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2021-03-31-accounts

SERPENTINE GALLERIES

Annual Report and Financial Statements The Serpentine Trust (A Company Limited by Guarantee)

Annual Report and Financial Statements For the year ended 31 March 2021

Charity Commission Number: 298809 Company Number: 2150221

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CONTENTS

References and Administration Details 4
Letter from the Chair, Michael R. Bloomberg 5
Letter from the Chief Executive, Bettina Korek 6
Executive Summary 8
Trustees’ Report 2020/21 10
About Serpentine 10
A Brief History of Serpentine 10
Championing art since 1970 10
Looking forward to the next 50 years 11
Mission and Aims 11
Organisation Objectives 12
Strategic Report 2020/21 13
Summary of our Activities, Achievements and Performance 13
Championing an Integrated, Interdisciplinary and Diverse World-Class Programme 14
A Time to Reflect 14
World-Class Programming 14
Exhibition, Live, General Ecology, Civic and Education Programme 17
Exhibitions 17
Back to Earth 25
Serpentine Podcast 30
Groundwork 30
General Ecology 31
Public Art 33
Architecture Programme 34
International Touring Programme 35
Online Programmes 37
Live Programmes 38
Partnerships 39
Leading a Pioneering and Educational Programme 40
Education & Civic Projects 40
Cracks in the Curriculum 40
Radio Ballads 42
Leading Artistic and Digital Transformation 45
Arts Technologies 45
Serpentine R&D Platform 45
Future Art Ecosystems (FAE) 46
Creative AI Lab 48
Legal Lab 49
Synthetic Ecologies Lab 51
Blockchain Lab 51
Digital Commissions 53
Artist Worlds 54
Welcoming a Broad & Diverse Public 55
Serpentine Rebrand 55
Local and Global Audiences 55
Reaching Beyond the Gallery Walls 55
Media Reach 56
Developing Diverse, High-Performing & Engaged Teams 58
Promoting an Open, Collaborative, Supportive and Diverse Culture 58
Recognising and Rewarding Achievement and Performance Fairly 59
Equal Opportunity Policy 59
Future Plans 61
Financial Review 65
Improving organisational resilience and sustainability 65
Summary of Performance 65
Principal Sources of Funding 66
Expenditure 66
Annual Fundraising Activities 66
Other Income Generating Activities 68
Risk Statement 69
Going Concern 70
Reserves 70
Structure, Governance & Management 71
Governance 71
Board of Trustees 71
Finance Sub-Committee 72
Operating Committee 72
Ethics Committee 72
Public Benefit Statement 73
Environmental Sustainability Policy 73
Environmental Action Plan 75
Statement of Trustees’ Responsibilities 78
Independent Auditor’s Report 79
Consolidated Statement Of Financial Activities 82
Balance Sheet 83
Consolidated Statement Of Cash Flow 84
Notes To The Financial Statements 85
Our Supporters 103

References and Administration Details

Registered Office

Kensington Gardens London W2 3XA

Governing Document

Memorandum and Articles of Association

Executive Team

Bettina Korek – Chief Executive Officer Hans Ulrich Obrist - Artistic Director Monica Varriale - Chief Operating and Financial Officer

Company Secretary

WG&M Secretaries Ltd

Auditors

Crowe U.K. LLP 55 Ludgate Hill London EC4M 7JW

Bankers

Coutts & Co Media Banking 440 Strand London WC2R 0QS

Solicitors

Weil, Gotshal & Manges 110 Fetter Lane London EC4A 1AY

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Letter from the Chair, Michael R. Bloomberg

Dear Friends,

While the last year has presented unprecedented challenges, the Serpentine’s culture of bold reinvention and adaptability has enabled it to continue to provide an ambitious platform for artists to respond to urgent contemporary issues around the world.

With a renewed focus on ecology, technology and community, the Serpentine has embraced new opportunities to significantly expand its innovative digital programme, and to reach audiences across the globe, regardless of their background or location.

Serpentine also continued its long history of championing diverse voices in the arts, working to elevate the kind of perspectives that offer critical insight into complex social issues that require both deep reflection and bold action. And through the 2021 Pavilion, the institution will work to highlight the role cultural institutions can play in providing a space for dialogue and reflecting the communities that make London so special.

The success of our programme this year has been made possible through the generosity of our supporters, the talent of our artists and architects and the vision of our leadership team. I’d like to give a special thanks to our remarkable artistic director, Hans Ulrich Obrist and to our CEO, Bettina Korek, who together with their team, have allowed the Serpentine to thrive during such challenging times. I’d also like to thank our Board of Trustees for their guidance and all of our colleagues for the hard work and flexibility that has enabled Serpentine to deliver against an ever-changing set of circumstances. Our impact would not be possible without your dedication.

We now have our sights set firmly on the future. As we emerge from the pandemic, we will continue to explore new ambitious, long-term projects as we work with artists to open up new and exciting possibilities for the future.

Sincerely, Michael R. Bloomberg

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Letter from the Chief Executive, Bettina Korek

Dear Friends,

In a year like no other, when physical visits to Serpentine were limited, we pivoted towards enhanced online engagement to bring contemporary art to the world. While our galleries were closed this year, our online reach grew enormously. Visits to Serpentine’s website alone grew to 1.6 million visits. With a dynamic programme of talks, visits, and environmental artist campaigns from our ongoing Back to Earth initiative, we were able to continue introducing local and global audiences alike to new artists, year-round. Looking back, we’re proud of 2020/21’s artist-led, varied and socially engaged digital programme, which has democratised access to art.

On 4 August 2020, we began a phased reopening of our landmark show with long-term Serpentine collaborator Cao Fei, a Chinese artist working with video and virtual reality. Her immersive, site-specific installation Blueprints explored aspects of Beijing’s social history and rapid urban transformation over recent years. For the re-opening, the original exhibition’s virtual reality artwork, The Eternal Wave , was reconfigured as The Eternal Wave AR . Working with augmented reality technology for the first time, Cao Fei created a version of the work that audiences could safely interact with through their smartphones instead of virtual reality headsets.

Formafantasma’s exhibition , Cambio , examining fundamental global sustainability issues in the timber industry, reopened on 29 September 2020 and highlighted the crucial role that design can play in our environment. In what turned out to be a prescient decision, Formafantasma created a website, which is simply Cambio.website , to accompany the exhibition, giving greater insight into their research and activities for the ongoing project. This website gave the exhibition a second life during lockdown, connecting us to so many visitors who otherwise would have been unable to engage with Serpentine at the time.

In December 2020, we opened our first new exhibition since pandemic lockdowns began: Jennifer Packer’s The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing . Combining observation, improvisation and memory, Packer’s intimate portraits of friends, family members and flower still lifes recalibrate art historical approaches to painting, casting the medium in a contemporary political light and deeply personal context. During the first threeweek period in December when the show was open, it received five-star reviews and all tickets were booked. Packer’s first exhibition in the UK was a highlight of London’s cultural calendar throughout Summer 2021, and now it is about to travel to The Whitney in New York where it will open at the end of October.

Alongside exhibitions, Serpentine responded to a global society in flux with a sharp focus on programmes addressing issues of ecology, technology and community. Back to Earth , our multi-year project inviting artists to respond to the environmental crisis, released powerful campaigns throughout the year by, among others, Olafur Eliasson, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Yoko Ono and Vivienne Westwood. Our General Ecology initiative unites Serpentine’s efforts around humanism and environmentalism with those of collaborators from art, design, science, literature, anthropology and other fields. General Ecology’s annual symposium moved online this year. Titled The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish: The Understory of the Understory , it attracted a

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bigger audience than ever before, with more than 6000 people tuning in over the course of its two-day duration.

In terms of technology, this year we published our first annual strategic briefing for the arts sector, Future Art Ecosystems , which provided concepts, references, language, and arguments that can be integrated into operational agendas for the construction of 21st century cultural infrastructure. Future Art Ecosystems Vol.1 addressed the implications of artistic engagements with advanced technologies in terms of the infrastructural redesign that they, by default, enable within and in parallel to existing art ecosystems. The second briefing, on art and the metaverse, was released in July 2021.

As our artistic programme moved online, so did our participatory workshops with communities around London. We continued to produce artist-designed resources for educators through our Cracks in the Curriculum programme and deliver workshops to participants in Barking and Dagenham through our Radio Ballads project, which has brought artists into social service organisations to explore the topic and history of work.

We were so pleased to share the incredible work of James Barnor and Jennifer Packer when we were finally able to open again in Summer 2021. After more than a year of uncertainty, separation and loss, we have a renewed perspective on our arts institution as a site for connection and discovery.

Along with other organisations, when Serpentine closed to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the lives of our staff changed overnight and we quickly had to adjust to a new way of working. In a short period of time, we rolled out processes to allow us to continue working together remotely. The health, safety and wellbeing of our colleagues was our priority and we worked hard to stay connected, encourage self-care and promote active discourse on the changes to our working environment. We are proud of how our colleagues have adapted and supported one another.

Sincerely, Bettina Korek

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Executive Summary

The financial year 2020/21 was the year of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Spring 2020 was among the most challenging times across every aspect of Serpentine’s activities, with the impacts of the pandemic being felt across all industries. Having opened two exhibitions by Cao Fei and Formafantasma on 4 March 2020, just 13 days later, on 19 March, we were forced to close our doors to visitors and our employees. With meticulous planning and preparation, much of it starting long before the pandemic was declared, we upgraded our systems and moved to an agile working environment, to ensure remote working was possible. This allowed the majority of our team to continue to work and deliver on our objectives and mission. As a result, Serpentine was able to quickly pivot to accommodate the ‘new normal’ with virtual event programmes and engagement plans. When we were able to open again, we implemented strict safety protocols under the government guidelines to create a safe environment for visitors, staff, contractors and artists.

We began a phased reopening of our galleries on 4 August 2020 with our landmark show by long-term Serpentine collaborator, Cao Fei. Her immersive, site-specific installation, Blueprints , explored our interactions with technology and each other. In line with the UK government’s guidance on social distancing, the exhibition re-opened with set limitations on visitor numbers. To manage these and to capture visitor data, we implemented a new online free ticket booking system.

Formafantasma’s exhibition, Cambio , examining fundamental global sustainability issues in the design industry, reopened on the 29 September and ran until 4 November 2020 (another early closure due to the second national lockdown), welcoming nearly 5k visitors during this time.

During the first period of the closure, both exhibiting artists created new online elements. Out of Blueprints with NOWNESS and K11 was a moving image programme that brought together East Asia based artists, with a new film added each week for eight weeks. Antenna Fantasma was a weekly live program of conversations around design, ecology and sustainability hosted by Formafantasma with guests including Paola Antonelli (MoMA), Stefano Boeri (Architect), Rebecca Lewin (Serpentine) and more. Serpentine's Radio Ballads project in Barking and Dagenham and online campaigns for Back to Earth continued and remain ongoing.

As we adapted to restrictions through the year, the Autumn/Winter season saw programmes across the galleries benefit from a deeper understanding of how to create meaningful audience experiences online. While our doors may have been closed for much of the season, the varied and politically prescient virtual programme broadened our audience reach and democratised access to art at a time when the imagination and inspiration of artists are more vital than ever.

Whether through artist-led campaigns highlighting the global effects of the climate crisis, educational resources addressing gaps in the national curriculum, or our boundary-pushing arts ecology festival, Serpentine has harnessed the power of digital to engage audiences with the most urgent issues of our time.

In December, we presented American artist Jennifer Packer's exhibition, The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing, which was open for approximately three weeks before the third national lockdown commenced. Featuring 34 works dated from 2011 to 2020 - portraits of artists from Packer’s New York circle, monochromatic paintings, intimate interiors and flower still lifes - the show reopened in Summer 2021. British-Ghanaian

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photographer James Barnor's exhibition was similarly postponed from Summer 2020 to Summer 2021 and will present a long-awaited retrospective of his career spanning more than six decades.

Several of Serpentine’s exhibitions toured internationally, including Jenna Sutela’s I Magma at the Kunsthall Trondheim in Norway in March 2020, Luchita Hurtado’s I Live I Die I Will Be Reborn at LACMA, Los Angeles in February 2020, and Faith Ringgold’s retrospective at the Bildmuseet in Switzerland in August 2020.

In response to the public health and ecological crises, we look to artists for guidance on how to shape the future. Back to Earth , a multi-year project that invites over sixty-five leading artists, architects, poets, filmmakers, scientists, thinkers and designers to devise artist-led campaigns, protocols and initiatives, responds to the environmental crisis with the support of partner organisations and networks. Interdisciplinary at its very core, Back to Earth manifests through Serpentine's programmes onsite, offsite and online, sharing its resource to amplify ongoing projects and campaigns and to develop new ones.

We endeavour to broaden our reach further by addressing pressing issues, including ecology, technological advancements, housing, civil liberties and the ageing population and by working with groups and communities that relate to these concerns.

Challenging and reshaping the role that technologies can play in culture and society is part of Serpentine’s commitment to supporting new artistic experiments at what has now become a historical intersection. Our Arts Technologies Programme sits within an evolving R&D Platform that supports the development of infrastructures for ongoing artistic exploration and interrogation of advanced and emerging technologies.

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Trustees’ Report 2020/21

The Trustees, who are also Directors of the Serpentine Trust for the purposes of the Companies Act 2006, have pleasure in submitting their annual report and the audited financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2021.

About Serpentine

Championing the possibilities of new ideas in contemporary art, Serpentine has presented pioneering exhibitions for over half a century from a wide range of emerging practitioners to the most internationally recognised artists of our time. In 2021, Serpentine looks to the future with a programme that responds to the urgent issues of today. Key themes include ecology and the climate emergency, equality and education and the impact of digital and new technologies.

Uniquely situated across two sites in London's Kensington Gardens, Serpentine presents a year-round, free programme of exhibitions, education, live events and technological innovation, in the park and beyond.

A Brief History of Serpentine

Serpentine’s story is the story of contemporary art in Britain. Since its low-key launch in 1970 within a central London lakeside former teahouse, Serpentine has grown in scope, scale and ambition to become one of the most innovative, influential and important arts venues in the world. It is a crucible for artistic daring and audacity that crosses disciplines, blurs boundaries and continues to redefine what an arts institution can be and should do in the 21st century.

Defined by its commitment to remain open, accessible and free for all, Serpentine has shaped and defined the last 50 years of art in Europe. Opening at a time when contemporary art was a niche interest without a permanent London outpost, Serpentine has transformed how the public at large sees, understands and connects with the art, artists and ideas of our time – democratising work that had long been seen as difficult, while simultaneously reinventing and promoting contemporary art for tomorrow’s world today.

Championing art since 1970

A champion for art and artists, Serpentine hosted the first major UK shows by John Baldessari, Louise Bourgeois, Yayoi Kusama, Ed Ruscha, Richard Serra, Gillian Wearing and Rachel Whiteread, and introduced major international artists and movements to the UK through group shows dedicated to everything from American minimalism to video art (as far back as 1972, the first such show to be presented in Europe). Major exhibitions and retrospectives from the likes of Prunella Clough, Antony Gormley, Richard Hamilton, Howard Hodgkin, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, Maria Lassnig, Henry Moore, Mariko Mori, Claes Oldenburg, Tom Philips, Paula Rego, Gerhard Richter, Alison Wilding and Rose Wylie with trailblazing shows that have brought the likes of Anya Gallaccio, Damien Hirst, Gary Hume and Chris Ofili to public attention. And throughout its half-century, Serpentine has consistently led by championing women artists and British artists of every style and stripe.

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But perhaps Serpentine’s defining vision has been that the boundaries of art can – indeed, must – extend far beyond the gallery walls. To the grounds of Kensington Gardens, which have housed numerous unforgettable exhibitions of sculpture along with monumental environmental incursions such as Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The London Mastaba . To the digital realm – Serpentine is near-unique in having a Chief Technology Officer to commission and curate new digital work.

To performance, including such genre-breaking shows as Cornelia Parker and Tilda Swinton’s The Maybe and Marina Abramović’s 512 Hours . To discussions and lectures, as seen through and at such pioneering initiatives as The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish series and summer’s Park Nights . To fashion, most recently with the likes of Grace Wales Bonner’s dazzling A Time for New Dreams . To Gloucester Road tube station, via a 2003 collaboration with Cindy Sherman and London Underground. And, perhaps most famously, to the peerless Pavilion programme, which has seen pioneering architects such as Zaha Hadid, Oscar Niemeyer and Rem Koolhaas and emerging architects such as Frida Escobedo, Smiljan Radić and Francis Keré design and construct a new temporary building from scratch in Kensington Gardens every summer since 2000.

Looking forward to the next 50 years

Guided by CEO Bettina Korek and Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist, Serpentine enters its second halfcentury. With two galleries in Kensington Gardens, following Zaha Hadid’s 2013 conversion of a Grade II* listed gunpowder store into the Serpentine North Gallery, it is as urgent and vital as ever. Working under the pillars of Ecology, Technology and Community , Serpentine is dedicated to exploring, commissioning and promoting the work and the ideas of the most innovative, prescient and exciting artists in our world today.

Mission and Aims

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Organisation Objectives

Our aims for the four years from 2018-2022 include:

  1. Championing an integrated, interdisciplinary and diverse world-class programme

  2. Leading artistic digital transformation

  3. Leading a pioneering Education Programme and redefining the role of arts in society

  4. Welcoming a broad and diverse public

  5. Developing a diverse, high-performing and engaged team; and 6. Improving organisational resilience and sustainability

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Strategic Report 2020/21

Summary of our Activities, Achievements and Performance

Maintained a financial operating model that addressed the challenges the organisation faced, enabling both agility and fast responsiveness to the evolving environment

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Championing an Integrated, Interdisciplinary and Diverse World-Class Programme

A Time to Reflect

In 2020, our plans for our physical galleries were curtailed. Our doors closed and we accelerated new and existing plans to bring our programming online. We worked with new artists and contributors to expand our work further into the digital realm, specifically with Antenna Fantasma , Out of Blueprints and later with our Back to Earth campaigns and Civic Projects workshops.

We worked hard throughout the year to create an inclusive environment for our team and for our visitors. The museum closures during lockdown were challenging but we were able to maintain a connection to visitors online with digital commissions, podcasts, virtual events and tours, and through online outreach and workshops via our civic and education programmes. Once we were able to welcome visitors in person again, we made structural changes to better enable us to build bridges with audiences.

The pandemic created opportunities for us to learn and deepen our engagement with our audiences. We did this by creating more digital initiatives and public programmes around the art we present and slowing down our programme to provide visitors with more time to experience the exhibitions and reflect. We sought to remind everyone of what we are most passionate about - our audiences and supporting artists to explore the boldest and brightest visions of the future.

World-Class Programming

Serpentine presents pioneering exhibitions from a wide range of emerging practitioners to the most internationally recognised artists of our time. Each year, we invite artists from around the world to create an ambitious, innovative and world-class programme.

We welcome a broad and diverse audience from local communities and around the world to inspire and challenge them with the urgency of art and architecture today. Our programme is designed to be thoughtprovoking, exciting and stimulating for our audiences while remaining relevant and responsive to a wider cultural, social and political context. We are committed to broadening our research, deepening our relationships with artists over time and establishing meaningful partnerships with other institutions. Every event we present seeks to respond to the questions: Why here? Why now?

We develop long-term and supportive relationships with the artists we commission, as well as nurturing their conversation with our audiences. Emerging and celebrated artists and architects are given an open landscape for experimentation and creative collaboration. Our curators carry out regular studio visits, offer constructive critique and provide references and introductions for artists at all levels to encourage the creation of new artistic partnerships, networks, commissions and educational opportunities. We embrace the increasingly interdisciplinary approaches of practitioners and create an environment in which the artists we work with can engage with different media, spaces and forms. We work predominantly with living artists, with around one-third of our programme comprising brand new commissions.

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We are committed to programming exhibitions that reflect the diversity of contemporary England. We ensure selected artists come from a range of economic and educational backgrounds while supporting new talent, both UK and international, and engaging new audiences. Each exhibition is carefully conceived in relation to both the scale and architecture of the gallery buildings and their unique location in London's Kensington Gardens.

We are proud of the work our Education and Civic curators have facilitated over the last decade, inviting artists to listen to communities before making work with them. This work has sought to answer how an institution can hold a process that explores the relationship between art and pressing social issues. From Radio Ballads in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham to our Cracks in the Curriculum programme, this work focuses our attention on periods of transition and change in contemporary society.

Each year since 2000, landmark buildings are created for the Serpentine lawn by internationally acclaimed architects who have not yet completed a structure in England at the time of invitation. The Pavilion creates a context for a live programme of discussions, conversations and gatherings around ideas. It also provides a platform for more experimental, interdisciplinary work, including the annual Park Nights series.

Due to the pandemic, our 2020 Pavilion was extended into a two-year project. Designed by Johannesburgbased practice Counterspace, the additional time created space for detailed planning and an exploration of the community aspect of the design. The physical building was built in 2021.

General Ecology is the Serpentine’s long-term and ongoing project, researching complexity, more-thanhumanism, climate justice and environmental balance. Founded in 2018, General Ecology is a strategic effort to embed environmental subjects and methods throughout Serpentine’s outputs, structures and networks. General Ecology concerns itself simultaneously with environmental and organisational ecologies.

Launched in March 2020, Back to Earth invites leading artists, musicians, architects, poets, filmmakers, scientists, thinkers and designers to contribute artworks and projects that call to action in response to the climate emergency. A long-term project, Back to Earth is both a programme about change and a catalyst for change, and addresses the key environmental threats facing our world, such as land rights, water and toxicity, fishing, farming and the limits of consumption.

Our ambition to improve quality, engage with our audiences and establish meaningful collaborations with partner organisations has resulted in our pioneering integrated Exhibitions, Live, General Ecology, Civic and Education programme.

The Arts Technologies programme at Serpentine proposes critical and interdisciplinary perspectives on advanced technologies through artistic interventions. Challenging and reshaping the role that technologies can play in culture and society is part of Serpentine’s commitment to supporting new artistic experiments at what has now become an historical intersection. The programme initiates and supports artists in developing ambitious artworks that deploy advanced technologies as a medium, tool or topic, often operating beyond gallery walls. The foundation of the Arts Technologies programme

The Serpentine Education and Civic Projects programme seeks to redefine the role of the arts in times of transition and social change, addressing issues such as migrant rights, care, schooling and labour with

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individuals and groups excluded from the decision-making processes that shape the places where they live and work. The programme is grounded in a long-term study of radical pedagogy and is made up of ongoing commissions and workshops series, alongside toolkits and resources for change. The Education and Civic Projects team continued this year to serve under-represented communities, supporting thousands of educational encounters and producing downloadable resources and podcasts.

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Exhibition, Live, General Ecology, Civic and Education Programme

Exhibitions

Successive national COVID-19 lockdowns gave Serpentine an opportunity to consider how we could adjust our content to the unfolding challenges and provide enhanced content virtually to an expanding online audience.

