Annual Review

Demi, Kenya, and Ra’eesah joined the Roundhouse Board of Trustees in 2023. Here they talk about their role as Young Trustees and their connection with the Roundhouse.

Our goal is to provide creative opportunities to 15,000 young people a year – a target we’re aiming to reach in the coming years. 

From April 2022 to March 2023 the youth programme exceeded pre-pandemic levels for the first time.

Alongside our goal of working with more young people, we want to open up access to opportunities so that the creative industries better reflect society. 

In particular, we set ourselves ethnicity targets when it comes to the young people we work with so that our studios reflect the make-up of London, which in the latest census was 46% Global Majority. 

At the heart of everything we do at the Roundhouse is the voice of young people.

From the Roundhouse Youth Advisory Board (RYAB) to having Young Trustees on our Board of Trustees, actively listening and responding to the ever-changing needs of young people is vital.

Young people also find their voice through their art. Whether this is through a film they make, a song they write or a podcast they record. A key platform for this is Transmission Roundhouse, our in-house audio platform.

Talia Augustidis, who was recently awarded Bronze for the Rising Star Award at the British Podcast Awards and is currently in the running for Best New Producer at the Audio Production Awards, released UnReality – a podcast where fact and fiction collide. Its first episode, Sleep Talks, was selected as part of the Lucia festival in Florence, the Phonurgia Nova in Paris, the IFC in Reykjavik, and the Tribeca festival in New York.

Each year, we run the Film Fund programme which supports emerging filmmakers to create new short films exploring social and political issues from their unique perspectives. Each film is submitted for the Wiggin Emerging Filmmakers Award and the winner receives £8,000 to develop their film career, alongside mentoring.

The winner of the 2022 Wiggin Emerging Filmmaker award, Sofia Negri, has achieved 12 festival entries alone for her innovative animated documentary “The Skatebook”.

The short film collects diverse voices from the ever-changing skateboarding scene in London, and shares their stories, fears and dreams.

Thanks to the award, Sofia has been able to travel to various animation and film festivals around Europe with her film, and was selected to take part in the well known Danish animation lab ANIDOX.

She’s currently writing and developing her next short animated film, supported by ANIDOX and the Roundhouse.

“Thanks to this award, I realised I could make my filmmaking practice an actual career and not only a side hustle. The Roundhouse really supports you from A to Z, and believes in your capabilities. It’s really rare to see this kind of support in the film industry for emerging creatives. Especially for animators!”

You can see some stills from the film below.

Each year we run hundreds of projects for young people to explore their creativity in music, performing arts, broadcast and circus. Alongside this we have world-class facilities where young people can independently access space and equipment to support them in their creative journey. It also happens to be some of the most affordable studio space and creative projects on offer in London. 

The creative industries are booming, with the government also pledging to create more than 1 million jobs in the sector by 2030, but not everyone has equitable access. Our education programme draws on our unique position between training and industry, offering high-quality expert creative careers advice for young people aged 11 to 25, including our teachers resource Creative Futures.

For those who want to turn their creativity into a career, we run a range of projects and opportunities that support the artistic and technical development of young people. This includes our Resident Artists programme, collectives, internships, apprenticeships and paid professional opportunities, as well as projects that develop employability skills and industry connections such as creative initiatives to support young people into employment, education and training, and industry led masterclasses and networking events.

One series we run for creative freelancers and entrepreneurs is Self Made Live, which is supported by the Inflexion Foundation, and is a brand new series where 18-30 year-olds can hear from a host of groundbreaking speakers from across the creative industries. From inspiring music industry professionals to entrepreneurs paving the way for the next generation, Self Made Live got hundreds of young creatives up close to those making waves in the industry. Hear from Rudimental’s Amir Amor on how to make money from your music.

As well as events and projects, we pair creatives with our partners for one-to-one mentoring and pro bono support. From Spotify supporting our Transmission Roundhouse cohort and international law firm Taylor Wessing providing a number of invaluable workshops and one-to-one mentoring opportunities. 

Building work also continued on our new creative centre for 18 to 30 year-old freelancers and entrepreneurs, Roundhouse Works.

