The Trustees present their report and financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2023.
The accounts have been prepared in accordance with the accounting policies set out in note 1 to the accounts and comply with the charitable company's governing document, the Companies Act 2006 and “Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102)” (effective 1 January 2019).
The objectives for which the company as established are: "To promote, maintain, improve and advance education and to foster appreciation of the Arts in the theatre and other associated audio, visual and mechanical arts."
The policies adopted in the furtherance of these objects are: "To provide a context in which to enhance and develop the work of contemporary visual artists, choreographers, composers, writers, poets, photographers, film and video makers, fashion designers, curators and architects."
The Trustees have paid due regard to guidance issued by the Charity Commission in deciding what activities the Fund should undertake.
The main activities undertaken by the charity are commissions of new works in primarily, but not exclusively, in visual arts and writing, international residencies, exhibitions, screenings and discussions, all of which are held with the objective of developing a culture of appreciation for the Arts. Recent projects included WPT supporting: the music album by composer, violinist and double recorders player Laura Cannell, released on 19 June 2020; the series of new commissions by four Omani artists, Rawan AlMahrouqi, Safa Balushi, Ruqaiya Mazar, Riham Noor Al Zadjali, and Finnish artist Elina Brotherus, in partnership with the Stal Gallery in Oman and supported by the British Council through the UK-Gulf exhibition programme; the film A Line Was Drawn by Mairéad McClean, produced as part of her body of works Making Her Mark commissioned in 2017, which premiered at the 2019 BFI London Film Festival in Double Vision programme; the series of new writing commissions and translations for publications Resonance 1 and Resonance 2; the exhibition Wandelhalle at the Kommunale Galerie in Berlin presenting a body or work by artist Karen Stuke commissioned in 2013; Sky Forum in Sharjah, presented in partnership with Sharjah Art Foundation and supported by the British Council through the UK-Gulf exhibition programme; a series residencies in Berlin offering artists, writers, curators, choreographers, designers and architects and opportunity to take a creative break for eight-weeks. It is through such activities, that the Charity aims to imbibe an appreciation for the Arts for the general public, while at the same time providing opportunities for artists to produce and present their works, and crucially develop and push forward their careers.
Achievements and performance
Overview
The year 2022-23 has been very productive for Women’s Playhouse Trust. We focused on completing ongoing projects, as well as developing new ideas and partnerships.
Throughout the past financial year, we continued working on Andrea Luka Zimmerman’s film and installation titled Wayfaring Stranger. This is one of our key large-scale projects, which we hope will be shown across international film festivals, cinema distribution and gallery installations from late 2023 or early 2024.
Last year, we partnered with Sharjah Art Foundation to co-commission a new work titled The Eternal Night by Cuban-American artist Coco Fusco for the Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present. The work premiered at SB 15 and was exhibited there from 7 February to 11 June 2023. This a major international commission, and we are delighted that we were able to support the making of this project. The Eternal Night was our second collaboration with Sharjah Art Foundation, and we hope to continue this fruitful partnership.
In September 2022, we presented the first full-scale exhibition of Topologies of Air by Shona Illingworth, which we had commissioned in 2017, at the Bahrain National Museum. We brought together a team of highly experienced collaborators to create an immersive experience for the audience within the exhibition hall spanning six hundred square meters. The exhibition at the Bahrain National Museum had a particular significance as it was the culmination of the project that had been largely produced in the Gulf, bringing the work to the audiences in the region. Topologies of Air was the first immersive video and sound installation presented within the museum, which focusses primarily on exhibiting archaeological artifacts. There was also a personal connection for the artist, Shona Illingworth, to the museum through her grandfather, P.V. Glob, a Danish archaeologist, who had spent a significant part of his working life excavating the remnants of the Dilmun civilisation in Bahrain and neighbouring Gulf countries. In the exhibition at the Bahrain National Museum, Topologies of Air was shown for the first time within an installation designed specially to present that work as a solo exhibition. It was also shown for the first time to its full scale, using 4k projection. At the Bahrain National Museum, we launched a bilingual publication Topologies of Air, produced to accompany the work, and presented a public programme Another Way of Looking, examining the intersection between artist moving image and the documentary.
Last year has also seen us make another new commission: The Water that Asked for a Fish, currently in development, by Bahrani artist Mariam Alnoaimi. The project has its starting point in a conversation with Mariam during the public programme Another Way of Looking at the Bahrain National Museum in September 2022. The Water that Asked for a Fish is envisaged as a body of works looking at the politics and poetics of the relationship with bodies of water within one’s environment.
