Full Circle Arts Annual Report 08/09

08-09

full circle arts

Annual Report Full Circle Arts2008 to 2009

7 SchoolhouseSecond Avenue

Trafford Park VillageManchester

M17 1DZ

Telephone 0161 872 0326E-mail [email protected]

Website www.fullcirclearts.co.ukBlog: http://fullcircleartsblog.wordpress.com/

Twitter: http://twitter.com/full_circle_art

08/09 was another positive and encouraging year for Full Circle Arts. Our work in Mentoring, Source Young Artists and our young people’s projects are

providing a holistic and comprehensive service, which develops talent in our sector and builds capacity for our Future. We are now seeing better long term

outcomes for the young people involved in our mentoring scheme, the year saw the end of Hub4 ‘Out and About’ in which young people gained their

bronze Arts Award and this year 09 saw the introduction of Silver Arts Award for Source Young Artists. 5 of our young artists will be leading/facilitating their own workshops for other disabled and non-disabled young people this

summer. They have designed, budgeted, and marketed the projects and will produce evaluations after the events in August 09.

The year began with our Artists Development Day Fayre Exchange on 1

April. Fayre exchange was a day for disabled artists at any stage of their career and those younger people who had progressed from our mentoring scheme onto Professional Development and the Young Artists scheme. All were

working, training or practising in the arts. Artists came from a variety of art disciplines. Solution focused and action orientated, everyone went away with

something that would contribute to their own individual professional development. The keynote speaker was Philip Patston from New Zealand. There were also a number of organisations giving advice to individual artists

including Arts Council England, Access to Work, Creative Industries Development Services, Performing Arts Network Development Agency, North

West Playwrights and BBC. There were 56 attendees, 6 organisations giving information, a number of workshops and guest speakers. The day was held at

the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester.

Our arts projects included ‘She’s Lost Control’ exhibition for Chorlton Arts Festival. Two Disabled artists from Full Circle Artists and two Non Disabled artists from Blank Media Collective worked in partnership on a collaborative

performance/exhibition in May 2008. ‘Passing Down’ a creative writing project on genes, which had 11 disabled participants and 2 artists. The project was

held at Manchester Museum of Science and Industry in September 08, with a final performance readings event at the museum in January 09. We also worked

in partnership with Manchester City Art Gallery and 6 of our disabled artists on the ‘Collections Project’. The project was a creative exploration of the “in-house collections” at the Gallery. The focus was on the Gallery’s collection of

British Empire Marketing Board posters. It was an opportunity to work directly with the art pieces to produce a piece of visual art.

Our young disabled people’s projects took the form of a series of outreach projects at Jigsaw in Bury, Skylight in Rochdale, Link and Newbridge Learning

Centre in Oldham, Earz 4 Kids, Bolton Octagon and Rumworth School. Over a 220 disabled young people have taken part in arts projects using a wide range

of media and these workshops will provide eager participants for our large scale young disabled people’s arts project Remix in July 2009. In addition we did a

partnership project with Bridgewater Hall for 6 of our young disabled people “Round the Piano” in which 6 young disabled people attended regular music

and dance workshops, which culminated in a public performance at the Bridgewater Hall in February 2008.

Although our new office space is further geographically from the centre of Manchester, and its running costs are more expensive than we anticipated, the

advantages for our users has been huge. Source Young Artists meet there on Saturdays; plan, make, create, learn team skills, leadership skills, critique and

practical skills. Young artists and older artists are now quite comfortable to come into FCA individually and as groups to work and create during the week.

This has huge benefits for us, and our users, we are closer to our users, can listen to their needs, dreams and aspirations which helps to direct our work. Young people can experience an arts working environment, all our users can

benefit from access to digital facilities, on-line editing, research, production, our resources etc.

As a small organisation, working in inclusion in the arts, our ambition is not to grow in size, but in influence and impact. 08/09 saw real progression with this

ambition, we widened and strengthened our partnerships with “mainstream” organisations with representation on a number of networks and organisations

such as the National Mentoring network, National Youth Arts Network, Hub4, Cultural Leadership Partnership. We also have partnership work and projects

completed or in development with MMU, the Cornerhouse, Future Sonic (Future Everything), Bridgewater Hall, Chorlton Arts Festival, Panda and the Museum of

Science and Industry. We have continued to advocate for disabled people in the arts through a number of strategic groups on which we serve and during in

2008 we played a major advocacy and influencing role by serving as the only arts representation on the Department for Culture Media and Sport’s Disability Reference Group which continues to be active.

Our on-line services and Information and Advocacy service ‘Source:it’

continues to flourish, it has become the most trusted and respected information service on inclusion, arts and disability in England. The figures speak for themselves;

Website visitors: actual people visiting the site and accessing more than one page. This does not include spiders. In March 09 there were over 600 visitors to

the site each day compared to 500 in March 08. In March 09, over 1,600 people we’re directed to the website through search engines compared to

1,435 people in March 08. Unique visitors to site, meaning people who visited the site for the first time, reached 6,100 in March 09 compared to 5,600 in March 08.

