2021 ANNUAL REPORT

Responding to the Challenge of Lockdowns.

Introduction from the Chair of our Board.

Last year’s report spoke of the growing concerns over the rise of rates of infection from Covid 19 but none of us could have quite foreseen the full impact of a global pandemic more widely, nor predicted the impact of this on a small arts organisation in the North West of England. The core team of TiPP are to be congratulated and thanked for, once again, putting the needs of the company to the fore.

We’re all familiar with the various personal improvement schemes initiated by individuals during lockdown. Many of these have fallen by the wayside, evidenced by the high number of second-hand exercise bikes now available online. Nevertheless, some of the better habits may have stuck – valuing meeting people and conversation, taking more walks, keeping up the daily habit of riding a real bike (and perhaps reminiscing about the better days with empty roads). As with the personal, often conflictual, impacts of Covid on us all as individuals so this is mirrored by TiPP.

The core team took advantage of the Government furlough scheme and, for much of the first part of the national lock-down, kept the company alive but largely inactive in terms of public-facing work. However, hard work behind the scenes resulted in some successes with fund raising and refocusing the company’s activities. We would like to thank Arts Council England and DCMS for their contribution to emergency funding. Extra funding has also been given by CRF and TiPP is very grateful for the ways in which this has enabled the company to not only continue but, in many ways and somewhat counter-intuitively, to thrive.

We were sorry to say goodbye to Rachel Scott who has been with the company for many years and who has made such a strong contribution to the work carried out. Good luck in the North East Rachel! We wish you well. We should also congratulate Dr Simon Ruding for gaining his Doctorate during the last year. Huge congratulations to you Simon! It was great to welcome back Rachel Graham from maternity leave even though she was working remotely for a lot of the time. We particularly enjoyed the Zoom meetings from the camper van on the driveway! Administrator Julia Child continues to provide valuable support for the business of the company on a part-time basis. Finally, we’d like to thank our amazing team of free-lance arts workers who have done such fantastic work over this period. Their work has been invaluable in keeping the company going and they have been so good at working out a whole new set of skills required to deliver online when this has been possible.

As we emerge into a brave new (post-Covid?) world, we look forward to taking the lessons that we have learned from this extraordinary period and using them to keep developing the company, the Board and all the unique and valuable work that is done under the name of TiPP.  

Dr. Alison Jeffers

29th November 2021

Responding to the challenges of Covid.

Participatory Artists Skills Development

Skills development sits at the core of our practice and we remain firmly committed to developing the skills and capacities of current, new and emerging artists. We offer training to all of our artists and our expertise is very much in demand from other arts organisations in the region.

Prison Based Activities

We ceased delivering prison based activity a couple of weeks ahead of the March 2020 lockdown, and while we have maintained our relationships with key prisons throughout the year, in common with many arts organisations we were unable to resume regular delivery. Prisons went in to lockdown early, and came out of lockdown much later than the wider community. When they began to return to normal operation, the prison service was dogged by high levels of staff illness, which restricted access further. Quite understandably, the service has been highly risk averse. The lockdown had a significant impact on the general, day-to-day operation of prisons, with men and women remaining locked in their cells for extended periods. The lockdown has occasioned a root and branch review of prison activities, which may result in a change in which institutions engage with organisations like ours, presenting new opportunities.

Taking Time

In the autumn of 2020, we took the decision to conclude our Arts Council England Lottery Project Grant funded project, Taking Time. The project had been running in six regional prison and was in its final few months when the lockdown was announced in March of that year. We had naively hoped to pause the project, and resurrect it in the summer of 2020, but as our appreciation of the prison context increased and it became apparent that the project would likely need to be paused for several months further, we made the decision to conclude the project not with a prison based conference, but instead by commissioning an artist with lived experienced to make a short film out of the recorded material from the project.

Community Based Activities

Summer Arts Colleges

The award of our Arts Council England Emergency Grant was made close to the introduction of the flexi-furlough scheme, which allowed us to invest time in developing a series of small, remotely delivered projects for youth justice agencies, and we began to work closely with Manchester Youth Justice Service on the development of a new Arts College model, financially supported by Unitas. This resulted in us delivering two Arts Colleges making use of digital technology and video conferencing.

Rock Up / Youth Music

Funded by Youth Music, Rock Up works with young people aged between twelve and eighteen through a range of youth justice partners including youth justice services across Greater Manchester. Building on the success of our pilot programme in 2016, we took the next step in developing high quality, live musical experiences for some of Greater Manchester's most vulnerable young people. Intensive, high quality, participatory music projects are at the core of the project through which young people can learn both musical and personal skills and gain an Arts Award.

The learning from the Arts Colleges influenced the delivery Rock Up programme, which was delivered remotely. This was the last of the Rock Up programmes in the 2019/20 round of Youth Music funding, and in March 2021 we were awarded a further two years’ funding for the project, which will see us working much ore closely with Manchester Youth Justice Service.