Manchester Craft & Design Ltd Annual Report 2013-14€¦ · party websites, and 82% promoting their work through social media. Tenants exhibited their work at venues including the

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Manchester Craft & Design Annual Report 2013-14 1!

Manchester Craft & Design Ltd Annual Report 2013-14

Manchester Craft & Design Centre 17 Oak Street Manchester M4 5JD t: 0161 832 4274 f: 0161 832 3416 e: [email protected] Facebook: Manchester.Craft w: www.craftanddesign.com Twitter: @ManchesterCraft Company No. 2572530

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Contents

3 The year in figures

4 Introduction

5 People

6 Marketing & Audience Development

8 Exhibitions & Events Programme

10 Building

11 Fundraising and Finance

Ella McIntosh, This is Pewter, Studio 20a

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Introduction

Our mission is to be the place to make, see and buy contemporary craft and design in the North West.

Manchester Craft & Design (MCAD) is a not for profit limited company responsible for managing Manchester Craft & Design Centre (MCDC). MCAD provides studio / retail accommodation for contemporary craftspeople and designers, organises a high quality exhibitions and events programme and hosts a café. The Centre is free to visit, and open to the public six days per week. MCDC is located in a Victorian fish and poultry market building owned by Manchester City Council, and has been in operation as a craft centre since 1982. We offer a unique space for makers to create, present and sell the best of contemporary craft and design to the public. This rare mix of urban studio venue and retail enables small creative businesses to develop and grow, whilst providing visitors with direct contact with artists. The Centre has played a key role in the regeneration of the Northern Quarter, and celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2012.

MCDC, 1966 MCDC, 1982 Alongside providing studio / retail opportunities for our resident designer makers, we organise activities to promote visitor engagement and creative business development:

• Our exhibitions programme showcases the work of regional, national and international artists ranging from new graduates to established makers, with free family-friendly launch events.

• Our public workshop programme provides opportunities for visitors to learn new skills and find out more about our resident and exhibiting artists.

• Our creative business development events deliver affordable, targeted business training to encourage the growth of sustainable craft and design enterprises.

• Our digital development programme is aimed at increasing MCAD’s online presence and reach, by providing opportunities for online sales, promoting new up and coming talent, and downloadable content.

Manchester Craft & Design is run by a voluntary Board of Directors, and five part-time members of staff.

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People Our tenants’ businesses MCAD supported 30 tenant businesses during 2013-14, and despite the ongoing challenges of the recession our studios were fully tenanted. However, pressures on consumer spending continued to have an impact on tenants’ direct sales to customers, despite an increase visitor footfall. Our Tenants Survey indicates an ongoing trend of decreasing average spend per customer, with the majority of transactions in the £21-£30 price bracket. Average sales growth was low at between 1%-10%. By aggregating the results of the survey we estimate average turnover during 2013-14 at £24,300 with average profits of £12,500, and combined turnover in the region of £729,000. The MCAD staff team worked to mitigate the decrease in customer spend-per-head by targeting new audiences and increasing footfall by 7.6%, 64% of whom were visiting for the first time. “Being able to watch customers and hear their comments about your work is beneficial to see which items they are drawn to, and which receive no attention. This can be helpful to see which designs to develop into further ranges.” (Tenant Feedback 2013-14) Alongside direct sales from MCDC, our tenants accessed external markets such as galleries, craft fairs and online sales, with 55% selling from their own websites, 66% selling from third party websites, and 82% promoting their work through social media. Tenants exhibited their work at venues including the Biscuit Factory (Newcastle), Walford Mill (Dorset), the Bluecoat Display Centre (Liverpool) and Manchester Art Gallery. Foreign export destinations included the USA, Australia, Japan and Europe. One of the highlights of being based at MCDC is the creative community, which can lead to new collaborations and opportunities. This year our tenants created a series of seasonal window displays, and we also promoted our resident businesses off-site through group stands and displays at the Buy Art Fair, Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair, and the newly re-opened Manchester Central Library. “Lovely community of like-minded crafters/artists, we are able to celebrate achievements and commiserate difficulties with peers who understand.” (Tenant Feedback 2013-14)

David Goodwin, DKG Art, Studio 26

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Our staff team and board This year we built capacity in the staff team by employing John Lucas (former freelance Administration Assistant) in a new role of Operations Manager. This post is supported by Arts Council Catalyst funding, and enables the Director Kate Day to spend more time on fundraising and development work. We were grateful to our 17 volunteers for donating 250 hours of their time, and also hosted a Team Programme work placement for the Prince’s Trust. Our Catalyst Consortium work enabled us to access fundraising training for staff and board members, both as an individual organisation and with consortium partners. This included commissioning bespoke joint staff and board training opportunities (Arts Quarter), and attending the National Fundraising School. Board members have contributed their expertise by facilitating workshops and one-to-one coaching, and we have accessed pro bono feedback on our plans from professional fundraising consultants. In November 2013 we began a strategic review of our Business Plan, by holding a number of workshops with staff and board members. These led to a review of our core mission, and the development of new Business Drivers for 2015-18, alongside revising our Marketing and Audience Development Strategy and Artistic Policy. We also held our annual Question & Answer session involving board, tenants and staff. We expressed thanks to outgoing board members Annie McGoff and Lara Pugh, and a new Artistic Director Harriet Godden joined the board.

