learnt about different things, like even having access support workers to help you with Arts Council bids.”

“The most valuable support I received during Emergent was having a mentor to guide me and provide suggestions on artists whose work resonates with mine, thus supporting my artistic journey. Their guidance helped me discover new perspectives, refine my artistic vision, and navigate the complexities of the art world more effectively. Additionally, the mentorship provided me with valuable networking opportunities and access to resources that have been instrumental in my artistic development.”

“Shape with its regular meetings, provided a scaffolding and supportive framework for continuing to think about my practice and continue creating art. It prompted me to take steps to submit my work to open calls and approach galleries and institutions for future shows and collaborations. I don’t think that on my own I would have had the confidence and motivation to do so. My disability is energy limiting, so I move very slow in production, planning and writing, this makes me feel underconfident and guilty of wasting people's time. But Shape Arts reassured me and held me in a paced and unpressurized structure, and I did not feel judged or measured by deliverables. They generously gave me encouragement, written structures, and materials to help me with applications and reassured me that they can help me with budgeting realistically, which is a great thing for me as I lack this skill. I now have more confidence, tools, and information to proceed.”

“Very useful are the audio and written notes of our meetings as I can refer to them over time and in the future too. I value the support, the inspiring and thoughtful conversations about art practice and practical considerations around managing my disability and setting realistic and paced workloads.”

“Mentors are experienced and kind, some suggestions they gave me around organization and practice were surprising and good, as I would have never thought about them myself (for example thinking about getting an assistant).”

“One of the best parts was being asked at the start of our time together what my 5 year goals were. This isn’t something I’d been asked before (or not recently anyway), and it was really great to be encouraged to dream big, and then working out the steps to achieve those goals. I feel like this set me on a path I’m really excited about!”

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Shape London

Trustees’ annual report

For the year ended 31 March 2024

“I really appreciate how SHAPE connected me with a mentor who understands my culture and background. It's often challenging for Westerners to grasp the nuances of my experiences and the barriers I face in creating artwork. My mentor has been incredibly understanding and has helped me consider new and innovative ways to present my art. His support has been invaluable in navigating these challenges and exploring new artistic possibilities.”

“It was great to get critical feedback on some my artwork, that wasn't focussed so much on professional development, but more creative and critical development. I'm excited to have our final session this weekend. I hope that it will be a creative relationship that I can continue to develop.”

Through this year’s programme, Shape has benefitted from expanding our network of artist mentors, deepening our relationship with Baltic and making connections with exhibiting spaces that are new to us, for example, Bethlam Gallery, London, and a curatorial team at Central St Martins, all made possible through our support for these artists. Additionally, we have some useful learning points to take into next year, around recruitment and selection and ways of showcasing artists’ work.

Writers

We were delighted to be invited to be diversity partner for The Literary Consultancy (TLC) for another year, with an enhanced offer for disabled writers made available to selected applicants, such as 1:1 editorial sessions and advice on how to pitch or write a synopsis for a piece of writing. The Free Reads and Chapter and Verse mentoring opportunities are also available, providing between £4-5K of support to writers this year. Editorial lead at TLC, Joe Sedgewick welcomed the new round of diversity partners with this message:

“A huge thank you firstly, for your outstanding work in the past year, and indeed in the whole (very challenging) funding period of 2018-23. Across the period you’ve helped support over 450 lowincome and marginalised writers with FREE editorial support. An incredible achievement, for which you should be very proud!” Also, AG Parker, a FreeReads alumnus writer, announced they had been awarded DYCP funding in order to edit their second novel, ‘Rafterland’. They acknowledged Shape’s support in their Instagram message, adding: “It’s a highly competitive bit of funding to get, the biggest tap on the head with the legitimacy wand I’ve ever had as a writer, and certainly the most money I’ve ever received for Making Stuff Up.”

Across the year, 7 disabled writers received a professional critique of their work, and an additional writer was selected for an extensive mentoring programme by TLC. Feedback included:

“I am more than grateful for the reader’s report & recommendations; far more positive than I had dared hope with solid pointers to make it better.”

“It’s hugely helpful - much more than I was expecting or hoping for. I'm very grateful for the care taken and the insights given. The hard work that's gone into the report is plain to see and all the observations and suggestions for development seem entirely valid.”

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Shape London

Trustees’ annual report

For the year ended 31 March 2024

Artist support and trajectories

In addition to providing support for artists through our regular programmes, we delivered a flexible range of support to sector creatives, including through organisations, covering access, curation, project support and planning, mentoring, advice and guidance. This included alumni of previous Shape programmes as well as creatives new to us. This work is fluid in that it can involve supporting individuals, many of whom are disabled creatives, or small diverse companies, often led by disabled people or from other marginalised groups. It also includes companies who may be larger in scale, and who wish to improve their accessibility or the ways in which they might be more inclusive. Some of this work takes place in workshop settings, or may involve presentations and engagement at symposia, conferences or similar settings. Overall this activity involves participation in informal learning and for individuals it is most often delivered in 1:1 or small group settings.

Across the year, we reached 1,036 participants in our advice, consultancy and creative project support programme of work, of whom 800 were delegates in symposia or presentation settings and 216 beneficiaries in 1:1 or small group settings, mostly delivered through online conferencing, reached collectively through 239 sessions. Some support was offered by email, phone or face to face meetings. Across these sessions, 115 people identified as disabled creatives, including those taking part in ARA, Emergent and Shape Open programmes.

An example of creative support includes our support for Emergent alumnus Grace Fairley with her relationship with schuh, whereby Grace delivered a hands-on workshop with schuh employees at an event in London, with 200 attendees. Formal learning is undertaken through our training and access consultancy services. As part of this work, our comms producer Eli Hayes delivered a session to this year’s Art School Plus cohort on inclusive art practices, reaching 15 people and receiving highly positive feedback: “I’m writing with a huge heartfelt THANK YOU for your time on Thursday. I realise you are incredibly busy, and I am very grateful that you took the time to be with us. I know the artists found your presentation, insights and perspective to be hugely helpful and meaningful. You really built on last year and I know you gave it a lot of meaningful thought and time. The artists were reflecting and speaking about it for the rest of the week and I am sure they still are now. Thank you for your support of what we are growing here, and of artists, it means such a lot. I’m looking forward to continuing working with Shape and thinking about the next steps together.”

Other examples of supporting and collaborating with diverse partners included an interview between Shape staff and ACE’s Digital Culture Network and a new digital inclusion resource by the Space, which we contributed to. Both articles focus on making digital tools more accessible. These articles are of benefit to cultural organisations, independent practitioners and artists alike, and open up pathways for more opportunities for disabled creatives of all disciplines. This was echoed by our input into UAL’s Creativity, Access, Freedom intervention, where we had a curatorial role, helping to select and promote the work of diverse disabled artists.

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Shape London

Trustees’ annual report

For the year ended 31 March 2024

Other groups and organisations we supported includes: Sonic Bothy, Ugly Duck, Slade School of Art, AA2A, Art Angel, Future Artefacts, Ciadish Mag, Imperial College.

Sample feedback for our support included:

“Brilliant, that’s perfect thank you! Today was very helpful and inspiring for me!”

“You boosted me a bit because I feel better. It's a good byproduct isn't it”

“This is brilliant. Thank you so much. I’ve never done one before and used an online form with suggestions.”

“Hopefully it will help those I work with in future. It’s a learning curve all of this, and I will change and amend it over the years, so it grows with me.”

“Thank you also for the invoice help”

“… lots to process but all great stuff – [the artist] has so much potential, it's just about having a robust strategy in place and the right support.”

“Thank you again for your support on the radio show I was working on with [her]. Your help was really invaluable.”

“Thank you so much, it’s perfect and I appreciate you taking the time to write this. I just want to say I have loved all the opportunities I have been involved in over the years with Shape. I wanted to express my gratitude for [your] incredible help as we continue to work on my Developing your Creative Practice (DYCP) application.”

“I appreciate the time you've taken on this. As a small organisation, it's great to be able to reach out to colleagues in the sector. Thank you for your suggestion about consultancy, I'll certainly bear that in mind as it's something we may come back to in the future.”

Trajectories

With Shape supported artists and creative practitioners going on to do or achieve such a wide variety of things, we aim to track a small sample to reflect what is quite a significant number of people after more than a decade of our visual arts programme. The purpose is to give an outline of onward progress rather than build biographies. Some artists send us details through their mailings and emails, which is helpful for our reporting purposes, and these will often be people we have supported in more recent years.

We were very pleased that Open alumnus Christopher Samuel was invited to speak at the Wellcome Collection; Christopher was on our Open selection panel last year and sits on the NDACA accession committee; in the last year he has also had works taken into the National Art Collection. Unseen: Archiving the Hidden Black Disabled Experience | Wellcome Collection

Christopher’s talk focussed on growing up Black, British and disabled, and how, when he was making the artwork, he realised these experiences were missing from Wellcome Collection’s archive. ‘The Archive of An Unseen’ addresses these absences. In conversation with Wellcome Collection director Melanie Keen, Christopher explored representation in medical and social archives. The pair discussed how museums need to proactively ask questions about power and why finding one meaningfully represented matters.

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Shape London

Trustees’ annual report

For the year ended 31 March 2024

Xan Dye took their Stimming performance piece into new spaces such as the Place, London, as part of a new phase of development and collaboration with dancers such as Aby Watson. During our support sessions last year we discussed with Xan various approaches to engaging audiences more directly with their performances and we are pleased that they have taken their work on a step, with the promotional material emphasising: Stimming asks how dance can create space for us all to connect with our need and desire for movement. A collective encounter between performers and audience.

We were pleased to see the onward progression of Emergent alumnus Kasra Jalilipour, for whom we provided career advice and guidance. Kasra’s first UK solo show ‘Beastly Love’ exhibited at Arcade-Campfa at BayArt in Cardiff, in July 2023. The work was a product of over 2 years of research into depictions of animals/beasts in Islamic art.

We were also pleased that Shrewsbury-based artist-activist Zoe Partington transferred her Shape supported Decoding Difference artwork from the Layers of Vision show at Kings College London to the (December 2022) King’s ‘Seeking Connection’ pavilion at the London Design Biennale unites art and science to inspire curiosity, spark new ideas, and showcase some of the transformative research taking place at King’s in an engaging, accessible way: In Decoding Difference, the sculpture is the artist herself and reflects her hidden impairment. Light and sound mirror Zoe Partington-Beck's changing blood glucose levels and heartbeat, as live data is transmitted directly from an implant in her body. The piece was originally commissioned as part of the Layers of Vision exhibition at King’s, which was based on ongoing research exploring how museums in the UK make their art collections accessible to blind and partially sighted visitors.

We were delighted that Chesterfield-based artist Bella Milroy was successful in receiving funding with Shape’s support to deliver a series of interviews with disabled artists facing rural isolation. The project, titled Further Afield, is being developed in collaboration with level, Derbyshire.

A hugely significant story around artist trajectories is the exhibiting of works by Shape alumni as part of DAM IN VENICE, including ARA awardees Jason Wilsher-Mills and Terence Birch, and 2022 Emergent awardee Ker Wallwork. Shape Open/ Tate Exchange alumnus Abi Palmer also exhibits, as well as Shape Chair and sculptor Tony Heaton OBE and NDACA artist Tanya Raabe-Webber.

In addition to exhibiting at Venice, we were delighted to attend the opening event for Jason Wilsher-Mills’ solo exhibition Jason and the Adventure of 254 at Wellcome Collection, London, where our 2020 ARA awardee gave tribute to Shape and the support he has received over the last decade or so, many of these opportunities acting as distinctive stepping stones on his journey to national and international recognition: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/apr/09/jason-wilsher-mills-jason-and-theadventure-of-254-welcome-collection.

Examples of our wider support in the cultural sector to break down barriers to engagement and support new disabled-led initiatives include our support for the Flarewave Festival in Brighton in

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Shape London

Trustees’ annual report

For the year ended 31 March 2024

September 2023. We are pleased to have helped this Deaf-led festival to become a biannual event in Brighton, giving a major new platform for deaf diaspora artists to meet, exhibit, perform and take part in debates and discussions about contemporary issues that impact on the wider deaf community.