Blueprints , by Chinese artist Cao Fei, and Cambio, by design duo Formafantasma had to close shortly after opening in Spring 2020. Both exhibitions moved online with Out of Blueprints , a special moving image programme hosted by Nowness that brought together East Asian practitioners, and Antenna Fantasma, a weekly live programme of conversations around design, ecology and sustainability hosted by Formafantasma.

Summer/Autumn/Winter saw the reopening of Blueprints on 4 August and Formafantasma reopen on 29 September, though the latter closed early due to a second national lockdown. The brief opening of Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing on 4 December took place before the third national lockdown commenced on 21 December. Online, our programmes benefitted from a deeper understanding of how to create meaningful digital audience experiences, ensuring that we were able to reach a global audience 24/7 365 days a year. While our doors may have been closed for much of the season and the first half of 2021, this varied, and politically prescient virtual programme broadened our audience reach and democratised access to art at a time when the imagination and inspiration of artists became more vital than ever.

Whether through artist-led campaigns highlighting the global effects of the climate crisis, educational resources addressing gaps in the national curriculum, or our boundary-pushing arts ecology festival, Serpentine harnessed the power of digital across the seasons to engage audiences with the most urgent issues of our time.

Cao Fei

Blueprints 4 - 19 March 2020

4 August - 13 September 2020 Exhibition

Born in 1978 in Guangzhou, Cao Fei is one of the most innovative young Chinese artists to have emerged on the international scene. Currently living in Beijing, she mixes social commentary, popular aesthetics, references to Surrealism, and documentary conventions in her films and installations. Her works reflect on the rapid and chaotic changes occurring in Chinese society today. Blueprints brought together new and existing works in an immersive, site-specific installation, expanding the themes of automation, virtuality and technology that she continuously draws upon.

We opened the exhibition to the public on 4 March and had to close on 19 March due to the global COVID19 pandemic. We were able to reopen the exhibition on 4 August with a strict limitation on visitor numbers due to the UK governmental regulations on social distancing and issued free, timed tickets to control visitor numbers.

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To extend the reach of the exhibition during its closure period, we created a series in collaboration with Cao Fei, Nowness and K11 Art Foundation called Out of Blueprints which featured several artists from East Asia, including Zheng Yuan, Kim Heecheon, Hsu Che Yu, Sinae Yoo, Wang Tuo, Everyday Holiday Squad (aka Side Core) and Ma Qiusha.

This exhibition was Cao Fei’s first large-scale institutional solo exhibition in the UK, and is the third time that she has participated in Serpentine’s artistic programme: firstly, as part of China Power Station: Part 1 , an offsite Serpentine exhibition at Battersea Power Station in 2006, where the artist presented her film, Whose Utopia? , and then in 2008, with the installation of RMB City in the gallery’s entrance space, where visitors could access a fictional city constructed in the online virtual world of Second Life.

Blueprints included the world premiere of the virtual reality work, The Eternal Wave , produced in collaboration with Acute Art. This site-specific installation brought together collected archival material and furniture based on elements of Cao Fei’s Beijing studio, and her latest film, Nova .

In response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, Acute Art developed an augmented reality version of The Eternal Wave for the re-opening of the exhibition in August. This new artwork, visible through visitors’ smartphones, represented the second chapter in Cao Fei’s recent exploration of virtual possibilities. These three interconnected works marked the culmination of her extensive research in Beijing over the previous five years, examining the social history and urban transformation of the city’s Jiuxianqiao (‘Hong Xia’) district where she lives and works. This new body of work was presented within an installation that brought together a selection of the artist’s previous film works to expand the themes of automation, virtuality and technology, giving visitors an introduction to her wider practice.

Audience Figures:

4 - 19 March 9.8k 4 August - 13 September 4.5k Total Visitors 14.3k

Cao Fei

Out of Blueprints 4 April - 4 August 2020 Online Exhibition

Out of Blueprints was an online exhibition of moving image work produced in response to the closure of the Blueprints exhibition due to the COVID-19 crisis. Artists featured were Cao Fei, Zheng Yuan, Kim Heecheon, Hsu Che Yu, Sinae Yoo, Wang Tuo, Everyday Holiday Squad (aka Side Core) and Ma Qiusha.

In partnership with the NOWNESS and K11 Art Foundation, this new programme illustrated how artists and institutions turned closure into creation, and adversity into innovation, as each week an East Asia-based practitioner released a moving image work on NOWNESS. Standing in solidarity with artists affected by the outbreak, Out of Blueprints traversed borders to make thought provoking art freely accessible to audiences around the world.

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‘Out of Blueprints come new realities .’ This was a statement and situation we grappled with after Cao Fei’s exhibition was forced to close, but it also marked a starting point to be productive rather than resolute. At a moment when travel restrictions closed borders internationally, and our sense of physical stasis never felt more apparent, the exhibition questioned what it means to ‘discover the universal’ again, to find connections in other spaces, and to travel to other places and times.

This online programme began by responding to the sense of a universal experience created by COVID-19, but more importantly it was concerned with providing a small but hopefully meaningful platform for artists and audiences through a series of works freely accessible digitally around the world, to show support and solidarity with artists affected by the virus borders to make thought-provoking art that was freely accessible to audiences around the world.

Out of Blueprints – Nowness Partnership

Cao Fei’s film Same Old, Brand New , documenting the artist’s 2015 video installation which transformed Hong Kong’s tallest building into a Pacman game received an impressive 400k views.

Publication and Limited Edition

To coincide with the showing of Blueprints , Serpentine co-published HX . This publication forms part of the artist’s extensive research project of the same name developed over several years and will be a lasting asset long after the show.

HX takes Cao Fei’s studio, the former Hongxia Theatre, as a starting point, and expands out into neighbouring Jiuxianqiao and Dashanzi Districts. The theatre was built during a period of intense industrial development throughout the 1940s, 50s and 60s fuelled by the assistance of communist allies in the USSR and DDR. During this period Jiuxianqiao changed from a rural area into a conglomerate of factory infrastructures as part of China’s development of advanced electronics. It was here that the first Chinese computer was invented. The Hongxia Theatre was located at the heart of this activity, functioning as a social space until its permanent closure in 2008 in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics. In 2015, following the demolition of her previous studio, Cao Fei came across the theatre and moved in, initiating what would become a five-year research project mining the social and economic histories of this charged space and its surrounding neighbourhood.

The two limited editions, Nova 15a and Nova 18a, are two film stills from Cao Fei's new video work, Nova , a ‘retro-Sci-Fi’, produced as part of the HX research project. The film tells the story of a computer scientist working on a secret international project that attempts to turn humans into digital mediums. A failed attempt to use his son as a test case results in a young man becoming lost in cyberspace, a spectre haunting the past, present and future worlds that continuously interact and overlap throughout the film. By mining the history of her immediate context, Cao Fei takes us on a ‘retro-futurist’ journey that goes beyond chronological time and hovers between reality and fantasy.

Audience Figures:

Audience Figures:
Instagram followers increased by 14.1k
Twitter follower increase 1.4k
Facebook likes increase 394

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Exhibition web page hits to June 2020 9.3k Exhibition web page hits June to Sept 2020 22.8k

Serpentine sent out approximately 2,000 press releases about the Spring season with a press page available to access freely on the website. A newsletter announcing the opening of the Cao Fei exhibition reached 26k for the first preview and 25.2k for the re-opening announcement. Cao Fei received a glowing five-star review from The Guardian , four stars in Timeout and four stars in The Telegraph . Blueprints was also listed in The Observer’s ‘Cultural Highlights’ in the opening week.

“An immaculately crafted exhibition...this latest in the Serpentine's exploration of VR and AI is exceptional both in engaging so critically with the 'century of progress' that precedes it, and in suggesting that redemption lies not in new technology, but human contact.”

Hettie Judah, The Guardian ***

Formafantasma

Cambio

4 March - 19 March 2020

9 September - 4 November 2020 Exhibition

Andrea Trimarchi (b. 1983) and Simone Farresin (b. 1980) are the Amsterdam-based Italian designers behind Formafantasma . Since meeting at Design Academy Eindhoven over ten years ago, their practice – characterised by experimental material investigations – has explored the history and implications of turning natural resources into commodities. Bridging craft, industry, object and user, their research-based practice remains relevant to the design industry at large.

The studio’s work has been presented, published and acquired by international institutions including New York’s MoMA and Metropolitan Museum, London’s V&A and Centre Pompidou in Paris. In March 2011, Paola Antonelli of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and esteemed design critic Alice Rawsthorn included Formafantasma in a shortlist of practices that would shape the future of design.

Cambio , from the medieval Latin cambium , ‘change, exchange’, was an investigation into the governance of the timber industry. The evolution of this form of commerce over time, and its tentacular expansion across the globe, has made it difficult to regulate. The industry grew out of the bioprospecting that took place throughout colonial territories during the 19th century, becoming one of the largest industries in the world both in terms of the revenue it generates and the impact it has on the planet’s biosphere. The earliest objects in the exhibition were samples of rare hardwoods first exhibited in the Great Exhibition of 1851, a few hundred metres from the Serpentine Galleries, which represented trees logged to the point of extinction. The newest were the exhibition display furniture and seating designed by Formafantasma, all of which were made from a single tree blown over in a storm in northern Italy in 2018. Contained in every piece of wood was an archive of climatic change and the movement of natural materials around the world.

We opened the exhibition to the public on 4 March and closed on 19 March due to the global pandemic. While the show was closed, we collaborated with Formafantasma on the live series Antenna Fantasma as a way of exploring ideas of ecology and design examined in the show through conversations with designers,

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architects, academics, scientists and curators. We were able to reopen on 29 September with a strict limitation on visitor numbers due to the UK government’s regulations on social distancing. During this second run we issued free, timed tickets and welcomed 4,728 visitors.

Publication & Limited Edition

The Cambio catalogue presented the research at the core of the exhibition and was extremely popular with visitors, selling out two print runs. The publication gathered a range of texts, interviews and visual materials that posed questions about the role that design can play in translating emerging environmental awareness into informed, collaborative responses. A limited-edition stool was created by Formafantasma for the exhibition. Like all display and seating in the exhibition, it was made from a single tree blown over in a storm in northern Italy in 2018.

Livestream with Dezeen

To launch the exhibition on 3 March, Dezeen's chief content officer Benedict Hobson spoke to Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin of Formafantasma about their new exhibition Cambio with an exclusive talk livestreamed to Dezeen’s online audience. Introduced by Rebecca Lewin, Curator of Exhibitions and Design, Serpentine.

Attendance Figures:
4 March - 19 March 8.8k
29 September - 4 November 4,7k
Total Visitors 13.5k
Guide starts downloaded Oct to Dec 3.3k

“Elegantly presented, rich in detail and broad but concentrated in view, the exhibition is an adept

demonstration of design’s usefulness in spaces and formats more usually given over to art…Cambio is also quite brave… If designers are to have any role in sparing our world from climate catastrophe, Formafantasma must be heeded.”

Joe Lloyd, Icon

Antenna Fantasma

Formafantasma

Weekly Live Programme

Antenna Fantasma was a weekly live program of conversations around design, ecology and sustainability hosted by Formafantasma. It was produced during lockdown in response to the temporary closure of Formafantasma’s

Cambio exhibition as a way of exploring ideas of ecology and design examined in the show through conversations with designers, architects, academics, scientists and curators who contributed. Guests included Paola Antonelli (MoMA), Stefano Boeri (Architect), Rebecca Lewin (Serpentine Galleries) and more.

Formafantasma (Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin) are designers who dissect the ecological and political responsibilities of their discipline. Their holistic approach reaches back into the history of a particular material used by humans, out towards the patterns of supply chains that have developed to

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support and expand its use, and forward to the future of that material’s survival in relation to human consumption.

Audience Figures:

Audience Figures:
Rebecca Lewin, Curator of Exhibitions and Design at Serpentine
 13.5k
Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator of Architecture and Design, and Director of R&D at MoMA 12k
Stefano Boeri, Architect, professor and Chairman of Fondazione La Triennale in Milan 8.1k
Paulo Tavares, Architect, Writer & Researcher 7.5k
Phillip Pattberg, Professor of Transnational Environmental Governance & Policy at VU, Amsterdam 6.5k
Mauro Agnoletti, Director of the Laboratory for Landscape & Cultural Heritage, University of Florence 4.7k
Total Viewers
52.4k
Total Instagram Live Views:
65k

Jennifer Packer

The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing

5 - 21 December 2020, due to reopen 19 May - 22 Aug 2021

Exhibition

Jennifer Packer (b. 1984, Philadelphia) is known for painting intimate portraits of friends and family members and funerary bouquet still lifes. Working from a combination of observation, improvisation and memory, Packer’s expressionistic paintings and large-scale drawings reveal the emotional and physical fragility of life. Characterised by a vibrant approach to colour and a powerful play of scale, she layers, obscures and reveals her subjects through constant shifts between the foreground and background, and figuration and abstraction.

“My inclination to paint, especially from life, is a completely political one. We belong here. We deserve to be seen and acknowledged in real time. We deserve to be heard and to be imaged with shameless generosity and accuracy.” Jennifer Packer

This exhibition, the artist’s first outside of the US, included paintings and drawings from the past decade alongside recent work. Combining observation, improvisation and memory, Packer’s intimate portraits of friends and family members and flower still paintings insist on the emotional and physical essence of the contemporary Black lives she depicts. While the casual repose of her portraits is the result of her care for the sitters, Packer acknowledges her choice to paint figures as political, stating: ‘representation and particularly, observation from life, are ways of bearing witness and sharing testimony’.

Jennifer Packer’s paintings recalibrate art historical approaches to these enduring genres, casting them in a political and contemporary light, while rooted in a deeply personal context. On occasion, Packer describes her flower compositions as funerary bouquets and vessels of personal grief; these paintings about loss are often made in response to tragedies of state and institutional violence against Black Americans.

Featuring 34 works dated from 2011 to 2020, the exhibition presented portraits of artists from Packer’s New York circle, monochromatic paintings, intimate interiors and flower still lifes including Say Her Name (2017),

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painted in response to the suspicious death of Sandra Bland, a Black American woman who is largely believed to have been murdered while in police custody in 2015. The exhibition also includes drawings which for Packer are rarely just a study but hold a weight of their own that differs from paintings.

Audience Figures:

Total visitors 5-15 December: 1.7k

During the first week of Jennifer Packer’s exhibition opening in December 2020, Serpentine’s digital engagement saw a huge boost:

“I cannot recommend this exhibition highly enough. There are a lot of good painting shows on in London at the moment…but if you only have time to visit one, go to the Serpentine Gallery to see this outstanding Jennifer Packer exhibition. It really is as good as art gets.”

★★★★★ Will Gompertz, BBC Arts

“Packer seems to be asking who is looking, and what it is you are looking for. Painting is a good medium for such questions, which feel endless and unanswerable.”

★★★★ Adrian Searle, The Guardian

A Celebration of James Barnor

Portraits of the Future

31 March 2021

Online

In anticipation of the Summer 2021 opening of the long-awaited retrospective of pioneering BritishGhanaian photographer James Barnor, whose career as a studio portraitist, photojournalist and Black lifestyle photographer spans six decades, Serpentine ran a fundraiser to go beyond the walls of the gallery. All funds raised were dedicated to bringing this landmark exhibition to life with a free public programme of activity. After a year of social distancing, the aim was to connect with audiences online and later in-person, sharing Barnor’s wonderful work and support a summer-long calendar of photography, poetry, music and more.

Hosted by Clara Amfo, the event featured Barnor in conversation with photographer Tyler Mitchell and Hans Ulrich Obrist; music by Ebo Taylor; poetry by Nii Ayikwei Parkes; a look through the archives with Black in the Day; contributions from Sir David Adjaye, Naomi Campbell and British Vogue Editor-In-Chief Edward Enninful; plus instructions, reflections and tips from some of the most exciting photographers working today, including Liz Johnson Artur, Samuel Fosso, Eric Gyamfi, Zohra Opoku, Dayanita Singh, Ming Smith and Tourmaline.

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“Enjoying this event. First time (shamefully!) I've come across James Barnor's work #PortraitsForTheFuture.” Diane Apeah-Kubi via Twitter

Jakob Kudsk Steensen

Catharsis

14 January - 31 May 2020

Exhibition, Digital

Serpentine presented Catharsis by Danish artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen as part of global public art project, CONNECT, BTS, a series of major art projects open free to the public in five cities on four continents initiated by South Korean pop group BTS.

Jakob Kudsk Steensen (b. 1987) is a Danish artist based in New York concerned with how imagination, technology and ecology intertwine. His works range from immersive VR ecosystems to mixed reality installations bridging physical and digital worlds, which invite audiences to enter new ecological realities.

Catharsis immersed audiences within a digital simulation of a re-imagined old-growth forest, a forest that has developed undisturbed over hundreds of years. Based on field work undertaken by Kudsk Steensen and his primary collaborator Matt McCorkle, the work’s virtual ecosystem and synchronised audio comprised 3D textures and sounds gathered from several North American forests.

Jakob Kudsk Steensen

The Deep Listener

12 July 2019 - 31 December 2020

Augmented Architecture

The Deep Listener was an augmented reality commission that immersed visitors within the complex ecosystems that circulate the Serpentine’s Park setting, providing as it has throughout history, the architectural backdrop to access the natural world that exists within the city. Designed as an augmented reality and spatial audio work downloadable as an app for mobile devices, it provided an audio-visual ecological trail through the park to see and hear five of London’s species: London plane trees, bats, parakeets, azure blue damselflies and reedbeds. The work was both a site-specific public artwork and a digital archive of these species. The work was presented by the Serpentine in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture and Sir David Adjaye OBE.

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Back to Earth

Back to Earth is a multi-year project that invites over sixty leading artists, architects, poets, filmmakers, scientists, thinkers and designers, to devise artist-led campaigns, protocols and initiatives responding to the environmental crisis, with the support of partner organisations and networks. Interdisciplinary at its very core, Back to Earth manifests throughout our programmes onsite, offsite and online, sharing its resources to amplify ongoing projects or campaigns, or develop new ones.

The project continued to grow in 2021, with five new campaigns launched in January, February and March. A collaboration with WePresent saw Back to Earth projects take on new formats and reach ever broader audiences, while a partnership with the Archaeological Park of Pompeii is raising artist-led questions around archaeology, archaeobotany and archaeozoology.

Audience Figures WePresent:
Average readers per feature 500k
Impressions for artists’ chosen charities 10M
Boost in visits to Back to Earth web pages 500%

Back to Earth Earth Perspectives Olafur Eliasson 22 April 2020 Artist Campaign/Project

A multidisciplinary artist, Olafur Eliasson has long been using art to bring the public’s attention to the climate crisis: His work Ice Watch brought melting icebergs from Greenland to Copenhagen in 2014 and to Paris on the occasion of the COP21 Climate Conference in 2015. Eliasson is also the co-founder of Little Sun , a company that provides clean, affordable energy to communities without access to electricity.

A participatory project that invited the public to discover a new world view, Earth perspectives was shared by millions around the world on Earth Day 2020. A series of nine world views over Earth, the project encapsulates how maps, space, and the earth itself are human constructs, which we have the power to see from other perspectives, whether individually or collectively. The piece, which includes views of earth from the Great Barrier Reef, the Ganges River, Chernobyl, and the Greenland ice sheet, seeks to provoke the viewer into recalibrating their relationship with how they see the world.

Audience Figures:
Instagram 5M
Instagram Live 12k
Twitter 1.5M
Facebook 18k
Total social media reach 6.7M

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Create Art for Earth Judy Chicago, Jane Fonda and Swoon Dates: 22 April 2020 - ongoing Artist Campaign, Project

The Serpentine teamed up with artists Judy Chicago and Swoon, Jane Fonda, Greenpeace USA and the Women, Arts and Social Change initiative of National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington, D.C. to launch #CreateArtForEarth .

CreateArtForEarth is a global creative campaign to encourage art that addresses the climate crisis and inspires action. #CreateArtForEarth is conceived as part of Serpentine’s Back to Earth campaign. During this period of uncertainty and social distancing, while the streets and empty and in-person demonstrations were suspended, #CreateArtForEarth was an open call to make protest visible and create art that reflects our mutual commitment to stop the climate crisis and protect the planet.

Audience Figures:
Social Media #CreateArtforEarth 11.5k
Instagram Stories 11.1k
#CreateArtforEarth hashtag on Instagram 4k
Swoon Zoom class for Earth Day on Instagram 19k

Refuse Trespassing Our Bodies, Metabolic Selves

1 October 2020

Metabolic Selves is an initiative designed by the Royal College of Art’s Architecture studio ADS3: Refuse Trespassing our Bodies , led by spatial practitioners Cooking Sections . The campaign looks afresh at our relationship with metabolism, considering the microscopic agents and materials, from microplastics to formaldehyde, that traverse our bodies and through them our environments.

Over the course of 2019/20, each researcher in the collective focused on a particular material or substance to consider the metabolic processes that have emerged from human activity and geopolitical systems. This research was gathered on an online platform, Metabolic Selves , which invites audiences to engage in a threedimensional environment with the outcomes of this research.

The platform was launched on 1 October 2020 with an online in-conversation event featuring sociologist Hannah Landecker, human rights and environmental activist Kumi Naidoo and artist researcher and writer Susan Schuppli. The talk was viewed over 500 times.

Karrabing Film Collective, The Family

15 October 2020

Karrabing Film Collective is an indigenous media group who use filmmaking to retain connections to their land and ancestors and interrogate the conditions of inequality for Aboriginal people in Australia.

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The Collective creates films through ‘improvisational realism’ that open a space beyond binaries of fiction and documentary, past and present.

The campaign amplifies ancestral Emmi narratives, rooted in the ecologically fragile Mabuluk (Cape Ford) region of Southern Australia. The Family comprised two artistic outputs as well as the comprehensive digital mapping of an extensive network of rock weirs and shell middens in the Mabuluk region. The artistic outputs comprised a film - The Family - co commissioned by Serpentine, and a series of locally situated large scale wood-based graffiti maps. While the campaign initially centred on these artistic outputs, its ultimate goal is the creation of a Mabuluk region cultural heritage area.

Manthia Diawara

15 October 2020

Manthia Diawara (b. 1953) is a writer, filmmaker, cultural theorist, scholar and art historian. He holds the title of University Professor at New York University, where he is Director of the Institute of African American Affairs. For Back to Earth, Diawara made a new film emerging from conversations with the community in which he lives for part of the year in the seaside town of Yene, Senegal. The film connects local economies in Yene with philosophical approaches to climate change drawn from Édouard Glissant.

Retracing the Roots: Formafantasma, Anab Jain and Mantha Diawara

15 October 2020

Following on from Tracing the Roots , a podcast episode recorded earlier in 2020, Back to Earth artists Manthia Diawara and Anab Jain (Superflux) met Formafantasma in an online discussion to consider how art, design and philosophy can affect long term change in the face of ecological crisis.

Connecting Formafantasma’s exhibition Cambio and Serpentine’s ongoing environmental project Back to Earth, this discussion brought together artists and practices that span multiple continents, perspectives and media, but which share key concerns such as ‘how can we do better by learning more about the systems of which we are a part?’ , or ‘How do we go about changing these systems, and our own behaviours as a result?’ Manthia Diawara spoke about his new film for Back to Earth, Anab Jain described her studio’s process of introducing audiences to possible futures through multimedia installations, films, objects, systems and technologies, and Formafantasma focused on what they have learnt from Cambio and from the pandemic as designers and as teachers.

