justlife.art CIC Community Interest Annual Report Reporting period: August 2025 – August 2026 Company Activities and Impact The core aim of justlife.art CIC continues to be the provision of art education of the highest quality, primarily for the local community of West Cornwall and the wider county of Cornwall. Inclusion and diversity remain at the heart of everything we do. We are particularly committed to creating genuine equality of access for people with lived experience of mental health disability and others who may experience marginalisation, discrimination or barriers to participation. Our aim is to create a warm, friendly, down-to-earth and grassroots environment in which people from all backgrounds can develop their artistic practice, learn from exceptional practising artists and educators, build confidence, form friendships and feel genuinely valued as members of a creative community. A central principle of justlife.art is that excellence and inclusion should reinforce one another. We believe the highest standards of arts education should be available within a welcoming community environment and should not be reserved only for those able to afford extensive private education or travel elsewhere to access it. This has been a significant year of growth for justlife.art. We have substantially expanded our teaching faculty and educational programme, developed our community activities, begun creating more formal roles for our volunteers and strengthened our Board with the addition of two new directors. We have also begun the most ambitious undertaking in justlife.art's development so far: our campaign to save and acquire the historic Penzance School of Art and establish a permanent home from which our educational and community work can flourish. Venue and Penzance School of Art Having previously operated from St Just Parish Church Rooms and then Sancreed Village Hall, we relocated to Zennor Village Hall in May 2025. We have been enormously welcomed by the community in Zennor and love operating there. Our time there has also led to a wonderful relationship with the local community, particularly through our Portraits of Zennor project. However, as justlife.art has grown, the limitations of operating an increasingly ambitious art school from hired community halls have become much clearer. Storage is extremely limited, requiring substantial quantities of equipment and materials to be transported for sessions. We cannot risk paint marking the hall floor; the natural light is not ideal for the observational drawing and painting central to much of our teaching; and the available space restricts both the number and range of activities we can provide. Our rural location has also highlighted an important issue of accessibility. A significant number of people who would like to attend our activities rely upon public transport and cannot easily reach Zennor. Penzance, by contrast, is a major transport hub for West Cornwall and is accessible from many surrounding rural communities. During this reporting period, an extraordinary opportunity arose that has the potential to address these needs while also preserving an important part of Cornwall's artistic and educational heritage. justlife.art CIC began campaigning to save and acquire the historic Penzance School of Art. Penzance School of Art has the potential to provide the permanent and accessible home that justlife.art has been seeking while enabling us to offer considerably more to the wider community. Our ambition is not simply to acquire premises for our existing activities. We want to return the Art School to full and active use as a thriving centre for arts education, artists and community creativity. The site would enable us to develop our educational programme from entry and access-level provision through to sustained diploma-level study; continue bringing nationally and internationally recognised artist-educators to West Cornwall for specialist courses and masterclasses; expand community arts provision; and, in time, provide affordable artist studios and dedicated community studio space. It would also provide the permanent teaching spaces, storage, facilities and organisational stability that we have lacked while operating from hired community venues. Most importantly, a permanent base in Penzance would make our provision accessible to a much wider section of the West Cornwall community, including people dependent upon public transport. Our ambition is to secure the future of this historic building and develop it as a thriving, inclusive art school for Penzance and the wider community of West Cornwall, and as a national beacon of excellence in arts education. Penzance School of Art therefore represents far more than a solution to our need for premises. It brings together many of the educational, community and inclusion ambitions that have been developing through justlife.art since its creation. Courses, Workshops and Tutors One of the most significant developments during this reporting period has been the substantial expansion of our teaching faculty and educational programme. Our faculty has now grown to 22 practising artists and artist-educators, including members of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters (RP) and Contemporary British Portrait Painters (CBPP), alongside internationally renowned and award-winning artists. This enables us to bring an exceptional standard of specialist arts education to West Cornwall while continuing our commitment to making that teaching as financially accessible as possible. Our roots remain firmly within life drawing and portraiture, but our curriculum is gradually expanding into broader figurative drawing and painting, providing students with opportunities to explore a much greater range of approaches to observing, interpreting and representing the human form. As justlife.art develops further, we also intend to introduce teaching in abstract expressionism and