The Inter-Diaspora exhibition as part of Flarewave Festival included installation artwork by Shape Open alumnus Maral Mamaghanaizadeh, a deaf Iranian female artist and refugee. Acclaimed comedian John Bishop was in conversation with deaf comedian Gavin Lilley on the main performance night at Brighton Dome Theatre, developing an ongoing relationship between the two exploring the differences and similarities between deaf and hearing cultures.

Additionally, we supported Dr Ken Wilder and Dr Aaron McPeake (an ARA alumnus) in a successful bid for continuation funding from AHRC for an event programme and research network, Beyond the Visual: Non-Sighted Modes of Beholding Art, with activities to take place over the coming year. A rolling programme of workshops exploring audio description and object handling will feature, as well as the development of a database of blind and partially sighted artists working in sculpture: “This 3-year ground-breaking research is a collaboration between Chelsea College of Arts, the Henry Moore Institute and Shape Arts - the UK’s leading disability-led arts organisation. It aims to enhance blind people’s experience of art in museums. In 2025, it’ll culminate with a landmark exhibition at the Henry Moore Institute (HMI) in Leeds. This highlights work by blind and partially blind artists. Beyond the Visual explores engagements with contemporary sculpture using senses other than sight. It also challenges the dominance of sight in the making and reception of art. The exhibition will mark the first major UK-based sculpture exhibition. The exhibition will feature works by blind or partially blind artists within a major national institution. This is rare in having a blind curator intrinsic to the project.”

https://www.arts.ac.uk/colleges/chelsea-college-of-arts/research-at-chelsea/researchprojects/beyond-the-visual-blindness-and-expanded-sculpture

The National Disability Movement Archive and Collection (NDMAC)

Led by Shape CEO and NDACA (National Disability Arts Collection and Archives) Project Director David Hevey, NDMAC, is Shape’s large scale heritage project which is collecting and retelling the heritage story of the Disability Rights Movement, interpreting those heritage stories in film, moving image, a website, catalogue, learning resources, artists commissions, a repository and more. NDMAC goes live in late 2025 and we believe we will achieve some 10M in users and audience for this project by 2030.

The NLHF has provided funding to explore the heritage of the Disability Rights Movement. The historic movement was integral to achieving the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA), which, although flawed, transformed the rights and changed the lives of disabled people. Many had played a part in this historic achievement, but these stories are at risk of being lost forever if they are not documented and archived. We go live on the thirtieth anniversary of the DDA in 2025.

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Shape London

Trustees’ annual report

For the year ended 31 March 2024

The four-year heritage project NDMAC will record and digitise these unique social history and heritage stories. These will be used to create an accessible and interactive website that is dedicated to the story of the Disability Rights Movement in the UK. The website will: digitise and preserve collections of key figures from the Disability Rights Movement, build an e-learning portal with a full suite of accessible assets including gaming, zines and graphic novels for younger audiences, catalogue and create an extensive collection of oral history films. During the second full delivery year of 2023/24 , Shape achieved significant advances in the project including:

• Commencing digitising of over 100- superb heritage archives from key Disability Rights activists, including the landmark collection from Keith Armstrong, and including its display

• We commenced other digital collecting and copying, too, achieving some 500 digital files in the year covered by this report, such as by the work of Dave Lupton, aka Crippen

• We secured the deal with Bucks New University and the Brunel Engine Shed in High Wycombe, to base the NDMAC Archive and Collection there.

• We continued to see NDMAC underpin our DAM IN VENICE exhibition, with the design of the exhibition containing significant and prominent photography by the disabled rights activist Keith Armstrong as heritage elements in the show, and these heritage elements became a major part of the story DAM IN VENICE told because they framed the Disability Movement Art within a fight for rights history.

The National Disability Arts Collection and Archive (NDACA)

The NDACA project continues to impact on a curator-less-digital-archive-in-cyber-space, with for example the NDACA Social Model Animation passing the half of a million views mark by this period. The NDACA Wing in Bucks New University continues to be used for appointments by scholars from the UK and abroad, supported by both the University staff and the NDACA Archivist, Alex Cowan MA. NDACA also supported THE DAM IN VENICE, providing deposited artworks such as the landmark Who’s Who to DAM IN VENICE, which went live in Venice in April 2024. NDACA continues to influence widely, too, in the heritage sector, with other outsider-heritage-projects reaching out for our NDACA support. The Accessions Committee meets quarterly during the period of this report, commenting on the collection and making sure the collection remained open for new accessions.

Shape Presents The DAM In Venice 2024

Led by David Hevey as Curator and Creative Director, this year saw the main delivery and planning year of DAM IN VENICE CRIP ARTE SPAZIO , with the install in Venice occurring in February and March 2024 and a formal opening in April. A landmark exhibition, the DAM IN VENICE in this period created films of the artists by David Hevey, a catalogue to support the 2025 tour, graphic novels, banners and much more – all intended to convey the exuberant disruption of the Disability Arts Movement. This is the first major international exhibition of the UK's unique and radical Disability Arts Movement, showcasing seven of the leading radical disabled artists from this worldshaking arts movement that helped win rights for disabled people and create the same time a large and important artistic production around these themes.

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Shape London

Trustees’ annual report

For the year ended 31 March 2024

We went live in April 2024 in Venice and will display in Venice until January 2025, after which our UK tour commences with DAM IN VENICE at the Attenborough Arts Centre from late 2024 to mid 2025. The assets then significantly join both NDACA and NDMAC – the flags, the Keith Armstrong drapes, the films, etc – as part of the Rights Visibility elements of NDMAC. So allowing our projects to cross-fertilise, empower and uplift each other to wider audiences and users.

The goal of CREA's 2024 flagship exhibition is to change the way we look at disabled people, putting them in power rather than treating them with pity. The exhibition, supported by the British Council and Arts Council, conveys the enthusiasm and creativity of the DAM Movement, with podcasts and publications planned throughout the period of the exhibition.

Curated by David Hevey with exhibition design by Nina Shen, the more than 20 works are framed by enormous, witty and extraordinary protest banners, imposing comic strips describing the history of the DAM, and giant cinema screens showing films on artists directed by David. Even with our graphic novel Crip Arte Spazio, which shows the DAM blowing up Venice and winning the Golden Lion, CRIP ARTE SPAZIO: THE DAM IN VENICE conveys the sheer exuberance, joy and creative explosion of the great DAM Movement. In addition to works by artists Terence Birch, Tony Heaton OBE, Jameisha Prescod, Abi Palmer, Ker Wallwork, Tanya Raabe-Webber, Jason WilsherMills and Keith Armstrong, there will be podcasts and publications during the period of the exhibition.

Creating our own content across varied formats is now more of a feature of Shape’s programme, as exemplified by our second podcast, with the script, research and recordings made by the Shape team. Still in its pilot -phase, it helps us to balance out the range of content that is sound-based against predominantly visual based media.

https://www.shapearts.org.uk/Blog/shape-arts-podcast-episode-two

Shape Creative and Heritage Services

The marketing and underpinning tools to roll these elements out are still in place, including posters, marketing flyers and a microsite to join the main Shape website. Though as yet unable to roll out Shape Creative and Heritage Services to market, largely because of the post-Covid economic sluggishness of the arts and creative sectors as they fight for their own survivals, as well as a general decline in arts and heritage services spend by arts and heritage organisations, we still believe that Shape can develop positive disruption and change to the arts and their delivery models through Shape delivering business and content elements for other organisations’ needs, such as creative directing, digital services, inclusion strategies and so on. While we wait for new models of business opportunity to roll out our services, we are using the principles inhouse – such as digitising in house, producing podcasts inhouse, making full crew films in house, and so on, which allows us significant recharge income, so the models are live and generate incomes, but not yet rolled out to other organisations.

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Shape London

Trustees’ annual report

For the year ended 31 March 2024

Audiences – broadening arts inclusion and engagement

During the year we delivered 165 days of exhibitions and events, either directly producing the content our working in close partnership with other organisations. Walk in attendances were around 136K, the majority of whom were visiting the Morph Art Trail in central London where the Shape-supported statue designed by artist Jason Wilsher-Mills in tandem with young wheelchair users and youth ambassadors from Whizzkidz, was exhibited, in a suitably busy yet accessible location close to Tate Modern and in view of St Pauls. During the three day Flarewave Festival in Brighton, an additional 700+ audiences enjoyed a range of deaf-led performance, comedy, talks, and artwork showcasing from diverse creatives.

An assessment of online PR reach during the entire year 2023-24, compared to the previous year, showed us increasing our overall reach, which we refer to as the Shape Effect. In the previous year, 2022-23, we achieved more direct (primary) reach compared to secondary reach (1.5M compared to 992K), owing to more of our content being launched and experienced -in-year. Whereas this year, some of the works created may not reach audiences for some time, owing to, for example, lengthy waits for screening selections to take place with our submitted animations. In spite of that, and owing to the trajectory momentum of Shape-supported artists, as well as our programme impact, we still increased overall engagement and coverage, with primary reach being 989K and secondary reach at 3.4M.

This broadening of reach is in part due to the delivery of a high quality programme, and partly the variety and relevance of its components, with us able to connect with new and existing audiences across heritage, visual arts areas as well as performance, thought leadership and creativity aimed at young people. This year gave good examples of the diversity of our reach, encompassing the Morph Art Trail in Central London, Brighton Dome Theatre-hosted Flarewave Festival, and some early announcements and profiling in connection with DAM In VENICE, led by our partners CREA in Italy. It was also a year when we made key announcements relating to the Emergent and ARA awardees and cohort groups, thereby raising the profiles of those artists as we began to support them on the two project areas. We also gained exposure through making call out for FreeReads and the Shape Open, resulting in the largest responses to the Open yet, in terms of applicants. Our various call outs boosted our online engagement, converting to website traffic where we are hosting applications, such as for Free Reads, DAM IN VENICE freelancers, and for accessible versions of the Emergent application documents. Below are links to these various engagement highlights.

Our audience figures were boosted significantly in the summer of 2023 owing to pre-event publicity for the Morph Art Trail in London, where we supported the commissioning of new work by Jason Wilsher Mills in conjunction with young ambassadors for Whizzkidz, the national charity - supporting young wheelchair users’ greater independence and confidence. https://www.whizz kidz.org.uk/news/creating-the-whizz-kidz-morph-on-a-quest-to-make-disability-visible/

For example, in this promotional feature on Kidscreen.com, Jason’s Morph design is used as the promotional image (uncredited, left) from a pre-launch PR event at which the artists and key

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For the year ended 31 March 2024

collaborators and partners were invited, at Somerset House, London.

https://kidscreen.com/2023/06/19/aardman-partners-on-accessible-art-trail/. Underlining impact and reach is this from the organisers: “The trail will also raise over £500,000 for WhizzKidz, enabling us to provide vital wheelchairs and confidence-building experiences to many more young wheelchair users across the UK.”

Jason Wilsher-Mills is on an epic adventure, too, a quest to make disability more visible. Based in the East Midlands but originally from Wakefield in Yorkshire, he studied fine art and traditional painting. He now embraces digital technology to create his paintings, sculptures and large-scale augmented reality experiences. He’s an enthusiastic collaborator, working on community projects to create art with thousands of children and adults nationwide, including groups of learning disabled and homeless people. In 2020, Jason received the Adam Reynolds Award from Shape Arts, the acclaimed disability-led arts organisation that he works closely with.

The Flarewave Festival attracted around 300 people per day over the three days it was hosted by Brighton Dome Theatre, and there was a separate exhibition that ran during 9 days at a nearby pop up location, which attracted 269 people including two groups of young deaf people from a local school and one group of young people from Brighton Met University.

Feedback shown below is typical of the positive responses generated by its focus on the deaf diaspora and related identity:

“Beautiful work- brilliant to see Deaf artists being celebrated and championed in artistic spaces!” “Such a wonderfully curated group of artists and disciplines. Thank you. A visual joy for the eyes, heart and soul.”

