yaj annual report 2014

YOUTH ARTS JERSEY

ADVISORY COMMITTEE

ANNUAL REPORT 2014

Youth Arts Jersey - Annual Report 2014

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Committee Members Chairman Steve Haigh Vice Chairman Phil Hogben Treasurer Jonathan Corfe Secretary Anne Marie Lynch (Nov Dec) Ordinary Members: Steve Healey Marcus Butel

Ernie Mallet (Jan May) Deanne Le Gresley (May Sep)

Ex Officio Members: Ivor Richards (Jan Mar)

Carmel Butel (Sep Dec) Mark Renouf

Youth Arts Jersey Team Senior Youth Worker Ivor Richards (Jan Mar)

Carmel Butel (Sep Dec) Assistant Youth Worker Janni Boon Sessional Youth Workers Jo Dove Alice Godden Catherine Graf Administrator Philippa Druce

Providing creative opportunities for young people in Jersey


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Introduction

Youth Arts Jersey is a registered charity (NPO 0104), working in partnership with the Jersey Youth Service. The framework of this partnership is outlined in an MoU dated July 2012. The charity is a full member of the Association of Jersey Charities, Membership No: 396.

The object of the Charity is to support the development of arts based activities and opportunities for young people, to promote their personal and social development and to enable them to have a voice which is heard across Jersey. This is achieved through the provision of the following:

A safe, warm, well equipped and accessible environment for young people to meet in order to participate in a broad range of Arts based opportunities

Varied provision to include building based youth work as well as detached and outreach youth work both on and off the island.

A range of opportunities to support young peoples personal and social development, including art, music, performance, drama, and outdoor activities to develop new skills, to build self-confidence and explore issues that impact on their lives.

Access to information and advice on a variety of issues that impact on their lives from trained and experienced youth workers who they trust and feel comfortable with, knowing they will be non-judgmental and supportive.

An opportunity to be involved in developing Youth Arts Jersey through involvement in decision making, with an opportunity to provide feedback.

Providing a voice and to be heard on issues that they feel strongly about both by having representation on the Committees sub committees and through other creative methods of participation.

Youth Arts Jersey has been operating in its current form since May 2007 following a major refurbishment. The project was conceived to not only provide generic youth club provision for teenagers but to also champion a youth arts agenda. The popular youth club has developed whilst the arts agenda has grown exponentially with the introduction of dance, drama, technical and creative courses alongside a busy programme of rehearsal and island-wide musical performances. Facilities include:

3 fully equipped music rehearsal rooms

A multi-track recording studio

A Community Radio Station

A Visual Media Suite

A fleet of outdoor performance equipment & vehicle

A social space for meetings, activities, drama and dance


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Chairmans Report With the sudden departure of Ivor Richards in the early part of 2014 the year proved to be a difficult one for Youth Arts Jersey. However, Im pleased to say that the welcome appointment of Carmel Butel, in September, as Senior Youth Worker saw us recover and end the year with many positive initiatives in place. Due to having no permanent senior youth worker in post during the middle of the year meant that we had to reluctantly postpone the annual Junior Battle of the Bands. One of the key issues that influenced this decision was also the lack of obtaining a suitable venue. We are therefore very much looking forward to re-launching the event in our new home, St James, in 2015. Another casualty in 2014 was our planned Tech. Tour which would have given a group of young people the opportunity to train and work alongside one of our Technology suppliers, SFL, in providing sound, lighting and event management at a major UK event. Again this is something that we would very much like to try and resurrect in 2015. During 2014 it was more important than ever to continue ensuring a strong focus was maintained on corporate governance issues, with particular emphasis on our financial controls and reporting. I am therefore once again pleased to report that we ended the year with a healthy financial position. We have continued to work with the kind assistance of Baker Tilly in bringing our Annual Financial Accounts up to SORP standards for Not for Profit Organisations and Charities. (SORP Statement of Recommended Practice)

One Key issue that was resolved during 2014 was to work with the Jersey Youth Service and agree a new staffing framework to enable Youth Arts Jersey to develop and progress. Funding was successfully obtained from St Helier Youth Committee and the ONE Foundation which allowed us to appoint an Assistant Youth Worker and a number of extra Sessional Youth Workers. The latter part of the year has also seen us engage a number of volunteers to support the delivery of our programme. This new framework will give us confidence to support our existing programme as well as allow us to develop new initiatives. Work continued on the development of our new facilities at St James and we worked closely with the Jersey Youth Service and SFL to ensure that our sound and lighting facilities met the requirements for this exciting new venue. The new facilities at St James will not only give us a modern well equipped base to operate from but will also enable us to expand our activities and grow our membership. We have set funds aside so that once we move in, during the 1st quarter of 2015, we can immediately start investing in developing our programme of activities and opportunities. Our much needed new van arrived in the first part of the year and once again many thanks to the St Helier Youth Committee for donating us the required funds but also to the Parish of St Helier for assisting with the purchase. Also thanks must go to Caf JACS for purchasing much needed image clothing for our stage crew. This year we entered the Jersey Business Awards for Enterprise in the Not for Profit category and I was nominated for the IoD Director of the Year again in the not for profit category. We were short listed in both of these awards and reached the finals in the IoD award. Although we did not win either of these awards the process served to raise the profile of Youth Arts Jersey within the business community of Jersey.