Compelling stories and perspectives from some of the capital’s most vital voices. Including the return of our iconic Roundhouse Poetry Slam, won in 2022 by Ezra England, The Receipts & Friends podcast, BBC Radio 1xtra’s Richie Brave, Apples and Snakes as well as performances from Roundhouse Resident Artists and the Roundhouse Poetry Collective.

Jean Paul Gaultier’s incredible Fashion Freak Show opened at the Roundhouse to rave reviews – a positive force of nature and celebration of being your true self.

45 shows, 4,635 mins, 184 costumes

Alongside Fashion Freak Show, we partnered with Studio Moross to present Beyond + Between; a season exploring queer identity, nightlife, fashion, body image and pop culture that brought the Roundhouse to life over the summer.

Studio Moross and artist Mia Maxwell curated a summer programme of events, workshops, discussions and installations that celebrated and amplified some of the most important artists and voices including Aries Moross, Sofie Hagen, Le Gâteau Chocolat, Queefy Cabaret, Trans Voices and Bernice Mulenga.

In collaboration with artists Katie Greenall, Krishna Istha, Sarah Hopfinger and DemiMa, the Roundhouse explored the processes of making, opening up conversations and being transparent about how artists can be supported by venues and producers.

Each artist or creative was at a different stage of developing a piece of work, idea or model and was provided with the support and physical and financial resources to progress their project to the next stage.

This season of work invited Roundhouse audiences to contemplate the present, reflect on the past and conceive new possibilities for a world in need of change.

KALAK delved into South-Asian Futurisms, with spoken word, music which explores futurism through a South Asian lens, sparking conversation around censorship, nationalism and caste, and a performance from a leading light of the UK jazz scene and curator of KALAK, Sarathy Korwar.

AfroFUTURES represented Afrofuturism through film and an audio visual performance from dubmorphology x GAIKA as well as workshops that shared tools for shaping more inclusive futures.

Just at the point that the world became simultaneously excited and concerned about the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence, Roundhouse held space in FUTURES for conversation about the challenges presented by AI and was early to commission work that explored human-machine creative collaboration. Artists included disability campaigning artist Jess Thom from Touretteshero and Karen Palmer premiering her SXSW award winning piece Consensus Gentium.

Since 2011, Roundhouse Rising has showcased the creative talent of the future through gigs, workshops and access to industry events and traineeships, driving its dedication to support new and emerging artists and young people looking to progress their careers in off-stage music roles.

With financial support from PRS Foundation, as a Talent Development Partner, we worked with partners to co-curate the festival including BBC Introducing, Risen and shesaidso, welcoming artists Yune Pinku, Loshh, Talia Goddess, and Roundhouse Resident Artist India Shan.

This year, we partnered with Deaf Rave who brought their Beat Blocks technology, a haptic flooring system that takes input from any audio source and creates felt vibrations and audio output to give people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing a new way to experience gigs.

In order to deliver a groundbreaking youth programme and world-class artistic moments, we need to raise vital funds each year.

We do this through a variety of activities including fundraising, venue hire and ticket sales. Every penny spent at the venue is invested back into helping us achieve our charitable goals. Our mixed economy model also means we can respond to different external challenges and confidently plan for the future.

Achieving the level of impact we do takes a village. Every individual and organisation who brings their passion into our venue each day contributes to the vibrant ecosystem.

This includes the meaningful and values-led partnerships we have and 22/23 was no different. We retained and developed some key partnerships that helped us achieve our goals. This included sustaining our National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) status with Arts Council England as well as bringing on incredible support from partners including Taylor Wessing, Wiggin, Livingbridge and Inflexion.

Below you can see how we raise our money and how we spend this on our programmes.

We had a bumper year for events. which included large-scale televised events, an Apple Music Live Session with Wizkid, as well as a host of gala and award ceremonies, including the Virgin Atlantic Attitude Awards, The London Football Awards, and The Booker Prize 2022.

This helped us earn the ‘Best Award or Gala Venue’ in the London Venue and Catering Awards and ‘Best Unusual or Unique Venue’ at the Cool Event Awards.

Check out some of the red carpet action from the Virgin Atlantic Attitude Awards below.