“A beautifully curated space that’s just fizzing with vibrant deaf talent exploring different aspects of our human conditions in a myriad of different ways.”

“Interesting differences in Art & Medium. Loved the delicate handshapes by Kim.”

“Beautiful exhibition. Well done to all involved.”

“Emma is a gem! The exhibition is lovely and a real reflection of the deaf community. Lovely to see!”

The festival benefited from a strong publicity boost from Brighton Dome Theatre, who were keen to promote this bi-annual event as an example of high quality work and diversity / inclusion coexisting comfortably, and able to attract solid audiences. This was aided on social media by the appearance of John Bishop, although attendances at events matched last year’s inaugural festival, indicating a demand for this kind of deaf-centred event.

• https://brightondome.org/news_blog/take_5_with_omeima_mudawi rowlings/

Brighton Dome has 10K Instagram followers. Shape’s logo was on all significant literature.

Beyond The Visual: There was a strong and well coordinated PR campaign to support the launch of this project, which Shape helped to achieve its 0.25M funding, and below are samples of news coverage.

https://advisor.museumsandheritage.com/news/research-into-blind-peoples-experience-of-artbacked-by-new-ahrc-fund/

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For the year ended 31 March 2024

FE news: https://www.fenews.co.uk/education/pioneering-collaboration-between-ual-shapearts-and-the-henry-moore-institute-awarded-250k/

UKRI news: Projects explore innovative exhibition futures – UKRI

Interview with Aaron: 'A new beholding': listen to Aaron McPeake's lowdown on Beyond The Visual | Shape Arts

Interview with Ken and Aaron: Beyond the Visual: £250,000 awarded to help change blind people’s experience of art | Chelsea (arts.ac.uk)

Announcement: Beyond the Visual: Blindness and Expanded Sculpture | Henry Moore Foundation - (henry moore.org)

https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/2023/09/new-funding-toenhance-art-museums-for-blind-people/

We also benefited from our partnership with schuh who boosted our reach through the launch of their tote bag campaign promoting their Disability Equality pillar. The design commission for this was awarded to Emergent alumnus Grace Fairley, a process we gave ongoing support for. Some details of the campaign are below:

LONDON, Nov. 16, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- At schuh, we love footwear more than most, but we know some things are more important. We're about shoes and sneaks, but also the people wearing them – teams, customers and the wider community. Our mission is to foster self-expression and style within an inclusive community that inspires progress through purpose. schuh x Shape Arts Charity Tote Bag. Our Purpose Pillars embody over 40 years of the brand's diversity, selfexpression, and inclusivity culture. The Purpose Pillars have evolved into three main pillars – Sustainability, Mental Wellness and Fostering Diverse Talent, which includes Racial Equality, Disability Equality and LGBT+ Equality. Our Disability Equality charity partner, Shape Arts is a disability-led arts organisation who work to remove barriers for disabled people in arts and culture.

Shape Arts nominated one of their artists, Grace Fairley, to create this year's tote bag design, inspired by the theme ‘re-thinking disability’. Grace Fairley is an award-winning illustrator, and 2D animator. She loves everything weird, wonderful and colourful. She believes that big messages can be communicated in simple ways. Her work has a special focus on disability, mental health, and womanhood.

In addition, we benefited significantly from the initial press and publicity for the DAM In VENICE activities, which were at instal stage.

Skills, Diversity and Leadership

In addition to our regular project delivery, we made a strong contribution to the Creative Case for Diversity through the delivery of formal access audits and consultancy sessions for individuals and organisations working across the cultural spectrum, including: Building Delivery Group (London), schuh, Glasgow International, Historic England Archive, Cornwall365, Ultimate Picture Palace, Oxford, Crafts Council and Hampstead Theatre. Over the year, we reached 14 separate organisations over 21 sessions, of which 5 were complete audits, benefitting wider teams and departments as well as disabled participants, employees and visitors. Through this contact, which

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For the year ended 31 March 2024

included formal learning, training and consultancy 90 cultural sector workers were reached directly.

As schuh’s Disability Equality partner, we delivered a presentation to their annual brand conference in Manchester and continue to share plans looking at ways of supporting disabled creatives as well as their own disabled employees and customers. In measuring their success in making progress in this area, schuh listed the following achievements, which we were delighted to hear:

• Through its bespoke schuh academy training platform, over 82% of store teams have completed a Disability Confident training module and over 76% have completed an Autism Awareness module.

• Almost 20% of schuh's ecommerce imagery is now shot with disabled models and models with visible differences, up from 15% last year, better representing the disabled community.

• '

• • This year schuh has donated 487 items of footwear to Jo s Odd Shoes, for people who only wear one shoe or two odd shoes because of amputation, limb absence or conditions, such as CRPS.

• Through schuh's Disability Confident Employee pilot initiative, it has created work experience opportunities for disabled or neurodiverse individuals and groups. As a result of this initiative schuh has permanently employed two new team members in their stores.

• schuh has worked with equality, diversity and inclusion consultancy partner Goss Consultancy through Shape Arts to ensure their websites are accessible, and have resolved accessibility issues highlighted through this work. Regular access reviews will be carried out and accessibility incorporated into future developments wherever possible.

By supporting a wide variety of cultural organisations this way, we add enormous value to the arts ecology as well as improving skills and confidence to welcome disabled people into buildings, staff teams and creative programmes. In terms of inhouse development and our own capacity building over the year, the Shape team undertook training on stop-motion animation techniques and gained valuable experience learning about film editing, colour rendering and soundtrack layering, especially during the making of the Another Day animation. Staff attended training on use of audio production and photoshop to support in house digital production, and created public-facing podcasts. Staff were also trained in film making production including oral history capture and film planning, and undertook training in the use of AI for creative work and marketing.

Elsewhere, our Transforming Leadership Post Funding Phase advice services included supporting DYSPLA and other Transforming Leadership participating organisations post Funding on their strategies to develop business and income generating opportunities for Bomb Factory and HOP Projects, among others. Additionally, Shape’s CEO David Hevey was interviewed by the Museums Journal on ableism and the future of the museums sector, which was published during in the year. As a result of our skills and strategy support for diverse and marginalised creative enterprises, Bomb Factory now has over 100 artists and derives significant income from our support and connecting them to funding models, and attending fortnightly sessions with Shape. HOP Projects became a new ACE funded NPO commencing April 2023, with whom we are supporting by, among

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Shape London

Trustees’ annual report

For the year ended 31 March 2024

other things, building their board, their programme and their comms. HOP are advising Shape on curatorial approaches to our DAM IN VENICE exhibition, and in their capacity as architect, also built the Venice location scale model, to be used for detailed exhibition planning. We also explored users of our Peckham Offices, including our own NDMAC Project Repository potentially being built there. And we used the Peckham offices for DAM IN VENICE/NDMAC film making, engaging an entirely diverse crew of disabled and BAME people.

Children and Young People

From April 2023, we supported artist Jason Wilsher-Mills’ residency visit to Tokyo, Japan, combining outcomes around support for disabled young people, as well as adults, as well as supporting artist trajectories, including in an international context.

In Tokyo, Jason was hosted by two organisations, Keio University Graduate School of Media Design, through Jason’s contacts, and Able Art through Shape’s contact, following a meeting we had with them a year ago about potential collaborations. Shape supported the visit and workshops through direct funding as well as substantial in kind support for the funding application, in particular through Sasakawa Foundation’s UK office. On arrival, Jason, as a wheelchair user, faced numerous challenges around navigating transport and locations, but was well supported by the host teams and had PA and project development support throughout the visit. We had the bonus of the principal translator having been based in Jason’s hometown of Wakefield, which made communication much more fluid and enjoyable.

The main activities Jason was involved in were leading creative workshops, having mentoring conversations (usually through zoom links to locations across Tokyo that were hard to reach in person) and exhibiting samples of his work to the groups he was engaging with. It provided a rare opportunity for disabled participants to take part in creative activities outside of educational settings, and develop their creative skills and potential. Workshops were free and supported our aims of being exciting and engaging in an authentic way, tapping into the voice and opinions of the disabled cohorts, who created images using ipads as well as traditional art materials.

Under Jason’s tutelage they learned how to use digital tools better and gained confidence in expressing their identity and hopes for the future as disabled people in a culture which offers few pathways for them. In briefing us about the visit, Jason was hugely impressed with the quality and craftsmanship of some of the work by those he met with- again, who too rarely get opportunities to showcase their talents. As part of the span of the programme, Jason plans to stay in touch with Able Art in particular and to link up with creative workshops he is delivering from the UK. Jason found significant inspiration by some of the designs and approaches to line drawing in particular from among the cohort, and this resulted in the making of a new artwork which will be exhibited in the UK and online. A large scale inflatable artwork was created as a result of the creative workshop collaboration, which is in the process of being toured.

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Shape London

Trustees’ annual report

For the year ended 31 March 2024

Transforming Leadership (TL)

Post ACE funding, which ended in September 2022, we continued TL through a Drop In Model, in which the cohort could book sessions with David Hevey, Project Director, to underpin their previous 24 months of learning. We also continued the visibility phase and pioneered a number of radical new approaches to visibility such as using disruptive merch, radical blogs, manifestos and so on, as well as pushing each of the cohort to write their own business canvas - a short version of a business plan with the sustainability and viability phases to continue until 2025, per the funding agreement. The visibility phase of the TL programme will continue into 2025, as per our funding agreement, with films and other productions from partners (with Shape TL funding and credit) set to go live in 2025.

Financial review

Shape reports overall income of £874,150 in 2023/24 compared with £656,508 in 2022/23 and overall expenditure of £981,977 compared to £643,867 in 2022/23. The overall result for the year reports net outgoing resources of £107,827 (2022/23 net incoming resources £12,641) as shown in the charity’s Statement of Financial Activities (SOFA). The overall financial performance reflects the following key aspects:

Arts and Partnerships’ financial performance reports income of £524,366 (2022/23 £331,330) and expenditure of £914,829 (2022/23 £490,028). This includes the start of DAM (Disability Arts Movement) in Venice and the delivery phase for National Disabilty Movement Archive and Collection (NDMAC) during the year, and continued delivery of Adam Reynolds Award and Shortlist, Shape Open, and other art programme activities.

The financial performance of Audience and Engagement reports income of £nil (2022/23 reclassified £nil) and expenditure of £39,669 (2022/23 £37,781). Activity includes consultancy, access and training activity as described in the 2023/24 performance.

The financial performance for Skills, Diversity and Leadership reports income of £2,555 (2022/23 reclassified £24,482) reflecting work with schools, and expenditure of £27,479 (2022/23 £115,958) which includes delivery, management time and support providing the range of activity described in the 2023/24 activity.

During the year Shape secured a total of £59,051 (2022/2023 £62,418) of contributed income from Trusts, Foundations, other organisations and individuals which contributed financial support to the delivery of the programme and added value through specific project funding. As in previous years, Shape also benefits from ‘in kind’ support from a range of partners.

Expenditure attributed to generating new voluntary and charitable funds was £nil (2022/23 £100). This continues to reflect that Shape does not have a separate fundraising team and allocates income generation responsibilities across the whole organisation and portfolio of activity. Focused resources were invested internally in 2022/23 and 2023/24 as shown by the successful new projects secured to start from 1 April 2023.

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Shape London

Trustees’ annual report

For the year ended 31 March 2024

Total expenditure attributed to governance costs associated with meeting the charity’s strategic administration and statutory requirements was £19,616 (2022/23 £20,204).

Overall funds stand at £171,269 at 31 March 2024 compared to £279,096 at 31 March 2023. Unrestricted reserves stand at £112,103 (2022/23 £136,955) comprising of designated reserves of £4,810 (2022/23 £35,005) and general reserves of £107,293 (2022/23 £101,950). The decrease in total reserves of £107,827, comprises unrestricted funds net income of £16,023 (2022/23 net outgoing of £61,924) and restricted funds net outgoings of £123,850 (2022/23 net incomings of £74,565).