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Although we operated a restricted programme during the year I would like to thank Janni Boon and Brent Connan for respectively ensuring that our Summer Performance programme and Rock Academy were successfully delivered and maintained. I would also like to thank Carmel Butel who since September has launched Dance Club, Drama Club Ukulele Club, Animation School, Junior Open Mic and re-energised the radio station. I must also mention Ernie Mallet who had to stand down at this years AGM after completing the maximum term of 5 years on the committee. Ernie has always been a strong supporter of everything that we do and his input will be missed on the committee. However he has agreed to stay on as an ambassador to help promote Youth Arts Jersey within the community and especially within the local Schools. This will be my last report as Chairman of Youth Arts Jersey and I would therefore like to express my thanks to Carmel Butel, the Jersey Youth Service and all of the Advisory Committee for their hard work and support throughout the year. I wish you all every success for the future! Steve Haigh Chairman


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Treasurers Report Financial highlights 2014 produced an operating surplus of 18,188 from income of 94,768. Year-end bank balances were 9,760 (current a/c) and 56,454 (savings). 60% of our savings is restricted funds, already earmarked for significant investment in 2015 and beyond, further demonstrating that Youth Arts Jersey (YAJ) has developed a much stronger, and forward-looking, financial footing. Income It is once again notable that a good deal of our income in 2014 was derived from the charitable activities themselves, variously from courses (13k), events (9k) and hire of rooms or equipment (2k), demonstrating our ability to make business as usual much more self-funding. In March we received a grant of 16k from the One Foundation for the provision of extra Sessional Youth Worker hours. The change of Senior Youth Worker during the year impacted our plans to put plans into action and this remains in restricted funds pending the expansion of the YAJ programme in St James in2015. A grant of 20k from St Helier Youth Committee in August allowed us to recruit an Assistant Youth Worker. Expenses Our biggest single expense of the year was the replacement of the YAJ Van. St Helier Youth Committee kindly donated 16k towards this purchase. We have 3k remaining from this donation in restricted funds and it is planned to invest this in 2015 on an integral awning to allow the van to be used more flexibly at outdoor events. Notable costs for delivering were courses, at a cost of 8k, new equipment at 2k and events at 1k, although all of these activities recovered more in income. The first quarterly payment for the Assistant Youth Worker was made in November. The increased governance costs shown in the profit and loss statement includes the bookkeeping of significant restricted funds received in 2014 and moved to savings, ahead of being spent in 2015, or later. 3rd party assistance with financial review During the year we continued to receiving (pro bono) assistance from Baker Tilley, who have advised us on improvements to our record-keeping towards the SORP standards for Not for Profit Organisations and Charities. (SORP Statement of Recommended Practice) The Advisory Group decided that we could not yet identify and maintain the records that would support our full adoption of the SORP, because of resource constraints. However the advice received has already helped us improve our records in relation to reserved and restricted funds. Reserve for St James At the start of the year we had already we reached our target of GBP 10k of reserves ahead of move to St James in 2015. The strong performance during 2014 has put us in an even better position to make the most of our new home in 2015 and beyond.


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Thanks There are various people who I must thank. Philippa Druce has provided the bedrock of our day to day financial record-keeping. Ewan Spraggon and David Hopkins from Baker Tilly have provided valuable assistance with our accounts. And of course a big thank you to all of our sponsors and benefactors for 2014 without whom none of this would be possible. I must thank Steve Haigh for his tireless efforts as Chairman, which range from fundraising to implementing changes in our financial record keeping; I also thank Steve for asking me to become involved with YAJ in the first place. Finally I would like to thank Mark Godel for agreeing to take over as YAJs new Treasurer after I step down at the AGM. Jonathan Corfe Treasurer