abstract painting, broadening the range of artistic disciplines and approaches available. Alongside our specialist short courses and masterclasses, we have begun developing the curriculum for more sustained one and two-year diploma-level programmes. These will initially be non-accredited programmes, with the first planned to commence in October 2027. We very much hope to launch these programmes from our future permanent home at Penzance School of Art. Equally important is the development of provision at the beginning of the educational journey. We are developing more entry and access-level courses, particularly for mature students who may not have drawn or painted since school, as well as people who may never previously have had the opportunity or confidence to undertake formal art education. Our longer-term aim is to create a genuine progression route: from somebody picking up a pencil or paintbrush again for the first time in decades, through regular practice and developing skills, to specialist study and sustained diploma-level education. This developing educational model sits at the heart of our plans for Penzance School of Art: combining excellence in arts education with genuine local accessibility. Community Sessions and Portraits of Zennor Alongside the expansion of our formal teaching programme, our community activity has continued to develop. Since September 2025, we have been engaged in our long-term Portraits of Zennor project, painting the people who make up the Zennor community. This includes residents of the parish as well as people who work locally, regular attendees of the church and others actively involved in community life. With more than 200 residents in the parish, this is intended to become a long-term project extending over several years. The project has been extremely warmly received and has created a lovely relationship between our artists and the wider Zennor community. Local people sit for our regular portrait sessions, giving participating artists sustained opportunities to draw and paint from life while gradually creating a unique visual record of the people who make up the parish. As a thank you for the warmth with which Zennor has welcomed justlife.art, we have also provided free tutored art sessions for members of the local community. We are preparing our first exhibition bringing together portraits created through the project. Those who have sat for us will be invited to choose their favourite portrait of themselves to keep, allowing the artwork to return to and become part of the community it records. We are also exploring whether the project might ultimately be documented in a book, creating a lasting visual record of the people of Zennor and the portraits produced over the life of the project for future generations. Portraits of Zennor demonstrates the kind of relationship between art education, artistic practice and genuine community participation that we hope to develop on a much larger scale from Penzance School of Art. Volunteering Volunteering has developed considerably during this reporting period and is becoming an increasingly important part of how justlife.art operates and grows. While volunteering initially consisted largely of attendees informally helping with setting up and clearing away sessions, we are now developing more clearly defined and formal volunteer roles across the organisation. This is already helping justlife.art to take shape as a stronger, more collaborative organisation as we grow. These developing roles include supporting courses as technicians, facilitating untutored portrait and life-drawing sessions, helping with practical and organisational activities, and contributing professional or specialist skills where volunteers have particular areas of experience. We want volunteering to be genuinely reciprocal. Wherever possible, volunteers supporting courses and sessions are able to benefit from access to the artistic and educational opportunities they are helping us to provide. This creates another route into high-quality arts education for people who might otherwise find the cost of participation a barrier. As the programme develops, we particularly hope to create meaningful opportunities for people who may be out of work, experiencing financial difficulties, living with mental health disability or otherwise facing barriers to participation. Volunteering can provide opportunities to develop skills and experience, build confidence, make connections and become an active part of the justlife.art community. The development of more formal volunteer roles is also helping us build the organisational structure and capacity we will need for the next stage of justlife.art's growth and, ultimately, for operating from a permanent home at Penzance School of Art. Our aim is to retain the warmth and grassroots character of justlife.art while developing a strong community of people who can contribute their different skills, experience and ideas to shaping its future. Strengthening Our Board During this reporting period, two new directors joined justlife.art CIC, significantly strengthening our Board as the organisation enters a more ambitious stage of its development. The expansion of the Board brings additional experience, skills and perspectives into the governance of justlife.art and provides greater organisational capacity as we expand our educational programmes, develop our volunteering structure and pursue a permanent home. This strengthening of our governance is particularly important as justlife.art develops from a small grassroots community initiative into an increasingly established not-for-profit art school with greater educational, operational and organisational responsibilities. Our directors continue to contribute their time and expertise voluntarily and share a commitment to the central principles of justlife.art: high-quality arts education, community benefit, inclusion and genuine equality of