The staff team worked with a wide range of partners to broaden our reach, including the Buy Art Fair, Creative Tourist, Flow Gallery (London), Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair, Manchester Metropolitan University and the Whitworth Art Gallery. MCAD also contributed towards networks including the Northern Quarter Small Business Forum and Contemporary Visual Arts Manchester (CVAM), and continues to play a key role on the steering group for the North West Craft Network.

Marketing and Audience Development MCAD successfully increased footfall this year by 7.6% on 2013-14. Our marketing activity continued to target digital development with the launch of a new website, increased downloadable video content, and targeted social media campaigns.

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Annual&Visitor&Figures&

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Our challenge is to continue this upwards trend and build awareness, and to further develop dialogue with our customers. The introduction of MCAD’s new website (September 2013) led to a drop in mailing list numbers due to data cleansing, but overall during 2013-14 we increased our digital audiences as follows;

April 2013 April 2014 % increase Mailing list 5,484 5,506 0.4% Facebook 2,756 3,937 43% Twitter 10,186 14,028 38% MCD Network 520 600 15% During 2013-14 MCAD welcomed 95,686 visitors, an increase of 7.6% on 2012-13 (exceeding our 6% target). During the year we increased events activity such as space2 programming, partnerships including the Manchester Weekender, and drop-in events including artists and curators talks. In addition to targeted digital promotions we now distribute a quarterly events guide aimed at non-digital audiences. With the support of an Innovation Fund grant from Manchester City Council we invested in equipment and training to produce in-house video content, such as exhibition openings, CBD highlights, artist interviews and talks, and artist / curator blogs. This resulted in a 250% increase in video downloads due to the wider range and quantity of activity we published online through platforms such as Pinterest, Instagram and Vimeo. In 2013 MCAD joined the Audience Agency’s ‘Audience Finder’ project. This enabled us to begin to improve our data capturing methods and gain access to specific profiling data. Continued work with this programme will enhance our ability to target audiences more effectively through key collaborations. The new website has allowed us to integrate our digital platforms, ensuring a cohesive approach across all sites.

The development of our hireable workshop/project studio, ‘space2’, has enabled us to engage with a wide range of community and artists groups alongside successfully developing a new income stream. We offer discounted rates for charities and have hosted creative workshops (Ministry of Craft, Manchester Jewellery School); pop-up exhibitions (Manchester College, Yuck Posters); and film screenings (Bokeh Yeah). Having this dedicated space also enables us to communicate about our work to community groups such as the Creative Hands Foundation and U3A. “We thoroughly enjoyed our time at the centre. All the tenants were so welcoming and helpful. It was the first time at the centre for many of the women and they were blown away and slightly intimidated by the talent, high quality and professionalism displayed.” (Michelle Ayavoro, Creative Hands Foundation 2013) This year we began to develop our offer to education groups and welcomed 713 school / FE / HE pre-booked visitors in 2013-14, an increase of 36% on the previous year. We are continuing to make improvements to the experience and resources available for group visitors, utilising advice from Curious Minds and our education partner Manchester Metropolitan University. MCAD registered as an Arts Award supporter, with the aim of increasing the quality of experience for our education group visitors. We were also delighted to be awarded 'Independent Tourism Retailer 2013' by the Manchester Tourism Awards for demonstrating clear year-on-year progress complimented by a strong uplift in visitor numbers, and were highly commended in the ‘Loved and Local’ awards.