Previously, at 31 March 2021, the Board agreed to designate £80,000 to support Programme delivery costs from April 2022 as risk mitigation in case new income or projects are delayed as a result of uncertainties from the post Covid-19 economy. Following transfers of £57,951 in 2022/23, the Board approved transfers of £22,049 in 2023/24 to support programme direct delivery leaving £0 at 31 March 2024. The SMT reports to the Finance, HR and Risk Committee quarterly ahead of the quarterly Board meetings and the level of unrestricted reserves have been scrutinised carefully throughout 2023/24 consistent with the steps outlined.

Restricted funds report net outgoings of £123,850 (2022/23 net incomings £74,565) and, as in previous years, this represents timing differences between grants received during the year and the actual delivery over the multi-year life of the programme. DAM in Venice and NDMAC are mainly funded from secured funding sources with match funding and in kind support targets, and both made positive contributions to core costs in 2023/24.

Overall financial performance comprises separate funds and further details on the financial position can be gained by reference to the balance and movements on each fund which are described in the Reserves Policy and Note 15.

Principal Funding Sources

During the year Shape continued to be funded by the ACE with 2023/24 being the first year of the National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) business plan for the period 2023-2025, Shape also received ACE funding for DAM in Venice and Feasibility transfer out of London; Creative Scotland funding for DAM in Venice, Heritage Lottery funding for NDMAC and Garfield Weston Foundation for Adam Reynolds Award.

Our funding continues to come from a diverse range of sources including statutory, Lottery, and a range of charitable trusts and foundations, corporate and individual supporters.

Earned income is derived from a range of services including consultancy, training and access reviews. This has continued to be adversely impacted during 2023/24 due to post Covid-19 restrictions to develop opportunities.

Shape would like to take this opportunity to record its immense appreciation to all its funders and stakeholders for their continued funding support and partnership. Shape also records its grateful thanks for all ‘in kind’ support provided from a wide range of partners.

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Shape London

Trustees’ annual report

For the year ended 31 March 2024

Investment Policy

Apart from aiming to retain a prudent amount in reserves each year most of the charity’s funds are intended to be spent in the short term so there are few cash funds for long-term investment. As and when funds become available the Board of Trustees will seek professional advice on the most appropriate and financially beneficial policy.

Fundraising

Most of Shape’s income comes from statutory and major grants, ably supported by amounts from Trusts and donations. We undertake very little public fund raising and do not use professional fundraisers or commercial participators. Shape nevertheless observes and complies with the relevant fundraising regulations and codes. During the year there was no non-compliance of these regulations and codes and Shape received no complaints relating to its fundraising practice.

Reserves Policy and Going Concern

The Board of Trustees considers the aim of holding of general reserves, in conjunction with relevant designated and restricted reserves available to support Shape’s delivery, equivalent to a range of between three to six months (2022/23: between three to six months) of key operating costs to be a prudent financial policy. Shape’s current general reserves of £107,293 together with relevant designated reserves represent three months of key operating costs. The Board has extended the range up to six months to allow for risk management whilst the post Covid-19 financial environment and its implications for Shape are further clarified. It is hoped that once the financial outlook is more stable and predictable, the target and level of general reserves can be reduced back to three months. This will be monitored and controlled by long term forecasts which advise on the level of committed funds compared to funds to be raised and reported quarterly to the Board.

Where there have been shortfalls in general income, Shape has used appropriate designated and general reserves to support its activities. The Board of Trustees regularly consider Shape’s financial position and future funding position. Strategic reviews are regularly and thoroughly monitored and developed to ensure that sufficient reserves are maintained in the prevailing circumstances on an on-going basis. An overview and update of the Rebuilding Reserves plan is covered under Plans for the future below. The Trustees have reviewed budgets and forecasts to 31 March 2026 taking into account the impact of the current economic environment. These budgets and forecasts have been stress-tested to identify if Shape would continue to have positive cash during the going concern period if none of the unsecured forecast income in the period was to materialise. The results of this testing confirmed that Shape would continue to have positive cash in the going concern period even if this worst-case scenario arose without the need to model the impact of any mitigations (which management would perform if this scenario was to occur). Therefore the Trustees consider there to be no material uncertainties that need to be referenced and it is appropriate to prepare the financial statements on a going concern basis.

Details of the various reserves are as follows and are set out in more detail in Note 15 Movement of Funds.

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Shape London

Trustees’ annual report

For the year ended 31 March 2024

Restricted Income Funds

These funds represent grants and donations provided to fund specific expenditure in agreed areas of work. Restricted funds at 31 March 2023 of £142,141 were received and held ahead of delivery in 2022/23. Incoming resources were £497,225 and outgoing resources were £621,075. A transfer of £40,875 was received from unrestricted funds, leaving a balance of funds to carry forward of £59,166 at 31 March 2024. Note 15 provides further details of the transfer.

Unrestricted Funds

Designated Funds: These are funds which the Board of Trustees has designated to meet future liabilities and commitments as part of its strategic vision and risk assessment for sustainability. The funds currently include investment in office IT equipment and furniture. Net transfers amounting to £30,195 were made to the general fund. This transfer comprised £8,146 from the tangible fixed assets fund (reflecting depreciation and disposal of assets during 2023/24) and £22,049 from the strategic delivery and development fund to support programme direct delivery during 2023/24. The balance of these funds at the end of the year was £4,810 (2022/23 £35,005).

General Funds: These funds represent the free reserves available to the charity which can be used for any purpose within its charitable objects. Such costs can include programme, fund-raising, management and administration as well as the cost of meeting any future shortfalls in restricted fund activities. At 31 March 2024 General Funds showed a balance of £107,293 compared to funds of £101,950 at 31 March 2023. The performance of Shape’s General Funds reflects the additional contributions to core from funded projects and voluntary donations in 2023/24. The commitment to strong financial management operated by the Board and the Senior Management Team continues to be followed to take account of the difficult economic environment.

Principal risks and uncertainties

The Board of Trustees has examined external risks to Shape in considerable detail during the past year and has regularly updated its risk register to reflect business planning and delivery. The Board shares with ACE our risk-register on a quarterly basis and, in particular, the risk to Reserves is monitored closely. Given all cultural organisations, not just Shape, operate in an increasingly uncertain and difficult financial environment, the Board endorses the multi-strand strategy of controlling reserves, internal charging for services, internal multiskilling approaches, while examining costs and continuing funding bids, as parts of the Risk Mitigation around this Risk. We also monitor the wider Post- Covid Landscape as a main risk, too, with our Shape Programme in 2023/24 growing its hybrid digital-first approaches, with the mainly positive exponential growth of online audiences, also a factor of Coronavirus impact as more of our users and audiences operate online.

The risk register is regularly reviewed by the Senior Management Team, Finance, HR and Risk Committee and the Board of Trustees. The register includes both strategic and operational risks. Key risks identified and their management are:-

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Shape London

Trustees’ annual report

For the year ended 31 March 2024

• Strategic, Financial & Organisational: Post Covid-19 impact:- risks are perceived from the uncertain economic environment in terms of income availability and restrictions in funding. Shape is managing these through careful planning of programme delivery with established funders with whom we have excellent relationships and working closely with delivery partners to share resources. Shape is developing sustainability through the development of new business models and earned income streams. Shape is managing these risks through robust financial monitoring of carefully set budgets and seeking cost efficiencies and value for money in delivery, including online, digital and strategic partnership working.

In terms of wider barriers to disabled people and the impact of the pandemic / return to ‘normality’ for disabled people, Shape sees a range of financial and other difficulties being presented, with studies showing that disabled people will be the last group to return to functioning as pre pandemic – with this ‘left behind’ feeling compounded by seven key tenets including: 1) economic, such as changes to Universal Credit and other benefits, 2) social care changes, 3) inflation, and other economic factors; 4) work place and employment, 5) access to culture - both as artists for employment and performance as well as attending as ‘live’ audiences, plus 6) access to health and wellness services (e.g. ‘remote’ GP services) and, lastly, 7) a decline in incomes due to digital low pricing. All these underpin the general negative impact of the Coronavirus pandemic and its long shadow over disabled people.

• Financial: Unrestricted reserves and Cashflow:- uncertainties in income generation and cost levels present a risk for Unrestricted reserves and cashflow. These risks are managed through monitoring management accounts and updated reserve and cashflow forecasts which are reported quarterly.

• Financial: Failure to realise at least one major new project during 2023-2025:- economic uncertainties may risk Shape securing multi-year major new projects. Shape is managing this through dedicated development and fundraising from the CEO and Head of Programme alongside programme delivery. New multi-year projects were secured in 2021/22 for DAM in Venice from April 2022 to 2025 and NDMAC delivery from December 2022 to 2026. New funding applications are in progress to secure further funding for other major projects.

• Financial: Government Spending Reviews – risk perceived if adverse reviews impact on arts funding. Shape has secured renewed NPO status from 2023 which will provide four years of secured core funding. Other risk managements outlined above will also enable the Board to monitor the impact of any adverse changes.

• Financial: inflationary pressures on the organisation to reflect the current economic Environment, which is being managed through careful budgeting and monitoring and by reviewing value for money on all key contracts.

• Political reputation: Insufficient representation of disabled artists on our Board and staff :- risk is that as a disabled led organisation, Shape must ensure sufficient representation. Shape will be recruiting new trustees to maintain the Board’s disabled artists representation and extends its reach with staff by working with disabled freelancers and delivery partners.

As part of our NPO Programme funded by Arts Council England, we also monitor two risks identified by ACE . One concerns the levels of our Reserves and mirrors our existing Risk table

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Shape London

Trustees’ annual report

For the year ended 31 March 2024

element, and the second concerns how we select artists, which pertained to the DAM IN VENICE selection process.

Plans for the future

As we move into 2024-25 delivery, our second of the new NPO-T Programme integrated with ACE Let’s Create Principles, supporting Creative People and Creative Communities, we would like to take a moment to acknowledge the historic accomplishment of showcasing with such impact the works of generations of talented disabled artists in the DAM IN VENICE ‘CRIP ARTE SPAZIO’ exhibition. This show, which will run throughout 2024, following its April 2024 launch, is not only landmark in Shape’s history but the wider Disability Arts Movement, with which so much of Shape’s history is entwined. Curated by Shape CEO David Hevey, ‘CRIP ARTE SPAZIO’ is attracting 2.5K walk-in visitors per month and causing ripples of debate and discussion about where the Disability Arts Movement has come from and where it will go from here, with multiple exhibiting formats and curatorial off shoots available to tell the full and ever growing story of how some of society’s most marginalised creatives fought to be heard and seen, and continue to do so today. CRIP ART SPAZIO is also garnering significant online presence of around 1M views to date, plus major reviews in Frieze, the London Evening Standard, and other publications.

As our highly varied programme demonstrated in the last year, each new event will now often contain a double footprint, in other words both a digital raft of engagement and its real world or physical counterpart. Whilst challenging in terms of resource management, forcing difficult choices to be made at times, this hybrid delivery model also continues to open doors for us, as well as for the creatives and audiences we support, meaning that, what in one year may be an activity very much rooted in person-to-person engagement, the next may be developed in an online context. In both planning and delivery, we have to constantly weave around, not following trends as such, but innovating whilst retaining continuity and relevance.

To enable us to be confident as well as conversant with this new way of working, we will continue to upskill our team so that we can pivot from in-place to online creativity and participation in a way that does not leave disabled people behind, and which promotes and champions accessibility and inclusion without compromising quality. Indeed, when engaging with other organisations who wish to become more accessible and inclusive, we are to demonstrate how the quality of arts programming can be enhanced through the informed use of access tools. By making this investment in our team, we reduce unnecessary external spend and maximise efficiencies so that we share our learning with the disabled creatives we support, mentor and commission to make new work.