Overall the number of visitors to the site has grown from 15,000 to over 18,000 each month since March 07. 

Top Pages: The jobs and opportunity sections of the site are the most frequently visited pages both in March 08 and March 09. These pages work

well because they’re updated everyday to ensure the most up to date information is available to our users. The artist’s section is also very popular with

over 1200 visitors each month. The website is effective because of it’s layout and ease of finding relevant information. 

Artists: Artist’s featured on the site have been contacted to produce commissions, lead workshops and to take part in projects all over the UK. Signposting artists to training or relevant opportunities and keeping them up to

date with what’s available for them to utilise is invaluable for the artists. Promoting a different artist each month on the website as well as the newsletter

has proved to be very beneficial for the artists, giving them the opportunity to showcase their work to a wider audience. There is now 36 professional and emerging artists featured on source:artists. Artists have also found our toolkit

section valuable with the addition this year of career development toolkits to the fundraising toolkits already available.

 Source:it Newsletter: Each week we’re inundated with requests to advertise

jobs, training and events occurring throughout the North West and beyond, within the newsletter.  Subscriptions to Source:it have grown from 400 people and organisations to over 600 in a year. Source:it includes links that direct

people to our website so they don’t have to spend time searching for relevant information. It features artists and venues and has proved very popular. Each

fortnight the number of subscribers grows as well as the newsletter itself. Although our distribution list is 600 we know that a number of subscribers are

Twitter:RT @sallyent: Google Analytics reports @full_circle_art was most successful place by far to promote work to local creatives/artists Thanks FCA

““

animation artists arts

arts award arts project

conversations. TED talks

creativity design

development

diary room drama

experiment festival

film food FriiSpray

full circle arts

interactive

Manchester meetings

memories mentoring music

Office Gossip

play sharing

staff visual arts web2

web sites young people

organizations, who then distribute it to other individuals through their networks.

The internet, our digital presence: We now have networks on facebook:

with over 1,000 friends -  http://www.facebook.com/fullcirclearts  We joined Twitter in March 08 and we have a community of 300 followers already:  http://

twitter.com/full_circle_art/ We have a flickr account where visitors can see photos of our events:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/fullcirclearts We have a youtube account which show films made by and with young people:   http://

www.youtube.com/FULLCIRCLEARTS  and we also have a social networking site that was established to be ready for discussion leading to a conference

around inclusion, collaboration and use of the social web: http://neverdivealone.crowdvine.com/

We're increasing our web presence on a weekly basis and have found

many new contacts and participants through increasing our presence outside our own site and using the different channels

where our users are likely to be.  This also allows us to be more open as an organisation, encourage feedback and suggestions and open up conversations with our existing

and potential service users.

Staff and Management

Of course quality service and provision can only be achieved with high quality

staff and management. All Staff and Management have undergone training during the year including:

Arts Project Officer – Arts Award Advisor Trained and project delivery training

Artistic Director & Advocacy & Information Officer, have attended a number of Social Web/ Web2 development seminars and conferences including Art of

Digital, Ambition, FutureSonic and Shift Happens.

Advocacy & Information Officer, – completed Open University 12 month course

in Social Science and the Arts.

Mentoring and PDP Coordinator - Arts Award Advisor Trained and undertaking a further Coaching Certificate

2 of our members of staff also have mentors from outside the organisation our Arts Project Officer and our Mentoring and PDP Officer.

Our Management Committee is relatively strong with a good balanced range of talents and skills. Most have undergone diversity training, but with new members now on our Board we are looking for funding to repeat this during the

forthcoming year. We have 2 young disabled people presently as Board members.

Company Accounts

income 08 09 07 08

revenue £151,914 £130,986

earned £3,213 £31,329

project £41,948 £93,615

other £1,196 £3,695

total £198,271 £259,625

expenditure 08 09 07 08

salaries £128,210 £122,049

overheads £62,395 £63,209

projects £45,406 £51,170

total £236,011 £236,428

net movement

funds at 31st March 08

£131,960

funds at 31st March 09

£94,220

fixed assets 08 09 07 08

tangible £29,907 £36,623

current debtors £22,418 £32,679

cash at bank & in-hand

£44,996 £80,524

totals £97,321 £149,826

creditors due within 1 year

£3,101 £17,866

net current assets

£94,220 £131,960

current assets less current liabilities

£94,220 £131,960

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The members of our Management Committee during 2008/9 were:Shelley HeathBen CoveJanet CharlesworthTom RainesGeoff RileyElliott ThompsonMichelle Oakes Jo RigbyRay McHughDamien Hayward

Full Circle Arts were grateful to receive funding from the following during 2008/9:Arts Council EnglandAGMA

Manchester City CouncilHub’4

Lloyds TSBConnexionsMedia Trust

Princes TrustBBC Blast

Creative Leadership Programme

Company registration No 2312426Charity registration number 700918