Revital Cohen & Tuur van Balen, Heavens

28 January 2021

In its completed version, forthcoming in late 2021, Heavens will be a moving-image work and installation. Created using planetarium projection methods to overlay planetary footage with deep sea

imagery, Heavens looks at deep space to see deep into the ocean, or perhaps the other way around. A multichannel sound installation will form a choir of voices (human and non), unravelling a creation myth based on the hypothesis of a cosmic cause to the Cambrian explosion.

Over time, the work will be developed and produced through a series of encounters with multiple experts (marine and evolutionary scientists, astronomers, ministers, a sexologist, a psychotherapist, an escape artist and a representative of SpaceX, among others). These conversations will follow cultural narratives and scientific observations inspired by octopuses’ behaviour, anatomy and mythology: its complex mating

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strategies, self-cannibalism, the erotic iconography that surrounds this animal, as well as its function in oracle rituals. The octopus, an invisible yet ghostly presence in the final work, will thus act as a facilitator of deep encounters, guiding the research and narrative while remaining absent.

Tai Shani, Untitled Hieroglyphs

11 February 2021

The Archaeological Park of Pompeii, Italy and Serpentine’s Back to Earth project have teamed up in the context of Pompeii’s first contemporary art programme, Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters , inviting three artists involved in the Serpentine’s Back to Earth project to share insights from their ongoing research which intersects with questions connected to archaeology, archaeobotany and archaeozoology. As part of this collaboration, artist Tai Shani developed Untitled Hieroglyphs , a film and sound art project emerging from the artist’s research into psychedelics, feminism and myth and unfolding throughout 2021.

Untitled Hieroglyphs weaves together a series of poetic considerations on a feminist history of Ergot, a fungus that grows on rye and other common grains from which the hallucinogenic drug LSD is derived. Shani’s investigation spans many fields – from the cellular to the galactic, from Palaeolithic cave markings to the optic markings left by drone photography in our internal eye, dancing plagues, communist psychedelic witches, hyper-sexual fungi, descents and ascents. In the artist’s words, through Untitled Hieroglyphs Shani addresses ‘the building of a house we will never live in, a house for our ghosts, where the gothic and the hallucinatory collide, where gothic affects and fractal dread form a mausoleum for psychedelic spectres. Also the sun! Sun is a ghost that haunts the night!’ The expansion of consciousness and hallucinatory qualities of psychedelic experiences thus offers both a hypothesis and an access point to multiple histories and alternative forms of knowledge.

Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg

18 February 2021

Developed in response to the Eden Project’s three-year project, Create a Buzz , which focuses on telling the story of UK’s native pollinators, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg has developed a special algorithm that optimises garden designs – including plant species and layout – for pollinators rather than humans. This resulted in a new outdoor garden commission onsite in Cornwall as well as a new website through which audiences can develop their own garden design using the same algorithm.

As part of Back to Earth, Serpentine will work with the Eden Project and Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg to investigate the possibility of a London garden optimised for pollinators, and to disseminate the website to its audiences and networks, with the aim of multiplying the number of pollinator-optimised gardens worldwide.

As a first release within the Back to Earth framework, Ginsberg had a conversation with Serpentine’s Curator of Exhibition and Design, Rebecca Lewin, in a discussion jointly produced for a collaboration between Serpentine and the Archaeological Park of Pompeii’s contemporary art platform, Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters.

“I want to make an artwork for pollinators, not about them.” Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg

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Vivienne Westwood, SWITCH

23 February 2021

Vivienne Westwood is calling for clear change: ‘First step to save the environment: SWITCH to Green Energy.’ We must change our energy source, we must do it quickly, and then we must reflect on our behaviours to commit to and make long term difference. Westwood is encouraging us to make changes now that will translate into a significant impact in the environmental effort and reminds us that the consumer has the agency. Westwood’s campaign for Back to Earth, specifically focuses on switching to green energy. ‘We’ve got five years to fix it’ , as Westwood declares.

In September 2017, Vivienne Westwood, along with the British Fashion Council, and support from the London Mayor’s office, launched the SWITCH to Green campaign to encourage the fashion industry to switch all UK offices and stores to a green energy supplier. Concurrently, Westwood has been developing a longterm relationship with Cool Earth , a charity that works alongside communities to reduce deforestation and its impact on climate change. Everything is connected, as Vivienne says: ‘ Tropical rainforests are the lungs of the world – they breathe for us, they give life. We need to cultivate and respect nature. We must rely on cooperation and collaboration to maximise our impact: we must act now! What’s good for the planet is good for the economy.’

For the second issue of Groundwork with WePresent, Vivienne Westwood shared her call to action for the planet: SWITCH to Green Energy, supported by punk visuals and her history as an environmental activist. Westwood has nominated Cool Earth as her chosen charity.

Himali Singh Soin, Static Range

29 March 2021

Static range is a multi-disciplinary and multi-limbed project using a real-life spy-story in the Indian Himalayas as a springboard for speculations and reflections about invisibility, leakages, spiritual entanglements, nuclear culture, socio-political marginalisation and Icarian delusions. The series of transmissions that make up static range included an adapted stamp, letters, an animation, music, embroidery, healing, planting and a performance installation.

‘Dear mountain, how does one move you. shift you, but also elicit emotion, make you cry because something was too beautiful or it hurt.’

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Serpentine Podcast

The Serpentine Podcast is a hybrid publishing and commissioning platform for audio. It supports a nomadic live broadcast radio station and a living archive of our programme. As an editorial platform, it responds to a wider cultural and socio-political context while expanding upon the research and knowledge generated by Serpentine’s programme.

The platform was initiated on the occasion of the Transformation Marathon in 2015. It has become a permanent fixture of Serpentine’s programme and now brings together over 10 years of audio experiments and commissions from our archives.

As part of the Back to Earth campaign, a series of podcasts aimed to answer the questions; How are artists developing campaigns for the Earth? How can an artwork reconnect us with the environment? Can we ‘feel’ the speed of climate change, or hear the sounds of a seed?

Each week, hosts Victoria Sin and Lucia Pietroiusti, interviewed artists including Ayesha Tan Jones, James Bridle, Cecilia Vicuña & Brian Eno along with climate change campaigners, botanists and other experts. They explored the scientific, artistic and spiritual in wide ranging conversations about how creativity can help in the fight against the destruction of our planet.

Back to Earth Podcasts:

How Do We Get There? 3 April Sowing the Seeds 17 April Drops Make an Ocean 1 May By Leaves We Listen 19 June Tracing the Roots 26 June Systems and Sprouts 8 July Standing with the Forest 7 August Queer Currents 21 August Total Streams 50k

Groundwork

WePresent Partnership for Back to Earth

Groundwork is a collaboration between Serpentine Galleries and WePresent (WeTransfer). It explores the extensive research behind five artists’ proposals for Back To Earth: Serpentine’s multi-year exhibition focused on instigating change regarding the climate crisis.

Groundwork acted as a series of accessible mini-encyclopaedias with all the research and references artists use to come to a final artwork. They will go behind-the-scenes on the research the artists have done, in a bid to reveal their processes and inform how the viewer sees their project as a whole when it’s finished. It will involve diving deep into the research of artists such as Karrabing Film Collective, Revital & Tuur, Vivienne Westwood, Tabita Rezaire and Himali Singh Soin.

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Groundwork campaign by WePresent x Serpentine won the Communication Arts (CommArts) Design Awards - Public Service category. It has been selected by the 2021 jury to appear in Design Annual 62, the September/October 2021 issue of Communication Arts.

Engagement with WePresent Wallpapers:

Rev & Tuur

Impressions: 30.26m Clicks: 264.96k CTR: 0.88%

Vivienne Westwood

Impressions: 23.00m Clicks: 88.78k CTR: 0.39%

Himali Singh Soin

Impressions: 30.28m Clicks: 112.67k

General Ecology

General Ecology is Serpentine’s long-term and ongoing project researching complexity, more-thanhumanism, climate justice and environmental balance. Founded in 2018, it is a strategic effort to embed environmental subjects and methods throughout our outputs, structures and networks.

General Ecology concerns itself simultaneously with environmental and organisational ecologies. It manifests through publications, exhibitions, study programmes, radio, symposia and live events as well as structural and systemic initiatives, bringing together practitioners from the fields of art, design, science, literature and anthropology, among many others.

In 2014, Serpentine collaborated with artist Gustav Metzger on the Extinction Marathon , hailed by The Guardian as ‘The artworld’s bid to save the world’ . Since this pivotal event, the Serpentine has continued its research around ecology, climate change, animality, human and artificial consciousness, wellbeing, extinction, technology and multi-scale complexity.

The Long Time Sessions

1 October 2020

The Long Time Sessions were a fortnightly Zoom talk series centred around the question of how we can cultivate care for the world beyond our own lifetimes. Bringing together leading thinkers from varied fields to explore how the long term can change the way we act in the short term, the series was organised by The Long Time Project, in collaboration with the RSA and the General Ecology Network at the Serpentine Galleries.

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In the fifth session of the series, speakers from around the world considered the ways in which present day inequalities will shape the future, explored how we can decolonise the future, and questioned who has access to shaping and imagining futures. Participants included designer and futurist Anab Jain, writer and activist Yasnaya Elena Aguilar and filmmaker and activist Caterina Coppel.

About Place: A Conversation

22 October 2020

As part of Thanks for Nothing’s third annual symposium, on Art, Sustainability and Commitment, in partnership with Serpentine’s General Ecology Network and ArtReview, Serpentine convened About Place , a conversation between artists Fernando García Dory and Isabel Lewis, chaired by Serpentine General Ecology curator Lucia Pietroiusti. The artists reflected on their practices’ shared profound commitment to place and discussed ecological work, situated knowledges and rooted practice.

The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish: The Understory of the Understory

5 - 6 December 2020

The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish is an ongoing research project and series of festivals dedicated to unpicking the assumptions we make about the centrality and exceptionalism of humanity. In December, Serpentine took the latest in this series online for the first time at themind.fish . Attracting 6000 visitors digitally across the two-day event, the festival facilitated dynamic interdisciplinary discussion with contributions from artists, anthropologists, architects, scientists, ecologists and writers from all over the world.

By considering The Understory of the Understory , participants took us into the ground to explore a universe where lichens and mycelium, vertebrates and invertebrates, bacteria and pathogens, roots and soil come together and constitute one another. Drawing on the digital convening experience necessitated by the pandemic, Serpentine curators were able to meaningfully build on this series, with its most international and accessible programme to date. All festival talks are now available to watch on Serpentine’s YouTube channel.

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Public Art

Sophia al-Maria, Tosh Basco and Kelsey Lu, Tarax’sup? Digital presence on 21 December 2020 and 21 March before public sculpture installed on 21 June

Sophia Al-Maria is a Qatari-American artist who lives in London. Though her work spans many disciplines including drawing, film and screenwriting for TV, it is united by a preoccupation with the power of storytelling and myth, and in particular with imagining revisionist histories and alternative futures. Her work has been exhibited and published internationally and collaboration remains a fundamental principle of her expansive practice. Sophia was the co-curator of the Serpentine Miracle Marathon in 2016, participated in the 2014 Extinction and 2015 Transformation Marathons and her films have been screened widely at Serpentine Cinemas and symposia, most recently as part of the General Ecology programme.

tarax’sup? is a collaborative project between Sophia Al-Maria, Tosh Basco, Kelsey Lu and more to come. Launching on the Winter Solstice, 21 December 2020, tarax’sup? - a short meditative audio exercise inspired by the common dandelion (taraxacum officinale) was written and performed by Sophia Al-Maria, with a musical score by Kelsey Lu and cover artwork by Tosh Basco (boychild) developed collaboratively throughout late 2020.

The work took the image of the dandelion at its centre to explore the ‘seeding’ of ideas, kinship, our connection to nature and abolitionist thinking through breathwork, deep listening and the principles of guided meditation imagery. tarax’sup? can be used at home as a means to access a different kind of space or used in different environments such as on a daily walk as a way to connect to one’s surroundings. tarax’sup? is a moment of first seeding, a prelude to Sophia Al-Maria’s ongoing project with the Serpentine, Taraxos , which ruminates on the dandelion.

For part two of Taraxos, on the Spring Equinox, A Wish is a Form of Travel , Al-Maria chatted with artist Leila Dear about the mathematics of flowers, the healing power of geometry and float through the new series of drawings Dear produced for the project based on the structure of a dandelion blowball. Part three of Taraxos, a physical portal, will flower on the Summer Solstice outside Serpentine.

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Architecture Programme

Serpentine Pavilion 2021 Designed by Counterspace 11 June - 17 October 2021 Pavilion

The 20th Serpentine Pavilion was designed by Johannesburg-based practice Counterspace, directed by Sumayya Vally. A TIME100 Next List honoree, Vally is the youngest architect to be commissioned for this internationally renowned architecture programme. Counterspace’s design was based on gathering spaces and community places around the city, folding London into the Pavilion structure in Kensington Gardens. The shapes of the Pavilion have been created from a process of addition, superimposition, subtraction and splicing of architectural forms, directly transcribed from existing spaces with particular relevance to migrant and other peripheral communities in London, including Brixton, Edgware Road, Barking and Dagenham and Hoxton.

For the first time since the annual architecture programme was founded in 2000, the Pavilion was extended into a two-year commission to allow a greater period of planning and outreach.

For the first time in the history of the Serpentine Pavilion commission, four Fragments of the Serpentine Pavilion 2021 designed by Counterspace are placed in partner organisations whose work has inspired its design. They are located in New Beacon Books in Finsbury Park, one of the first Black publishers and booksellers in the UK; a multi-purpose venue and community hub The Tabernacle in Notting Hill; arts centre the Albany in Deptford, and the new Becontree Forever Arts and Culture Hub at Valence Library in Barking and Dagenham, which was established this year to commemorate the centenary of the UK’s largest council housing estate. The Fragments support the everyday operations of these organisations while enabling and honouring gatherings of local communities that they have supported for years.

Since its inception, the Pavilion has become an established home for Serpentine’s Live Programmes. This year the Pavilion will also host a specially commissioned sound programme Listening to the City that features work by artists including Ain Bailey and Jay Bernard, connecting visitors to the stories and sounds of selected London neighbourhoods.

It also sees the return of the Park Night series of live encounters and a mini festival of Back to Earth activations, marking the progress of Serpentine’s long term environmental programme, including sound commissions from Brian Eno and Torkwase Dyson.

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International Touring Programme

Despite the global pandemic, several of Serpentine’s exhibitions toured internationally:

Luchita Hurtado: I Live I Die I Will Be Reborn

LACMA, Los Angeles, USA

16 February - 20 November 2020

Luchita Hurtado: I Live I Die I Will Be Reborn presented the first career survey of paintings and works on paper by multifaceted artist Luchita Hurtado (Venezuela, b. 1920). Prior to 2016, the remarkable breadth of Hurtado’s eight-decade career was virtually unknown, as her works were kept in storage and out of public view for most of her life. This exhibition introduced museum audiences to several distinct bodies of work, including Hurtado’s early forays into abstraction, her consistent use of the body as a subject, her experiments with language, and her recent engagement with issues of environment and ecology. Hurtado lived and worked in Santa Monica from the early 1950s until her death in 2020. In 2019 she was named to the Time 100 list of most influential people. This exhibition was organised by Serpentine, in association with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Faith Ringgold Bildmuseet Umeå, Sweden 27 August 2020 - 10 January 2021

As an artist, activist and author, Faith Ringgold has challenged injustices and prejudices about Afro-American identity for five decades. In this large retrospective exhibition created by Serpentine, Bildmuseet presented her paintings, graphics and textile works from the 1960s to the 2000s.

Ringgold was born in Harlem, New York in 1930 and grew up during the creative and intellectual era known as the Harlem Renaissance. Throughout her artistic life, which began in the early 1960s, she has been in the centre of contemporary debate, with paintings inspired by the American civil rights movement and feminism, as well as with autobiographical textile stories. In her work, she draws inspiration from several visual and cultural sources, early European modernism as well as traditional quilts and their place in the history of slavery.

She lives in New Jersey, USA, and is represented at the Guggenheim, MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Her first retrospective in the Nordic countries, this exhibition was initiated by Serpentine, London, and curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Melissa Blanchflower. For its presentation at Bildmuseet, it was curated by Anders Jansson.

Arthur Jafa: A Series of Utterly Improbable, Yet Extraordinary Renditions (Featuring Ming Smith, Frida Orupabo and Missylanyus)

Serralves Museum, Porto, Portugal 21 February - 27 September 2020

Known as a cinematographer and filmmaker, Arthur Jafa presented in this exhibition works he has made as a visual artist for the past two decades. Using film, photography and sculpture, Jafa explored the role of race, gender and class in mainstream popular culture and social media in the United States and beyond.

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From Spike Lee and Stanley Kubrick to Beyoncé and Solange, Jafa has collaborated with a long list of noteworthy filmmakers, artists and musicians. For the exhibition, Jafa invited photographer Ming Smith and visual artist Frida Orupabo, and incorporated material from Missylanyus’s YouTube channel, to create an audio-visual experience that was both politically reflective and visionary. Curated by Amira Gad and Hans Ulrich Obrist and presented in partnership with Serpentine.

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Online Programmes

do It (Around the World)

do it is an ever-expanding set of creative instructions by leading artists – simple enough for anyone to do. The project first started in Paris in 1993 with Serpentine Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist and artists Bertrand Lavier and Christian Boltanski.

In 2020, 30 artists from around the world made brand new instructions for people to do at home, with do its from creative figures from the fields of art, music, poetry, fashion and design, including Virgil Abloh, Chino Amobi, Arca, BTS, Korakrit Arunanondchai, Alvaro Barrington, Grace Wales Bonner, Ian Cheng, Matt Copson, Shawanda Corbett, Counterspace, Jesse Darling, Aria Dean, Es Devlin, Demna Gvasalia, Aurelia Guo, Max Hawkins, Evan Ifeokya, Arthur Jafa, Carla Juaçaba, Dozie Kanu, Ligia Lewis, Kelsey Lu, Total Luxury Spa, James Massiah, Oscar Murillo, Jeremy O’Harris, Precious Okoyomon, Nisha Ramayya, Megan Rooney, Rachel Rose, Lorenzo Senni, Solange, Patrick Staff, Jenna Sutela, FKA twigs, Jan Vorisek, Leilah Weinraub and Hsu Che Yu.

Hans Ulrich Obrist, Serpentine’s Artistic Director, initiated do its in Paris in 1993 with artists Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier, gathering recipes for artworks from twelve artists. Since then, more than 400 artists have contributed instructions, including founders Boltanksi and Lavier, plus Yoko Ono, Gilbert and George, Louise Bourgeois, Adrian Piper, Tracey Emin and Félix González-Torres - an eclectic mix of things that range from the active to the absurd and the philosophical. Over the nearly three-decade life of the project, more than 150 art spaces in over 15 countries have exhibited do it exhibitions and many new versions have appeared, such as do it (museum), do it (tv) and do it (in school).

The idea for do it (around the world) began when people quarantined due to the COVID-19 outbreak in Italian cities and elsewhere began making and sharing do its via social media in March 2020. ICI launched do it (home), a selection of artists’ instructions especially suited to be realized from home and shared across ICI’s global network of collaborators. Kaldor Public Art Projects, the world’s longest-running public art organisation launched do it (Australia) in 2020.

Serpentine Constellation Virtual Talk Series

The Serpentine Constellation virtual talk series was a collection of live and pre-recorded in-conversations with artists, practitioners, architects, musicians and more with the Artistic Director of the Serpentine, Hans Ulrich Obrist. The virtual events were shared with Serpentine’s valued supporters and provided insight into some of the greatest creative minds of our time. A selection of the virtual talks is also shared with the public via the Serpentine’s Vimeo page:

Alia Al Senussi and Nicholas Kirkwood at Art Basel 24 September
‘A Focus on Painting’ tour and discussion with Bettina Korek and Julia Peyton-Jones 24 September
Agnes Gund X Hans Ulrich Obrist 28 September
Francis Sultana X Amy Astley 8 October
Back to Earth Roundtable discussion with David de Rothschild 23 October
The Art of Documentary Filmmaking with Kim Longinotto 30 October
Marina Abramovic, Todd Eckhertt X Hans Ulrich Obrist 12 November
Zadie Xa X Kostas Stasinopoulous 16 November
Sumayya Vally X Amal Khalaf 3 December

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The Serpentine Constellation virtual talk series continued into 2021, with the introduction of virtual tours and studio visits:

The Serpentine Constellation virtual talk series continued into 2021,
and studio visits:		 with the introduction of virtu
Virtual Tour of John Stezaker: The Edge of Pictures 26 January
Private Tour of Cecily Brown at Blenheim Palace 4 February
Rikrit Tiravanija X Hans Ulrich Obrist 11 March
Lauren Halsey X Hans Ulrich Obrist 18 March

Live Programmes

The Long Time Sessions

Ongoing

Online

A fortnightly online talk series on cultivating care for the world beyond our lifetimes. 2020 was a poignant reminder that we need longer-term thinking now to tackle the existential risks we face and create a better world for future generations. The Long Time Sessions was a fortnightly online talk series on cultivating care for the world beyond our lifetimes. It brought together leading thinkers and doers from art, culture, philosophy, science, technology, law, finance and politics to take a longer view.

Speakers explored how engaging with the long-term can change the way we act in the short term. The Long Time Sessions were organised by The Long Time Project, in collaboration with the RSA and the General Ecology Network at Serpentine.

Recorded sessions:

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Partnerships

Partnerships with other organisations play an important role in bringing about new artworks and collaborations and expanding the reach of contemporary art to new audiences globally as well as supporting artists and exploring new artforms.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s London Mastaba in AR

Serpentine and Acute Art

8 July 2020 - ongoing

Christo’s final large-scale public artwork was recreated in Augmented Reality in collaboration with Acute Art. Visitors to Hyde Park could virtually summon one of the best loved public artworks of recent years, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The London Mastaba on their smartphones. The launch of The London Mastaba AR (Hyde Park) (2020) brought this iconic sculpture back to Serpentine via the free Acute Art app and is an exact virtual replica of the physical sculpture installed in 2018.

The London Mastaba, Serpentine Lake, Hyde Park, 2016-2018, a temporary sculpture made of colourful stacked barrels, was the artists’ first major public work in the UK. The London Mastaba AR (Hyde

Park) evoked the memory of the sculpture, which floated on the Serpentine Lake for just over three months in 2018 and was accompanied by an exhibition of the artists’ work. Planned before Christo’s death in May 2020, this was an opportunity to share the last public work realised in Christo’s lifetime with a global audience and celebrate the memory of his and Jeanne-Claude’s visionary projects.

The translation of the London Mastaba into Augmented Reality gave audiences a chance to play at being the artist, placing the sculpture within the landscapes of Kensington Gardens and beyond. Viewers were able to explore a virtual version of the installation through their smartphones when they visited the Serpentine Lake.