As we have noted in our descriptions of project activity, much of this learning has had a digital focus, and we have benefited significantly through working with partners such as Hot Knife Digital Media, with whom we collaborated for the ARA funded Another Day film, led by artist and 2023 awardee James Lake. As we documented in our ‘making of’ films, this was a unique opportunity to explore ways in which materials with texture and physicality such as cardboard can be processed through different techniques so that they retain an atmosphere of physicality in an augmented digital environment. In this particular case, a day in the life of a carboard man living a dreary

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Shape London

Trustees’ annual report

For the year ended 31 March 2024

existence in a cardboard home became the basis for new storytelling, with a distinctive take on how disabled people live, revealed through layers of creativity towards an unexpected end. This blended physicality and digital treatment was echoed in the animations created by our three ARA Shortlist artists, Djofray Makumbu, Tilly PM and Ernie Maltby, whose newly commissioned works take audiences on journeys through city-based oppression and hope to underwater human-animal transformations to a post-industrial fairytale of grit, grind and survival of the human in inhuman surroundings.

Owing to the nature of animation, we have had the chance to support collaboration on, and creation of, media as varied as sound production and lighting, clay, textiles, film, photography, puppetry, scanning, CGI, character development and storytelling and sculpture, among others, all of which has prepared us well as we plan our 2024-25 ARA programme, where we anticipate making further explorations of film based content, with artists whose practices cover a variety of fields, and who by no means are principally working in film. Apart from supporting creative practitioners to gain new digital skills this also enables them to showcase their work in both gallery and other cultural spaces as well as through a host of electronic platforms. Longer term we are beginning discussions with partners who run venues and other arts spaces to explore other ways of supporting creatives to make physical/ hybrid works that can be showcased onsite or at other locations, with digital strands to them that engage those not able to experience them in person.

With the Shape Open being primary a physical exhibition in 2023, we had to relearn certain lessons and rediscover certain skills to ensure that in-person access worked seamlessly in line with our curatorial plans for the show, whilst developing a bespoke website to connect with those who could not visit the 198 Gallery in South London.

Some of this was focused on ensuring the live performances of the opening event worked as intended, whilst ensuring that recordings took place at high quality to share in later broadcasts of the event, which we undertook through an exhibition highlights podcast in February 2024. In attracting our highest ever number of submissions for the Open this year, we are aware of the huge demand for this kind of high quality and accessible exhibition that centres disabled voices and talent, and continue to explore avenues for partnership and innovation to ensure that it maintains its relevance for disabled people as well as its place in the artworld calendar.

One area where we anticipate finding increased activity is the field of AI, whether in the form of artworks made with AI tools, or developed through their support. At this point in time, we are tracking how this field is evolving before drawing up new criteria about ways of working or involving AI in our creative portfolio of projects. Since part of our focus is in supporting disabled creatives to be more confident in using digital tools, we do not wish to create new barriers for them. On the other hand, it remains important that we can connect creative outcomes

meaningfully with the person identified as the originator, in other words, the creator or author. So far in our programme we have made it clear when works are AI-made and have identified the advantages of using new AI tools to support accessibility in one of our podcasts. We anticipate some controversy ahead as AI takes more of a grip on the sector, and as copyright issues become

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Shape London

Trustees’ annual report

For the year ended 31 March 2024

more complex, but at all times will be supporting disabled creatives as they navigate their way through the new challenges.

This underlines our general commitment to continue to support disabled and marginalised creative at all career stages through our ongoing projects such as Emergent and the ARA, as well as our flexible support for individuals and creative companies that we meet with across the year, providing guidance on subjects as varied as project development, fundraising and grant applications, access and creative curation, as well as more general career and creative production advice.

This flexibility of support allows us to maintain long term relationships with creatives across a range of disciplines as their careers develop and the nature of the support they require alters, often in relation to new or changing barriers they face.

Similarly, our formal training access consultancy and auditing, delivered in longstanding partnership with Goss Consultancy, continues to build capacity in our sector and provide the wider arts ecology with a consistently high quality framework to reference as they make and deliver on plans to widen accessibility and inclusion. The intended-outcome being organisations more willing and warm in welcoming disabled people as staff members, visitors and participants, as well as disabled creatives taking a lead role in artistic programmes. As with our artistic and heritage programmes, this work is delivered at local, national and international level, and we continue to partner with significant bodies such as the British Council in the delivery of this work, including advising on the development of UNESCO sites.

We continue to innovate, particularly around exploring what new means of production may look like, how AI and other Data Models affect our world, and how we may continue hybrid showing across digital and walk-in.

In terms of projects, Shape went live with CRIP ARTE SPAZIO: THE DAM IN VENICE in April 2024; curated by David Hevey, the show parades the Disability Arts Movement in all its glory and displays in Venice for seven months, before commencing its UK tour in 2025. We also continue our landmark heritage project NDMAC, which collects the heritage story of the UK disability rights movement, as it fought for and achieved the DDA in the mid 90s – this heritage story we tell new users and audiences, going live in 2025 on the 30[th] anniversary of the passing of the DDA.

We achieved 2024/25 NPO UPLIFT as well as for this report year: This meant that we enjoyed a significant £50k per annum uplift in our National Portfolio Agreement with Arts Council England, which allowed us to significantly develop our Out of London commissioning, new future-project ideas, international project development, and much more.

Finally, 2024 sees us leave our Peckham offices and move onto the Bucks New University campus on a hot desking model. Our Shape staff and freelancers will remain remote working for the foreseeable future; this started as a consequence of Covid and looks set to remain a key operational approach for Shape.

38

Shape London

Trustees’ annual report

For the year ended 31 March 2024

We continue to strive and innovate. In 2023/24, as a response to the continuing uncertain economic future in terms of long Covid-19 and the economy, Shape developed various new business approaches such as in-house production on various films, podcasts, and other mediated content. We also drove more multiskilling with our inhouse talent producing graphic novels, table top role play games, podcasts, films and more. This in turn allowed elements of recharging which in turn both underpins our content creation and our financial performance, while the new multiskilling in new forms keeps us both relevant and dynamic.

We also conducted deep data research for our Feasibility funding, which was ACE funding to allow us to explore where might our Out of London Shape HQ base be, and on what principles were we creating a new place for a new Shape? This led to us drastically reducing our Office footprint, while planning for increasing out content and branding from our new base in Buckinghamshire New University, preparing us for roll out of content across several locations and models in 2025.

Our innovative hybrid approach to programming also finds us active overseas as we extend our international reach. Our ambitious international plans see us producing and hosting our The DAM In Venice arts pavilion in the Venice Art Biennale in 2024 with ACE support of £445k, going live in April 2024 then touring. And we continue to talk with partners in European countries as well as Japan about blended residencies and showcases in which part of the activity is delivered in place and part of it online, capitalising on the global reach made possible through digital interactions. Producing a tour to Tokyo in 2023 led by Shape alumnus Jason Wilsher-Mills was an important step in this onward journey to international standing overseas and expanding the reach of our audiences into new markets and ways of experiencing culture that will feed back ideas about future growth beyond the next two to three years. And Shape achieved an NPOT 2023-24 £50k uplift, which sees us exploring rolling out the DAM IN franchise, creating in the coming decade THE DAM IN SUB SAHARAN AFRICA, THE DAM IN NEW YORK, THE DAM IN BERLIN and THE DAM IN SAO PAOLO.

So, despite the challenges on many fronts, Shape is adjusting well to the Post- or Long-Pandemic landscape but we are also mindful that there continues to be several adverse undercurrents, such as the long term slow re-entry of disabled people into the creative communities and into society in general, and whether or not those wider communities will continue to be open, accessible and engage with disabled creatives and users.

Added to that, is the clear long-term negative-economic effect of Covid-19, and, with recent economic and political instability, a prospect that less funds may be available, with digital driving down price, and with a corresponding pressure to leave London due to declining arts funding in the Capital, and yet where they may be less funding outside of London.

One other longer term Covid-19 effect is the now permanent presence of digital-first approaches, but with high-end bespoke physical events also in the picture. Again, Shape is monitoring cultural trends and we will continue to make interventions, commissions creatives and build projects which respond to the way we live now, which is again one of the secrets of our success – we remain relevant by holding up the creative mirror to the modern world.

39

Shape London

Trustees’ annual report

For the year ended 31 March 2024

As referred to in the Financial review and Reserves Policy section, we will continue to focus on improving our financial sustainability and maintaining our general reserves. The Reserves Plan requires that all delivery commitments are fully funded from the diverse range of income sources which Shape has access to, rather than being partly funded from general reserves. This was set out in our plans for new income generating prospects developed from the Culture Recovery Plans for Shape Creative and Heritage services which will contribute towards maintaining general reserves in the longer term, as just one tenet of this approach.

And Shape continues to develop and apply for new project funding taking into account how our delivery might take place in the future creative world including e-commerce and a range of digital delivery. We will be looking to invest in our infrastructure to ensure we have appropriate IT and other digital resources to support this direction. All new bids include full cost recovery and charging for services delivered by Shape.

It is expected that these future plans will support Shape to maintain its general reserves and consolidate its sustainability and future resilience.

Structure, Governance and Management

Governing Document

The organisation is a charitable company limited by guarantee, incorporated on 20 December 1979 and registered as a charity on 20 December 1979.

The company was established under a Memorandum of Association which established the objects and powers of the charitable company and is governed under its Articles of Association. The company's registered name is Shape London. The Articles of Association have been reviewed during the year.

The trustees are aware that the Charity Governance Code was updated in December 2020. They reviewed the Code in May 2023 and consider the organisation is compliant with the spirt of the Code. The trustees are aware of a few areas where the organisation is not fully aligned and are looking in to the feasibility and proportionality of being fully compliant.

All trustees give their time voluntarily and receive no benefits from the charity. Any expenses reclaimed from the charity are set out in note 6 to the accounts.

Appointment of trustees

Members are Trustees for the purpose of charity law and Directors for the purpose of company law and under the company’s Articles are known as members of the Board of Directors. Under the requirements of the Memorandum and Articles of Association, at each Annual General Meeting, onethird of the Directors for the time being shall retire from the office. A retiring Director shall then be eligible for re-election.

40

Shape London

Trustees’ annual report

For the year ended 31 March 2024

Due to the nature of Shape’s programme and the involvement of disabled people, the charity aims to ensure that the Board of Trustees is as diverse as possible in terms of disability, gender, and ethnicity.

In order to ensure a broad representation of skills and experience across the Board an annual Skills Audit is carried out. This is used as a tool in providing training and recruiting new members to ensure a broad balance is maintained and the Board is able to sustain quality decision making.

In order to further support the development of Shape’s work and to ensure the direct involvement of artists, people who use our services and other professional expertise, Shape has established a committee structure. Each department head and their team benefit from the support of a committee as follows:

• Programme and Development

• Finance, HR and Risk

The Programme and Development Committee and the Finance, HR and Risk Committee each meet four times a year. Both have appropriate delegated authorities. Minutes of these meetings are provided to the Board. A written report is also made to the Board on any specific delegated tasks or work undertaken. Terms of reference are available and reviewed at regular intervals.

Day to day management of operations is delegated to the Senior Management Team. In 2023/24 this comprised:

Chief Executive David Hevey Head of Programme Jeff Rowlings

From 1 April 2023, the Finance function was restructured with David Hevey assuming SMT responsibility. Finance services are provided by Shape’s virtual-office accountants, PEM, supported by a senior finance freelancer (Sally Yarwood).

Trustee induction and training

All new Trustees are given a Board Trustees' Handbook with background information about Shape, including the Memorandum and Articles of Association, and information regarding the role of being a charity Trustee. They also attend briefing sessions with the Chair and Chief Executive and are offered other induction support.

Board members are kept up to date with key business and compliance issues, the operating environment and any relevant key changes in company and charity regulations and are offered training opportunities as they arise.

Related parties and relationships with other organisations

There are no related parties and relationships between Shape and other organisations. There are related party transactions as disclosed in Note 8.

41

Shape London

Trustees’ annual report

For the year ended 31 March 2024

Shape has a policy to review and scrutinise any related party transaction at Committee level and report to the Board. There is full and transparent disclosure of the decision-making process to the Board and to funders where relevant.

Remuneration policy for key management personnel

Remuneration for key management personnel is based on attracting suitably qualified people for the roles whilst taking account of available funding. All salaries are reviewed on an annual basis and the Board decides whether any uplift should be applied. Salaries were last uplifted in April 2023. All staff are automatically enrolled into a pension scheme, unless they chose to opt out or remain under the previous scheme. Shape does not operate a bonus scheme.

