About Idle Women Idle Women is an arts, environment and social justice collaboration that creates vibrant and adventurous spaces with and for all women that can’t be cut, closed or taken away. Idle Women was established as a Community Interest Company in 2015 to create spaces with and for women and girls in places where they are least imagined. We are artist led, our emphasis being on delivering projects in areas of least or diminished provision and working in partnerships with specialist women’s sector service providers such as refuges, black and minoritised specialist support services and women' s centers. Project based, our provision includes both specialist outreach work as well as public access open space and activity for all women and girls to join. Idle Women’s studio is based in Accrington, Hyndburn with outdoor sites in Accrington and Nelson, Pendle. Fundraising and earned income Grant income for project delivery and core costs was received from the following: Arts Council England - National Portfolio Organisation Sustainability, Health, Environment Development Trust - Necessity Fund Paul Hamlyn Foundation - Arts Fund National Lottery Community Fund - Reaching Communities Partnership Lancashire County Council - Community Orchard Grant Community Foundation for Lancashire Great Places Housing Association - Resilience Fund We received earned income for work with Daily Life Ltd, South London Gallery, donations to our apothecary project and from our non profit online shop . Activities Key activity during the year April 2024 - March 2025 includes the following projects: 1. Arts Council England - National Portfolio 2. Humraaz Partnership 3. Gain Ground 4. World Art School 5. Physic Garden - Nelson 6. Apothecary and Publication 7. Medicine Nursery - Accrington 8. Case For Land 9. Digital projects 10. Evaluation 11. R&D new invitations, collaborations and project commissions Activity report 1. Arts Council England - National Portfolio Idle Women joined Arts Council England National Portfolio of Organisations 2023 - 2026. This multi year support is a positive step change for Idle Women who formally have been project funded for 8 years. The success is also an important arts investment for the borough of Hyndburn who has never had an NPO. Idle Women engaged a strategic consultant throughout the year to help IW make the transition. Idle Women reports quarterly with Arts Council England on activity, finance, advisory board meetings and on ACE’s four investment principles. 2. Humraaz Partnership Humraaz Support Services provides confidential specialist support to Black and Minority Ethnic women who are experiencing Domestic Abuse and all forms of Harmful Traditional Practices. Idle Women have worked closely in partnership with Humraaz since inception offering alternative space in nature, creative workshops, confidence building, practical skills, lunches, trips and a place to belong. Idle women also develop strategy with senior staff and offer support and space for general staff and volunteers. During 2024-25 Idle Women and Humraaz delivered the second year of a 4 year partnership fund from NLCF ‘reaching communities’. The partnership between Humraaz and Idle Women has strengthened through the process of working formally together to deliver Gain Ground through the recognition and certainty of the commitment made in defining this partnership. The partnership fund secures a secondment of a senior outreach worker from Humraaz to work weekly on developing the Gain Ground. In 2024 Humraaz secured a new property to consolidate their refuge spaces and Idle Women worked in partnership to assist in the renovations to the house and garden. 3. Gain Ground Gain Ground is a multi year cross sector partnership program set up to address a gap in provision for women that have left domestic violence refuge into independent living. The project is in partnership with Humraaz Support Services and the program is supported by the National Lottery Community Fund. The project consists of weekly in person group meetings and activities which are held at both the Idle Women Studio and the Nursery allotment space. The group was facilitated by associate gardeners, relational artists, and a senior support worker seconded from Humraaz and Idle Women directors. The group consists of over 40 women and their children and include women from a local asylum and refugee network. Idle Women also works within Humraaz refuge for outreach. Activities include: Fire Chai Club - our weekly activity and social space around an open fire and pan of something healthy and delicious with guest facilitators, a space for planning and meetings, workshops and mini projects. Driving school - our goal for at least ten women to pass their driving tests. The school is well loved and taken very seriously by the group who peer support each other through the process. Social enterprise project - a creative exploration of social enterprise strands for future sustainability. Pointing to paid traineeships in future. Trips and celebrations - Included a Summer Holiday residential at Whitehough Activity Centre, an outdoor Eid Party and an end of year meal out together supported by Community Foundations for Lancashire Growing Knowledge The group learned horticulture, food growing, first aid, nutrition and herbal wellbeing at the nursery space. Arts Practice All activities are artist led or programmed as part of collaborative relational practice, the group was also involved with World Art School (see below). 