In addition to the site-specific AR work, Acute Art also developed The London Mastaba AR (2020) as a version that users could place at home or wherever they are.

Total number of downloads of Acute AR London Mastaba App: 7k

Rolls Royce Muse Dream Commission

February 2021

Fondation Beyeler and Serpentine hosted an online presentation of moving-image artworks for the biennial Dream Commission, the flagship initiative of Muse, the Rolls-Royce Art Programme. The Dream Commission strives to support a spirit of innovation at a time when it has never been more vital. Recognising the growing importance of new technologies in contemporary art, it provides a platform to emerging and mid-career artists working in the medium of moving image.

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Leading a Pioneering and Educational Programme

Education & Civic Projects

Serpentine Education and Civic Projects redefines the role of the arts during periods of transition and social change. We connect communities, artists and activists to generate responses to pressing social issues. The programme is guided by four questions:

We believe arts education is a necessity for children and adults alike. Collaborations between artists and our diverse communities can make positive changes to those communities and to society at large and increase arts engagement. The Serpentine Education and Civic Projects programme seeks to redefine the role of the arts in times of transition and social change, addressing issues such as migrant rights, care, schooling and labour with individuals and groups excluded from the decision-making processes that shape the places where they live and work. The programme is grounded in a long-term study of radical pedagogy and is made up of ongoing commissions and workshops series, alongside toolkits and resources for change.

In 2020/21, our team supported 2,264 educational encounters, produced resources that were downloaded 1382 times and podcasts that were listened to 7,739 times. We define encounters as everyone with whom we make personal contact at workshops and events plus the number of activity packs or toolkits distributed in person.

Cracks in the Curriculum

#4 Sweet Rebellion

October 2020

Cracks in the Curriculum is a workshop series and publishing platform for teachers that aims to bring artists and educators together to think about how to address pressing social issues in the classroom.

In October 2020, Serpentine launched Sweet Rebellion , the fourth resource in the series, offering a series of activities looking at the histories of rebellion on British Caribbean plantations through drawing, discussion, group investigations and further study. The resource features an illustration by Rudy Loewe and Jacob V Joyce, depicting people who have resisted British colonial rule and injustice.

The resource is available to download from Serpentine’s website and an A2 printed classroom poster is also freely available for teachers to request and we shared via a social media campaign and mail out to 9000 teachers across the UK. In total, 1000 Cracks in the Curriculum resources were downloaded or requested by post during this period. Sweet Rebellion was launched with an in-conversation event with Jacob V Joyce and Rudy Loewe, which is available online. The conversation has so far had 304 YouTube views.

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“History often ignores people who fought for their own freedom and instead focuses on the idea of a saviour or hero who comes to the rescue. This takes away the importance and power of key figures, some of whom this resource aims to celebrate.”

Jacob V Joyce and Rudy Loewe

Changing Play

We continue to develop multi-year embedded artist commissions in partnership with the Portman Early Childhood Centre, a place that provides education, care and family support services for young children and their families living in an area of Westminster where over 50% of children live in poverty.

Everyday Resistance

Since 2018, mothers and children from the Portman Early Childhood Centre have worked with artist Jasleen Kaur, using the micro-politics of cooking and eating together to collectively consider and respond to issues facing the local community. Adults and children make bread together, learning a culturally significant recipe from a different group member each week.

Through the project, the group asks: ‘How can cooking and eating be an act of resistance?’ , ‘How can we create a network of care to support ourselves and others?’ and ‘How can we take up space and make our voices heard when the government is systematically working on the removal of us?’

In September 2019, mothers and children met at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park to celebrate the project with a picnic using specially designed blankets, featuring words and images from workshops. Following the event, the blankets were shared with the Portman and participants.

Emerging from this process, the group produced a booklet designed to create a network of support for POC and migrant new mothers in Westminster who feel ill-equipped in dominant culture. The booklet centres the experiences of women of colour and provides sources of support. It will be distributed via health visitors in NHS new parent packs through a pilot phase in NE Westminster in the summer and throughout Westminster in September.

We hope that the booklet will support new mothers to:

Which Way Now

Artist Sam Curtis invited children aged three and four years old from the Portman Early Childhood Centre to lead a series of walks through the Church Street neighbourhood. Each child was given a digital camera to capture the objects, places and people that interested them. Curtis collated the images and facilitated editing sessions where each child selected the photographs they preferred and talked about their choice.

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The project aimed to address the following questions: ‘What do child led walks tell us about children’s experience of the city and their relationship to it?’, ‘How does managed risk open up children’s experience of the world?’ , and ‘Can we learn to re-think the city by listening to children as they navigate the local area?’ A full colour book presents documentation from the project as a series of visual essays exploring children’s experience of the neighbourhood, revealing the barriers that inhibit their movement through the city alongside the poetry and wonder of the everyday.

The accompanying toolkit is a practice-based guide for early years and primary settings who have an interest in exploring the potential of child-led walks as a regular practice. Aimed at practitioners who work with children aged 3-7, the toolkit supports investigations of local urban environments and reflections on how to bring settings into closer conversation with their neighbourhood. The book and toolkit were developed during 2020/21and will launch in Autumn 2021.

Like Coming Home

Families from the Portman have been taking part in online workshops with writer and filmmaker Ed WebbIngall, exploring relationships to ideas of the home. The UK is experiencing a housing crisis, with entrenched issues such as overcrowding and insecure temporary accommodation, exacerbated and made visible by the COVID-19 pandemic. The project centres the lived and everyday experiences of people who feel the impacts of changes in housing policy and bureaucracy most acutely and asks: ‘Who is the housing system benefitting?’ and ‘Who makes the rules and decisions about the way we live?’

Family Programme

Artists Jacob V Joyce and Rudy Loewe are the Serpentine Families Artists in Residence and have been commissioned to develop a pack for children in alignment with Back to Earth, the Serpentine’s multi-year programme that invites practitioners to respond to the climate emergency.

The artists have created Power Pack: Climate Emergency, a pack that centres and amplifies BIPOC (Black, Indigenous People of Colour) environmental campaigners from around the world and invites young people from London and beyond to respond with environmental issues that are personal and local to them. It features illustrations of the activists and drawing activities that support children and young people (aged 7- 14) to think of the actions they can take in response to the climate.

The pack was developed during the pandemic and responds to the growing digital exclusion that many young people experience, meaning they have limited or no access to internet, laptops or other smart devices. The team partnered with Kitchen Social , a Mayor's Fund for London Project, which responds to the growing issue of food insecurity in the capital, supports community groups already working with children and young people to provide healthy food and a range of social development activities and lobbies for system change. The pack will be distributed via Kitchen Social in April 2021 and launched onsite and online in June 2021.

Radio Ballads

To mark the anniversary of the 1970 Equal Pay Act and the momentum for change created by the Dagenham Ford sewing machinist strike of 1969, Serpentine and the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham partnered to commission artists Helen Cammock, Rory Pilgrim, Ilona Sagar and Sonia Boyce to lead participatory projects examining the future and histories of care and work. Between October and December

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2020, the Radio Ballads artists led 29 in-depth workshops, and three public events were held about the project:

Overall Radio Ballads Engagement to date March 2021:

“For me the session has been really insightful […] I’m going to leave behind the feeling of hopelessness because there is always something we can do, always.”

Tolu, social worker, Radio Ballads workshop led by Sonia Boyce, December 2020

Ain Bailey and Micro-Rainbow International, Sonic Stories

Ongoing

Ain Bailey is a sound artist and DJ whose practice involves an exploration of sonic autobiographies, architectural acoustics, live performance and collaborations. During October and November, in partnership with Micro Rainbow International – an organisation that supports LGBTQI asylum seekers and refugees – we transferred Bailey’s Sonic Stories Serpentine residency online.

Through a series of ongoing deep listening sessions exploring the role sound plays in identity formation, Bailey created an open space for sharing memories of times, places, people or events. By addressing acts of listening as a critical register of social, emotional and political life, Sonic Stories created a collective transitional space for mourning, resting, healing and dreaming.

Alongside the Sonic Stories listening sessions, the workshops with Micro Rainbow International engaged with other artists working in sound, including Pauline Oliveros and her philosophy of Deep Listening, poet Belinda Zhwai and voice practitioner Elaine Mitchner.

“In the listening sessions you become intimate, and I think that within itself, with people that you don’t necessarily know, is a political act.”

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Ain Bailey

Rehana Zaman

Ongoing

In collaboration with Hibiscus Initiatives and women affected by incarceration, Rehana Zaman’s residency examined the intersections of race, gender and class within the UK criminal justice system. Together they engaged with processes of racialisation bound by law, where UK jurisprudence is both constituted by and acts to entrench structures of racial domination. Hibiscus Initiatives, established in 1986, is a leading voluntary organisation that supports foreign nationals involved in the criminal justice system in the UK.

Podcast, on Practice

5 March 2021

Over the last year through the pandemic, we’ve seen more than ever how our individual actions impact others and how we’re all interdependent. This three-part podcast series, hosted by Serpentine Education Curator Alex Thorp and Civic Curator Amal Khalaf, explored the practices that can sustain us individually and collectively - Cooking, Listening and Walking - and how they can be used to bring people together to work towards change.

Across the three episodes, Alex and Amal welcomed artists, collaborators and friends to explore ideas and projects developed as part of Serpentine’s Education and Civic programme, which connect communities, artists and activists to generate responses to pressing social issues.

All three episodes were launched on 5 March and reached over 1.6k downloads in their first day, marking Serpentine’s most successful podcast launch to date. On Practice was produced by Reduced Listening.

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Leading Artistic and Digital Transformation

This artist-led programme proposes critical and interdisciplinary perspectives on the role of emerging technologies. As we stand at the brink of the next technological revolution, Serpentine is committed to supporting new experiments in art and technology, challenging and shaping its role in our cultural and social landscape. Under the guidance of Europe’s first Chief Technology Officer at an arts institution, we work with artists to realise new works that consider emerging technologies as a medium, a tool or a topic that can operate beyond the gallery walls. Through exploring artificial intelligence, blockchain, robotics and drones, biotechnology and immersive technologies, our digital programme examines the critical impact of these innovations on the way we work, think and collaborate.

Arts Technologies

Serpentine’s Arts Technologies programme proposes critical and interdisciplinary perspectives on advanced technologies through artistic interventions. Challenging and reshaping the role that technologies can play in culture and society is part of our commitment to supporting new artistic experiments at what has now become an historical intersection. The programme initiates and supports artists in developing ambitious artworks that deploy advanced technologies as a medium, tool or topic, often operating beyond gallery walls.The foundation of the Arts Technologies programme sits within an evolving R&D Platform that supports the development of infrastructures for ongoing artistic exploration and interrogation of advanced and emerging technologies.

Serpentine R&D Platform

Serpentine’s Research and Development Platform is a space where our institution’s ‘back-end’ (operations, protocols, in-built values) and ‘front-end’ (what we produce) are brought into experimental realignment. In today’s environment of hyper-production and accelerated change, arts organisations need a reflexive space that allows for thoughtful and conscious advancement.

Historically, art has frequently taken the form of social risk-taking and thus an undercover engine of ‘innovation’, presenting a distinctly different paradigm for innovation to the fields of science and technology. Meanwhile, the importance of arts organisations as scalable sites for dedicated artist-led research and development is only now becoming apparent.

The R&D Platform at the Serpentine grows organically from the organisation’s long-standing commitment to advancing new forms of cultural production. The R&D Platform is built on inter-operable modules that manifest themselves in capacity-building workshops for the wider sector, roundtables and summits bringing experts from different fields to develop an art-field specific view on innovation, and precedent-setting artworks that challenge conceptions of what art is and where the boundaries of art’s impact lie.

Some of the questions guiding the development of the R&D Platform include:

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As a critical module for in-depth engagement with these questions, our R&D Labs provide infrastructural support for collaborative research, targeting specific questions and devising operational propositions. Current labs include Legal Lab , led by Alana Kushnir, Director of Guest Work Agency, Blockchain Lab , led by Ruth Catlow, Co-Founder and Co-Director of Furtherfield and DECAL DeCentralised Arts Lab; Creative AI Interfaces Lab , led by Mercedes Bunz, Senior Lecturer in Digital Societies at King’s College. Although emerging from Serpentine, the R&D Platform is a constantly growing community of individuals and organisations without whom it would not be a reality.

R&D Platform Newsletter

The R&D Platform newsletter was launched in July 2020 and gathered more than 1.5k subscribers in five months and is a dedicated to communicating the Arts Technologies programme together with information from the wider sector.

Workshops and Forums

Serpentine R&D hosts both public facing and private events to generate new knowledge for the sector. Our programme has been designed to ensure an evolution in understanding technological tools in creative practice. We bring together practice-based workshops that examine the use of specific technologies in the arts, with an annual conference that platforms digital practice and practitioners inside cultural institutions. These forums are complemented by summits that consider specific technological impact on the arts. Each of the research events are documented and the content published online, distributing findings globally as a resource for industry and an entry point for knowledge-sharing.

Creative R&D Working Group

Established in collaboration with National Gallery X. , the objective of our Creative R&D Working Group is to establish a UK-wide inter-organisational working group for advancing R&D in the cultural sector by bringing together cultural actors, technology fields, research institutions and policy to openly discuss and devise a path to action. Its trajectory is to cement a common understanding of advanced technological development within the cultural sphere that supports the implementation of appropriate policy and the necessary incentives to sustain and mature this work.

Future Art Ecosystems (FAE)

“The Serpentine Galleries in London are quickly making a name for thinking through the art world’s relationship to new technologies. Future Art Ecosystems 1: Art and Advanced Technologies [is] a wideranging report surveying trends in art and tech… It’s exciting to see an institution taking on these issues with such clarity, intelligence, and insight.”

Brian Droitcour, Art in America, July 2020

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Central to the mission of advancing innovation for future art ecosystems is the publication of an annual strategic briefing that analyses current and future impacts of advanced technology on the art sector. Developed through primary research and case-studies, the strategic briefing offers key stakeholders important insights and sets an annual agenda for different forms of investment in and by cultural institutions, to address the impact of this emerging field.

After a soft launch in March 2020, the inaugural strategic briefing launched publicly on 9 July 2020, the first issue on art and advanced technologies and is produced by the Serpentine R&D Platform and Rival Strategy.

The inaugural issue of FAE focuses on the new infrastructures being built around artistic practices engaging with advanced technologies. The view presented is based on Serpentine’s experience and desire to share insights from working with artists including Hito Steyerl, James Bridle, Cécile B. Evans, Ian Cheng and Jakob Kudsk Steensen, ongoing conversations across broader networks, and insights derived from a series of interviews conducted with artists Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Holly Herndon, Rebecca Allen and Refik Anadol; Ece Tankal and Carmen Aguilar y Wedge of Hyphen-Labs ; journalist and technologist Jonathan Ledgard; Julia Kaganskiy, founding director NEW Inc ; Kenric McDowell from the Artists + Machine Intelligence programme at Google Research; Liz Rosenthal, Power to the Pixel ; futurist Noah Raford; Rachel Armstrong, Professor of Experimental Architecture, Newcastle University; Takashi Kudo of teamLab .

The strategic briefing is organised into three chapters. Chapter 1: Art x Advanced Technologies , describes some of the core features of the artistic practices emerging in this domain. Chapter 2: Infrastructure for AxAT , documents particular types of infrastructure demanded by these practices, and cases in which various actors - including artists themselves - are now beginning to construct. Chapter 3: Strategies for an ArtIndustrial Revolution , documents potential ways in which nascent infrastructural plays may be integrated into much broader strategies that will have far-ranging impacts on the art industry.

The briefing asks questions such as:

Serpentine’s Arts Technologies team is currently producing the second annual briefing, on art and the metaverse, for release in 2021.

“ It’s like you are a painter, but you also have to invent paint.”

Takashi Kudo, teamlab

Future Art Ecosystems Live

A series of online talks emerging from the launch of Serpentine’s inaugural Future Art Ecosystems report. The first issue of Future Art Ecosystems, produced by Serpentine R&D Platform in collaboration with Rival Strategy , addresses the impact of technologies on the arts and focuses on the new infrastructures being built around artistic practices engaging with these advanced technologies. In the spirit of FAE, these conversations aim to make visible the invisible infrastructures and systems behind artists’ work, as the report itself considers the future of art and technology from an infrastructural perspective.

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Audience Figures:

Ben Vickers x Takashi Kudo Instagram Live 7k Kay Watson x Refik Anadol Instagram Live 10k Benedict Singleton x Rachael Armstrong YouTube 450

Creative AI Lab

Creative AI Lab is a collaboration between Serpentine R&D Platform and the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London. New approaches to aspects of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) including interface design, production and engagement have emerged from artistic practices. The aim of the lab is to surface this ‘back-end’ knowledge and link it to wider artistic and curatorial practices in order to overcome the existing ‘black-box’ narratives. Through the lens of artmaking, the lab produces knowledge for cultural institutions, artists, engineers and researchers on how to engage AI/ML as a media. Additionally, the lab aims to develop institutional capacities to engage with this media for the benefit of the wider cultural sector.

Our research currently investigates:

Cultural institutions offer a much-needed societal space to critically engage with advanced/deep machine learning technologies. To support this, the Creative AI Lab focuses on a range of research outputs that include:

Aesthetics of new AI: Panel Discussion Creative AI Lab in collaboration with NYU Digital Theory H-Lab

9 October 2020

A panel discussion on machine learning and its aesthetic capacity with Mercedes Bunz, Leif Weatherby, Nora Khan, Joanna Zylinska & Murad Khan Machine learning technology (a subset study of Artificial Intelligence) has profoundly advanced in the past few years and is becoming a mainstay in artistic practices. Through a discussion on machine learning and its aesthetic capacity, we sought to answer: ‘What new aspects does the technical framework of machine learning bring to artmaking?’ And conversely, ‘What can artworks that use AI point to in AI research and development?’

Aesthetics of New AI Interfaces Creative AI Lab 12 February 2021

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Hosted by the Creative AI Lab, a collaboration between Serpentine R&D Platform and Kings College London, this panel discussion was attended by 180 people and explored machine learning’s art-making interfaces. Panellists included:

Legal Lab

The Serpentine’s Legal Lab is a pioneering effort within the art field dedicated to the development of legal infrastructure for cross-industry collaborations, developed in collaboration with Alana Kushnir of Guest Work Agency . Our lab is focused on the sharing and development of new knowledge, and it relates to complexities emerging from new artistic fields of practice, particularly in relation to the intersection of art and advanced technologies.

Legal structures and tools, such as contracts, are crucial to structuring innovative enterprises and effective operational models. However, in the sphere of art, there is a tendency to shy away from legally onerous forms of arrangement. This has resulted in legal infrastructures being under-acknowledged for their multifaceted potential in supporting cutting-edge creative practice. These concerns are present in the internal organisation of the art field and the expanding realm of cross-disciplinary relationships between art actors and external fields.

The work of the Legal Lab is guided by a cross-disciplinary Advisory Panel:

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Throughout 2020, the Legal Lab conducted research to map the legal issues from the perspectives of different types of users (artists, technologists, scientists, curators, lawyers, legal academics, arts organisations, galleries, tech companies, etc), analysed the trends and distilled a series of action points, this will be released as a report in July 2021.

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Synthetic Ecologies Lab

Ongoing

Led by designer and researcher Yasaman Sheri, Synthetic Ecologies Lab aims to support artists in the context of emerging biological technologies and ecology by strengthening the foundations for art’s critical inquiry and intervention into these spaces. This is done by integrating insights derived from existing art-science collaborations as well as exploring the tools and models for collaboration in new artistic engagements with the sciences and lifeforms.

From ecological awareness around climate change to ethics of geo-engineering, to providing glimpses into techno-biological futures, to making with a multitude of species and living systems, there is a long history of artists and designers attempting to give shape to the invisible biological medium that is so hard to perceive and contextualise conceptually in everyday living.

2020 marks an entry into a new decade and signifies a powerful moment to support aesthetic and political engagements in life sciences and ecology. With rapid advances being made in biotechnologies and other tools of life sciences, artists and designers are an increasingly important voice in shaping how such technologies get rendered at societal level.

Blockchain Lab

Ongoing

Supporting network development between visionary artists, cultural workers, blockchain entrepreneurs, as well as local initiatives, communities, institutions and businesses to foster new translocal and transnational systems and an ethos of global cooperation within the arts.

Led by Ruth Catlow, co-founder of Furtherfield and DECAL , Serpentine’s Blockchain Lab builds on the experiences of DAOWO - the award-winning blockchain programme for reinventing the arts. The first series of events ran in 2017-18 in collaboration with the Goethe Institut London, with international artists, engineers, crypto-economists, musicians, technologists, and theorists joining forces to understand how blockchain technologies - cryptocurrencies, distributed ledgers and smart contracts - could enable a critical, sustainable and empowered culture. This was later followed in 2019 by the Blockchain & Art Knowledge Sharing Summit UK in collaboration with Digital Catapult , which examined the cultural sector opportunities available for working with blockchain technologies.

The DAOWO Sessions: Artworld Prototypes

28 January – 4 March 2021

Online events

This series explored the possibilities for the future of the artworld with blockchain by investigating what can be learned from DAOs (Decentralised Autonomous Organisations) working with Others (-WO). Each session was an eye-opening presentation and conversation around active experimentation that aims to hack, deconstruct and reinvent the arts in the emerging crypto space in response to people and their local contexts.

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The events provided a unique opportunity for cultural practitioners, representatives of arts, technology organisations, communities and anyone interested in the potential of blockchain to come together and question the future of art and society.

Doctoral Research Collaborations

Ongoing

The Arts Technologies programme at the Serpentine supports and facilitates both practice-based and academic doctoral research projects in collaboration with leading research centres and universities in the UK and beyond.

The programme is currently hosting two doctoral research projects:

Hidden Patterns, A Conversation about Networks and Art

8 April 2021

In April, Serpentine Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist, physicist and Director of BarabásiLab Albert Lászlo Barabási , ideas collective CAMP , and artist Burak came together to discuss how network effects and big data are poised to shift our understanding of the dynamics of the contemporary art world.

Network effects pervade the art world, determining the success of individual artists, their access to exhibition opportunities. Big data and network science allow us to increasingly map out and quantify these effects, bringing out hidden connections that shape artistic careers. Meanwhile, network visualisations are themselves emerging as a new form of artistic practice. The goal of the event was to start an important conversation about the role of networks in art.

This talk followed the launch of Hidden Patterns , at the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest. The exhibition presented 25 years of research by Albert László Barabási that uses state of the artnetwork diagrams, visualisations and data sculptures to capture underlying structures and relationships that can help us better understand both art and society.

Audience Figures:

Live viewers 458

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Digital Commissions

Serpentine’s Digital Commission is a programme that develops new digital works through a variety of emerging media, transforming our website into a new forward-thinking space for exhibiting art. Each commission aims to expand how we understand the effect of digital technologies on artistic and cultural practice today.