Statement of responsibilities of the trustees

The trustees (who are also directors of Shape London for the purposes of company law) are responsible for preparing the trustees’ annual report including the strategic report and the financial statements in accordance with applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).

Company law requires the trustees to prepare financial statements for each financial year which give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the charitable company and of the incoming resources and application of resources, including the income and expenditure, of the charitable company for that period. In preparing these financial statements, the trustees are required to:

• Select suitable accounting policies and then apply them consistently.

• Observe the methods and principles in the Charities SORP.

• Make judgements and estimates that are reasonable and prudent.

• State whether applicable UK Accounting Standards and statements of recommended practice have been followed, subject to any material departures disclosed and explained in the financial statements.

• Prepare the financial statements on the going concern basis unless it is inappropriate to presume that the charity will continue in operation.

The trustees are responsible for keeping adequate accounting records that disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the financial position of the charitable company and enable them to ensure that the financial statements comply with the Companies Act 2006. They are also responsible for safeguarding the assets of the charitable company and hence for taking reasonable steps for the prevention and detection of fraud and other irregularities.

In so far as the trustees are aware:

• There is no relevant audit information of which the charitable company’s auditors are unaware.

• The trustees have taken all steps that they ought to have taken to make themselves aware of any relevant audit information and to establish that the auditors are aware of that information.

The trustees are responsible for the maintenance and integrity of the corporate and financial information included on the charitable company's website. Legislation in the United Kingdom

42

Shape London

Trustees’ annual report

For the year ended 31 March 2024

governing the preparation and dissemination of financial statements may differ from legislation in other jurisdictions.

Members of the charity guarantee to contribute an amount not exceeding £1 to the assets of the charity in the event of winding up. The total number of such guarantees at 31 March 2024 was 10 (2022/23:11). The trustees are members of the charity but this entitles them only to voting rights. The trustees have no beneficial interest in the charity.

Members of the Board of Trustees, who are Directors for the purposes of company law and Trustees for the purposes of charity law, who served during the year and up to the date of this report are set out on the Reference and Administrative page.

Auditors

Sayer Vincent LLP was re-appointed as the charitable company's auditor during the year and have expressed their willingness to continue in that capacity.

The trustees’ annual report has been prepared in accordance with the special provisions applicable to companies subject to the small companies' regime.

The trustees’ annual report has been approved by the trustees on 16 December 2024 and signed on their behalf by

Tony Heaton Chair

43

Independent auditor’s report

To the members of

Shape London

Opinion

We have audited the financial statements of Shape London (the ‘charitable company’) for the year ended 31 March 2024 which comprise the statement of financial activities, balance sheet, statement of cash flows and notes to the financial statements, including significant accounting policies. The financial reporting framework that has been applied in their preparation is applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards, including FRS 102 The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).

In our opinion, the financial statements:

• Give a true and fair view of the state of the charitable company’s affairs as at 31 March 2024 and of its incoming resources and application of resources, including its income and expenditure for the year then ended

• Have been properly prepared in accordance with United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice

• Have been prepared in accordance with the requirements of the Companies Act 2006

Basis for opinion

We conducted our audit in accordance with International Standards on Auditing (UK) (ISAs (UK)) and applicable law. Our responsibilities under those standards are further described in the Auditor’s responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements section of our report. We are independent of the charitable company in accordance with the ethical requirements that are relevant to our audit of the financial statements in the UK, including the FRC’s Ethical Standard and we have fulfilled our other ethical responsibilities in accordance with these requirements. We believe that the audit evidence we have obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion.

Conclusions relating to going concern

In auditing the financial statements, we have concluded that the trustees' use of the going concern basis of accounting in the preparation of the financial statements is appropriate.

Based on the work we have performed, we have not identified any material uncertainties relating to events or conditions that, individually or collectively, may cast significant doubt on Shape London's ability to continue as a going concern for a period of at least twelve months from when the financial statements are authorised for issue.

Our responsibilities and the responsibilities of the trustees with respect to going concern are described in the relevant sections of this report.

44

Independent auditor’s report

To the members of

Shape London

Other Information

The other information comprises the information included in the trustees’ annual report, other than the financial statements and our auditor’s report thereon. The trustees are responsible for the other information contained within the annual report. Our opinion on the financial statements does not cover the other information and, except to the extent otherwise explicitly stated in our report, we do not express any form of assurance conclusion thereon. Our responsibility is to read the other information and, in doing so, consider whether the other information is materially inconsistent with the financial statements or our knowledge obtained in the course of the audit, or otherwise appears to be materially misstated. If we identify such material inconsistencies or apparent material misstatements, we are required to determine whether this gives rise to a material misstatement in the financial statements themselves. If, based on the work we have performed, we conclude that there is a material misstatement of this other information, we are required to report that fact.

We have nothing to report in this regard.

Opinions on other matters prescribed by the Companies Act 2006

In our opinion, based on the work undertaken in the course of the audit:

• The information given in the trustees’ annual report, for the financial year for which the financial statements are prepared is consistent with the financial statements; and

• The trustees’ annual report has been prepared in accordance with applicable legal requirements.

Matters on which we are required to report by exception

In the light of the knowledge and understanding of the charitable company and its environment obtained in the course of the audit, we have not identified material misstatements in the trustees’ annual report. We have nothing to report in respect of the following matters in relation to which the Companies Act 2006 requires us to report to you if, in our opinion:

• Adequate accounting records have not been kept, or returns adequate for our audit have not been received from branches not visited by us; or

• The financial statements are not in agreement with the accounting records and returns; or

• Certain disclosures of trustees’ remuneration specified by law are not made; or

• We have not received all the information and explanations we require for our audit; or

• The directors were not entitled to prepare the financial statements in accordance with the small companies regime and take advantage of the small companies’ exemptions in preparing the trustees’ annual report and from the requirement to prepare a strategic report.

Responsibilities of trustees

As explained more fully in the statement of trustees’ responsibilities set out in the trustees’ annual report, the trustees (who are also the directors of the charitable company for the purposes of company law) are responsible for the preparation of the financial statements and for being satisfied

45

Independent auditor’s report

To the members of

Shape London

that they give a true and fair view, and for such internal control as the trustees determine is necessary to enable the preparation of financial statements that are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error.

In preparing the financial statements, the trustees are responsible for assessing the charitable company’s ability to continue as a going concern, disclosing, as applicable, matters related to going concern and using the going concern basis of accounting unless the trustees either intend to liquidate the charitable company or to cease operations, or have no realistic alternative but to do so.

Auditor’s responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements

Our objectives are to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements as a whole are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error, and to issue an auditor’s report that includes our opinion. Reasonable assurance is a high level of assurance but is not a guarantee that an audit conducted in accordance with ISAs (UK) will always detect a material misstatement when it exists. Misstatements can arise from fraud or error and are considered material if, individually or in the aggregate, they could reasonably be expected to influence the economic decisions of users taken on the basis of these financial statements.

Irregularities, including fraud, are instances of non-compliance with laws and regulations. We design procedures in line with our responsibilities, outlined above, to detect material misstatements in respect of irregularities, including fraud. The extent to which our procedures are capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud are set out below.

Capability of the audit in detecting irregularities

In identifying and assessing risks of material misstatement in respect of irregularities, including fraud and non-compliance with laws and regulations, our procedures included the following:

• We enquired of management, and trustees, which included obtaining and reviewing supporting documentation, concerning the charity’s policies and procedures relating to:

• Identifying, evaluating, and complying with laws and regulations and whether they were aware of any instances of non-compliance;

• Detecting and responding to the risks of fraud and whether they have knowledge of any actual, suspected, or alleged fraud;

• The internal controls established to mitigate risks related to fraud or non-compliance with laws and regulations.

• We inspected the minutes of meetings of those charged with governance.

• We obtained an understanding of the legal and regulatory framework that the charity operates in, focusing on those laws and regulations that had a material effect on the financial statements or that had a fundamental effect on the operations of the charity from our professional and sector experience.

• We communicated applicable laws and regulations throughout the audit team and remained alert to any indications of non-compliance throughout the audit.

46

Independent auditor’s report

To the members of

Shape London

• We reviewed any reports made to regulators.

• We reviewed the financial statement disclosures and tested these to supporting documentation to assess compliance with applicable laws and regulations.

• We performed analytical procedures to identify any unusual or unexpected relationships that may indicate risks of material misstatement due to fraud.

• In addressing the risk of fraud through management override of controls, we tested the appropriateness of journal entries and other adjustments, assessed whether the judgements made in making accounting estimates are indicative of a potential bias and tested significant transactions that are unusual or those outside the normal course of business.

Because of the inherent limitations of an audit, there is a risk that we will not detect all irregularities, including those leading to a material misstatement in the financial statements or non-compliance with regulation. This risk increases the more that compliance with a law or regulation is removed from the events and transactions reflected in the financial statements, as we will be less likely to become aware of instances of non-compliance. The risk is also greater regarding irregularities occurring due to fraud rather than error, as fraud involves intentional concealment, forgery, collusion, omission or misrepresentation.

A further description of our responsibilities is available on the Financial Reporting Council’s website at: www.frc.org.uk/auditorsresponsibilities. This description forms part of our auditor’s report.

Use of our report

This report is made solely to the charitable company's members as a body, in accordance with Chapter 3 of Part 16 of the Companies Act 2006. Our audit work has been undertaken so that we might state to the charitable company's members those matters we are required to state to them in an auditor’s report and for no other purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than the charitable company and the charitable company's members as a body, for our audit work, for this report, or for the opinions we have formed.

Noelia Serrano (Senior statutory auditor)

Date: 16 December 2024

for and on behalf of Sayer Vincent LLP, Statutory Auditor 110 Golden Lane, LONDON, EC1Y 0TG

47

Shape London

Statement of financial activities (incorporating an income and expenditure account)

For the year ended 31 March 2024

For theyear ended 31 March 2024
Note Income from: 2 3 3 4 4 4 4 5 15 Net movement in funds Reconciliation of funds: Total funds carried forward Total funds brought forward Transfers between funds Arts and Partnerships Audiences and Engagement Raising funds Net (expenditure)/ income for the year Total expenditure Charitable activities Skills, Diversity & Leadership Voluntary grants and donations Charitable activities Skills, Diversity & Leadership Interest receivable Total income Expenditure on: Arts and Partnerships	Unrestricted £ 344,208 27,141 2,555 3,021	Restricted £ - 497,225 - -	2024 Total £ 344,208 524,366 2,555 3,021	Unrestricted £ 299,242 31,821 5,982 1,454	Restricted £ - 299,509 18,500 - 318,009 - 157,553 - 85,891 243,444 74,565 - 74,565 67,576 142,141	2023 Total £ 299,242 331,330 24,482 1,454
	376,925	497,225	874,150	338,499		656,508
	- 293,754 39,669 27,479	- 621,075 - -	- 914,829 39,669 27,479	100 332,475 37,781 30,067		100 490,028 37,781 115,958
	360,902	621,075	981,977	400,423		643,867
	16,023 (40,875) (24,852) 136,955	(123,850) 40,875 (82,975) 142,141	(107,827) - (107,827) 279,096	(61,924) - (61,924) 198,879		12,641 - 12,641 266,455
	112,103	59,166	171,269	136,955		279,096

All of the above results are derived from continuing activities. There were no other recognised gains or losses other than those stated above. Movement in funds are disclosed in Note 15 to the financial statements.