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Exhibitions and Events Programme During 2013-14 MCAD programmed five exhibitions, providing opportunities for 72 artists to exhibit their work (against an annual target of six). Our exhibitions attracted c.74,000 visitors, with 3,219 attending launch events. The programme ranged from showcasing new graduate talent with our annual MMU Solo Exhibition Award (Joseph Hartley, Elizabeth Winstanley), to a themed international group show toured in from Flow Gallery, London (Forming Words), and critically engaged work by a mid-career artist (Alinah Azadeh); “It gave me the opportunity to consolidate a body of work in one space that had not been shown before, add new work to it and contextualise it with my written diary archive. It helped raise the profile of my smaller works, and illustrated their relevance within my body of work and hopefully in the broader field of practice they sit in.” (Alinah Azadeh, 2014) We have also developed more in-depth methods to evaluate the impact of the programme on exhibiting artists, enabling us to take a more qualitative and long-term perspective. Alongside data such as hours worked, net income, and resulting work opportunities, we also ask for feedback on how the exhibition has impacted on creative practice and digital outlets, whether the artist has gained new skills, and how MCAD can improve its working practices; “I feel as though the exhibition certainly did move my practice forward…I’m also now working on many projects which came from people seeing my work in the show. Projects that I would never of seeked out myself but came from people offering them to me.” (Joseph Hartley, 2013) In addition to the main exhibitions programme, we also provided new opportunities for artists to get involved. The Forming Words Alphabet was an open call pop-up exhibition inviting artists to respond to the programme and featured 26 exhibitors, our resident makers promoted 13 new graduates in their annual Future Makers project, and MCAD supported 10 new graduates with digital promotion through our annual ‘Spotted’ initiative. Membership of free digital ‘Manchester Craft & Design Network’ grew by 15%, signposting opportunities from MCDC and partners to craft and design practitioners.

MCD Network and Spotted logos

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MCAD’s five Creative Business Development workshop sessions were attended by 52 artists, focusing on trend forecasting, critical writing and product photography. 100% of attendees reported that they would use the skills learnt in their practice, and 98% thought they were good value for money;

“Excellent tutors. Engaging, informative and knowledgeable. Good use of examples. The tasks went a long way to boost my confidence.” (Participant, CBD workshop: The Craft of Writing, 18/10/13) Our popular Make With Makers public workshops included mosaics (Vivian Hamilton) and pewtering (Ella McIntosh). We also held a free laser-cutting workshop run by Mekkit, and space2 played host to external craft workshops run by Ministry of Craft and Manchester School of Jewellery.

“Ella is a wonderful tutor – professional, friendly, approachable and extremely organised – everything and more you could wish for.“ (Participant, MWM Workshop: Pewter Vases with Ella McIntosh, 20/07/13) The exhibitions and events programme received favourable press coverage in 20 publications including Lancashire Life, MEN, The Skinny, Flux, In Design and Crafts Magazine. It was included in over 50 online sites including AN, Craft & Design Magazine, Creative Tourist, Design Week, Manchester Wire, and Manchester Culture Show.

Alinah Azadeh installing ‘Gifts of the Departed, Nov 2013

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Building improvements

During the year we implemented our Environmental Action Plan to reduce our building’s environmental impact to 19.5 tonnes CO2e (from 26.4 tonnes CO2e the previous year). This has been achieved by installing timer switches, energy efficient hand dryers and office equipment. We successfully negotiated with Manchester City Council to relocate four unused outdoor planters outside the building, which are now a habitat for local wildlife and improve the ambience of the area.

New planters, Oak St, August 2013

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Fundraising and Finance Having accessed training via Catalyst we have developed MCAD’s first Case for Support and Fundraising Strategy, which will inform our new Business Plan for 2015-18. Our strategic review has also involved a ground-up review of MCAD’s core purpose and governance model to support our application for charitable status. Despite being at the early stages of fundraising development, MCAD’s funding balance remains strong with a high percentage of earned vs. funded income. This was maintained by increased earned income sources through workshop bookings and space2 hire, and high levels of studio occupancy. During 2014-15 we will build on existing earned income by introducing online sales and venue hire opportunities and strengthening the resilience of our resident makers’ businesses and the organisation overall.

Income

Expenditure

Getting Involved MCAD welcomes the involvement of individuals and organisations in a number of roles, including Board Members, volunteers, project partners and sponsors. If you’d like to contribute please contact the Kate Day (Director) on 0161 832 4274 or [email protected]

£91,356!

£6,865!

£39,168!

£11,621!

£200!£782!

INCOME!

Studio!rents!

Other!earned!income!

ACE!NPO!funding!

ACE!Catalyst!funding!

ACE!NW!Craft!Network!

Studio!rents,!61%!

Other!earned!income,!5%!

ACE!NPO!funding,!26%!

ACE!Catalyst!funding,!8%!

ACE!NW!Craft!

Network,!0%!

Individual!donations,!0%!

£74,869!£33,504!

£13,385!

£15,771!EXPENDITURE!

StafSing!

Premises!&!admin!!

Exhibitions!&!events!

Marketing!&!website!

StafSing,!54%!

Premises!&!admin!,!24%!

Exhibitions!&!events,!10%!

Marketing!&!website,!12%!

Documents

Manchester Craft & Design Ltd Annual Report 2013-14€¦ · party websites, and 82% promoting their work through social media. Tenants exhibited their work at venues including the