4. World Art School Throughout 2024 Idle Women commissioned,hosted and co-created the first itteration of World Art School delivering three courses facilitated by arts educators/practitioners to women over the program including filmmaking, African dye /printmaking and the history and practice of culture and art in tandem with a Children's monthly art club. World Art School led by Dr Alana Jelinek is an artistic curriculum which builds connections and shares the wide variety of artistic traditions from every part of the world, honoring equally the wide diversity of artistic expression that are found across the globe while also seeking the highest standards of excellence and what this means locally. Critically engaging with a non-Eurocentric curriculum for art. 5. Physic Garden - Nelson Throughout Spring 2024 Idle Women finished the construction and final fabrication of the Physic Garden. Idle women employed a number of women to work on the project, Theatre workers whose employment had ceased/lessened during the pandemic and master crafts women and gardeners to construct the terracing and dry stone walls. In June 2024 Idle Women opened the garden to the public with a celebration launch held at the garden and reception dinner and outdoor rave at the Haworth Gallery in Accrington attended by over 300. Throughout the year the garden was visited by outreach groups to inform its use. Several artists worked within the garden, both physically and digitally creating new relational artworks and hosting public workshops. The planting developed over the year, there are now over 150 different species of medicinal plants ( some rare) and we are developing a protocol to sustain and distribute them. The first year of completing and launching the Physic Garden was a broad body of work - exploring and testing approaches for opening the garden and setting in motion plans for sustaining it beyond our current capacity. 6. Publication and Apothecary With support from Sustainability, Health, Environment Development Trust we invited endobiogenic herbalist E Baughman to collaborate on the development of a publication for the Physic Garden. The book is also being created with our community to include an introduction to endobiogenic herbalism, the scientific keystone of the garden. The book will explore plants, health, anatomy and physiology, the hormone, digestive, elimination and stress systems with particular emphasis on womens health conditions such as menstruation, menopause, mental health (anxiety and depression). Writing endobiogenic content is ongoing. Alongside the book Idle Women with support from SHED has set up a clinical apothecary with herbalist E Baughman to work directly supporting women with their health and to provide case studies for the publication. Take up has been high and the apothecary is well loved and in demand. 7. Medicine Nursery - Growing Knowledge - Accrington Idle Women continued to create a medicinal herb nursery as a complementary learning space to the Physic Garden. Medicinal herbs were cultivated throughout the year and were harvested and used for our medicinal herb workshops. Also medicinal herbs were cultivated for planting in the physic garden. Growing Knowledge is a well loved and attended weekly food, creative workshop and medicinal plant growing space at the Nursery facilitated by She Digs ecology associates, a responsive creative programme of activities and engagement through outreach partnerships. This year Hyndburn Council allowed us to expand our allotment space even further. Alongside our new food growing beds we planted an orchard with 25 fruit and nut trees with support from Lancashire county council. We also created a new dye plant area in collaboration with World Art School. 8. Case for Land A Case for land: Petrichor is a new major performance work.. This is a long term piece that consolidates an eight year period of meeting women, gathering unheard voices, stories and perspectives of what it takes for us to access our rightful place on land. Petrichor will be produced as a series of site-specific performances that audiences experience one at a time in site-specific locations – a woodland, a carpark, a room above a church. These public performances build on Idle Women’s work with women behind closed doors via the refuge network, devised with professional and not-yet-professional performers to make profoundly transformative artwork for makers and audience. Idle Women were successful in receiving the 3 year Arts Fund from Paul Hamlyn Foundation enabling the space and resources for the production process. 