48

Shape London

Balance sheet

Balance sheet	Balance sheet
As at 31 March 2024		Company number: 01468164
Note £ Fixed assets: 10 Current assets: 11 186,345 134,121 320,466 Liabilities: 12 (154,007) 14 15 4,810 107,293 Total unrestricted funds Restricted income funds Unrestricted income funds: Designated funds Debtors The funds of the charity: Creditors: amounts falling due within one year Net current assets Total net assets Cash at bank and in hand Tangible assets General funds Total charity funds		2024 £ 4,810 4,810 166,459 171,269 59,166 112,103 171,269	£ 154,953 164,616	2023 £ 12,956
				12,956 266,140
	320,466 (154,007)		319,569 (53,429)
	4,810 107,293		35,005 101,950
				279,096
				142,141 136,955
				279,096

Approved by the trustees on 16 December 2024 and signed on their behalf by

Tony Heaton Chair

Jon Tibbits-Smyth Treasurer

49

Shape London

Statement of cash flows

For the year ended 31 March 2024

For the year ended 31 March 2024	For the year ended 31 March 2024
£ £ Net (expenditure)/ income for the reporting period (as per the statement of financial activities) (107,827) Investment income (3,021) Depreciation charges 7,456 Loss on disposal of fixed assets 690 (Increase) / decrease in debtors (31,392) Increase / (decrease) in creditors 100,578 (33,516) Investment income 3,021 - 3,021 (30,495) 164,616 134,121 There is no reconciliation of net movement in funds as only cash is held. Cash flows from operating activities Net cash provided by/ (used in) investing activities Cash flows from investing activities: Purchase of fixed assets 2024 Cash and cash equivalents at the beginning of the year Cash and cash equivalents at the end of the year Change in cash and cash equivalents in the year		£ £ 12,641 (1,454) 8,156 179 210,668 (460,270) (230,080) 1,454 (3,329) (1,875) (231,955) 396,571 164,616 2023
		1,454 (3,329)
	3,021		(1,875)
	(30,495) 164,616		(231,955) 396,571
	134,121		164,616

50

Shape London

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2024

1 Accounting policies

a) Statutory information

Shape London is a charitable company limited by guarantee and is incorporated in England and Wales. The registered office address is Bucks Culture Office, Buckinghamshire New University, Queen Alexandra Road, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, HP11 2JZ.

b) Basis of preparation

The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) - (Charities SORP FRS 102), the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) and the Companies Act 2006.

Assets and liabilities are initially recognised at historical cost or transaction value.

c) Public benefit entity

The charitable company meets the definition of a public benefit entity under FRS 102.

d) Going concern

The trustees have reviewed budgets and forecasts to 31 March 2026 taking into account the impact of the current economic environment and consider there to be no material uncertainties about Shape’s ability to continue as a going concern.

The trustees do not consider that there are any sources of estimation uncertainty at the reporting date that have a significant risk of causing a material adjustment to the carrying amounts of assets and liabilities within the next reporting period.

e) Income

Income is recognised when the charity has entitlement to the funds, any performance conditions attached to the income have been met, it is probable that the income will be received and that the amount can be measured reliably.

Income from government and other grants, whether ‘capital’ grants or ‘revenue’ grants, is recognised when the charity has entitlement to the funds, any performance conditions attached to the grants have been met, it is probable that the income will be received and the amount can be measured reliably and is not deferred.

For legacies, entitlement is taken as the earlier of the date on which either: the charity is aware that probate has been granted, the estate has been finalised and notification has been made by the executor(s) to the charity that a distribution will be made, or when a distribution is received from the estate. Receipt of a legacy, in whole or in part, is only considered probable when the amount can be measured reliably and the charity has been notified of the executor’s intention to make a distribution. Where legacies have been notified to the charity, or the charity is aware of the granting of probate, and the criteria for income recognition have not been met, then the legacy is a treated as a contingent asset and disclosed if material.

Income received in advance of the provision of a specified service is deferred until the criteria for income recognition are met.

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Shape London

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2024

• 1 Accounting policies (continued)

• f) Donations of gifts, services and facilities

Donated professional services and donated facilities are recognised as income when the charity has control over the item or received the service, any conditions associated with the donation have been met, the receipt of economic benefit from the use by the charity of the item is probable and that economic benefit can be measured reliably. In accordance with the Charities SORP (FRS 102), volunteer time is not recognised so refer to the trustees’ annual report for more information about their contribution.

On receipt, donated gifts, professional services and donated facilities are recognised on the basis of the value of the gift to the charity which is the amount the charity would have been willing to pay to obtain services or facilities of equivalent economic benefit on the open market; a corresponding amount is then recognised in expenditure in the period of receipt.

• g) Interest receivable

Interest on funds held on deposit is included when receivable and the amount can be measured reliably by the charity; this is normally upon notification of the interest paid or payable by the bank.

• h) Fund accounting

Restricted funds are to be used for specific purposes as laid down by the donor. Expenditure which meets these criteria is charged to the fund together with a fair allocation of management and support costs.

Unrestricted funds are donations and other income received or generated for the charitable purposes.

Designated funds are unrestricted funds earmarked by the Trustees for particular purposes.

i) Expenditure and irrecoverable VAT

Expenditure is recognised once there is a legal or constructive obligation to make a payment to a third party, it is probable that settlement will be required and the amount of the obligation can be measured reliably. Expenditure is classified under the following activity headings:

• Costs of raising funds relate to the costs incurred by the charitable company in inducing third parties to make voluntary contributions to it, as well as the cost of any activities with a fundraising purpose

• Expenditure on charitable activities includes the costs of delivering projects and services to further the purposes of the charity and their associated support costs

Irrecoverable VAT is charged as a cost against the activity for which the expenditure was incurred.

The charity deregistered from VAT from 1 January 2024.

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Shape London

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2024

• 1 Accounting policies (continued)

j) Allocation of support costs

Resources expended are allocated to the particular activity where the cost relates directly to that activity. However, the cost of overall direction and administration of each activity, comprising the salary and overhead costs of the central function, is apportioned on the following basis which are an estimate, based on staff time, of the amount attributable to each activity.

Where information about the aims, objectives and projects of the charity is provided to potential beneficiaries, the costs associated with this publicity are allocated to charitable expenditure.

the	costs associated with this publicity are allocated	to charitable expen
	Raising funds	0%
	Arts and Partnerships	65%
	Audiences	17%
	Skills, Diversity and Leadership	10%
	Support costs	5%
	Governance costs	3%

Support and governance costs are re-allocated to each of the activities on the following basis which is an estimate, based on staff time, of the amount attributable to each activity:

	Arts and Partnerships	70%
	Audiences	19%
	Skills, Diversity and Leadership	11%

Governance costs are the costs associated with the governance arrangements of the charity. These costs are associated with constitutional and statutory requirements and include any costs associated with the strategic management of the charity’s activities.

k) Operating leases

Rental charges are charged on a straight line basis over the term of the lease.

l) Tangible fixed assets

Items of equipment are normally capitalised where the purchase price exceeds £250. Depreciation costs are allocated to activities on the basis of the use of the related assets in those activities. Assets are reviewed for impairment if circumstances indicate their carrying value may exceed their net realisable value and value in use.

Depreciation is provided at rates calculated to write down the cost of each asset to its estimated residual value over its expected useful life. The depreciation rates in use are as follows:

• IT equipment and software

• Furniture, fittings and equipment

3 years 4 years

m) Debtors

Trade and other debtors are recognised at the settlement amount due. Prepayments are valued at the amount prepaid net of any trade discounts due.

53

Shape London

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2024

• 1 Accounting policies (continued)

• n) Cash at bank and in hand

Cash at bank and cash in hand includes cash and short term highly liquid investments with a short maturity of three months or less from the date of acquisition or opening of the deposit or similar account.

o) Creditors and provisions

Creditors and provisions are recognised where the charity has a present obligation resulting from a past event that will probably result in the transfer of funds to a third party and the amount due to settle the obligation can be measured or estimated reliably. Creditors and provisions are normally recognised at their settlement amount after allowing for any trade discounts due.

p) Financial instruments

The charity only has financial assets and financial liabilities of a kind that qualify as basic financial instruments. Basic financial instruments are initially recognised at transaction value and subsequently measured at their settlement value.

q) Pensions

The charity provides an auto-enrolment pension scheme to which all employees are enrolled unless they choose to opt out. The charity previously offered a defined contribution scheme where employees could contribute either an amount or percentage of salary.

2 Voluntary grants and donations

2 Voluntary grants and donations
Grants receivable Donations Other grants and donations Arts Council England - National Portfolio Organisation	2024 Total £ 341,824 2,384 344,208	2023 Total £ 291,824 7,418
		299,242

All grants and donations are unrestricted (2022/23: all unrestricted).

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Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2024

For the year ended 31 March 2024	For the year ended 31 March 2024
3 Unrestricted £ - - - - - - 26,667 - 474 - - 27,141 - 2,555 2,555 29,696 Arts and Partnerships Income from charitable activities ACE - Disability Arts Movement (DAM) in Venice Total income from charitable activities Skills, Diversity and Leadership ACE - Transforming Leadership Sub-total for Skills, Diversity and Leadership Garfield Weston Foundation Other grants and donations National Heritage Lottery Fund - National Disability Movement Archive and Collection (NDMAC) Delivery phase Sub-total for Arts and Partnerships Pop up galleries Other income ACE - Feasibility Creative Scotland - Disability Arts Movement (DAM) in Venice Sales and fees charged for services Foyle Foundation Sales and fees charged for services Donated services and facilities in kind		Restricted £ 178,000 31,500 15,000 242,725 30,000 - - - - - -	2024 Total £ 178,000 31,500 15,000 242,725 30,000 - 26,667 - 474 - -	Unrestricted £ - - - - - - 11,500 19,500 766 - 55	Restricted £ 222,500 - - 30,829 30,000 13,500 - - - 2,680 - 299,509 18,500 - 18,500 318,009	2023 Total £ 222,500 - - 30,829 30,000 13,500 11,500 19,500 766 2,680 55
	27,141	497,225	524,366	31,821		331,330
	- 2,555	- -	- 2,555	- 5,982		18,500 5,982
	2,555	-	2,555	5,982		24,482
	29,696	497,225	526,921	37,803		355,812

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Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2024

• 4a Analysis of expenditure (current year)

Analysis of expenditure (current year)
Staff costs (Note 6) Recruitment, training and other staff costs Rent, insurance and services Depreciation and loss on disposals Communications and IT Printing, stationery and postage Sundry administration costs Auditor's fees Other professional fees Banking, financial and bad debt provisions Services provided - Artists, trainers and interpreters Programme materials, delivery, access and marketing Support costs Governance costs Total expenditure 2024 Total expenditure 2023	Cost of raising funds £ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 100	Charitable activities			Governance costs £ 6,723 - - - - - 617 11,556 - - - 720 19,616 - (19,616) - -	Support costs £ 60,325 758 22,266 8,146 21,220 2,661 3,769 - 34,730 477 - 1,057 155,409 (155,409) - - -	2024 Total £ 290,551 815 23,798 8,146 53,642 2,674 4,374 11,556 36,690 1,511 2,836 545,384	2023 Total £ 298,691 1,205 21,096 8,335 58,923 1,508 1,116 10,886 1,732 578 18,099 221,698
		Arts and partnerships £ 198,142 57 1,532 - 32,422 13 (12) - 1,960 1,034 2,836 543,607	Audiences £ 14,704 - - - - - - - - - - - 14,704 21,254 3,711 39,669 37,781	Skills, Diversity and Leadership £ 10,657 - - - - - - - - - - - 10,657 14,701 2,121 27,479 115,958
		781,591 119,454 13,784					981,977 - -	643,867 - -
		914,829					981,977	643,867
		490,028					-	643,867

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Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2024

• 4b Analysis of expenditure (prior year)

Analysis of expenditure (prior year)
Staff costs (Note 6) Recruitment, training and other staff costs Rent, insurance and services Depreciation and loss on disposals Communications and IT Printing, stationery and postage Sundry administration costs Auditor's fees Other professional fees Banking, financial and bad debt provisions Services provided - Artists, trainers and interpreters Programme materials, delivery, access and marketing Support costs Governance costs Total expenditure 2023	Cost of raising funds £ - - - - - - - - - - - 100 100 - - 100	Charitable activities			Governance costs £ 8,286 - - - - - 452 10,886 13 - - 567 20,204 - (20,204) -	Support costs £ 94,811 1,000 21,096 8,335 32,844 1,508 664 - 309 161 - - 160,728 (160,728) - -	2023 Total £ 298,691 1,205 21,096 8,335 58,923 1,508 1,116 10,886 1,732 578 18,099 221,698
		Arts and partnerships £ 153,188 205 - - 25,997 - - - 1,410 157 2,678 157,064	Audiences £ 15,596 - - - - - - - - - - 2,100 17,696 17,842 2,243 37,781	Skills, Diversity and Leadership £ 26,810 - - - 82 - - - - 260 15,421 61,867 104,440 10,232 1,286 115,958
		340,699 132,654 16,675					643,867 - -
		490,028					643,867

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Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2024

5 Net (expenditure)/ income for the year

This is stated after charging / (crediting):

This is stated after charging / (crediting):
	2024	2023
	£	£
Depreciation	7,456	8,156
Loss on disposal of fixed assets	690	179
Trustees' reimbursed expenses	-	18
Operating lease rentals:
Property - Peckham	17,175	14,650
Printer / photocopier	1,301	1,100
Auditors' remuneration (excluding VAT):
Audit fee 2023/24 (Previous year 2022/23)	9,630	9,000

6

Analysis of staff costs, trustee remuneration and expenses, and the cost of key management personnel

Staff costs were as follows:

Staff costs were as follows:
Salaries and wages Redundancy and termination costs Pension costs Contract / temporary staff Social security costs	2024 £ 202,267 6,404 61,500 16,469 3,911	2023 £ 199,908 - 77,523 16,880 4,380
	290,551	298,691

The following number of employees received employee benefits (excluding employer pension costs) during the year between:

		2024	2023
		No.	No.
£60,000	- £69,999	1	1

No pension contributions (2022/23: £0) were made to a defined contribution scheme for the above member of staff during the year. The staff member left the pension scheme in September 2021.