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Financial Statistics

-10000

0

10000

20000

30000

40000

50000

60000

70000

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

2014 - Prior Year Performance Surplus/Deficit

0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

Total Income

Activities for Generating Funds

Charitable Activities

Resources from Generated Funds

Total Expense

Governance Costs

Cost of Charitable Activities

Cost of Generating funds

Surplus

Financial Performance 2014 SurplusExpenseIncome

Restriced Funds 60% Reserved

Funds 17%

Unristricted Funds 23%

2014 Cash Breakdown


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Senior Youth Workers Report

Since taking over as the new senior youth worker in September 2014 I have seen the project rapidly grow. We have expanded from our musical roots to offer dance, drama, ukulele and film animation clubs and in doing so we have seen an increase in the number of weekly attendances. We have grown to between 80-100 attendances per week. As well as providing great opportunities for young people, the idea was to run these clubs alongside the rehearsal rooms being open so that we created more of a youth club atmosphere. All of our clubs are kept to a minimum cost (- 1 seniors and 1.50 Juniors) so that they are accessible to everyone. We hope to be able to eventually pull all of these groups together (dance, drama and music) and put on a musical production in 2015. It has been suggested that this could be We will Rock You. Film Animation After a slow start our film animation group has begun to grow and now has four regular members that are working on a storyboard which they hope to have produced by 2015. The course is headed up by Tony Barnes, one of our volunteers who is a professional within the industry. The team are also working on a short 2 minute promotional piece on YAJ that they aim to show for the official opening/Royal Visit in 2015. Radio Station Our radio crew have also grown in numbers due to an Intro to Radio course that was run this year. We had seven young people complete the course and six of them have stayed on to become regular presenters on RYFM. The crew is currently made up of 14 young people and we hope to recruit a full ten people onto our next course that is due to be run next year. We are able to view the listening figures and they have reached 500 on several occasions over the past few months, this being the maximum listeners that we are licenced for. It has therefore been decided that we will up our licence to 1000 listeners. Ukulele Club Again, numbers are growing slowly and the club have regularly performed at Curiosity Coffee shop throughout the winter program. Dance Club Both our junior and senior dance club groups put together Bollywood performances for the Eisteddfod this year, 10 senior girls and 12 juniors, 3 boys and 9 girls. This was a fantastic achievement as the clubs had only been set up 6 weeks before. They both received a bronze award and all thoroughly enjoyed the experience of performing on the Opera House stage. Drama Club Drama club numbers have taken a long time to grow but we have now reached 13 regular members and we are planning our first production in 2015, The Exam by Andy Hamilton. Open Mic Holding monthly open mic nights has been very successful with three new bands forming because of this. We have between 15 20 young people attending these regularly. We give them an hour in the rehearsal rooms to prepare a song or two to perform on the stage during the last hour. I have been inviting all past Rock Academy students as I feel this is the next step along for them. I have also kept our rehearsal rooms as no charge on Monday nights for young bands to hire to encourage these young people to come regularly.


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Arts Award Unfortunately we were unable to promote the Arts Award in 2014 as Janni is now the only assessor left on our staff team. I have applied for funding for 2 x YAJ staff to complete the bronze/silver course and we hope to progress this in 2015. Outside crew events We covered 18 different events over the course of the year and some of these were weeklong festivals. With the departure of Ivor this was left solely for Janni to oversee. It was felt that supporting so many events was a difficult task and with a small crew it did not provide our young members with the opportunities it should. On some occasions Janni was running these events on his own. We have therefore decided to cut back on our outside crew events to make it more manageable and we are also in the process of arranging crew course training with SFL, the company that installed the sound and lighting equipment at St James. Rock Academy Rock Academy continues to be very successful. We ran three over the course of the year and they continue to produce bands of a very high standard. I am sure that the added help of having apprentices to work alongside each of the tutors plays big part in this. Our Christmas academy was the first in a while to have a full team of tutors and apprentices in all disciplines. As all of our tutors are university students themselves the apprenticeship scheme allows for a continual progression towards tutoring and so far all of our previous apprentices have gone on to become tutors. I would like to say a big thank you to Brent Connan for running Rock Academy. The academy has become so successful due to his management of it over the years, overseeing the whole process from the application stage right through to the performance. Battle of the Bands Unfortunately, due to the project not having a senior youth worker in place during the planning stages of Battle of the Bands we received a very low number of applicants for the competition. It is the 10th anniversary of the event so sadly it was decided that we would have to postpone it until we had moved into St. James in 2015. Photo Academy Photo Academy took place during the Easter holidays with 8 students completing a weeks course with Yury Toroptsov, the international photographer in residence. This was delivered in partnership with Archisle, the Contemporary Photography Programme and Youth Arts Jersey. Whats next? We aim to continue building up our weekly club sessions which now include dance, drama, film animation, ukulele club and monthly open mics. We will have three Rock Academies (during the school holidays over Easter, Summer and Christmas) We have a Photo Academy booked in for May half term. Again, this will be in partnership with Archisle Jersey and the photographer in residence will be Tom Pope. We hope to put on several drama performances with both our junior and senior groups over the year, leading up to our main production in November. All of our open mic nights will now go out live from the stage at St James through our radio station, RYFM, live lounge style.


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We aim to recruit 10 new radio crew through our next Intro to Radio Course We aim to recruit 10 new sound and lighting crew to cover our outside gig program and gigs/shows that will be performed at St James. We aim to recruit 8 new recording studio crew so we are able to offer better recording facilities to local young musicians We are in talks with the promoters of Jersey Live about partnering them to offer a Battle of the Bands competition that will be open to all secondary schools as well as youth organisations. Following on from this we are aiming to have our crew run a stage at Folklore and possibly the PAR4 stage at Jersey Live. Finally, I would like to thanks all of the staff at Youth Arts Jersey for putting so much time and enthusiasm into getting our new sessions off the ground and running so successfully. We really do have a great staff team. Carmel Butel Senior Youth Worker


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yaj annual report 2014

Documents

introduction youth arts

developing youth arts

youth arts agenda

jersey youth service

experienced youth workers

outreach youth work

popular youth club

building based youth