We have also continued our work on the new edition of the mentoring and production programme Resonance. In June 2022, we have been awarded a grant of €19,000 and accommodation and workspace for a group of ten artists at Saari Residence near Turku, Finland, from Kone Foundation. The funding and in-kind support will enable us to bring four early career artists from Finland, four early career artists from Oman and two established artists acting as mentors on a two-week production residency in June 2023, leading to a joint exhibition later in 2023 or early 2024.
Some of our past projects have continued to make us proud. Making Her Mark by Mairéad McClean, commissioned in 2017 and completed in 2018, has been acquired for the Arts Council of Ireland Collection in 2022. The film Erase and Forget by Andrea Luka Zimmerman, completed in 2017, has been selected for the Focus Programme: Around Masculinity at the 35th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam and screened from 14 to 18 November 2022.
And, in 2022-23, we also worked on updating and expanding our website to include an extensive archive of projects produced by Women’s Playhouse Trust over the past four decades and at different phases of the organisation’s existence – from theatre productions and workshops of the 1980s, through site-specific works in derelict buildings across the London’s East End in the 1990s, through the exhibitions, commissions and programmes created with and for the Wapping Hydraulic Power Station from 1993 to 2013, to the current nomadic way of working that focuses on producing new works across the visual arts, literature, film and music. Our archives are vast and making them available digitally is an ongoing project.
PROJECTS
Wayfaring Stranger
Continuation of production
Until summer 2022, we continued with the production of Wayfaring Stranger by Andrea Luka Zimmerman. From autumn that year, the film went into postproduction. We anticipate the completion of the project in autumn 2023. Wayfaring Stranger is aimed at screening in film festivals before having a cinema distribution in the UK. Later in the life of this project, we aim to present this new work within a gallery or museum context as an installation.
Wayfaring Stranger charts the life of an itinerant character, embodied by seven performers, across seven days representing seven decades. Running from the city, through post-industrial edge lands and manicured enclaves, they find themselves in forests, farms, mountains and finally at the shore. Along the way, which lasts a lifetime, they undergo a transformation, through the seasons and changing geography, both physically and emotionally, from youth to elderhood, and from a single, alienated being into an accepted element of the wider world. Their personal narrative co-exists with the past, present and future of the land they traverse. Each ‘day’ is a ‘station’ that signifies a turning point in their emotional development: from escape, through loss, grief and waywardness, to solidarity and co-existence.
Part fable, part manifesto, part poem, filmed across landscapes marked by centuries of ceaseless human extraction, Wayfaring Stranger asks what it takes to find a liveable life on one’s own terms and without conflict with others and the environment.
Within the sound design by multi-award-winning sound recordist Chris Watson, the polyphonic environment scores the seasonal changes alongside the human and topographic shifts.
The film is accompanied by a text developed with poet, essayist and novelist Eileen Myles, who performs in the seventh day.
The performers:
Eileen Myles
Eirini Ampatzi Ippikoglou
Michiko Oki
Moon Nanook Guo-Barker
Mwiinga Twyman
Therese Henningsen
Xiaolu Guo
With a special performance from Tizzy-Rose.
Written by Andrea Luka Zimmerman and Gareth Evans
Directed and filmed by Andrea Luka Zimmerman
Produced by Marta Michalowska and Thomas Zanon-Larcher
Co-Produced by Andrea Luka Zimmerman
Edited by Taina Galis and Andrea Luka Zimmerman
Sound design by Chris Watson
With music by Balamuc and Fern Maddie
Title song ‘Wayfaring Stranger’ performed by Fern Maddie
Andrea Luka Zimmerman is a Jarman Award-winning artist, filmmaker and cultural activist whose multi-layered practice calls for a profound reimagining of the relationship between people, place and ecology.
Andrea’s films include: Here for Life (2019), produced by Artangel, which premiered in the Cineasti Del Presente International Competition of the Locarno Film Festival (winning a Special Mention); Erase and Forget (2017), which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival (nominated for the Original Documentary Award); and Estate, a Reverie (2015), nominated for Best Newcomer Award at the Grierson Awards.
Andrea’s works have been shown in exhibitions including Art Class at METAL and LUX, Shelter in Place at Estuary Festival, Civil Rites at the London Open, Whitechapel Gallery, Common Ground at Spike Island, Bristol and Real Estates at Peer Gallery. Andrea co-founded the cultural collectives Fugitive Images and Vision Machine.
The Eternal Night
Co-commission
We had been invited to partner with Sharjah Art Foundation on co-commissioning a new work by Cuban-American artist Coco Fusco for the Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present. The work premiered at SB 15 and was exhibited there from 7 February to 11 June 2023. We – Marta Michalowska and Thomas Zanon-Larcher – attended the opening week of the biennial, where we met international curators and artists. The visit was also an opportunity to see new and recent works by 150 artists and collectives from all-over the world, many especially commissioned and premiering at SB15. The participation in events during the opening week allowed us to connect with peers and potential partners, as well as see works by artists from beyond Europe and thus gain a broader perspective on themes, trends and concerns in international contemporary art.