Suzanne Treister, From Survivor (F) to The Escapist BHST (Black Hole Spacetime)

Ongoing

Utilising various media, including video, the internet, interactive technologies, photography, drawing, painting and watercolour, Suzanne Treister explores emerging technologies, alternative belief systems and potential human futures through a newly commissioned book and web-based augmented reality work.

Treister’s (b.1958, London UK) multi-part commission comprises an artist’s book and a web-based augmented reality work. The book From SURVIVOR (F) to The Escapist BHST (Black Hole Spacetime) brings together two interconnected projects, SURVIVOR (F), a potential human/non-human survivor of human civilisation, and the newly commissioned The Escapist BHST (Black Hole Spacetime), which follows an interdimensional entity journeying through event horizons and spacetime.

Suzanne Treister, The Museum of Black Hole Spacetime Séance

29 October 2020

Originating from Treister’s 2019 project, The Escapist BHST (Black Hole Spacetime), Serpentine digital commission, this event attracted 226 RSVPs and took audiences to a hypothetical museum in the cosmos through a virtual séance. The participants questioned the museum’s function, its contents, its origin and what it had to say about the mysteries of the cosmos, producing drawings and texts describing their visions.

Jenna Sutela, I Magma & I Magma App

Ongoing

Jenna Sutela is a Finnish-born, Berlin-based artist who creates experimental installations and performances that bring together biology, technology and cosmology. Her work, I Magma , exists in two related parts: an app for mobile devices developed with the Serpentine in collaboration with Memo Akten and Allison Parrish and an installation exhibited at Moderna Museet, Stockholm. The installation features a series of custommade, head-shaped lava lamps whose movements act as a ‘seed’ in generating the app’s visuals and

language. Using live camera footage of the lava flow in combination with the routes of app users, it allows users to receive divinatory readings based on collectively formed shapes. The commission expanded Sutela’s research into alternative forms of intelligence by applying chemical and digital processes in the creation of an oracle.

The work toured to Kunsthall Trondheim in Norway in March 2020 for Sutela’s first major solo show at an international institution.

Jenna Sutela x Stefanie Hessler, Live Q&A

19 August 2020

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Artist Jenna Sutela and Kunsthall Trondheim director Stefanie Hessler came together to discuss the ideas explored in NO NO NSE NSE , a new publication about Sutela’s work. The event attracted 400 live viewers, and focused on Sutela’s work I Magma , which explored the notion of an oracle through alternative forms of intelligence and the application of machinic and chemical processes. Serpentine also published one of the book’s featured texts for free on our website: The umbra of an imago: Writing under control of machine learning .

Artist Worlds

Artist Worlds is an ongoing series of commissions and events that support artistic practices that engage with simulated realities, immersive storytelling and virtual world building that invites audiences into these worlds to explore and offer insights into these advancing technologies and associated practices, processes simulating nature, immersive storytelling, and multi-player game worlds.

Live conversation with Jakob Kudsk Steensen and Ben Vickers UBS and Serpentine

24 February 2021

This was the first part of a two-part project, in which Ben Vickers, Senior Strategist at Large, was in conversation with artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen to discuss simulating nature, immersive story-telling and multi-player game worlds. Ben and Jakob discussed immersive experiences, advanced technologies and the creative concepts that power new digital art works. The discussion also explored some of the simulated natural worlds that Steensen has developed in projects like Catharsis (2019-20), The Deep Listener (2019) and Reanimated (2018).

Audience Figures:
Live viewers on the UBS Hub: 321
Facebook Livestream: 5.2k
LinkedIn Livestream: 2.8k

Artists Worlds, Primal Tourism

Jakob Kudsk Steensen with Alenda Chang, Rindon Johnson, Mikkel Rosengaard

16 March 2021

Jakob returned in March to take online audiences on an immersive tour of a virtual island modelled on Bora Bora in French Polynesia, initially developed for his work Primal Tourism (2016). This experimental live multiplayer virtual event focused on the interrelationship between ecology, sustainability and advancing technologies. Crash landing, audiences navigated between an abandoned airport, a flooded beach resort, a deserted workers town, an old colonial office, and an overgrown forest, floor strewn with tsunami warning signs from a past future. Along the way we met some of his close collaborators: academic Alenda Chang, artist Rindon Johnson and writer Mikkel Rosengaard, and experienced live readings that spoke to our ecological present and the ‘reimagination of nature’ through technology

Audience Figures:

Total viewers on Twitch 861

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Welcoming a Broad & Diverse Public

Serpentine brings artists and audiences together in real time, in our galleries, gardens and across our global digital networks. Our aim is to bring people closer to art and ideas, and we strive constantly to expand our reach and engage new audiences with art and creativity.

A Memorable Experience

We welcome a broad range of visitors by providing diverse activities, programmes and support. Our Visitor Experience team is strongly committed to delivering an exceptional service to the public, playing a vital role in bringing to life Serpentine’s values of delivering an enriching and memorable experience, while guiding visitors through our exhibitions and encouraging dialogue. The team provides a crucial link between gallery presentation, artists' vision and visitor interpretation, and it has the mission of establishing Serpentine as an inclusive space for ideas, conversation and individual expression, making art accessible to all.

Serpentine Rebrand

Ahead of our 50th anniversary, we worked closely with Hingston Studio to build a bold and dynamic new voice for our next chapter. With a growing impetus on art that can be experienced across new platforms and beyond the physical walls of a gallery, the brief was to deliver a future-facing, digital-first identity. Launched in June 2020, the new Serpentine brand is rooted in three central ideas: an urgent voice, the fluid exchange of thought and experience, and the surrounding environment of the park. More than a logo, the identity supports our continued outreach to new audiences with endless capabilities, across multiple platforms.

Local and Global Audiences

In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, international travel restrictions and the resulting closure of our gallery spaces, we were unable to welcome overseas visitors for much of the year and focused instead on digital engagement.

Audience Figures:

Total attendance for onsite Serpentine exhibitions in London 1 April 2020 and 31 March 2021 10.9k

Reaching Beyond the Gallery Walls

Serpentine Website

Our website attracted over 1.5M visits in the financial year 2020/2021, with Jennifer Packer’s exhibition proving to be the most popular programme page with 38k page views.

Serpentine’s new editorial platform, Art & Ideas , launched in June 2020 and garnered a total of 24k page views across 2020/2021. The most popular pages were the On Practice podcasts, an introductory piece on Jennifer Packer and the Understory of the Understory podcast.

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Aligned closely with Serpentine’s audience strategy, Art & Ideas aims to resonate with new and broader audiences, while championing wider Serpentine themes such as ecology, technology and equality in the arts. As well as being an important channel to delve deeper into the programme, Art & Ideas gives Serpentine an opportunity to develop a more accessible tone-of-voice and clearer narrative for a range of audiences. Additionally, the Serpentine e-newsletter had 30,452 subscribers at the end of March 2021.

Digital Communications

20202/21 has seen a new approach to digital communications, including a new content strategy, new social media activity and the planning for a major new audience-focused website. Our social media presence has continued to expand across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

Followers increased on Instagram to 352k Follower increase on Twitter to 157.4k Likes increased on Facebook to 84.1k Facebook followers increased to 83.7k by the end of March 2021

Media Reach

The galleries closed on 17 March 2020 due to COVID-19, but while Live and Exhibition programmes were suspended, media could still engage with Serpentine’s work online.

Partnerships with media platforms gave us increased audience reach: our collaboration with NOWNESS, Out of Blueprints, on the occasion of Cao Fei’s exhibition at Serpentine, had total views of 400k. Back to Earth online campaigns and partnerships also attracted significant audiences and media: Olafur Eliasson’s Earth Perspectives, a new participatory artwork conceived for Earth Day 2020, gained a collective estimated reach of 6.7 million across social media and was featured or shared by Art Newspaper , Design Boom , Flash Art Mag , System Mag , Vogue and many more.

The fourth edition of our festival on consciousness and intelligence across life forms, The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish , was the first to take place online. Over two days 4000 visitors convened at specially created platform - themind.fish - for discussions, presentations and performances on the subject of soil, earth, land and ground and we had coverage in publications including Tank Magazine , Emergence Magazine and ArtNet .

Media also noted the new incarnation of the world’s biggest participatory art project, do it , presented by Serpentine Galleries, Google Arts & Culture, Independent Curators International & Kaldor Public Art Projects. Coverage included art and listings titles around the world and an appearance on Radio 4’s flagship news outlet the Today Programme for Hans Ulrich Obrist and designer and do it contributor Es Devlin. Korean superstars BTS also provided a do it which gained 174k likes on Serpentine’s Instagram, as well as 264k tweets, 65k retweets and an additional 5k comments.

Serpentine’s Arts Technologies programme continued to make an impact; the publication of annual report Future Art Ecosystems was reflected via a series of features and media appearances, including BBC World Service Cultural Frontline programme, ArtNet , Hyperallergic and Art in America .

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Archive exhibitions continued to bring attention: Sky TV broadcast documentary 512 Hours with Marina Abramović, made during her Serpentine show in 2018, which led to Serpentine featuring on TV pages in The Sun , The Daily Mail and every UK broadsheet.

The Directors maintained media profiles with opinion pieces and features. Bettina Korek was featured in LALA Magazine (US), Elle Magazine (UK), Harper’s Bazaar (UK) and London’s Evening Standard: ‘ It’s this accessibility - serious art and ideas expressed with a sense of fun - that Korek aims to keep up at the Serpentine.’

Hans Ulrich’s call for support for the arts post COVID-19 - a New New Deal. - was picked up in prominent news and culture outlets including The Art Newspaper , The Guardian and ArtNet and in international publications including Telerama, Frankfurter Allemeigne Zeitung and Corriere della Sera.

The announcement of the appointment of Yesomi Umolu as Director of Curatorial Affairs and Public Practice gathered coverage across arts titles, with news items in Artforum , ArtNews , Surface Magazine and more. The Serpentine team was also featured across a wide spectrum of media outlets: the hard work that goes in to installing a show in a pandemic was noted with a great piece in Elephant Magazine on how COVID-19 has transformed the way curators approach exhibition making, built round an interview with Melissa Blanchflower. Lucia Pietroiusti featured in la Republicca , in an interview headlined ‘Green is the Colour of Art’ , and Claude Adjil was featured in Vogue as part of its ‘New Creatives’ feature.

When the galleries opened with our first new exhibition post-lockdown, Jennifer Packer The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing , the response from media was effusive. We had a socially distanced and specially extended press view attended by BBC Arts, The Daily Telegraph , Elephant Magazine , Apollo, The Art Newspaper , The Guardian , i paper, Nowness and more. Previews, features, reviews and news pieces ran internationally in titles including Airmail , BBC Radio London, Elle Decoration , The Art Newspaper , RA Magazine , Cultured and Artforum . The first review was 5* from the BBC’s Will Gompertz on bbc.co.uk (1.5 billion monthly page views):

“I cannot recommend this exhibition highly enough. There are a lot of good painting shows on in London at the moment - Titian and Gentileschi at the National Gallery, Tracey Emin at The Royal Academy, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye at Tate Britain - but if you only have time to visit one, go to the Serpentine Gallery to see this outstanding Jennifer Packer exhibition. It really is as good as art gets.’

Looking forward to the 2021 summer programme, TIME Magazine selected Pavilion architect Sumayya Vally for the TIME100 Next List , an honour that highlights 100 emerging leaders shaping the future, and the announcement of the James Barnor Portraits for the Future virtual event was the kick-off for the James Barnor season with major coverage in The Guardian , Vogue.com , Hero Magazine , Nataal.com and many more.

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Developing Diverse, High-Performing & Engaged Teams

During 2020 along with other organisations, when Serpentine closed to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the lives of our staff changed overnight and we quickly had to adjust to a new way of working. In a short period of time, we rolled out Microsoft Teams and upskilled to allow us to continue working together remotely. The health, safety and wellbeing of our colleagues was our priority and it was important for us to stay connected. We provided regular updates on COVID-19 along with advice for home working and practising selfcare. We found different ways to keep staff motivated and engaged and when we were ready to reopen, we asked for feedback on practical matters, worries and suggestions so we could understand what would help make staff feel safe to return to work. Throughout this challenging time, we are proud of how our colleagues adapted to the changes so quickly and supported each other in such a meaningful way.

Promoting an Open, Collaborative, Supportive and Diverse Culture

Serpentine has pledged to promote anti-racism in all that we do: the content of our programmes, the culture of our workplace, the diversity of our staff and the experiences of our audiences. Since 2020, we have been working with diversity and inclusion consultants who are leading a programme of change that involves staff and leadership at all levels of the organisation and will be sustained for the foreseeable future. This has allowed us to develop a structured approach to monitoring our progress and accountability in becoming anti-racist at Serpentine and to listen to the opinions and experience of all our staff.

The programme involves:

In September 2020, we established The Progress Project , a diverse and inclusive collective of staff at Serpentine who have come together to ensure the voices of our diverse colleagues are included in Serpentine’s transformation into an anti-racist organisation.

The Progress Project’s work includes:

Since October 2020, nine Race Resolutions Teams have also been established at Serpentine involving all staff across all levels. These teams are responsible for meeting monthly to address our anti-racism culture across different areas of the organisation:

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Serpentine is committed to diversity, equity and inclusion, and is continuing its programme of training and support for staff at all levels.

Attracting and Retaining Qualified and Talented Employees

We recognise having a diverse, inclusive team with a variety of different perspectives and experiences will benefit Serpentine’s strategic aims. We have continued to develop and implement an accessible, inclusive recruitment and retention strategy to attract a diverse range of the highest quality employees and have introduced new initiatives to ensure an inclusive, supportive working environment to support their retention within the organisation.

Recognising and Rewarding Achievement and Performance Fairly

Serpentine has been paying staff the London Living Wage for several years and in 2020 we became officially recognised by the Living Wage Foundation as an accredited Living Wage Employer. This commitment applies to directly employed staff as well as contractors providing services to Serpentine.

Equal Opportunity Policy

Serpentine is committed to encouraging and promoting equality and diversity throughout our workforce. Our aim is for our staff to be truly representative of all sections of society and to work in a positive and effective environment where everyone is respected, and for each employee to perform to the best of their ability.

Our policy is to provide equality and fairness for all in our employment and in our provision of services and not to discriminate on the grounds on age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, gender (sex) and/or sexual orientation.

We continue to report Equal Opportunity data annually in line with Arts Council England to monitor the diversity of the workforce and Board of Trustees. We believe all these activities promote a culture that engages happy, productive and empowered employees who support Serpentine’s vision.

The current Serpentine staff is a diverse ensemble of national and international employees coming from both art and non-art backgrounds, made up of 74% women, 23% Black, Asian and Ethnically Diverse, 3% LGBT and 7% with a disability (March 2021).

We will also continue to work with a diverse range of practitioners across our programmes, in terms of age, sex, sexual orientation, race and religion. We are happy to report that in 2020/21, 76% practitioners were other than white British, 52% were female, 4% were non-binary and 31% were emerging artists. These figures exceed our targets for the financial year and our Programming Guidelines.

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By broadening the diversity of art and artists, we are also widening our reach. Improving accessibility and reception of individuals from varying backgrounds is being achieved through the training of Visitor Services personnel and more targeted communications.

The Board of Trustees continues with plans to diversify in 2020/21 with a review commissioned for year 2021/22.

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Future Plans

Serpentine believes that the arts inspire people, make communities more creative and strengthen economies. This unprecedented time in history has created uncharted realities and shifted our perspectives profoundly. The many challenges we’ve faced have given us renewed clarity of purpose for the future: Serpentine’s mission is to amplify the work of artists engaging the urgent issues of today - ecology, technology and community - throughout the art world and beyond it.

Our overarching strategic objective for our 2021/22 business planning is to be ‘artist-led, audience-centric' , for which we have developed six areas of emphasis that remain relevant as we progress toward the launch of the SerpentineLAB Campaign. These are:

1. Art for All

We aim to diversify our audiences and increase audience retention, through an emphasis on different visitor experiences informed by data. We will do this by strengthening our brand, vision and mission; enhancing audience development; and diversifying media reach and creative partnerships.

2. 360[o] Artistic Production and Audience Engagement

We will connect artists to topical conversations and new audiences by integrating our physical and online programmes, and tap into our core pillars of ecology, technology and community. We will do this by creating a programme that champions and reflects diversity across all areas; cultivates a diverse audience and provides accessible content in person and virtually; addresses urgent issues of our time through the lens of ecology and community; and find new methods to deliver content and support school age children.

3. Sector Leadership

Serpentine will act as a convener among art, business, educational and governmental institutions - and in turn situate artists in these new, polyvalent contexts with increased agency. We will do this by championing sector convening initiatives on art and technology and build dedicated, diverse communities around arts technologies; extending our resilient models for innovative arts and technology work by creating a distributed model for network building, audience engagement and development opportunities, including experimentation with new commercial models; and continuing organisational transformation in light of new challenges brought on by COVID-19 through the consolidation of new team structure and embed arts technologies knowledge and capabilities at all levels of the organisation, including the board.

4. Inclusive Culture

We continue our commitment to anti-racism and inclusivity, which manifests in our public programmes as well as the internal culture and its further development. We foster a culture focused on diversity, inclusivity and positive staff engagement; creating a diversity, equality and inclusion plan for staff; and attracting and retaining the best talent and developing a high-performance culture, led by managers, in which staff can be supported, developed and managed effectively.

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5. Engagement and Value Development

We will secure funding partners motivated by our core pillars as well as enhancing the appeal and value of donating to Serpentine for all supporters - both of which inform the goal of the 50+1 Anniversary Campaign. We will do this by creating new propositions for engagement and enhancing the value we deliver to our donors.

6. Entrepreneurial Leadership

We will focus on maintaining organisational flexibility, prioritising resources to ensure agility and sustainability, and testing new business models as we enter a new and fast evolving landscape.

Today we are uniquely positioned to take on the challenges and opportunities of this landscape. Against the backdrop of sectoral, political and pandemic disruption, Serpentine continues to be a global leader among cultural organisations, championing the artist’s voice in society’s biggest conversations. Last year hastened paradigm shifts in so many arenas of life. Our view is that it is no longer sustainable for art to exist above or to the side of society. We need to be at the forefront of it.

Serpentine must take on the challenges and topics that matter to everyone, everywhere. Serpentine is a physical platform and a digital one, where ground-breaking artists and luminaries from other fields exhibit and experiment on a world stage. Our 50+1 Anniversary is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to galvanize support around elevating and amplifying some of our lesser-known, long term research projects that have become increasingly relevant in light of world events: projects that engage ecology, technology and community. As we continue to produce ground-breaking exhibitions by artists who deserve recognition, the effects of these topical projects ripple out beyond the walls of the gallery and beyond the limits of the art world. Similarly, our commitment to Slow Programming, will go beyond the conventional temporal limits of museum initiatives, unfolding organically and demonstrating sustained investments in issues and audiences.

Forthcoming activities for 2021/22 will include:

Exhibition: James Barnor

Accra/London – A Retrospective

19 May - 24 October 2021

Serpentine will open on 19 May 2021 with a major new retrospective for photographer James Barnor. His career as a studio portraitist, photojournalist and Black lifestyle photographer spans six decades, recording major social and political changes in London and Accra. His Serpentine exhibition will focus on the period 1950-1980, selecting from more than 40k available images, all distinguished by his unmistakable eye and indelible connection to his sitters.

Exhibition: Jennifer Packer

The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing

Reopens 19 May – 22 August 2021

New-York based painter Jennifer Packer creates intimate portraiture centring contemporary Black lives to politically charged still lives and an investigative use of drawing. The extension to her acclaimed exhibition will include paintings and drawings from the past decade alongside new work created in her Bronx studio

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over the last year. The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing will travel to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in autumn 2021, where the presentation will be organised by Rujeko Hockley, assistant curator.

Architecture Commission: Serpentine Pavilion 2021 designed by Counterspace

11 June – 17 October 2021

The 20th Serpentine Pavilion is designed by Johannesburg-based practice Counterspace, directed by Sumayya Vally, recently named to the TIME100 Next list, celebrating 100 emerging leaders shaping the future. Opening in June 2021, Counterspace’s design will reference gathering and community spaces around the city, folding London into the Pavilion structure within Kensington Gardens. The structure will be accompanied by a full programme of activations throughout the summer, including the Listening to the City programme, which engages with a set of sonic landscapes from selected London neighbourhoods, paying attention to existing and lost spaces of gathering and belonging, with relevance to migrant communities across the city.

Back to Earth Publication: 140 Artists’ Ideas for Planet Earth

Beyond the galleries, 3 June sees the publication of 140 Artists’ Ideas for Planet Earth , published with Penguin as part of the Serpentine’s major environmental programme Back to Earth. This urgent guide to rethinking the climate emergency will be a ‘do-it-yourself’ manual on how to shape a more ecological and equitable future, with contributions from 140 of the most creative minds of our generation.

Future Art Ecosystems

In July, the latest report from Serpentine’s pioneering Arts Technologies department, Future Art Ecosystems Vol. 2 (FAE2) will be released. Future Art Ecosystems is an annual strategic briefing, launched in 2020, that provides concepts, references, language, and arguments for the construction of 21st century cultural infrastructure.

Vol. 1 addresses the implications of artistic engagements with advanced technologies in terms of the infrastructural redesign that they enable; FAE2 focuses on the larger stakes involved in revamping digital strategy at cultural institutions. The advent of the ‘Metaverse’ - an always-online, persistent, spatial ‘second’ world – represents a fundamental shift in our notion of digital infrastructure and presence, requiring new technological and organisational vocabularies to understand its implications.

Education and Civic Projects: Listening to the City

July - September 2021

The Listening to the City programme will engage with a set of sonic landscapes from selected London neighbourhoods, paying attention to existing and lost spaces of gathering and belonging, with particular relevance to migrant communities across the city. Conceived as a free summer programme from July to September 2021 developed by Serpentine Education, Civic Projects and 2021 Pavilion architect Sumayya Vally, the programme of sound commissions, workshops, education packs and listening sessions will offer ways of listening to the city. At a time when personal listening devices have become ubiquitous, shared spaces to listen are increasingly rare. If how we listen determines what we hear, this programme encourages us to unplug, slow down, and embrace modes of active listening, making connections between histories of struggle, community care and organising.

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Education and Civic Projects: Publication

Launch February 2022

A book for arts educators, organisers and those who are interested in working relationally with others, who want to use creative practice to disrupt the status quo and work towards social change. This book will reflect on Serpentine Education and Civic’s work with artists and communities, responding to political and social urgencies. It will be designed to support dissenting and oppositional conversations and offer challenges to neoliberal and colonial models of education in museums, arts organisations and other institutions, through commissioned texts, documentation of projects and practical exercises alongside socio-political timelines that outline a decade of crisis.

Education and Civic Projects: Support Structures for Support Structures May 2022 – Ongoing

A new fellowship programme that will support artists working at the intersection of art, spatial politics and community practice. Support Structures for Support Structures is a new fellowship programme initiated by Serpentine, that will support up to ten artists and collectives working at the intersection of art, spatial politics and community practice. The fellowship will consist of an unrestricted grant of at least £10,000 to develop creative ideas. It will also invite grantees to join an interdisciplinary network for support, development workshops and mentoring. It is conceived in collaboration with Sumayya Vally, the architect behind this year’s Serpentine Pavilion designed by Counterspace, and Serpentine’s Civic Projects programme.