The total employee benefits including pension contributions and employer's national insurance of the key management personnel were £136,969 (2022/23: £132,321). Key management personnel comprise the Chief Executive and the Head of Programme on the grounds that they hold significant decision-making and delegation control.

The charity trustees were not paid or received any other benefits from employment with the charity in the year (2022/23: £nil). No charity trustee received payment for professional or other services supplied to the charity (2022/23: £nil).

No trustees received reimbursement of expenses during the year (2022/23: £18 reimbursed to 1 trustee in respect of delivery work).

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Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2024

7 Staff numbers

The average number of employees (head count based on number of staff employed) during the year was as follows:

2024 2023 No. No. 5.1 5.5 2.6 3.0 0.7 0.4 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.8 0.1 0.1 4.0 4.6 Skills, Diversity and Leadership Audiences and Engagement Arts and Partnerships Support Governance The average weekly number of staff (expressed as full-time equivalents) during the year was as follows:	2024 No. 5.1	2023 No. 5.5
	4.0	4.6

8 Related party transactions

The Chief Executive rents space in Folkestone and during 2023/24 the whole space provided a production base for DAM in Venice and NDMAC. Shape's Programme and Projects contributed £5,400 being 100% of the total rent charge in respect of the area for the period from 1 April 2023 - 31 March 2024 (2023: £4,800).

The Chief Executive's son, Liam Roden, is a freelancer who Shape engaged on various projects during 2023/24 on flexible contracts. In 2023/24 fees of £40,350 (2022/23: £36,580) and reimbursed delivery expenses of £2,842 (2022/23: £955) were paid. At the year-end, £2,100 was due to Liam Roden (2022/23: £nil). The Chief Executive's partner (Nina Shen - CT20 Projects CIC) is a delivery partner who was engaged on DAM in Venice, NDMAC, Feasibility and NPO Uplift in the year. In 2023/24 fees were paid of £33,740 (2022/23: £6,977).

Tony Heaton (Chair of the trustees) received a £4,000 from Shape grant for participating in the DAM in Venice project, including attendance at the exhibition of his artwork at Crip Arte Spazio!, Venice (2022/23: £nil).

Tony Heaton (Chair of the trustees) received a £500 student mentoring honorarium as part of the Emergent project.

(2022/23: £nil).

There are no donations from related parties which are outside the normal course of business and no restricted donations from related parties.

9 Taxation

The charitable company is exempt from corporation tax as all its income is charitable and is applied for charitable purposes.

10 Tangible fixed assets

Tangible fixed assets purposes.
Net book value At the start of the year At the end of the year Disposals At the end of the year Disposals Cost or valuation At the start and end of the year At the end of the year Additions At the start of the year Charge for the year Depreciation	IT equipment and software £ 57,165 - (15,593) 41,572	Furniture, fittings and equipment £ 28,647 - - 28,647	Total £ 85,812 - (15,593) 70,219
	44,743 7,154 (14,903)	28,113 302 -	72,856 7,456 (14,903)
	36,994	28,415	65,409
	4,578	232	4,810
	12,422	534	12,956

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Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2024

For the year ended 31 March 2024
11 12 13 Balance at the beginning of the year Amount released to income in the year Amount deferred in the year Balance at the end of the year 14a 14b Net assets at the end of the year Other creditors Net current assets Tangible fixed assets Net assets at the end of the year Deferred income (Note 13) Analysis of net assets between funds (current year) Taxation and social security Accruals Tangible fixed assets Net current assets Deferred income comprises: Deferred income Creditors: amounts falling due within one year Debtors Analysis of net assets between funds (prior year) Prepayments Trade creditors Trade debtors Grants receivable	General unrestricted £ - 107,293	Grants in advance - - -	2024 £ 318 15,170 170,857	2023 £ 2,253 10,621 142,079
			186,345	154,953
			2024 £ 87,493 5,242 9,439 51,833 -	2023 £ 6,489 5,568 12,123 29,249 -
			154,007	53,429
			2024 £ - - -	2023 £ 111,250 (111,250) -
		-	-	-
		£ 4,810 - Designated	Restricted £ - 59,166	Total funds £ 4,810 166,459
	107,293	4,810	59,166	171,269
	General unrestricted £ - 101,950	£ 12,956 22,049 Designated	Restricted £ - 142,141	Total funds £ 12,956 266,140
	101,950	35,005	142,141	279,096

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Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2024

For the year ended 31 March 2024
15a Total restricted funds Total designated funds General funds 15b Total restricted funds Total designated funds General funds Skills, Diversity and Leadership Designated funds: Movements in funds (prior year) Restricted funds: Arts and Partnerships Programme - Adam Reynolds Award Designated funds: Total unrestricted funds Total funds Programme - Strategic delivery and development Unrestricted funds: Tangible fixed assets Skills, Diversity and Leadership Arts and Partnerships Programme - Strategic delivery and development Tangible fixed assets Movements in funds (current year) Unrestricted funds: Restricted funds: Total funds Total unrestricted funds	At 1 April 2023 £ 142,141 -	Income and gains £ 497,225 -	Expenditure and losses £ (621,075) -	Transfers £ 40,875 -	At 31 March 2024 £ 59,166 -
	142,141	497,225	(621,075)	40,875	59,166
	12,956 22,049	- -	- -	(8,146) (22,049)	4,810 -
	35,005	-	-	(30,195)	4,810
	101,950	376,925	(360,902)	(10,680)	107,293
	136,955	376,925	(360,902)	(40,875)	112,103
	279,096	874,150	(981,977)	-	171,269
	At 1 April 2022 £ 185 67,391	Income and gains £ 299,509 18,500	Expenditure and losses £ (157,553) (85,891)	Transfers £ - -	At 31 March 2023 £ 142,141 -
	67,576	318,009	(243,444)	-	142,141
	17,962 12,070 80,000	- - -	- - -	(5,006) (12,070) (57,951)	12,956 - 22,049
	110,032	-	-	(75,027)	35,005
	88,847	338,499	(400,423)	75,027	101,950
	198,879	338,499	(400,423)	-	136,955
	266,455	656,508	(643,867)	-	279,096

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Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2024

15 Movements in funds (continued)

Purposes of funds

Restricted funds - £59,166 are funds which represent monies given for specific purposes and projects as described below:

Arts and Partnerships £59,166 - £184 Shape Programme , DAM (Disability Arts Movement) in Venice £43,445 and ACE Feasibility £15,537.

A transfer of £40,875 from General funds was made to the NDMAC (National Disability Movement Archive and Collection) project to fund the deficit arising from the lack of third-party match funding. Designated funds - £4,810 are funds which the Board of Trustees has designated to meet future commitments and liabilities as part of their vision and risk assessment for sustainability:

Tangible fixed assets - £4,810 represents funds for office tangible fixed assets. Transfers in respect of associated depreciation and loss on disposal of fixed assets will be made to General Funds.

Programme: Strategic delivery and development £0 - the Board designated £80,000 at 31 March 2022 to ensure the strategic delivery and development of the Programme after 1 April 2022 whilst new projects and their funding were being secured. It aimed to provide 'going concern' assurance that internal resources were designated to support any funding shortfalls during 2022/23 and 2023/24 due to any future economic uncertainties. The balance at 1 April 2023 was £22,049 and transfers of £22,049 were made in 2023/24 to support programme direct delivery leaving £0 at 31 March 2024.

General Funds £107,293 - these are free reserves of the charity which can be used for any purpose within its charitable objects. The Reserves Policy is set out in the Trustees' annual report. A transfer of £40,875 was made to the NDMAC project held in restricted funds to fund the deficit arising from the lack of third-party match funding.

Heritage Lottery Fund - funding disclosure statement

Heritage Lottery Fund (receivable) Match funds contribution:(to be secured) Expenditure to be met from Match funds In Kind - Volunteers In Kind - Other Unrestricted General reserves transfer to provide internal Match funding as external Match funds not secured National Disability Movement Archive and Collection (NDMAC) Delivery Phase - commenced December 2022 to November 2026 Other delivery - Non cash Total Delivery Phase delivery	At the start of the year £ - - (4,606)	Income £ 242,725 -	Expenditure £ (242,725) - (36,269)	At the end of the year £ - - (40,875)
	(4,606)	242,725	(278,994)	(40,875)
	- -	- -	- -	- -
	(4,606)	242,725	(278,994)	(40,875)
	- -	- 40,875	- -	- 40,875
	(4,606)	283,600	(278,994)	-

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Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2024

15 Movements in funds (continued)

Arts Council England - funding disclosure statements

DAM ( Disability Arts Movement) in Venice (commenced 1 April 2022 to March 2025) Arts Council England Delivery expenditure ACE Feasibility Arts Council England Delivery expenditure Creative Scotland	At the start of the year £ 222,500 (75,937)	Income £ 178,000 15,000 -	Expenditure £ - (296,118)	At the end of the year £ 400,500 15,000 (372,055)
	146,563	193,000	(296,118)	43,445
	At the start of the year £ - -	Income £ 31,500	Expenditure £ (15,963)	At the end of the year £ 31,500 (15,963)
	-	31,500	(15,963)	15,537

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Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2024

16 Operating lease commitments

The charity's total future minimum lease payments under non-cancellable operating leases is as follows for each of the following periods

the following periods
Less than one year One to five years Over five years	2024 £ 12,500 - - Property	2023 £ 19,025 12,500 - and other
	12,500	31,525

Property - Peckham office - Shape signed a five year lease with LB Southwark for offices at Second Floor, Peckham Library and took occupation on 19 September 2019. Rent credits have been granted by the landlord in respect of the period December 2022 to 16 July 2023 in recognition of the office being closed as a consequence of the closure of the building due to Peckham Library refurbishments. The lease ended on 23 October 2024.

Unit B, 67 Tontine Street, Folkestone - Shape signed a Tenancy at Will with Creative Folkestone on 21 November 2022 for a studio space. After six months (21 May 2023), the Landlord and Tenant acknowledge that the agreement extends by one calendar month consecutively thereafter unless notice is given. There is no agreement for lease. No financial obligations require disclosing.

17 Prior-year restatement

In the prior year, sales and fees charged for services totalling £5,982 were classified as relating to audiences and engagement instead of skills, diversity and leadership. Accordingly, the prior-year income in note 3 and the Statement of Financial Activities has been restated.

18 Legal status of the charity

The charity is a company limited by guarantee and has no share capital. The liability of each member in the event of winding up is limited to £1.

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