The Eternal Night, a feature-length artist film by Coco Fusco, tells the story of three Cuban young men that were condemned for their beliefs and their creations. It is about the power of the imagination to transcend circumstance.
The film is based on the true story of Cuban writer and former political prisoner Néstor Díaz de Villegas. In 1974, Díaz de Villegas was sentenced to six years in prison for writing a poem. He was eighteen years old and had already been branded as a political nonconformist. At the time, those Cubans who were considered too intellectual, too enamoured of American popular culture, too effeminate or too attached to their religious faith were marginalised and subject to incarceration and re-education.
The film begins when the poet arrives at the prison and meets a young Evangelical man from the countryside and an older actor who was accused of trying to assassinate Fidel Castro. The actor ushers them into the social world of the prison. To enliven the prisoners’ evenings, he convinces the warden that screening films would be a more effective means of teaching inmates about the benefits of socialism and creates a cinema inside the prison.
Coco Fusco combines a dramatised version of Díaz de Villegas’ prison experience with archival footage and print culture from the 1970s, as well as interviews with Díaz de Villegas and his friend, the actor and former political prisoner José Manuel Castiñeyra.
Coco Fusco is an interdisciplinary artist and writer. She is a recipient of a 2021 American Academy of Arts and Letters Arts Award, a 2021 Latinx Artist Fellowship, a 2018 Rabkin Prize for Art Criticism, a 2016 Greenfield Prize, a 2014 Cintas Fellowship, a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2013 Absolut Art Writing Award, a 2013 Fulbright Fellowship, a 2012 US Artists Fellowship and a 2003 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts. Fusco’s performances and videos have been presented in the 56th Venice Biennale, Frieze Special Projects, Basel Unlimited, three Whitney Biennials (2022, 2008 and 1993), and several other international exhibitions. Her works are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Whitney Museum, The Walker Art Center, the Centre Pompidou, the Imperial War Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona. She is represented by Alexander Gray Associates in New York.
Fusco is a Professor of Art at Cooper Union. Fusco is the author of Dangerous Moves: Performance and Politics in Cuba (2015). She is also the author of English is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas (1995), The Bodies that Were Not Ours and Other Writings (2001), and A Field Guide for Female Interrogators (2008). She is the editor of Corpus Delecti: Performance Art of the Americas (1999) and Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self (2003). She contributes regularly to The New York Review of Books and numerous art publications. Fusco received her BA in Semiotics from Brown University (1982), her MA in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University (1985) and her PhD in Art and Visual Culture from Middlesex University (2007).
Topologies of Air
Exhibition at Bahrain National Museum
27 September 2022 to 5 January 2023
In September 2022, we were finally able to exhibit Topologies of Air by Scottish-Danish artist Shona Illingworth at the Bahrain National Museum. The exhibition was delayed from spring 2020 due to Covid-19.
The exhibition was presented by The Wapping Project (Women’s Playhouse Trust) in partnership with Bahrain National Museum, and was generously supported by the British Council, DCMS and GREAT through the UK-Gulf exhibition programme.
Curated by Marta Michalowska and Thomas Zanon-Larcher
Designed by Thomas Zanon-Larcher and Joshua Wright
Audio Visual design and installation by Philippe Frau-Nadal
Installation by Joshua Wright and Mark Williams
The exhibition was accompanied by a public programme Another Way of Looking (see the next section for full details) on Saturday 24 September and an in-conversation with the artist Shona Illingworth and Shaikh Khalifa bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, President of the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities, formerly Director of the Bahrain National Museum, on Monday 26 September. During the opening reception for the exhibition, we also launched a bilingual publication, in English and Arabic, accompanying the project.
Additionally, Topologies of Air was also exhibited at Les Abattoirs Musée-Frac Occitanie in Toulouse from 1 July until 20 November 2022.
Topologies of Air, an immersive three-screen and surround sound installation, traverses the cultural, geopolitical, environmental, technological and psychological layers of the sky, building an image of a complex and contested space, both shared and personal, and with a long history and rapidly changing future.
Filmed in Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Japan, China, Spain and the United Kingdom, the installation invites us to consider the space above our heads, once open to our dreams and imaginings, as a territory undergoing radical transformations through human activities that, in turn, are reshaping our present and future.