access. Stakeholders, Attendees and Inclusion One of the central intentions of justlife.art is to provide art education of the highest quality while remaining genuinely inclusive around disability, protected characteristics, financial circumstances and other barriers to participation. We remain particularly committed to challenging the stigma, pathologisation, stereotyping and assumptions that can still surround mental health disability. Provision intended for people with mental health difficulties can sometimes be unintentionally patronising or defined primarily by diagnosis rather than recognising people's abilities, ambitions, creativity and potential. justlife.art seeks to create an environment in which people are first and foremost artists, students, tutors, volunteers and members of a creative community. We have not undertaken formal monitoring of the percentages of attendees identifying as disabled, LGBTQIA+ or from Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities. However, approximately 25% of attendees have voluntarily disclosed lived experience of mental health disability. We hope to continue developing an environment in which people feel safe to disclose disability or access requirements without fear of prejudice or judgement. Consultation with our regular attendees continues to shape our weekly sessions and course programme. This takes place informally during sessions, through email correspondence and through conversations and occasional meetings outside classes. We also recognise that meaningful inclusion must include financial inclusion. We have therefore continued, wherever possible, to run courses at cost price, enabling participants to access exceptional teaching at considerably more affordable rates. Our developing volunteering programme provides another route through which people who might otherwise struggle financially can participate. Our mailing list has grown to more than 300 people, while social media continues to provide an important means of sharing participants' work, promoting courses and connecting with the wider artistic community. Impact for the Community Throughout this reporting period, justlife.art has continued to develop from a small community arts initiative into an increasingly ambitious community art school rooted in West Cornwall. We have provided high-quality art education as affordably as possible while bringing exceptional practising artists and artist-educators to Cornwall to teach. We have continued creating a welcoming creative environment for people who may feel marginalised or isolated, including people with lived experience of mental health disability, while providing opportunities for participants to develop substantial artistic skills, confidence, friendships and connections. Some attendees have progressed to receiving portrait commissions, exhibiting their work and selling their own artwork. Our community activities, particularly Portraits of Zennor, have extended this impact beyond those attending our courses by inviting members of the wider community to participate directly in portraiture and art-making. The substantial expansion of our faculty, strengthening of our Board, development of more formal volunteer roles and creation of educational pathways from entry-level through to diploma-level study demonstrate how much the organisation has developed and how much further it can now grow. Our campaign to save and acquire Penzance School of Art represents the next major stage in that development. It brings together many of the needs and ambitions that have emerged through our work: permanent and appropriate teaching facilities; greater accessibility; community arts provision; affordable studios; meaningful volunteering opportunities; space for equipment and materials; and the ability to substantially expand the range of high-quality arts education available locally. It also offers something considerably larger: the opportunity to preserve an historic educational building for the purpose for which it was created and give it a sustainable future serving another generation of artists and the wider community. Our vision is for Penzance School of Art to be deeply rooted in and accessible to Penzance and the wider community of West Cornwall, while becoming nationally recognised as a beacon of excellence in arts education.

We hold regular formalised meetings that those who attend just life.art regularly, who volunteer, and who are part of the organisational structure as well as anyone else who wishes to can attend. These currently take the form of meeting every other month. The main focus in these meetings are what can be improved, hearing feedback, exploring future possibilities for the development of justlife.art CIC as well as looking at the exciting and yet challenging prospect of trying to secure Penzance School of Art and utilise as our future home and provide affordable studios and a wider range of courses. We have engaged in conversations with Zennor Parish Council, Zennor Village Hall, Zennor Pantomime, Zennor Church members and the Sinners Arms to engage the local parishioners in what we are providing and to see ion we can provide more in the way of provision. Plus to encourage attendance and to include in our portraits of Zennor project. We have also engaged with our local MP, Andrew George, and the Arts and Culture Committee of Penzance Town Council and Cornwall Council and Truro and Penwith College regarding our bid to secure Penzance School of Art and prevent sale on the open market.

The only remuneration paid to a director for work undertaken on behalf of justlife.art CIC during the reporting period was to James Hague RP, CBPP for teaching a course in June 2026. The full amount including accommodation and travel expenses came to £3,200. All work undertaken by all three directors in their role as directors for the CIC was provided voluntarily.

No transfer of assets other than for full consideration