The fellowship will be awarded through a nomination process and a selection panel will select fellows in July 2021, consisting of: Sepake Angiama, Director, Iniva; Pooja Agrawal, CEO, Public Practice; Leopold Lambert, Editor in Chief, The Funambulist; Rita Keegan, Artist and Sumayya Vally, Counterspace. The panel will be chaired by Amal Khalaf, Civic Curator, Serpentine.

Exhibition: Radio Ballads

March – May 2022

Serpentine exhibition and public presentations in Barking and Dagenham

Serpentine and the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham (LBBD) have partnered to develop a series of collaborative artist residencies and commissions that will examine the future and histories of work and care, called Radio Ballads. Four artists, Sonia Boyce, Helen Cammock, Rory Pilgrim and Ilona Sagar, work within the social care sector in the borough, with social workers and communities, to make new work over three years. These commissions, produced in the aftermath of ten years of dismantling the care sector and sustained throughout a period of multiple global crises, will be shared with audiences and communities in Barking and Dagenham as well as at the Serpentine in an exhibition and series of presentations in Spring 2022.

Alongside the artworks, there will be opportunities to access perspectives from people working in and accessing social care, through workshops and research developed with Goldsmiths University, which explore the possibility of exchange between artists and care workers, and the role of art in creating practices that are relational rather than transactional. Radio Ballads is part of New Town Culture, a Cultural Impact Award project led by the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham for the London Borough of Culture, a Mayor of London initiative.

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Financial Review

IMPROVING ORGANISATIONAL RESILIENCE AND SUSTAINABILITY Overview

Like so many other art organisations throughout the world, Serpentine has had to explore innovative ways to navigate this period of unprecedented uncertainty.

The financial statements show that organisational resilience and sustainability has been significantly impacted with considerable financial and operational challenges faced throughout the year.

Our income levels were significantly reduced as a result of gallery closures throughout 2020/21 and therefore, we have had to draw on our free reserves. The reduction in income was primarily driven by the postponement of our flagship architectural Pavilion commission and the cancellation of the Summer Party, our primary fundraising gala, which usually attracts significant corporate sponsorship and reduced commercial activity.

We continued however, to benefit from the generous support from our individual members, whose numbers and donations, albeit reduced, continued to support Serpentine’s artists, the development of programmes of activities and our operational infrastructure in this difficult year.

By building on our digital heritage, we have been able to successfully deliver various artist-led, interactive digital programmes, significantly expanded our online reach, and have further developed organisational capabilities in this area.

Looking ahead, we enter a period of slow economic recovery and a gradual return to normality, with tourism not expected to return to pre-pandemic levels until 2024/25. The return to full visitor capacity will most likely build over a longer period as we continue to adhere to vital social distancing measures, even when lockdown is lifted.

Given the current economic climate, we anticipate our free reserves will continue to decrease as the fundraising landscape remains uncertain. We also acknowledge a need for essential repairs and maintenance to our listed buildings due to the prolonged lockdown. We are continuing to adapt our policies, processes, and physical environment to ensure we can continue to operate safely, effectively, and efficiently in a hybrid working system post-pandemic.

However, with the successful bid to Arts Council England’s Culture Recovery Fund and our most ambitious summer programme to date, we remain modestly optimistic about the organisation's financial outlook; and we are certain of Serpentine’s continuing leadership in presenting pioneering exhibitions and new ideas in contemporary art.

Summary of Performance

Overall, the 2020/21 financial performance has been impacted by the pandemic, primarily due to reduction in income. Total income amounted to £6,950k (2020: £12,206k) and total expenditure was £6,761k (2020: £10,504k), resulting in a modest surplus for the year of £190k (2020: £1,701k).

The unrestricted deficit of £142k was due to Serpentine’s unwavering resolve to fulfil our commitments to our employees, artists, and community projects during this period. In a year marked by isolation, it has been

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more important than ever for us to find innovative approaches to further our mission and support artists, visitors, and employees in connecting with one another and with themselves. As such, spend was focused on digital projects such as our Back to Earth podcast, Cao Fei’s Out of Blueprints online exhibition and Formafantasma’s live conversations.

Principal Sources of Funding

Serpentine’s sources of income have been severely reduced as a result of the pandemic, with overall income declining by 43% when compared to 2019/20 results; with income generated from programmes, fundraising events and commercial activities being the most adversely affected by COVID-19 restrictions.

As in previous years, the greatest proportion of income is from donations and other general support £4,989k (2020: £6,162k), which accounts for 72% (2020: 50%) of total funds. Serpentine’s grant allocation of £1,216k from Arts Council England includes an inflationary increase from the previous year, accounting for 17% of all income.

Fundraising trading activities of £565k (2020: £2,055k) decreased from the prior year due to there being no Summer Party or Mystery Nights fundraising events (2020: £856k), as well as a decline of 96% of gallery hire and commercial income (2020: £456k).

Income from charitable activities decreased by 65% to £1,397k (2020: £3,989k). This is largely due to there being no Pavilion in 2020/21 (2020: £889k) and reduced sponsorship opportunities for live, education, digital and civic programmes.

Expenditure

In 2020/21, Serpentine had to quickly adapt to the new environment and was able to deliver an

interdisciplinary programme of digital projects and online initiatives while also reopening the physical gallery space for parts of the year. Expenditure on:

Overall expenditure on charitable activities has decreased to £4,834k (2020: £7,949k), in line with a reduction in income, however we have still delivered a high-quality body of work (albeit reduced) with which to engage our audiences and establish meaningful collaborations with global partners.

Fundraising costs of £1,589k (2020: £1,560k) are slightly higher than last year due to pressure from the regulatory environment and macro-economic challenges.

A more detailed analysis of income and expenditure is reported in notes 3 - 8 to the Financial Statements.

ANNUAL FUNDRAISING ACTIVITIES

Fundraising Practices

Serpentine employs a Development team structured into different income generating areas, namely: Corporate and Partnerships, Individual Giving, Major Gifts, Trusts and Foundations, and Trading.

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In line with the organisation’s 2018-2022 Business Plan, each division of the department adheres to relevant rules and regulations, offering an exemplary fundraising service to the Charity while working within best practice guidelines of the Charity Commission, Fundraising Regulator, and the Institute of Fundraising, as well as Serpentine’s corporate policies, such as the Ethical Fundraising Policy, and with full support of the Arts Council England.

Serpentine’s fundraising activities are monitored by the senior management team, and additionally overseen and approved by the Board of Trustees. The Charity does not employ third parties to fundraise on its behalf. The Ethics Sub-Committee also monitors fundraising activities to ensure adherence to due diligence processes.

We received no fundraising complaints in 2020/21. Should a complaint have been received, this would have been dealt with following our complaints and feedback procedures.

The fundraising approach undertaken by the Development team is not unreasonably intrusive or persistent. This approach is bespoke, and defined in the induction of new staff, on-going team development and overall monitoring by the Director of Development. The team takes reasonable steps to understand the circumstances of each donor, including taking into consideration whether the donor is vulnerable or requires additional care or support to make informed decisions.

Serpentine has complied with all data processing requirements in accordance with GDPR legislation and updated our privacy policy. A clear opt-out process is available on all electronic mailings and communication.

Fundraising Performance

Under the leadership of the CEO and Artistic Director, the fundraising team had a positive year given the challenging circumstances. The significant contribution from the department has been important in supporting Serpentine’s resilience and sustainability during this period.

Due to the absence of the Pavilion and Summer Party in 2020/21, which generally draw a major level of sponsorship, corporate fundraising earned a total income of £292k (2020: £1,749k), a significant decline from the previous year. Nonetheless, successful renewal or extended contracts were secured with Goldman Sachs, Chanel, and Pictet, amongst others. All agreements have fallen within the legal remit of the Charity and commercial partners.

Individual Giving schemes break down into several levels of engagement and financial support. Despite this difficult year, the ongoing commitment of our supporters led to a membership group totalling 225 (2020: 364), with a combined income to the Charity of £847k (2020: £1,262k). There were no complaints with charity communications in issues of language, persistence, or any other inappropriate nature.

We engage closely with our members through several committees including the Exhibitions Committee, the Education Committee, Cultural and Social Affairs Committee, and Future Contemporaries Committee. In 2020/21, we introduced many virtual events and talks to maintain engagement with members and smaller online salon events galvanised a more bespoke relationship with members, allowing us to present our fundraising needs clearly and solicit further support.

Major gifts were all accepted in accordance with the Charity’s Ethical Fundraising Policy and following a due diligence process. The Development team carry out a risk assessment on all new prospective donations or sponsorship opportunities of £10k or more. This assessment is carried out at the earliest possible stage. Major gifts totalled £2,884k (2020: £4,322k) over the financial year, including £2,000k from the Future Funds campaign.

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All funding achieved through grants from Trusts and Foundations, both from the UK and internationally, followed protocol and guidance by each specific funder. As per grant terms, reporting has been timely and specific as required. This business area accounted for £123k (2020: £326k) over 2020/21.

Fundraising Events

The Summer Party is the foremost fundraising gala for the Serpentine which was unable to take place in 2020/21 due to the pandemic, resulting in a loss of income from the previous year (2020 : £690k). Mystery Nights , a fundraising initiative to raise awareness of our young supporters’ membership scheme, was also cancelled (2020: £166k).

OTHER INCOME GENERATING ACTIVITIES

SG Commerce Limited

The Serpentine Trust owns 100% of the issued share capital of SG Commerce Limited, a company incorporated in England and Wales under registered number 8052071. Its financial performance has been consolidated into the Trust’s group accounts.

The company carried out non-charitable commercial trading activities for the Trust, primarily for the sale of limited editions prints, catalogues and other merchandise. In 2020/21, its annual turnover was £522k (2020: £1,162k), with profit of £179k (2020: £535k), showing a margin of 34% (2020: 46%). The profit will be gifted to the Serpentine Trust.

Serpentine Online Shop

Serpentine’s shop and website offer a full range of available past and present Serpentine limited editions, Serpentine exhibition products and merchandise, and exhibition catalogues and titles released in parallel to the Serpentine programme.

Limited Editions

Serpentine aims to commission limited edition prints in conjunction with each exhibition. 2020/21 also saw the launch of our 50+1 portfolio to celebrate the organisation’s 50[th] anniversary. Revenue for the year was £417k (2020: £461k).

Publications

Serpentine produces exhibition catalogues and journals to accompany the programmes. Second editions of the Formafantasma and Cao Fei catalogues and two new publications focusing on Jenna Sutela and Future Art Ecosystems were produced in 2020/21. Sales for the year were £42k (2020: £119k).

Gallery Hire

The Serpentine offers a unique event space for hire on a commercial basis, with a predominant business-tobusiness model, as well as regular private hires. Gallery hire income in 2020/21 was reduced to £17k (2020: £273k) due to the government’s coronavirus restrictions.

Magazine Restaurant

COVID-19 presented a plethora of challenges to the hospitality industry and, as a result, The Magazine restaurant was forced to close before the end of the 2019/20 fiscal year, and the space remained unoccupied for 2020/21. Benugo will take over operation of the site in the summer of 2021.

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Koenig Bookshop

The Koenig Bookshop stocks all Serpentine’s catalogues, past and present, for which Koenig Books continues to act as the main co-producer and distributor. Specialising in artists’ books, monographs and catalogues, the bookshop offers broad-ranging international titles relating to art, photography, architecture and design. It is the main London branch of Walther Koenig Books Ltd , Europe’s largest independent bookshop. The Bookshop was closed alongside the galleries during the pandemic.

AMERICAS FOUNDATION

The Americas Foundation of the Serpentine Galleries was launched in 2014 and is an independent charity that brings together supporters from across the Americas to serve as ambassadors for Serpentine. Americas Foundation members' generous support, which in 2020/21 amounted to £189k (2020: £175k), helps showcase the work of North and South American artists at Serpentine. Members receive access to a range of special events and programmes throughout the year, including two annual meetings in New York featuring noted artists, architects and global leaders. There is also a programme in October to coincide with Frieze London, gatherings at major international art events (such as Art Basel Miami Beach) and access to Serpentine's International Art Study trips with fellow supporters.

RISK STATEMENT

The Board of Trustees is responsible for ensuring that there are effective and adequate risk management and internal control systems in place. It discharges this responsibility through the Finance Sub-Committee and Operating Committee, which lead the review and management of the Trust's risk management framework.

The Trustees have assessed all major risks to which the Charity is exposed. Risk areas reviewed include strategy, operations, financial performance, fraud, knowledge management, compliance, reputational and business continuity. For each, a programme of action or review has been developed, which is updated twice yearly.

The impact of COVID-19 has been broad and widespread and presented unprecedented challenges, including risk to our business model, an increasing cost base, and the pressure on available funding to drive organisational change and support our ambitious programme. The Trustees manage this uncertainty by meticulous evaluation of possible scenarios and robust review of business plans so that the Serpentine is proactive, fluid and agile in how we deploy our resources.

In response to the continued threat of a worldwide public health, ecological, and economic crisis, the Trustees are taking actions to ensure organisational resilience. This includes:

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The overarching focus for the Serpentine remains to provide free art and free thinking, by remaining open and accessible to all.

GOING CONCERN

The Serpentine Trust has considered its ability to continue as a going concern for the 12 months following the signing of the financial statements. Detailed budgets and cash flow estimates for 2022 and 2023 have been prepared, taking into account the probable prolonged implications of COVID-19 on the Trust's activities and the organisation's recovery strategy.

Prior to the pandemic, the Trust's financial sustainability had significantly improved which was instrumental in our ability to manoeuvre through this unchartered economic environment. Although unrestricted reserves had decreased by the end of 2021 and we expect them to fall further in 2022, thanks to the generosity of our supporters, to whom we are immensely grateful, as well as Arts Council England and the Future Funds campaign, we are able to ensure the organisation is sustainable in the current climate.

After considering the risks and uncertainties, the Trustees have a reasonable expectation that the Trust has adequate resources and facilities in place to continue its activities for the foreseeable future. Accordingly, they continue to adopt the going concern basis in preparing the financial statements.

RESERVES

The Trustees regularly review the reserves of the Charity. This review encompasses the nature and risk of the income and expenditure streams, the need to match variable income with fixed expenditure commitments and the different types of reserves held by the Trust.

Over the past strategy period, the policy was to progressively build reserves with a target of between £2.7m and £3m to create greater flexibility and resilience, which was successfully achieved with unrestricted funds of £3,034k in 2020. However, as expected, in response to the uncertainties caused by COVID-19, the unrestricted reserves decreased in 2021 to £2,892k. We expect them to decrease further to £2,600k by the end of 2022.

The Trustees designated a further £65k towards the replacement of vital climate-control plants serving Serpentine, which will need to be substituted within the next two years at a cost of £325k. They also acknowledge the importance of essential repairs and maintenance to our listed buildings as a result of the protracted closure. While compliance maintenance was carried out throughout the year, the beautiful venues required extensive work since they were unoccupied for much of the year. This work will be carried out in 2021/22, thus unrestricted reserves will be further affected. Additionally, a designated reserve of £310k has been established to cover those expenses throughout the course of the two leases. The value of the transfer was determined by evaluating the yearly rolling programme and the Serpentine's capacity to sustain the anticipated improvements. This brought designated reserves to £570k.

Restricted funds, representing remaining funds donated to support specific education and exhibition programmes, have increased from £91k to £114k.

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Endowment funds have increased from £10,534k to £10,842k thanks to the Future Funds campaign. The majority of this balance is the net present value of the North Gallery building (£8.6m) with the remaining expendable endowment funds held as capital.

Total funds amount to £13,848k (2020: £13,659k). After making allowances for unrestricted fixed assets of £168k, designated funds £570k, restricted funds of £114k, and endowment funds of £10,842k, the amount of free reserves is £2,154k (2020: £2,567k).

Structure, Governance & Management

Governance

The charity is a charitable company limited by guarantee. It was founded in 1970 and was incorporated as a company in 1987. It is governed by Memorandum and Articles of Association, which were last amended in November 2015.

The primary charitable objective is to promote, improve, develop and maintain public education in all forms of the arts and music.

The Board members, as charitable Trustees and Company Directors, have the legal responsibility for the effective use of resources in accordance with the objectives of the Serpentine Trust and for providing effective leadership and direction.

The Trustees delegate various financial and operational responsibilities, as well as the evaluation of ethical issues, to the Finance Sub-Committee, the Operating Committee and the Ethics Committee, which operate under their specific Terms of Reference. The committees meet on a regular basis and their decisions are ratified by the full Board.

Responsibility for strategy, planning and day-to-day management of operations is delegated to the executive team, who are considered to be the key management team, led by the Chief Executive Officer, Artistic Director and Chief Operating and Financial Officer. Formal reporting to the Trustees takes place regularly throughout the year.

The trustees are aware of the Charity Governance Code published in 2017, which sets out the principles and recommended practice for good governance within the sector. The trustees are satisfied that the Charity applies the principles of the code within its current Governance arrangements.

Board of Trustees

The Board of Trustees meets quarterly and is responsible for the Serpentine’s management and administration. The following is a list of the Trustees of the Serpentine Trust who served for all or part of the year to 31 March 2021.

Michael R. Bloomberg Chairman Barry Townsley CBE Co-Vice Chairman Felicity Waley-Cohen Co-Vice Chairman

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Marcus Boyle Treasurer Sir David Adjaye OBE Andrew Cohen Nicoletta Fiorucci Russo, Appointed 10 December 2019 Off. OSI Maja Hoffmann Ruth Mackenzie CBE Aditya Mittal Appointed 3 October 2019 Robert Rosenkranz Appointed 10 December 2019 Amanda Sharp OBE Michael Sherwood Resigned 18 September 2019 Jonathan Wood Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

Finance Sub-Committee

The Finance Sub-Committee meets quarterly to consider the Serpentine's strategy, business, and financial planning in order to ensure organisational sustainability and growth. It focuses on major areas of change, including innovation and development. It is responsible for audits, finances, operations and salary reviews

Salaries, including those of the Executive team, are reviewed annually and any increases take effect from 1 April of the following financial year. Increases are based on benchmarking of average pay awards in the UK combined with the Trust’s ability to pay. The Trust is committed to ensuring that salaries are market competitive and fair, offering the London Living Wage as a minimum to all staff.

The committee is instrumental in ensuring that all members of the Board and Senior Officers maintain an appropriate level of knowledge and understanding of key financial issues.

The Committee members are:

Michael R. Bloomberg Chairman Barry Townsley CBE Co-Vice Chairman Felicity Waley-Cohen Co-Vice Chairman Marcus Boyle Treasurer Jonathan Wood Secretary

Operating Committee

The Operating Committee meets fortnightly and oversees ongoing operational and financial performance, as well as assessing short-term risks and opportunities. Trustees consider the financial implications of all new significant strategic developments and projects undertaken by the Gallery, in particular the capital expenditure and cash flow requirements of such activities.

The Committee members are:

Barry Townsley CBE Co-Vice Chairman Marcus Boyle Treasurer Jonathan Wood Secretary

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Ethics Committee

The Ethics Committee meets quarterly and is responsible for developing and promoting Serpentine’s ethical principles. It safeguards and oversees the overall ethical health of the organisation, as well as the embedding equality, inclusion, and relevance values. The committee ensures that all corporate policies, practices, and decisions reflect the mission of the gallery and adhere to the highest ethical standards. It also promotes the debate and resolution of ethical situations that may arise. Additionally, it is responsible for the organization's ethical fundraising practises.

The Committee members are:

Marcus Boyle Treasurer Andrew Cohen Amanda Sharp OBE Jonathan Wood Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

Recruitment and Training of Trustees

The Serpentine Trust periodically reviews its Board of Trustees to ensure that the range of skills required by the organisation is assessed and provided for. The recruitment process is an opportunity to improve the effectiveness of the Board, which provides invaluable expertise to Serpentine members of staff, who, at a senior level, are in contact with the Trustees on a regular basis. This collaborative working relationship is of immeasurable value to the organisation and ensures a transparent model of governance.

Each Trustee undertakes an induction programme that includes meetings with the Chair, the Chief Executive Officer and members of the executive team as appropriate. Trustees do not exercise a management function but are encouraged to engage with areas of particular interest through close involvement with management and staff. Trustees give their time freely and no remuneration is paid, except for direct reimbursement of travel expenses.

Public Benefit Statement

The Trustees confirm that they have complied with the duty in section 17 of the Charity Act 2011 to have due regard to the Charity Commission’s general guidance on public benefit, ‘Charities and Public Benefit’.

The Trustees believe that all the Serpentine Trust’s charitable service delivery is for public benefit and note that the great majority is made available to the public without charge. This includes its world-renowned Exhibitions and Education programmes, as well as its architectural commission.

Environmental Sustainability Policy

Serpentine acknowledges the climate emergency and recognises it as the most urgent issue of our time. We are a public institution committed to supporting artists and their visions of the future; we pledge ourselves to new ways of thinking and acting.

As a central pillar of our programming, we have embedded environmental and ecological concerns across the galleries’ programmes, infrastructure and networks. We are committed to reducing our environmental

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impact and proud of our commitment to environmental sustainability. Serpentine is part of the Arts Council England Sustainability Spotlight Programme 2018-2022 delivered by Julie’s Bicycle, striving to reduce the environmental impacts of Band 3 National Portfolio Organisations to achieve measurable carbon reductions through the development of environmental management practice.

Our environmental policy takes a prominent place in all our operations, from procurement and staff travel to cleaning products and energy consumption. This includes using a renewable electricity supplier, Green IT, waste recycling, using recycled and environmentally friendly products where possible and moving towards ‘paperless’. Serpentine is also committed to pooling knowledge and convening its networks to share best practice.

Areas of focus for 2020/21 include:

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Environmental Action Plan

Objective 1:

Analyse trends in the institution’s energy output to identify energy saving measures:

Objective 2:

Implement energy-saving measures to reduce overall energy consumption over the three-year period:

Objective 3:

Increase staff engagement with environmental issues and make them active participants in the Serpentine’s work to reduce the institution’s impacts on the environment:

The objectives outlined above will aim to reduce:

Serpentine Environmental Policies

We are dedicated to reducing our environmental impact and proud of our commitment to environmental sustainability, through energy conservation, waste reduction and recycling. Our Environmental Policy takes a prominent place in all our operations, from procurement and staff travel to cleaning products and energy consumption.

New initiatives across the organisation

We have switched to eco window cleaning: our cleaning methods incorporate a Purified Water Fed Pole System attaining excellent results and reaching heights up to 65ft. We do not use environmentally damaging products, only 100% purified heated water. All products used by our window cleaners for interior cleans are

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certified plant-based solutions with added mineral ingredients to gently cut through any dirt and grime. We now use Green IT waste, which recycles all our old computers, etc: greenitdisposal.co.uk/about-us

Serpentine green committee

Headed by Julie Burnell, Head of Construction and Buildings, the committee meets quarterly with a representative from each department (Facilities, Programmes, Visitor Services, Communications, Development, Operations & Leadership Team) and discusses environmental performance, setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timing-agreed) targets.