Topologies of Air brings together voices of contributors from across international law, earth and life sciences, technology, neuropsychology, cognitive neuroscience, cultural studies, sociology, art, architecture, politics, theology, philosophy, environmental studies, economics and lived experience who took part in the Airspace Tribunal London, Airspace Tribunal Sydney, Sky Forum Bahrain and Sky Forum Sharjah, as well as conversations and interviews recoded during the production of the work between 2018 and 2020.
Topologies of Air was commissioned and produced by The Wapping Project (Women’s Playhouse Trust), with support from Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities, Sharjah Art Foundation, the British Council, Arts Council England and the University of Kent.
Shona Illingworth is a Scottish-Danish artist who works across video, sound, photography and drawing. She is known for her immersive video and multi-channel sound installations and evocative, research-led practice in which she explores the dynamic processes of memory, cultural erasure and the impacts of accelerating geopolitical, technological and environmental change.
Her work has been exhibited internationally, with shows at Les Abattoirs Musée-Frac Occitanie (Toulouse, France), The Power Plant (Toronto, Canada), Museum of Modern Art (Bologna, Italy), FACT (Liverpool, UK), UNSW Galleries (Sydney, Australia), and the Wellcome Collection (London, UK). She has received high profile commissions from Film and Video Umbrella, the Hayward Gallery and Channel 4 Television. Her work 216 Westbound was exhibited at the Imperial War Museum (London, UK) and was purchased by the Contemporary Art Society for the Imperial War Museum’s permanent collection.
Illingworth was shortlisted for the prestigious Jarman Award in 2016.
Topologies of Air
Publication
The publication Topologies of Air accompanies the commission by Shona Illingworth under the same title. It brings together edited fragments of transcripts from Airspace Tribunal London, Airspace Tribunal Sydney, Sky Forum Bahrain and Sky Forum Sharjah – a series of public discussions around the questions of airspace and its use that acted as key elements of production of the visual arts commission Topologies of Air – alongside a contribution from Professor Nick Grief titled Airspace: More Than an Inspirational Concept and an interview with Shona Illingworth.
The publication was designed in 2020 but was only publicly launched in September 2022, when the exhibition of Topologies of Air opened at the Bahrain National Museum.
Topologies of Air is available in print and digital format. The print publication can be purchased from our online shop at https://thewappingproject.org/publications/
2020
96 pages, paperback, 14.8 x 21 cm
published by The Wapping Project
designed by Atelier Dyakova
printed by PUSH, London
edition of 600
Another Way of Looking
Public Programme at Bahrain National Museum
Saturday 24 September 2022
To accompany the exhibition Topologies of Air by Shona Illingworth, we curated a public programme aimed at artists and curators questing the intersection between artist moving image and documentary practices. Another Way of Looking was presented by Women’s Playhouse Trust’s Artistic Director Marta Michalowska on Saturday 24 September from 11am to 5pm at the Bahrain National Museum.
Focusing on selected works produced within the last decade, the programme discussed artists’ approaches to telling factual stories, navigating the boundary between fact and fiction, excavating narratives form archival materials, questioning the past, the present and the future.
The programme also provided a wider critical and conceptual context for the immersive video and sound installation Topologies of Air, and offered a rare opportunity to see recent works by acclaimed artists working with film and video.
Part 1
People: narrating experience
Charlotte Ginsborg, 22:22, 2017, 30min
Shona Illingworth, 216 Westbound, 2014, 17 min
John Smith, Dad's Stick, 2012, 5min
John Smith, A State of Grace, 2019, 3min
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Rubber Coated Steel, 2016, 22min
Part 2
Places: looking at landscape
Larissa Sansour/Søren Lind, In the Future, They Ate From the Finest Porcelain, 2016, 29 min
Melanie Manchot, Out of Bounds (A), 2016, 5min
Mairead McClean, Making Her Mark, 2018, 12min
Part 3
Histories: excavating archives
Mairead McClean, A Line Was Drawn, 2019, 14min
Jasmina Cibic, Tear Down and Rebuild, 2015, production still, 15 min
Rachel Maclean, The Lion and The Unicorn, 2012, 12min
The Water that Asked for a Fish
New commission
During the public programme Another Way of Looking at the Bahrain National Museum, we met Bahrani artist Mariam Alnoaimi. A conversation in the cafe during the break lead to our interest in Mariam’s practice and ideas for a new project around the questions of water in Bahrain and beyond. Since September 2022, the project has been in development. Mariam joined us at the opening of Sharjah Biennial 15 in February 2023. Following the biennial, Marta Michalowska travelled to Bahrain to visit the key locations for Mariam’s project and start planning the production. We are currently in discussion with potential partners. Our aim is to commence the production in autumn 2023.