9. Digital Projects Physic Garden Network is a major digital body of work, completely unique, created by many. It’s a network that practically connects and holds the contextual programming and politics of the Physic Garden through a number of components. The project was borne out of a need to keep our community connected (it can’t be cut closed or taken away) and creatively engage during the pandemic whilst we could not offer the physical space of the garden. The platform offers a high quality free educational alternative space to all. The project is supported by SHED Necessity fund and Arts Council England. Physic Garden Network has several strands. During the year several Full Moon Commissions were initiated and developed. Artist Rosalie Shweike collaborated with women from the Physic Garden Network community to narrate voice notes personifying medicinal plants. Poet Riaz Begum created an audio work. The Fire Chai Club website created by web artist Rifke Sadleir and Gain Ground is animated live with a new recipe every Thursday. Artist Seyi Adelekun collaborated with 12 women and an audio recordist to capture the score of a live movement workshop at the allotment site creating a downloadable audio piece for audiences. The interactive database of medicinal plants currently logs over 130 plants and is being populated for post production this project will be updated and maintained through a small voluntary observation project with women. www.physicgarden.network Webring -The Web Ring is a major forthcoming net-art project to be produced in collaboration with the feminist coders, digital creatives, artists and hackers who are challenging the exponential male control, input, and design of all our digital realms. Together, we are creating a counter response. Idle Women will migrate away from our singular “profile” website and initiate in its stead a women-led ring of websites: a rhizomatic network of active connections created through grassroots workshops and education programmes. This project is part of the activity programme that has secured additional substantial funding from the Paul Hamlyn Trust. Other live digital spaces include: Stadium for the Future - stadiumfuture.space is both a proposal, provocation and occupation of space. It is a pre-proposal for an alternate future space, not another concrete monolith but a stadium to re-imagine environmental recovery and reciprocity, a self-sustaining ecosystem of women's doing, creating, training, playing and manifesting a different world. Commissioned for Women’s European Football Championship 2022. Powertools - Our digital legacy project Power Tools was launched in 2019 as part of an Arts council Ambition for Excellence award partnership multi faceted major project Helen . Power Tools is a series of household DIY videos made by women, for women. These 14 fun, approachable and concise videos give instructions on basic DIY tasks like changing a lightbulb, smashing a window, painting a wall and using a drill. The videos are available on Vimeo and YouTube. Power Tools continues to gather momentum. At the time of writing Power Tools has received over 795,444 views on YouTube alone. 10. Evaluation We are collaborating with psychosocial academic Dr Lynn Froggett to develop a new model of evaluation and articulation specific to arts and social justice practice. Evaluation is required by most funders but is heavily data driven and creates a transactional relationship which is at odds and in fact detrimental to our work. Throughout the year Dr Maria Turda UCLAN participated across our projects as an embedded weekly evaluator. 11. R&D new invitations, collaborations and project commissions Idle Women developed new local strategic networks and partners in Hyndburn - specifically with Hyndburn Council and the Haworth Art Gallery who both hosted and supported our summer launch event and celebration. Idle women fed into plans for the new Market Chambers Building project with a view to a potential social enterprise project. Idle women were also in conversation with Lancashire's new police and crime commissioner CEO to support the presentation of Case for Land in Hyndburn. Idle women also further developed community and arts relationships with Metal, University of Bergen Norway, Cartwheel Arts, Project Resist, Burnley FC in the community, the DEEN centre, Women Rise UP, Pendle Labour Women and AWAAZ Accrington.

Please refer to the social audit report attached in part 1.

.Directors received remuneration totalling £103,167 (2024 - £95,313) There were no other transactions or arrangements in connection with the remuneration of directors, or compensation for director's loss of office, which require to be disclosed.

No transfer of assets other than for full consideration