Our policy addresses the following:

1. Lighting

Artificial lighting accounts for 44% of the electricity use in the buildings. We commit to buy Energy Star-rated light bulbs and fixtures, which use at least two-thirds less energy than regular lighting and install timers or motion sensors that automatically shut off lights when they're not needed.

2. Maximising computer efficiency

Computers in the business sector unnecessarily waste £100 million worth of electricity a year. We commit to:

3. Print smarter

The average UK office worker goes through 10,000 sheets of copy paper a year. We commit to:

4. Move towards ‘paperless’ where possible

We will:

5. Our recycling

We have placed recycling bins in accessible, high-traffic areas and provided clear information about what can and cannot be recycled.

Serpentine South Gallery – 49.68% general: 56.32% Recycled

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Serpentine North Gallery – 81.08% general: 18.92% Recycled

An initial consultation with staff suggests that the implementation of extra bins and signage will have an immediate improvement on the above figures and a greater balancing with Serpentine ratio.

6. Using recycled and environmentally friendly products wherever possible

We will:

We commit to:

7. Travel

We invest in videoconferencing and other technological solutions that can reduce the amount of employee travel, where appropriate. When travel is unavoidable, we take the train, bus or tube instead of a rental car. When renting is unavoidable, we choose rental agencies that offer hybrids and other high-mileage vehicles.

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Independent Auditor’s Report to the Members of The Serpentine Trust

Opinion

We have audited the financial statements of The Serpentine Trust (‘the charitable company’) and its subsidiary (‘the group’) for the year ended 31 March 2021 which comprise the Consolidated Statement of Financial Activities, the Group and Charity Balance Sheets, the Consolidated Statement of Cash Flow 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 Financial Reporting Standard 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:

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 group 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 the charitable company's or the group’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.

Other information

The trustees are responsible for the other information contained within the annual report. The other information comprises the information included in the annual report, other than the financial statements and our auditor’s report thereon. 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 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.

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Opinions on other matters prescribed by the Companies Act 2006

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

Matters on which we are required to report by exception

In light of the knowledge and understanding of the group and charitable company and their environment obtained in the course of the audit, we have not identified material misstatements in the strategic report or the directors’ report included within the trustees’ 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:

Responsibilities of trustees

As explained more fully in the trustees’ responsibilities statement set out on page 78, 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 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.

Details of the extent to which the audit was considered capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud and non-compliance with laws and regulations are set out below.

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

Extent to which the audit was considered capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud

Irregularities, including fraud, are instances of non-compliance with laws and regulations. We identified and assessed the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements from irregularities, whether due to fraud or error, and discussed these between our audit team members. We then designed and performed

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audit procedures responsive to those risks, including obtaining audit evidence sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion.

We obtained an understanding of the legal and regulatory frameworks within which the charitable company and group operates, focusing on those laws and regulations that have a direct effect on the determination of material amounts and disclosures in the financial statements. The laws and regulations we considered in this context were the Companies Act 2006, the Charities Act 2011, together with the Charities SORP (FRS 102). We assessed the required compliance with these laws and regulations as part of our audit procedures on the related financial statement items.

In addition, we considered provisions of other laws and regulations that do not have a direct effect on the financial statements but compliance with which might be fundamental to the charitable company’s and the group’s ability to operate or to avoid a material penalty. We also considered the opportunities and incentives that may exist within the charitable company and the group for fraud. The laws and regulations we considered in this context for the UK operations were General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Taxation legislation, and Employment legislation.

Auditing standards limit the required audit procedures to identify non-compliance with these laws and regulations to enquiry of the Trustees and other management and inspection of regulatory and legal correspondence, if any.

We identified the greatest risk of material impact on the financial statements from irregularities, including fraud, to be within the timing of recognition of income, and the override of controls by management. Our audit procedures to respond to these risks included enquiries of management, and the Finance SubCommittee about their own identification and assessment of the risks of irregularities, sample testing on the posting of journals, reviewing accounting estimates for biases, reviewing regulatory correspondence with the Charity Commission, and reading minutes of meetings of those charged with governance.

Owing to the inherent limitations of an audit, there is an unavoidable risk that we may not have detected some material misstatements in the financial statements, even though we have properly planned and performed our audit in accordance with auditing standards. For example, the further removed noncompliance with laws and regulations (irregularities) is from the events and transactions reflected in the financial statements, the less likely the inherently limited procedures required by auditing standards would identify it. In addition, as with any audit, there remained a higher risk of non-detection of irregularities, as these may involve collusion, forgery, intentional omissions, misrepresentations, or the override of internal controls. We are not responsible for preventing non-compliance and cannot be expected to detect noncompliance with all laws and regulations.

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

Tina Allison, Senior Statutory Auditor For and on behalf of Crowe U.K. LLP Statutory Auditor

London

Date: 9 December 2021

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CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL ACTIVITIES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

(INCLUDING INCOME AND EXPENDITURE ACCOUNTS)

Consolidated Statement of Financial Activities
(including income and expenditure accounts)
Income and Endowments from:
Note
Donations and Legacies
Grants
3
Donations & Support
4
Total Donations and Legacies
Fundraising Trading Activities
Merchandise
Special Fundraising Events
Gallery Hire and Other Commercial Activities
Interest
Total Fundraising Trading Activities
Income from Charitable Activities
Exhibitions
5
Education
5
Architectural Commission
5
Total Income from Charitable Activities
Total Income
Expenditure on:
Raising Funds
6
Fundraising Trading Costs
Merchandise
Special Fundraising Events
Gallery Hire
Total Fundraising Trading Costs
Total Costs of Raising Funds
Net Income Available for Charitable Activities
Charitable Activities
Exhibitions
7
Education
7
Architectural Commission
7
Total Expenditure on Charitable Activities
Total Expenditure
Net (Expenditure) / Income
NET MOVEMENT IN FUNDS
Reconciliation of Funds:
Fund Balances Brought Forward at 1 April 2020
Fund Balances Carried Forward at 31 March 2021		 Unrestricted
General
Fund
£
1,576,717
2,412,128
3,988,845
505,177
32,000
17,300
10,166
564,643
15,000
-
-
15,000
4,568,488
1,588,779
288,445
43,013
6,802
338,260
1,927,039
2,641,449
2,406,548
358,004
18,448
2,783,000
4,710,039
(141,551)
(141,551)
3,033,981
2,892,430		 Restricted
Fund
£
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
1,014,501
367,500
-
1,382,001
1,382,001
-
-
-
-
-
-
1,382,001
977,501
381,484
-
1,358,985
1,358,985
23,016
23,016
90,984
114,000		 Endowment
Fund
£
-
1,000,000
1,000,000
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
1,000,000
-
-
-
-
-
-
1,000,000
691,655
-
-
691,655
691,655
308,345
308,345
10,533,664
10,842,009		 Total
2021
£
1,576,717
3,412,128
4,988,845
505,177
32,000
17,300
10,166
564,643
1,029,501
367,500
-
1,397,001
6,950,489
1,588,779
288,445
43,013
6,802
338,260
1,927,039
5,023,450
4,075,704
739,488
18,448
4,833,640
6,760,679
189,810
189,810
13,658,629
13,848,439		 Total
2020
£
1,202,300
4,959,964
6,162,264
733,622
855,745
456,474
8,720
2,054,561
2,366,128
733,873
888,875
3,988,876
12,205,701
1,560,282
557,642
400,227
37,202
995,071
2,555,353
9,650,348
5,602,833
1,095,187
1,251,053
7,949,073
10,504,426
1,701,275
1,701,275
11,957,354
13,658,629

All recognised gains and losses are included above and all activities are continuing. *

The notes on pages 85 to 101 form part of these financial statements.

82

GROUP CHARITY CHARITY
2021 2020 2021 2020
Note £ £ £ £
FIXED ASSETS
Intangible assets 13 146,837 170,540 146,837 170,540
Tangible assets 14 8,667,329 9,432,905 8,667,329 9,438,905
Investment 2,255,900 - 2,256,000 100
Total Fixed Assets 11,070,066 9,609,445 11,070,166 9,609,545
CURRENT ASSETS
Debtors and Prepayments 15 2,254,833 1,793,412 2,667,578 2,504,976
Cash at Bank and In-hand 3,727,019 5,044,151 3,228,245 4,234,340
Total Current Assets 5,981,852 6,837,563 5,895,823 6,739,316
LIABILITIES
Creditors: Amounts Falling Due Within 1 Year 16 (3,203,479) (2,788,379) (3,117,550) (2,690,232)
NET CURRENT ASSETS 2,778,373 4,049,184 2,778,273 4,049,084
TOTALASSETS LESS CURRENT LIABILITIES 13,848,439 13,658,629 13,848,439 13,658,629
TOTAL NET ASSETS 13,848,439 13,658,629 13,848,439 13,658,629
THE FUNDS OF THE CHARITY:
Unrestricted Funds 2,892,430 3,033,981 2,892,430 3,033,981
Restricted Income Funds 114,000 90,984 114,000 90,984
3,006,430 3,124,965 3,006,430 3,124,965
Endowment Funds 10,842,009 10,533,664 10,842,009 10,533,664
17 & 18 13,848,439 13,658,629 13,848,439 13,658,629

CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF CASH FLOW FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

Note
Cash flows from operating activities:
Net cash provided by operating activities
A
Cash flows from investing activities:
Interest on investments
Investment transfer
Purchase of property, plant and equipment
Net cash used in investing activities
Cash flows from financing activities:
Decrease in borrowing
Net cash used in by financing activities
Change in cash in hand in the reporting period
Cash in hand at the beginning of the reporting period
B
Cash in hand at the end of the reporting period
B
NOTE A: RECONCILIATION OF CASH FLOWS FROM OPERATING ACTIVITIES
Net incoming for the operating period
(As per the Statement of Financial Activities)
Adjusted for:
Interest income
Depreciation charges
(Increase) / Decrease in debtors
Increase / (Decrease) in creditors
Net cash provided by operating activities
NOTE B: NOTICE OF CASH AND CASH EQUIVALENTS
1 April 2020
£
Cash
5,044,151
Net cash and cash equivalents
5,044,151		 2021
£
975,513
10,166
(2,255,900)
(46,911)
(2,292,645)
-
-
(1,317,132)
5,044,151
3,727,019
2021
£
189,810
(10,166)
842,190
(461,421)
415,100
975,513
Cash Flow
£
(1,317,132)
(1,317,132)		 2020
£
2,402,525
8,720
-
(161,247)
(152,527)
(750,000)
(750,000)
1,499,998
3,544,153
5,044,151
2020
£
1,701,275
(8,720)
854,887
97,405
(242,322)
2,402,525
31 March 2021
£
3,727,019
3,727,019

84

1 PRINCIPAL ACCOUNTING POLICIES

a) Company Information

The Serpentine Trust is a Public Benefit Entity registered as a charity in England and Wales and a company limited by guarantee. It was incorporated on 24 July 1987 (company number: 2150221) and registered as a charity on 21 March 1988 (charity number: 298809).

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 registered address is Kensington Gardens, London W2 3XA.

b) Basis of Accounting

The consolidated financial statements have been prepared under the historical cost convention in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS102), the Companies Act 2006 and the 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) - effective 1 January 2015.

The financial statements have been prepared consolidating the results of the Trust and its subsidiary SG Commerce Limited (company number: 8052071).

The functional currency of the Trust and its subsidiary is considered to be GBP because that is the currency of the primary economic environment in which the group operates. The consolidated financial statements are also presented in GBP.

The Trust has taken exemption from preparing its Statement of Financial Activities under section 408 of the Companies Act 2006. The unconsolidated surplus for the Serpentine Trust in 2021 was £11k (2020: £1,166k surplus).

As disclosed in the Trustees’ Annual Report, the Trust is largely dependent on the generosity of supporters therefore there is a level of uncertainty in the longer-term forecasts. After considering future plans, budgets, cash flows and reserve levels as well as the risks and uncertainties, the Trustees have a reasonable expectation that the Trust has adequate resources and facilities in place to continue its activities for the foreseeable future. Accordingly, the Trust continues to adopt the going concern basis in preparing the financial statements as outlined in the Trustees’ Report.

c) Critical accounting judgements and key sources of estimation uncertainty

In the application of the charity’s accounting policies, which are described in this note, Trustees are required to make judgements, estimates, and assumptions about the carrying values of assets and liabilities that are not readily apparent from other sources. The estimates and underlying assumptions are based on historical experience and other factors that are considered to be relevant. Actual results may differ from these estimates.

The estimates and underlying assumptions are reviewed on an on-going basis. Revisions to accounting estimates are recognised in the period in which the estimate is revised if the revision affects only that period, or in the period of the revision and future periods if the revision affects the current and future periods.

85

In the view of the Trustees, no assumptions concerning the future or estimation uncertainty affecting assets and liabilities at the balance sheet date are likely to result in a material adjustment to their carrying amounts in the next financial year.

Critical judgments in applying the entity’s accounting policies:

The organisation makes an estimate of the recoverable value of trade debtors. When assessing impairment, management considers factors such as the ageing profile of debtors and historical experience.

Assets are reviewed annually to assess that their useful life and carrying value are still appropriate.

d) Income

All incoming resources are included in the Statement of Financial Activities, which the Trust is entitled to the income and receipt is probable and the amount can be quantified with reasonable accuracy.

Gifts in Kind: Goods and services received at no costs for which the Serpentine Trust would otherwise have to pay for are recognised in the financial statements at the value to the charity where this can be reasonably quantified.

Voluntary income: Donations and grants are accounted for on a receivable basis unless they are given for a future specified period in which case they are deferred.

Grants: Grant income is recognised in the statement of financial activities when received or when the charity becomes entitled to receipt. Grants that have been received will be treated as deferred income where there are specific requirements in the terms of the grant that the income recognition is dependent on certain activities being completed in a future accounting period.

Trading income: Income received from the provision of goods or services is recognised in the year in which the good or service is provided, and so entitlement earned.

e) Expenditure

Charitable activities and support costs comprise direct charitable expenditure including direct staff costs attributable to a particular activity. Where costs cannot be directly attributed, they have been allocated to activities on a basis consistent with the use of resources. This has been assessed by using an estimation of staff time spent on each activity as an average throughout the year.

Governance costs are those incurred in compliance with constitutional and statutory requirements and are allocated across charitable activities as a separate component of support costs.

All exhibition costs directly attributable to opening an exhibition are recognised in the year which the expenditure is incurred. Where appropriate, consideration around whether the expenditure meets the definition of an asset or liability will be made to ensure appropriate accounting treatment has been adopted.

86

Other costs including the salaries of gallery assistants and similar costs incurred once the exhibition is opened are recognised once a third party has provided a service.

f)

Fund Accounting

The General Unrestricted Fund is available for use at the discretion of the Trustees in furtherance of the general objectives of the Gallery. Designated Funds are those unrestricted funds set aside by the Trustees for specific purposes or projects.

Restricted Funds are subject to specific restriction imposed by donors or by the purpose of the appeal. The Refurbishment Funds are restricted funds. Permanent endowment funds are funds where the donors have stated that the funds are to be held as capital and only the interest may be spent. Expendable endowment funds are held as capital but are able to be converted into expendable income with the authorisation of the Trustees.

g) Depreciation

Depreciation is recognised in the statement of financial activities as part of expenditure and is allocated across the expenditure headings on the same basis as Support & Governance costs.

Capital expenditure in excess of £500 is capitalised and depreciated over its estimated useful life or the length of the lease. Current estimated useful lives for the major categories of fixed assets are:

Systems and Software 4 years
Assets in the Course of Construction Nil
Furniture and Equipment 4 years
Computer related equipment 3 years
Building Improvements 4 years
Leasehold Property 20 years

h) Operating Leases

Rentals under operating leases are charged to the income and expenditure account as incurred.

i) Foreign Currency Translation

Transactions in foreign currencies are translated at the exchange rate on the date of the transaction. Balances held in foreign currencies at the year-end are translated at the exchange rate at the balance sheet date.

j)

Financial Instruments

Financial assets and financial liabilities are recognised when the Trust becomes a party to the contractual provisions of the instrument. Additionally, all financial assets and liabilities are classified according to the substance of the contractual arrangements entered into.

Financial assets and liabilities are initially measured at transaction price (including transaction costs) and are subsequently re-measured where applicable at amortised cost. Assets and liabilities held in foreign currency are translated to GBP at the balance sheet date at an appropriate year-end exchange rate.

87

2 LIABILITY OF THE MEMBERS

The Company is limited by guarantee. In the event of its winding up due to insufficient funds, the maximum liability of each member is £1. As at 31 March 2021, the company had 14 members, all of whom were Trustees.

3 REVENUE GRANTS

Arts Council England
General Fund
Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme
General Fund		 2021
£
1,215,690
361,027
1,576,717		 2020
£
1,193,725
8,575
1,202,300

4 DONATIONS & SUPPORT

All general individual contributions provided to the Gallery are accounted for as unrestricted funds.

Funds provided by Gallery Benefactors
General Donations to the Gallery
American Friends
Donations for Serpentine Sackler Gallery
Future Funds endowment
Museum, Galleries and Exhibition Tax Relief
Total Donations & Support		 2021
£
1,793,908
3,703
188,732
-
1,000,000
425,785
3,412,128		 2020
£
3,192,402
50,746
175,330
60,422
1,000,000
481,064
4,959,964

88

5 INCOME FROM CHARITABLE ACTIVITIES

UNRESTRICTED
Grant From:
Exhibitions:
Sponsorship
Various
Ticket Income
Various
Tour Income
Various
Education:
Ticket Income
Various
Architectural Commission:
Pavilion Sale
Various
Overseas Pavilion
Total Unrestricted
RESTRICTED
Grant From:
Exhibitions programme
Various Exhibition Patrons
Education programme
Various Education Patrons
Architectural Commission
Various Architectural Patrons
Total Restricted		 2021
£
-
-
15,000
15,000
-
-
-
-
-
15,000
2021
£
1,014,501
367,500
-
1,382,001		 2020
£
-
3,870
95,000
98,870
13,651
13,651
525,000
-
525,000
637,521
2020
£
2,267,258
720,222
363,875
3,351,355

6 EXPENDITURE ON RAISING FUNDS

Staff Costs
Direct Costs
Support Costs		 2021
£
779,501
23,096
786,182
1,588,779		 2020
£
604,135
91,554
864,593
1,560,282

89

7 CHARITABLE ACTIVITIES

Unrestricted
£
EXHIBITION COSTS
Installation & Materials
32,995
Transport
26,217
Organising Costs
234,965
Security
-
Insurance Costs
-
Printing Material & Publicity
Costs
47,532
Development Costs
4,035
Staff Costs
634,982
Support Costs
1,425,822
Depreciation
-
2,406,548
EDUCATION COSTS
Education Programme Costs
69,174
Staff Costs
124,784
Support Costs
164,046
358,004
ARCHITECTURAL
COMMISSION
Direct Build Costs
-
Indirect Build Costs
18,448
Staff Costs
-
Support Costs
-
18,448
Total
2,783,000
8
SUPPORT COSTS
Fundraising
£
Marketing Staff Costs
77,791
Support Staff Costs
207,310
General Marketing
27,254
General Overheads
458,000
Governance Costs:
Audit Costs
7,074
Staff Costs
6,518
Support Staff Costs
2,235
786,182		 Unrestricted
£
32,995
26,217
234,965
-
-
47,532
4,035
634,982
1,425,822
-		 Restricted
Fund
£
13,402
10,649
95,439
-
-
19,307
1,639
257,919
579,146
-		 Expendable
Endowment

£

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

691,655

691,655

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

691,655
Education
£
31,115
91,216
10,902
201,521
3,113
-
983
338,850		 Expendable
Endowment

£

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

691,655

691,655

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

691,655
Education
£
31,115
91,216
10,902
201,521
3,113
-
983
338,850		 2021
£
46,397
36,866
330,404
-
-
66,839
5,674
892,901
2,004,968
691,655
4,075,704
142,885
257,753
338,850
739,488
-
18,448
-
-
18,448
4,833,640
Architecture
2021
£
£
-
311,162
-
829,238
-
109,016
-
1,832,006
-
28,296
-
11,344
-
8,938
-
3,130,000		 2020
£
563,947
59,018
430,307
152
94,838
518,447
61,350
1,173,870
2,009,249
691,655
2,406,548 977,501 691,655 5,602,833
69,174
124,784
164,046		 73,711
132,969
174,804		 -
-
-		 476,804
244,123
374,260
358,004 381,484 - 1,095,187
-
18,448
-
-		 -
-
-
-		 -
-
-
-		 904,911
130,597
3,599
211,946
18,448 - - 1,251,053
2,783,000 1,358,985 691,655 7,949,073
Exhibitions
£
202,256
530,712
70,860
1,172,485
18,109
4,826
5,720
2,004,968		 Education
£
31,115
91,216
10,902
201,521
3,113
-
983
338,850		 2020
£
305,857
849,690
199,137
2,054,513
26,600
11,773
12,478
3,460,048

90

9 NET INCOMING RESOURCES

2021 2020
Net Incoming Resources is stated after: £ £
Auditor’s remuneration:
Statutory audit 28,296 26,600
Tax & advisory services 4,900 4,900
Depreciation 842,190 854,887
Operating Lease charges:
Land and Buildings 727,208 717,118
Other 4,063 12,626

10 REMUNERATION OF TRUSTEES

No Trustees received any reimbursed expenses or remuneration during the year, however one Trustee was paid £750 for providing a service by writing an essay contribution for an exhibition publication (2020: £0).

91

11 STAFF COSTS

AFF COSTS
Wages and Salaries
Social Security Costs
Pension Contributions		 2021
£
2,727,221
282,010
81,606
3,090,837		 2020
£
2,843,391
278,985
83,148
3,205,524

The following number of employees earned more than £60,000 during the year:

2020 2019
Number Number
Employees earning £60,001 - £70,000 1 2
Employees earning £70,001 - £80,000 1 2
Employees earning £80,001 - £90,000 3 -
Employees earning £90,001 - £100,000 - -
Employees earning £100,001 - £110,000 - 1
Employees earning £110,001 - £120,000 1 -
Employees earning £120,001 - £130,000 - 1

Pension contributions of £15,312 (2020: £14,661) were made in respect of employees paid over £60,000.

Average monthly number of full-time equivalent employees, analysed by function:

Exhibitions
Education
Fundraising
Support
Marketing
Total		 2021
Number
22
6
15
16
6
65		 2020
Number
32
7
15
17
5
76

Average number of employees during the year was 78 (2020: 93).

The total aggregate cost of key management employee considerations was £365,660 in 2021 (2020: £312,820).

Redundancy costs during the year were £7,038 (2020: £12,884).

92

12 OPERATING LEASE COMMITMENTS

During the next year, the Trust is committed to making the following annual payments on leasehold properties and plant and equipment under operating leases which expire:

Land and Buildings
Within one year
Within two to five years
After five years
Plant and Equipment
Within one year
Within two to five years
After five years		 2021
£
768,557
3,240,018
5,481,400
9,489,975
2021
£
4,063
-
-
4,063		 2020
£
757,634
3,174,888
6,315,087
10,247,609
2020
£
12,626
2,855
-
15,481

13 INTANGIBLE FIXED ASSETS - GROUP AND CHARITY

Cost at 1 April 2020
Additions
At 31 March 2021
Depreciation at 1 April 2020
Charge for the year
At 31 March 2021
Net Book Value at 31 March 2021
At 31 March 2020		 Systems and
Software
£
337,251
37,605
374,856
166,711
61,308
228,019
146,837
170,540

93

14 TANGIBLE FIXED ASSETS - GROUP AND CHARITY

Cost at 1 April 2020
Additions
Disposals
At 31 March 2021
Depreciation at 1 April 2020
Charge for the year
Disposals
At 31 March 2021
Net Book Value at 31 March 2021
At 31 March 2020		 Furniture and
Equipment
£
482,256
5,485
(10,772)
476,969
415,103
64,633
(10,772)
468,964
8,005
67,153		 Building
Improvements
£
4,751,865
3,821
(8,311)
4,747,375
4,717,455
24,594
(8,311)
4,733,738
13,637
34,410		 Leasehold
Buildings
£
13,833,094
-
-
13,833,094
4,495,752
691,655
-
5,187,407
8,645,687
9,337,342		 Total
£
19,067,215
9,306
(19,083)
19,057,438
9,628,310
780,882
(19,083)
10,390,109
8,667,329
9,438,905
15
DEBTORS
Trade Debtors
Amount due from Subsidiary Company
Sundry Debtors
Prepayments
Taxation and Social Security
Accrued Income
Total		 Group
2021
2020
£
£
1,212,246
1,214,469
-
-
1,509
21,957
499,581
187,761
93,323
103,170
448,174
266,055
2,254,833
1,793,412		 Charity
2021
2020
£
£
1,210,041
1,184,188
404,591
711,123
1,509
21,957
498,826
186,701
104,437
138,668
448,174
262,339
2,667,578
2,504,976		 Charity
2021
2020
£
£
1,210,041
1,184,188
404,591
711,123
1,509
21,957
498,826
186,701
104,437
138,668
448,174
262,339
2,667,578
2,504,976
2,504,976

94

16 CREDITORS: AMOUNTS FALLING DUE WITHIN ONE YEAR

Trade Creditors
Other Creditors
Accruals
Taxation and Social Security
Deferred Income
Provisions
Total		 Group
2021
2020
£
£
251,768
347,970
1,088,003
1,000,482
632,578
741,541
77,832
-
1,062,797
607,885
90,501
90,501
3,203,479
2,788,379		 Charity
2021
2020
£
£
222,886
332,927
1,078,168
1,000,482
589,346
696,098
77,832
-
1,058,817
570,224
90,501
90,501
3,117,550
2,690,232		 Charity
2021
2020
£
£
222,886
332,927
1,078,168
1,000,482
589,346
696,098
77,832
-
1,058,817
570,224
90,501
90,501
3,117,550
2,690,232
2,690,232

Deferred income relates to annual Individual Giving memberships paid for future years £146k (2020: £113k), sponsorship received for future exhibitions and projects £913k (2020: £424k), corporate memberships for next financial year £0k (2020: £33k) and income related to future booked events £4k (2020: £38k).

Deferred Income b/fwd
Deferred in the year
Released to income from prior year
Deferred Income c/fwd		 £
607,885
1,062,797
(607,885)
1,062,797

95

17 FUNDS – GROUP AND CHARITY

Total Fund Balances
at 1 April 2020
Income Received
Expenditure Incurred
Funds Transferred
Total Fund Balances
at 31 March 2021
Creativity Funds
Various programmes
Future Funds
Radio Ballads		 General
Fund
Designated
Fund
Restricted
Income
Fund
Permanent
Endowment
Fund
Expendable
Endowment
Fund
Total
£
£
£
£
£
£
2,838,981
195,000
90,984
255,900
10,277,764
13,658,629
4,568,488
-
1,382,001
-
1,000,000
6,950,489
(4,710,039)
-
(1,358,985)
-
(691,655)
(6,760,679)
(374,886)
374,886
-
-
-
-
2,322,544
569,886
114,000
255,900
10,586,109
13,848,439
At 1 April
2020
Income
Received
Expenditure
Incurred
At 31 March
2021
£
£
£
£
38,000
-
(38,000)
-
-
390,001
(335,001)
55,000
18,000
950,000
(968,000)
-
34,984
42,000
(17,984)
59,000
90,984
1,382,001
(1,358,985)
114,000

DESIGNATED FUNDS

In 2017/18, the Trustees agreed to designate £65k per year for five years towards the replacement of vital climate-control plants serving Serpentine, which will need to be substituted at a cost of £325k. A further £65k was therefore added to this fund in 2020/21.

Additionally, designated reserve of £310k has been established to cover essential repairs and maintenance expenses throughout the course of the two leases. The value of the transfer was determined by evaluating the yearly rolling programme and the Serpentine's capacity to sustain the anticipated improvements.

EXPENDABLE ENDOWMENT

Expendable endowment funds have increased from £10,278k to £10,586k thanks to the Future Funds campaign. The majority of this balance is the net present value of the North Gallery building (£8.6m) with the remaining expendable endowment funds held as a long-term capital.

FUTURE FUNDS

The Future Funds campaign is an initiative to recognise the vision and ambition associated with the Serpentine’s 50th anniversary. It looks to support the development of the live, education, digital and civic programmes in a more sustainable way, whilst also engaging supporters with our mission to promote, improve and develop public education in all forms of the arts.

96

RADIO BALLADS

Radio Ballads is part of New Town Culture – a pioneering programme of artistic and cultural activity taking place in adult and children’s social care across the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. The programme focuses on workshops, exhibitions, radio broadcasts, live performances and courses targeted at people using social care services in the borough.

18 ANALYSIS OF NET ASSETS BETWEEN FUNDS

Unrestricted Funds:
General Funds
Designated Funds
Restricted Funds
Endowment Funds		 Fixed Assets
£
168,480
-
168,480
-
8,645,687
8,814,167		 Net Current
Assets
£
2,154,064
569,886
2,723,950
114,000
2,196,322
5,034,272		 Net Assets
£
2,322,544
569,886
2,892,430
114,000
10,842,009
13,848,439

19 CAPITAL COMMITMENTS

At 31 March 2021, there were no capital commitments authorised or contracted for.

20 RELATED PARTY TRANSACTIONS

No related party transactions were entered into during the year to 31 March 2021 with exception of those with regards to SG Commerce, the Trust's subsidiary. At 31 March 2021, SG Commerce Limited owed the Trust a net balance of £405k (2020: £711k) which includes gift aid of £179k (2020: £535k). Management recharges of £120k (2020: £169k) were charged to SG Commerce Limited in the year by the Trust.

The Serpentine Trust received £787k (2020: £651k) of donations from Trustees and a £1,950k (2020: £2,000k) donation from a Trustee's family foundation during 2020/21. One Trustee was Chair of Arts Council England’s London Area Council throughout 2020/21, see note 3 for income received from Arts Council in 2020/21.

In 2018, a loan guarantee of £1m was provided by a Trustee as security against a contractual receipt, which has been received in 2021/22.

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21 SUBSIDIARY UNDERTAKING: SG Commerce Limited

The Serpentine Trust owns 100% of the issued share capital of SG Commerce Limited, a company incorporated in England and Wales. The company carried out non-charitable trading activities for the Trust, primarily as licensor of The Magazine restaurant, gallery hire and the sale of limited edition prints and other merchandise. A summary of the results for the year are shown below:

Turnover
Expenditure
Operating Surplus
Gift Aid to The Serpentine Trust
Profit Before and After Tax
The Aggregate of the Assets, Liabilities and Funds was:
CURRENT ASSETS
Debtors and Prepayments
Cash at Bank and In-Hand
CREDITORS
Amounts Falling Due Within 1 Year
NET CURRENT ASSETS
NET ASSETS
Shareholders' Funds
Share Capital
Profit & Loss for the year		 2021
£
522,477
(343,335)
179,142
179,142
-
2021
£
2,959
498,774
501,733
(501,633)
100
100
100
-
100		 2020
£
1,161,937
(626,974)
534,963
534,963
-
2020
£
35,057
809,812
844,869
(844,769)
100
100
100
-
100

The subsidiary is part of a VAT Group comprising of the Serpentine Trust and SG Commerce Limited.

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22 PRIOR YEAR COMPARATIVES

2020 STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL ACTIVITIES
Income and Endowments from:
Donations and Legacies
Grants
Donations & Support
Total Donations and Legacies
Fundraising Trading Activities
Merchandise
Special Fundraising Events
Gallery Hire and Other Commercial Activities
Interest
Total Fundraising Trading Activities
Income from Charitable activities
Exhibitions
Education
Architectural Commission
Total Income from Charitable activities
Total Income
Expenditure on:
Raising Funds
Fundraising Trading Costs
Merchandise
Special Fundraising Events
Gallery Hire
Total Fundraising Trading Costs
Total Costs of Raising Funds
Net Income Available for Charitable Activities
Expenditure on Charitable Activities
Exhibitions
Education
Architectural Commission
Total Expenditure on Charitable Activities
Total Expenditure
Net income/(expenditure)
Reconciliation of funds:
Fund Balances Brought Forward at 1 April 2019
Fund Balances Carried Forward at 31 March 2020		 Unrestricted
General Fund
£
1,202,300
3,899,542
5,101,842
733,622
855,745
456,474
8,720
2,054,561
98,870
13,651
525,000
637,521
7,793,924
1,560,282
557,642
400,227
37,202
995,071
2,555,353
5,238,571
2,641,921
362,948
887,178
3,892,047
6,447,400
1,346,524
1,687,457
3,033,981		 Restricted
Fund
£
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
2,267,258
720,222
363,875
3,351,355
3,351,355
-
-
-
-
-
-
3,351,355
2,269,257
732,239
363,875
3,365,371
3,365,371
(14,016)
105,000
90,984		 Endowment
Fund
£
-
1,060,422
1,060,422
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
1,060,422
-
-
-
-
-
-
1,060,422
691,655
-
-
691,655
691,655
368,767
10,164,897
10,533,644		 Total
2020
£
1,202,300
4,959,964
6,162,264
733,622
855,745
450,591
8,720
2,054,561
2,366,128
733,873
888,875
3,988,876
12,205,701
1,560,282
557,642
400,227
37,202
995,071
2,555,353
9,650,348
5,602,833
1,095,187
1,251,053
7,949,073
10,504,426
1,701,275
11,957,354
13,658,629

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2020 FUNDS – GROUP
Total Fund Balances
at 1 April 2019
Income Received
Expenditure Incurred
Funds Transferred
Total Fund Balances
at 31 March 2020		 General
Fund
Designated
Fund
Restricted
Income
Fund
Permanent
Endowment
Fund
Expendable
Endowment
Fund
Total
£
£
£
£
£
£
1,557,457
130,000
105,000
245,900
9,918,997
11,957,354
7,793,924
-
3,351,355
-
1,060,422
12,205,701
(6,447,400)
-
(3,365,371)
-
(691,655)
(10,504,426)
(65,000)
65,000
-
10,000
(10,000)
-
2,838,981
195,000
90,984
255,900
10,277,764
13,658,629
2020 RESTRICTED FUND ANALYSIS
Creativity Funds
Various programmes
Future Funds
Radio Ballads		 At 1 April
2019
Income
Received
Expenditure
Incurred
At 31 March
2020
£
£
£
£
75,000
-
(37,000)
38,000
30,000
2,275,590
(2,305,590)
-
-
1,000,000
(982,000)
18,000
-
75,765
(40,781)
34,984
105,000
3,351,355
(3,365,371)
90,984

100

2020 ANALYSIS OF NET ASSETS BETWEEN FUNDS

Unrestricted Funds:
General Funds
Designated Funds
Restricted Funds
Endowment Funds		 Fixed Assets
£
272,103
-
272,103
-
9,337,342
9,609,445		 Net Current
Assets
£
2,566,878
195,000
2,761,878
90,984
1,196,322
4,049,184		 Net Assets
£
2,838,981
195,000
3,033,981
90,984
10,533,664
13,658,629

101

Our Supporters

Thank You

Trustees of Serpentine

Michael R. Bloomberg Chairman The Hon Felicity Waley-Cohen CBE and Barry Townsley CBE Co-Vice Chairmen Marcus Boyle Treasurer Sir David Adjaye OBE Andrew Cohen Nicoletta Fiorucci Russo Off. OSI Maja Hoffmann Ruth Mackenzie CBE Aditya Mittal Robert Rosenkranz Amanda Sharp OBE Jonathan Wood Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

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Council of Serpentine

Lady Elena Foster Chair Narmina Marandi and Francis Sultana Co-Heads of Cultural and Social Affairs Committee

The Hon Felicity Waley-Cohen CBE Head of Education Committee Iwan Wirth Head of Exhibitions Committee Nina Fialkow and Kristín Ólafsdóttir Co-Heads of Film Committee Tatyana Akhmedova Petr Aven Sofia Barattieri-Weinstein and Brian Weinstein Erin Bell and Michael Cohen Mrs Laurence Bet-Mansour Marcus Boyle Ivor and Kristen Braka Nicolas Berggruen Blavatnik Family Foundation Mr Rattan Chadha Miss Victoria Chang Priscilla and Louis de Charbonnieres Nick and Caroline Clarry Andrew Cohen Ms Du Yan Griet Dupont Nina and David Fialkow Nicoletta Fiorucci Russo and Giovanni Russo Wendy Fisher The Lord and Lady Foster of Thames Bank Alys and Jim Garman Richard and Odile Grogan Dr. Robert C. Hanea The David and Claudia Harding Foundation Susan and Richard Hayden Gabriela Hearst Mr Huh Yongsoo Stacey and Henry Jackson Charlotte Dauphin de La Rochefoucauld and Charles-Henri de La Rochefoucauld Mark and Laura Laurence Camilla and John Lindfors Mrs Aarti Lohia Sanda Lwin and Farhad Karim Narmina and Javad Marandi Svetlana Marich Usha and Lakshmi N. Mittal Kristín Ólafsdóttir and Thor Björgólfsson

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Sybil and Matthew Orr Mr and Mrs Hussam Otaibi James Paradise Catherine Petitgas Charlotte Philipps Joanna Przetakiewicz The Don Quixote Foundation Julia and Hans Rausing Christian Ravina and Robin Woodhead The Red Mansion Foundation Frances Reynolds Yvonne Rieber Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, LondonParisSalzburg Karen and Ely Michel Ruimy Mr and Mrs Jean Salata Anders and Yukiko Schroeder Mikolaj Sekutowicz and Sara Faraj Thea Sprecher Odeta Stuikys Francis Sultana and David Gill Tamares Real Estate Holdings in collaboration with Zabludowicz Collection

Tatiana Taypina Laura and Barry Townsley The Tretyakov Family Robert and Felicity Waley-Cohen CBE The Lars Windhorst Foundation Manuela and Iwan Wirth Jonathan and Lucy Wood White Cube Limited

Programmes supported by

Sarah Arison Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte Art Fund Bloomberg Philanthropies Adam and Mariana Clayton Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière The John S Cohen Foundation Corvi-Mora, London Alexander DiPersia Lonti Ebers Jim and Jennifer Esposito Nina and David Fialkow Fiorucci Art Trust Floreat Group

104

David Glover Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts Guy Halamish HENI Noel E.D. Kirnon Professor Lesley Lokko Luma Foundation Marandi Foundation Aditya Mittal Modern Forms The Momentary Natasha Müller Outset Contemporary Art Fund Outset Partners Gilberto Pozzi The Rosenkranz Foundation Sikkema Jenkins & Co. Laura and Barry Townsley CBE Isabel S. Wilcox

Platinum Corporate Benefactors

AECOM Bloomberg CHANEL Goldman Sachs Muse, The Rolls-Royce Art Programme Therme Group Weil, Gotshal & Manges

Gold Corporate Benefactors

Google Laurent-Perrier

Silver Corporate Benefactors

Edwardian Hotels London Gallowglass Health and Safety The Pictet Group Sotheby’s UBS

Bronze Corporate Benefactors

Amorim DLD Media GmbH DP9 FIOL

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Samsung SDS Stage One The Technical Department

Founding Corporate Members

Bloomberg Citi Foster + Partners

Annual Corporate Members

Charles Stanley

Associate Corporate Members

CBRE Dauphin INCA Productions The Communications Store The Peninsula Hotels Travers Smith

Innovation Circle of Serpentine

Yonca Dervisoglu Brunini Tom Chapman Adrian Cheng Steffi Czerny Es Devlin Joe Hage Kelly LeesAndrew McAfee Christopher Schlaeffer Andrei Tretyakov

Americas Foundation Trustees

Marina Abramović Sarah Arison Abigail Baratta Kasseem “Swizz Beatz” Dean Robin Saunders Rirkrit Tiravanija Ted Vassilev Amanda Waldron

Americas Foundation Supporters

Sarah Arison

106

Debbie August Abigail Baratta Diego Berdakin Wendy and Matthew Cherwin Susan and Greg Danilow Jennie and Richard DeScherer Trisha Donnelly Jamie Drake The Edward John and Patricia Rosenwald Foundation Katherine Farley and Jerry Speyer Fuhrman Family Foundation Lauren Schor Geller and Martin Geller Monica Gerard-Sharp Laurie and Peter Grauer Agnes Gund Marlene Hess and James Zirin Thomas L. and Katheryn P. Kempner, Jr. Nicole and Joel Klein Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Randi Charno Levine /RJL Charitable Foundation Robert C. Lieber Elizabeth S. and J. Jeffry Louis Harper Montgomery and Bradley Tusk Dambisa Moyo Sandra Muss Patty Newburger and Brad Wechsler Charlie Pohlad Neda and Farzad Rastegar Scott Rechler | Rechler Philanthropy, LLC Luz Angela Sarmiento Douglas Schoen John L. Silverman Gillian and Robert Steel Subject Matter Grazka Taylor Simona and Ted Vassilev Amanda and John Waldron Hope Warschaw Maureen White and Steven Rattner Barbara and David Zalaznick

Patrons

Kate Gordon Chair Maxine Adams Alka and Ravin Agrawal

107

Ahluwalia Family Foundation Jose Antonio Alcantara Kamel Alzarka Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar Mr Roheen Berry Guya Bertoni Hugo van Bilderbeek Laura Bordigato Romanos Elie Brihi Adriana Buckley Burger Collection, Hong Kong Karima and Gaurav Burman Sir Colin and Lady Callender Chantal and Greg Chamandy Radhika Chanana Terence and Niki Cole Cynthia Corbett Pilar Corrias Thomas Croft Colleen De Bonis Dr Paul Ettlinger of The London General Practice Alessandro Maria Ferreri Kateryna Filippi Mr Tim Flynn The Edwin Fox Foundation Katia Francesconi Linda and Richard Grosse Francesca Guagnini Mala Gaonkar Eva and Iraj Ispahani Mrs Mary Jeffers Cyrus and Victoria Jilla Mr Vladimir Kantor Shanyan Koder Tatiana Korsakova Mr and Mrs Lyndon Lea Simon and Carine Lee Peder Lund Daniel Macmillian Natasha Müller Opera Gallery London Christina Pamberg David Pearl Alexander Platon Mrs Natasha Poonawalla

108

Ahmed Rahman Marc Renard-Payen Luciana Rique Mrs Theresa Roberts Kimberley Robson Per Skarstedt and Bona Montagu Matthew Slotover Mrs Varga Tamara Anita and David Taylor Michael Tian and Sharon Zhu Adi Tiroche Ms Warly Tomei Lord and Lady Weymouth Lee Wheeler and Mark Shanker Bill and Anda Winters Veronique Zorzi David Zwirner

Future Contemporaries Committee

Robert Sheffield and Nicholas Kirkwood Co-chairs HRH Princess Eugenie of York Alia Al-Senussi Milo Astaire Ashkan Baghestani Maria Baibakova Hannah Barry Efe Cakarel The Hon Paola Foster Laura De Gunzburg Alex Eagle Magdalena Gabriel Alexander Mason Hankin Joe Kennedy Karen Levy Eugenio Re Rebaudengo Yassi Sohrabi Hikari Yokoyama

Future Contemporaries Members

Jade Adams Filipe de Almeida Assis Jose Antonio Alcantara Mila Askarova Marco Assetto Jaclyn Auerbach

109

Alastair Balfour Mrs Natasha Barnaba Andrew Bezhenar Lucas Bitencourt Donella Bossi Pucci Romanos Elie Brihi Jonny Burt Jez Cartwright Amira Chanana XiaoMeng Cheng Chen Chowers Patrick Colby Cunningham Samantha Cortes Liv Cuniberti Mrs Helena Czernecka Mrs Melanie Damani Delahunty Fine Art Aindrea Emelife Dr. Michael Engel Perrine Falcone Danae Filioti Maria Garmaeva Tracey Grace Lise Grendene Marie Guerlain Anna Guggenbuehl Landau Michael Hadjedj Sarah Aziza Hameed Shona Hampel Charles Janeway Peter Jones Meruyert Kaliyeva Zoe Karafylakis Sperling Simmy Kaur Bella Kesoyan Angeliki Kim Jonsson Mrs Sonja Koenig Casey Kohlberg Daria Kravchenko Anna Kuchina Dominic Kwok Mr. Maged Latif James Lindon M-C Llamas Lionel Luel

110

Sonia Mak Daniel Malarkey Jean-David Malat JD Malat Gallery Joanna Masiyiwa Florence B M Mather Magnus and Maria-Theresia Mathisen Lehmann Maupin Frederick McDonald Alexandra Meyers Aliya Modi Fernando Moncho Lobo Devon Nocera May Noradee Salar Nouri Santa Pastare Hilary Peltz Joe Phelan Mr and Mrs Alexander Purcell Rodrigues M. Qiu The Rt Hon. Sabina Ranger Jacob Rawel Ariana Regalado Piotr Rejmer Sophia Robert Niklas Röhling Francesca Roni Ilenia Rossi Phoebe Saatchi Yates Valerie Sadoun Annabelle Scholar Sally Eugenia Schwartz Tarek Shamma Jana Suhani Soin Mr Ivo Stourton and Mrs Natasha Stourton Izabella Stueflotten Christopher Suarez Gigi Surel Roxana Sursock Karam Leopold Thun Elina Tsokri Alina Uspenskaya Rachel Verghis Virginia Voena Angelina Volk Alexa and Marcus Waley-Cohen

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Luning Wang Tish Weinstock Arthur Yates Ms. Nerea de Zabala Nabil El Zaouk Fabrizio D. Zappaterra Alma Zevi

And any Council, Patrons and Future Contemporaries who wish to remain anonymous

Benefactors

With thanks to the Benefactors, our founding friends

And kind assistance from

The Royal Parks

Bloomberg Philanthropies

Public Funding by Arts Council England

112