Bodies of water – seas, lakes, springs, aquifers – can be seen as mediums of politics and poetics through which stories are told and narratives are unravelled into multiple layers of geography, ecology and collective memory. They are in constant change; their movement – the shift from presence to absence, or vice versa – can be a result of natural phenomena such as tides, storms and seasons, or human interventions: island building, land reclamation, creation of reservoirs, climate change.
The Water that Asked for a Fish will look at bodies of water as living entities rather than objects within the environment. The recognition of water bodies as living beings is already embodied within stories and daily interactions in many local communities. Indigenous knowledge is inherently entwined with the natural environment and embedded within the practices and language of its community.
The first part of the project will focus on water bodies in Bahrain and invite a group of poets, marine biologists, ecologists, writers, fishermen and community members to respond to them daily over a period of time. These will include the tidal waters in Karbabad, Lawzi Lake, Tubli Bay, Safahiya Spring and salt marshes on Sitra Island.
The project will weave this factual information with stories and rituals embedded within the local culture, including: the ritual of putting an eyeliner around an eye of a fish, wrapping its body with a white shroud, before returning it back to the sea as an offering; the tradition for a widowed woman to spend forty days of mourning in isolation from anything considered as a masculine entity, including objects that have masculine gender in Arabic language, after which she is guided to the sea to dip her body (the sea in Arabic has a masculine gender); the ritual of ‘burning’ the sea with palm leaves set alight by women who have pearl divers in their families as a revenge for their hardships.
In the second phase, the project will engage with bodies of water and communities beyond Mariam’s home country.
Mariam Alnoaimi is a Bahrain-based artist, working on the intersection of visual arts and urbanism. In her research-lead practice, she draws on her education in Urban Design – a Fulbright Scholar at the Master of Urban Design programme at the College of Architecture and Planning of the University of Colorado in Denver, 2017 – to contemplate relationships between people and their surroundings, and how they affect each other. Her installations, video pieces, photography, collages and participatory works examine questions around cartography, cognitive mapping, the built and natural environment, identity, memory and storytelling.
Alnoaimi’s work has been exhibited at the Bahrain Fine Art Annual Exhibition since 2014, where she recently won Al-Dana Prize (2021). She has shown widely in Bahrain. Outside Bahrain her woks were included in: Staple: what’s on your plate? exhibition at Hayy Jameel in Jeddah (2022); The Wait exhibition presented during the Venice Biennale in 2019; Video Art Forum, Dammam, Saudi Arabia (2018); and ArtBAB (Art Bahrain Across Borders) at Saatchi Gallery, London (2017).
The new project will draw on Alnoaimi’s established methods of working and key interests in memory, storytelling, environmental justice, local communities and fragile environmental systems.
Resonance Finland 2023
Mentoring and production programme
In March 2021, following a scoping visit to Helsinki, Finland, and meetings with artists Elina Brotherus and Maija Blåfield, we applied for a group residency programme for ten artists to Kone Foundation. We proposed the continuation of our 2019-20 Resonance programme that took place in Oman. This time we decided to bring a group of artists living and working in Oman and Finland together on a production residency in rural Finland. Our application to Kone Foundation was successful, and we were awarded both funds to support the programme and in-kind support in the form of accommodation and workspaces for two weeks in June 2023 at Saari Residence near Turku. At that point, other than mentors – Elina and Maija – none of the participating artists had been selected. In late September 2022, we travelled to Muscat in Oman to meet with Hassan Meer, the founder of Stal Gallery, and a group of artists to select Omani participants of the programme. Elina and Maija selected the Finland-based participants. On 7 March 2023, the whole group of artists met online for the first time in preparation for the residency. The initial meeting was followed by two online workshops in April and May 2023, which gave artists the opportunity to share and respond to each other’s works.
Resonance Finland 2023 will bring together Finnish and Omani earlier career artists with their more established peers and mentors to develop and produce new works across photography, performance, drawing, painting, film, video and installation during a two-week intensive period of production, exchange and sharing. Participating artists will work with external prompts to produce a new work or a ‘sketch’ for a new work each day. The prompts will be generated through a game of darts with three boards and a set of words assigned to the scores on each of them. These chance-determined words will define the parameters for each assignment across three categories: place or stage, form or theme, time or dimension.
Artists / mentors: – Elina Brotherus and Maija Blåfield
Artists / participants: Kawthar Al Harthi (Oman), Khadija Al Maamari (Oman), Safa Baluchi (Baluchistan, Oman), Paola Fernanda Guzmán Figueroa (Colombia, Finland), Hertta Kiiski (Finland), Ruqaiya Mazar (Baluchistan, Oman), Rosaliina Paavilainen (Finland), Lada Suomenrinne (Sápmi)
Website
Archives and update
In March 2023, we launched our updated and refreshed website, which was first designed in 2016. Seven years on, The Wapping Project Commissions section outgrew the original layout, and we had to rethink the listings of projects we have produced and are producing. We decided to add a chronological division for works across film, installation, photography, music and literature commissioned since 2016. At the same time, we made all our recent publications available to view and read online. Their print copies (some very limited) can be purchased via the online shop.
