September 2024 to August 2025 was a year of introspection and redirection for Living Song CIC, where we built on the momentum gathered through the 2023-24 Arts Council England funded ‘Artists Approach 2’ project, becoming clearer about our internal structures and role in our Living Song, and in the wider, community; informing where we want to head in the future. A Capacity Building Grant from the London Borough of Tower Hamlets enabled us to undergo a process of evaluation, renewing key elements such as updating policies and using technology to streamline our organisation. Through a research process with our stakeholders including creative partners, local people, and with large emphasis on the young people active within our Living Song community, we created a new mission statement and renewed our commitment to core aims and values. Living Song: Empowering musical communities through participation, pathways, and partnerships. Participation reflects what diversity means to us as an organisation, a community, and how we work in the wider community. Pathways reflects our core aim of supporting young people as emerging artists in the music industry through diverse development opportunities and mentoring. Partnerships reflects how integral working with external organisations is to Living Song, but also our well-established practice of collaboration within Living Song; our intergenerational approach to workshop leading, and absolute commitment to diversity in many of its forms, for example. Alongside our three key projects with longstanding creative partners (Southbank Centre, London Borough of Lambeth, Island House), in 2024 we identified three areas of particular need in our local community where we felt that Living Song CIC could make a positive difference and applied for funding in order to run projects which would address those needs. We were successful in securing funding from the Aspers Good Causes Fund to run a project in cooperation with Deafroots based in Stratford, a Mayor’s Small Grant from the London Borough of Tower Hamlets to run ‘Mama’s Song’ in local community venues and libraries, and a Neighbourhood Small Grant from the London Borough of Newham to run ‘Creative Lab’ in partnership with Newham Sixth Form College. Through the power of music and our unique Living Song ethos we were able to make a positive impact on the wellbeing of approximately 250 people in our local East London community during these three smaller projects. Deaf Roots – supporting positive mental health and wellbeing in the Deaf/deaf community and promoting greater awareness in the community of issues affecting them. Mama’s Song - supporting positive mental health and wellbeing for new mums and their babies. Creative Lab - supporting young adults with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMDL) and specific learning difficulties (SLD) and their communities. We continued to further develop our longstanding creative partnerships, most significantly with the Southbank Centre, Lambeth Music Service, and Island House in Tower Hamlets. With the Southbank Centre we co-planned and co-delivered ‘Come and Sing Day’ for Secondary School pupils in February 2025. This event reached approximately 200 young people, with a wider team of 20 established and emerging artists. The young people came primarily from Lambeth, but this project was also significant for our Living Song community as it offered unique development opportunities for our Young Artists and Emerging Young Artists, strengthening partnerships between them and excellent practitioners from the London music workshop scene. A key progression for us this year was that Living Song was given the responsibility of creating and wholly delivering the warm-up section of the day, which was an excellent development opportunity for our young people, both individually and as a team. We further developed our work with Lambeth Music Service, mainly as a key creative partner on their Primary Singing Programme which ran from September 2024 to March 2025. Living Song’s involvement included coplanning and delivering teacher-training sessions, arranging new repertoire, and providing a range of vocal lead, instrumental performance, mentoring, and logistical support for their massed schools concert at the Royal Festival Hall in March, reaching 30 schools and over 1600 children. Many people from our Living Song community were involved with this project, including our Executive Director, Projects Producer, Projects Coordinator, Lead Artists, Young Artists, Emerging Young Artists, and Young Music Mentees. The Isle of Dogs Community Choir is a regular group with an emphasis on supporting positive mental health and wellbeing, and they are a project run by Island House, the community centre where Living Song CIC is based. Our activities in this area included mentoring and providing ongoing training for their Musical Director, plus organising 3 workshops and a joint performance opportunity for the choir, reaching approximately 75 people in total. In addition to the activities outlined above, we supported our Living Song community of emerging young artists with regular mentoring sessions, work and work experience opportunities, training opportunities, and by responding to their wish to perform as a collective by organising and supporting performance opportunities, including at an event run by partner organisation Sound Connections.

Ongoing consultation with: Advisory Board & Youth Advisory Board Members - 3 zoom meetings + AGM per year. Island House (Projects Manager & Director) The Lab E20 – planning meetings throughout the year (Curator) Southbank Centre Schools Team – planning meetings throughout the year Lambeth Music (regular meetings with Senior Managers & Music Leaders) Pegasus Opera (Lambeth partner - meetings with Learning and Participation Manager) Music Making SENse (Lambeth partner – meetings with Director) Lead Artist Team, Artist Approach 2 Project (regular planning & evaluation meetings) Regular feedback sought from our group of Emerging Artists (16-25) to steer our focus An evaluation process within Living Song CIC was undertaken in 2025 including looking at how our systems operate, revisiting our core aims and values, looking forwards toward a redesign of the website and social media presence, and with a goal of rewriting our mission statement. This process involved a number of zoom meetings with our Youth Advisory Board, Advisory Board, Living Song core team, and website manager/designer. The ideas arising from the Youth Advisory Board were fed back to the Advisory Board and other colleagues, discussed back and forth, and all stakeholders within our Living Song community were comfortable and happy with both decisions to make some changes and also to renew our commitment to core aims and values which underpin Living Song CIC as an organisation.

The Director was paid for work attached to specific projects from September 2024 to August 2025, mainly for delivery of sessions. Much work was carried out on a pro bono basis with travel expenses remunerated.

No transfer of assets other than for full consideration