2024 Review

We are no longer producing a glossy Annual Review each year as we detail our achievements in the Accounts we submit each year to the Charity Commission and Companies House.

Below you can find a series of highlights of what happened from 2023-2024.

• The St Margaret’s House Garden was transformed thanks to the arrival of the Talitha Arts Garden from the Chelsea Flower Show in 2023. This set us on a path of making our whole garden fully accessible and a second stage of garden redevelopment began in May 2024, thanks to funding from the Veolia Environmental Trust and the Poor’s Land Charity.

• In April 2023, we became an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation. The funding is helping us expand our work in creative health and social prescribing and develop our Creative Health Tree approach. Part of this work will involve us supporting organisations in Newham (and later Barking and Dagenham) working in creative health.

• We curate cross-art activities in non-traditional spaces, this year with more than 700 artists in 1,075 events and sessions experienced by audiences and participants of over 7,500 people.

• We’ve worked with local, national and international partners including Talitha Arts, Complicité, Ice and Fire, Craft Central, Long Nose Puppets, Jazz Dance Elite, Moulded Theatre, Bric-à-Brac and Cranbrook Community Food Garden to bring a range of performances and participatory experiences to our communities. Our monthly Open Mics provided more than 275 community members opportunities to showcase their music and poetry and/or listen to the work of others.

• We hosted 5 exhibitions and we provided 3 Artist in Residence opportunities (spoken word artist, costume designer and visual and movement artist). In our Create Place, volunteer and community groups led craft, beading, woodwork, visual art and painting workshops. Our wellbeing clinics and yoga and movement sessions receive social prescribing referrals on a weekly basis. We began delivering holiday activities for local children for the first time, supported by Queen Adelaide’s Charity and then funded by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets through the Mayor’s Community Fund. We began supporting the East London Pensioners in weekly sessions at the Tramshed to come together for food, chat and bingo. We delivered our first Arts and Wellbeing Festival in July 2023 which will become an annual event.

• Ghyama Arts was funded by the City Bridge Foundation to work with Spare Tyre, Chocolate Films and National Centre for Circus Arts practitioners to deliver a year-round programme for disabled adults from Tower Hamlets Bangladeshi Communities. Hilarity Academy was funded by BBC Children in Need to deliver weekly free drama and comedy workshops and performance opportunities for young people aged 7-14 from the local area to build their confidence. We delivered Circus sessions for local children and families and older adults thanks to the London Marathon Fund and we began Tramshed Tuesdays with wellbeing activities for women and men (yoga and gentle exercise) and drama and boardgames for children after school thanks to funding from Clarion Futures. Our National Lottery Heritage Fund project Mendoza Mania came to an end with a performance by young people and a film.

• We were delighted to work with the Foundation for Future London to deliver a trainee producers’ programme, Culture Routes, offering six young people from Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest the chance to work with St Margaret’s House and partner organisations and venues (Fevered Sleep, Jackson’s Lane and Soho Theatre) to gain experience working in event and learning departments and produce an event here at St Margaret’s House.