We have also added an archive section to the website. This is something we have been considering and preparing for a few years. We feel that it is important to share with the public the archival materials from the past four decades of existence of Women’s Playhouse Trust. The archive section of the website will be an ongoing project, and the materials will be digitised and made available gradually. At present, we are sharing a selection of archival materials from productions, programmes and exhibitions dating back to 1992 – the year of the production of Blood Wedding, a new opera composed by Nicola LeFanu, with libretto by Deborah Levy based on Federico García Lorca’s play, and directed by Jules Wright. Still the most expensive project ever produced by WPT. Some other highlights include Shiny Nylon (1994), Conductor (2000), NYC (2002), A13 (2004), MiddleSea (2008) and Yohji Making Waves (2011).
Looking into the Future
It has now been ten years since Women’s Playhouse Trust entered its ‘nomadic’ phase ungrounded from the Wapping Hydraulic Power Station that defined our commissioning for the previous twenty years. Our current work focuses on enabling the making of new works and developing national and international partnerships. We produce artistic creations with those we commission. It is a highly involved and demanding process that at times can be challenging but is most rewarding when we see pieces from across different media, forms and approaches ushered into the world and having a life of their own. We intend to continue commissioning and producing new works in the future but shift our focus to support artist at a slightly earlier stages of their careers where support and mentoring can have greater impact.
The Resonance programme has become our key project focusing on supporting earlier career artists through production of new works within a setting of a residency shared with more established and experienced peers. We are delighted that we can deliver the second edition of the programme in Finland in June 2023. Following the residency at Saari Residence near Turku, supported by Kone Foundation, we will be working towards an exhibition featuring the works of the ten participating artists, including the mentors – Elina Brotherus and Maija Blåfield. Some of the pieces by Elina Brotherus produced during the Resonance programme will be exhibited at Schloss Moyland in Germany during her exhibition titled Potato Planting – Transformations opening in September 2023.
Following the British Council supported scoping trip to Poland in April 2023, we are considering developing the next edition of Resonance in Poland. The programme will form part of our wider proposal for the UK-Poland Season 2025. At the core of that project is the partnership with the Museum of Modern Art Warsaw to deliver a set of public interventions within their new building that is due to open in summer 2024. The discussions on the scope of this project are still ongoing. We will be submitting later this summer a report to the British Council with the summary of the outcomes of our scoping visit to Warsaw and the updated project proposal.
We anticipate completing the postproduction of Wayfaring Stanger by Andrea Luke Zimmerman within 2023. We expect the film to premier at an international film festival in 2024. Next year, we will also work towards the broader distribution of this new work across screenings and exhibitions.
In autumn 2023, we are planning to commence the production of The Water that Asked for a Fish by Mariam Alnoaimi. We are currently in discussion with potential partners for the project. We hope to crystalise the production plans very soon.
The Eternal Night will be shown at KW Institute in Berlin from September 2023 as part of Coco Fusco’s major retrospective – Tomorrow, I Will Become an Island (14 September 2023 – 7 January 2024).
We are also exploring several other projects, ideas and opportunities, including a possible collaboration with the Hundred Heroines, an organisation based in Gloucester focusing on promoting women and girls in photography. In addition, we are developing a brief for a series of commissions for a new publication focusing on the ideas of archives and narrative.
During the year the charity received incoming resources totalling £27,556 (2022: £149,794) including £19,319 (2022: £Nil) of restricted funds and expended resources totalling £225,107 (2022: £197,128), including £8,430 (2022: £6,257) expended from restricted funds. At the balance sheet date the charity held unrestricted funds of £1,257,615 (2022: £1,466,055) and restricted funds of £16,009 (2022: £5,120).
The trustees have assessed the major risks to which the charity is exposed, and are satisfied that systems are in place to mitigate exposure to the major risks.
The charity is a company limited by guarantee and was incorporated on 21st January 1983.
Women’s Playhouse Trust has two wholly owned subsidiaries, one of which is dormant. The companies have a Deed of Covenant with WPT.
Wapping Limited was incorporated to exploit the commercial aspects of the Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, which partly funded the charity’s activities. Since the sale of the Power Station, Wapping Limited had acquired a property in Berlin for international residencies for artists from all disciplines.
Women’s Playhouse Trust recruits for new trustees in two instances either when it identifies a skill shortage on the board or a current trustee resigns and needs to be replaced. In both instances, the skills and expertise that the potential trustee can bring to the board are paramount. WPT looks for new trustees through personal recommendations and word of mouth. They are appointed through nomination by existing trustees.
None of the Trustees have any beneficial interest in the company. All of the Trustees are members of the company and guarantee to contribute £1 in the event of a winding up.
The Trustees, who are also the directors for the purpose of company law, and who served during the year and up to the date of signature of the financial statements were:
The Trustees' report was approved by the Board of Trustees.
I report to the trustees (who are also Directors for the purpose of company law) on my examination of the financial statements of Women's Playhouse Trust (‘the charitable company’) for the year ended 31 March 2023 which comprise the Statement of Financial Activities, the Balance Sheet and related notes.
This report is made solely to the charity’s trustees, as a body, in accordance with section 145 of the Charities Act 2011. My work has been undertaken so that I might state to the charity’s trustees those matters I am required to state to them in this report and for no other purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, I do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than the charity and the charity’s trustees as a body, for my work, for this report, or for the opinions I have formed.
As the trustees of charitable company you are responsible for the preparation of the financial statements in accordance with the requirements of the Companies Act 2006 (‘the 2006 Act’).
As permitted by Direction 2, issued by the Charity commission the firm for which I work has provided the company with bookkeeping services during the year ended 31 March 2023. As a consequence I have followed the requirement of the FRC's Ethical Standard when undertaking this assignment.
An independent examination does not involve gathering all the evidence that would be required in an audit and consequently does not cover all the matters that an auditor considers in giving their opinion on the financial statements. The planning and conduct of an audit goes beyond the limited assurance that an independent examination can provide. Consequently I express no opinion as to whether the financial statements present a ‘true and fair’ view and my report is limited to those specific matters set out in the independent examiner’s statement.
I have completed my examination. I confirm that no material matters have come to my attention in connection with the examination giving me cause to believe that in any material respect:
the financial statements do not accord with those records; or
the financial statements do not comply with the accounting requirements of section 396 of the 2006 Act other than any requirement that the accounts give a true and fair view which is not a matter considered as part of an independent examination; or
the financial statements have not been prepared in accordance with the methods and principles of the Statement of Recommended Practice for accounting and reporting by charities applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102).
I have no concerns and have come across no other matters in connection with the examination to which attention should be drawn in this report in order to enable a proper understanding of the financial statements to be reached.
The statement of financial activities includes all gains and losses recognised in the year.
All income and expenditure derive from continuing activities.
Womens Playhouse Trust is a private company limited by guarantee incorporated in England and Wales. The registered office is 82 St John Street, London, EC1M 4JN.
The financial statements of the charitable company, which is a public benefit entity under FRS102, have been prepared in accordance with the Charities SORP (FRS 102) 'Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS102) (effective 1 January 2019), Financial Reporting Standard 102 'The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland', and the Companies Act 2006.
The financial statements are prepared in sterling, which is the functional currency of the charitable company. Monetary amounts in these financial statements are rounded to the nearest £.
The accounts have been prepared under the historical cost convention.
At the time of approving the financial statements, the Trustees have a reasonable expectation that the charitable company has adequate resources to continue in operational existence for the foreseeable future. Thus the Trustees continue to adopt the going concern basis of accounting in preparing the financial statements.
Unrestricted funds are available for use at the discretion of the Trustees in furtherance of their charitable objectives.
All expenditure is accounted for on an accruals basis and has been included under expense categories that aggregate all costs for allocation to activities. Where costs cannot be directly attributed to particular activities they have been allocated on a basis consistent with the use of the resources.
Support costs are those costs incurred directly in support of expenditure on the objects of the Charity. Governance costs are those incurred in connection with the administration of the Charity and compliance with constitutional and statutory requirements.
Intangible assets acquired separately from a business are recognised at cost and are subsequently measured at cost less accumulated amortisation and accumulated impairment losses.
Intangible assets acquired on business combinations are recognised separately from goodwill at the acquisition date where it is probable that the expected future economic benefits that are attributable to the asset will flow to the entity and the fair value of the asset can be measured reliably; the intangible asset arises from contractual or other legal rights; and the intangible asset is separable from the entity.
Amortisation is recognised so as to write off the cost or valuation of assets less their residual values over their useful lives on the following bases:
Tangible fixed assets are initially measured at cost and subsequently measured at cost or valuation, net of depreciation and any impairment losses.
Depreciation is recognised so as to write off the cost or valuation of assets less their residual values over their useful lives on the following bases:
The gain or loss arising on the disposal of an asset is determined as the difference between the sale proceeds and the carrying value of the asset, and is recognised in net income/(expenditure) for the year.
Investments in subsidiaries are measured at cost less provision for impairment.
A subsidiary is an entity controlled by the charitable company. Control is the power to govern the financial and operating policies of the entity so as to obtain benefits from its activities.
At each reporting end date, the charitable company reviews the carrying amounts of its tangible and intangible assets to determine whether there is any indication that those assets have suffered an impairment loss. If any such indication exists, the recoverable amount of the asset is estimated in order to determine the extent of the impairment loss (if any).
Recoverable amount is the higher of fair value less costs to sell and value in use. In assessing value in use, the estimated future cash flows are discounted to their present value using a pre-tax discount rate that reflects current market assessments of the time value of money and the risks specific to the asset for which the estimates of future cash flows have not been adjusted.
If the recoverable amount of an asset is estimated to be less than its carrying amount, the carrying amount of the asset is reduced to its recoverable amount. An impairment loss is recognised immediately in income/(expenditure for the year, unless the relevant asset is carried at a revalued amount, in which case the impairment loss is treated as a revaluation decrease.
Recognised impairment losses are reversed if, and only if, the reasons for the impairment loss have ceased to apply. Where an impairment loss subsequently reverses, the carrying amount of the asset is increased to the revised estimate of its recoverable amount, but so that the increased carrying amount does not exceed the carrying amount that would have been determined had no impairment loss been recognised for the asset in prior years. A reversal of an impairment loss is recognised immediately, unless the relevant asset is carried in at a revalued amount, in which case the reversal of the impairment loss is treated as a revaluation increase.
Cash and cash equivalents include cash in hand, and deposits held at call with banks.
The charitable company has elected to apply the provisions of Section 11 ‘Basic Financial Instruments’ of FRS 102 to all of its financial instruments.
Financial instruments are recognised in the charitable company's balance sheet when the charitable company becomes party to the contractual provisions of the instrument.
Financial assets and liabilities are offset, with the net amounts presented in the financial statements, when there is a legally enforceable right to set off the recognised amounts and there is an intention to settle on a net basis or to realise the asset and settle the liability simultaneously.
Basic financial assets, which include debtors and cash and bank balances, are initially measured at transaction price including transaction costs and are subsequently carried at amortised cost using the effective interest method unless the arrangement constitutes a financing transaction, where the transaction is measured at the present value of the future receipts discounted at a market rate of interest. Financial assets classified as receivable within one year are not amortised.
Basic financial liabilities, including creditors and bank loans, are initially recognised at transaction price unless the arrangement constitutes a financing transaction, where the debt instrument is measured at the present value of the future payments discounted at a market rate of interest. Financial liabilities classified as payable within one year are not amortised.
Debt instruments are subsequently carried at amortised cost, using the effective interest rate method.
Trade creditors are obligations to pay for goods or services that have been acquired in the ordinary course of operations from suppliers. Amounts payable are classified as current liabilities if payment is due within one year or less. If not, they are presented as non-current liabilities. Trade creditors are recognised initially at transaction price and subsequently measured at amortised cost using the effective interest method.
In the application of the charitable company’s accounting policies, the Trustees are required to make judgements, estimates and assumptions about the carrying amount of assets and liabilities that are not readily apparent from other sources. The estimates and associated 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 ongoing basis. Revisions to accounting estimates are recognised in the period in which the estimate is revised where the revision affects only that period, or in the period of the revision and future periods where the revision affects both current and future periods. Such estimates include the depreciation policies on tangible fixed assets.
Donations
Incoming resources from charitable activities
Sales of produced art works
Fundraising
During the year, Marta Michalowska was remunerated £41,388 (2022: £67,417) through payroll for the running and management of the charitable activities of the company.
No other trustees have received any benefits in kind or reimbursements of expenses during the year.
The average monthly number of employees during the year was:
The following work was carried out by the charity with restricted funds during the year:
'Topologies of Air' - the production of the major commission from Scottish-Danish artist Shona Illingworth titled 'Topologies of Air' in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, and the exhibition of said work at the Bahrain National Museum in 2022.
UK-Poland Season 2025 - scoping towards a programme in Poland in partnership with the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, supported by the British Council Poland.
Resonance Finland - a programme of mentoring and production including a two-week residency at Saari Residence in Finland for 10 artists from Finland and Oman. The programmes is supported by Kone Foundation, Finland.
At the balance sheet date, the charitable company owed 1,104,991 (2022: £1,109,000) to Wapping Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Womens Playhouse Trust.
The company has taken advantage of the exemption available in Section 33.1A of FRS 102 whereby it has not disclosed transactions with any wholly owned subsidiary undertakings within the group.
These financial statements are separate charitable company financial statements for Womens Playhouse Trust.
Details of the charitable company's subsidiaries at 31 March 2023 are as follows: