ANNUAL REPORT 2013/2014

Mission stateMent

SPEED OF LIGHT, YOKOHAMA

Our mission is to make powerful public art that reconnects people to their built and natural heritage. The work acts as a catalyst for regeneration; attracting investment and increasing community confidence and aspiration. Our name, NVA, takes its inspiration from nacionale vita activa, the Ancient Greek ideal of a lively democracy where actions and words, shared among a community of equals, bring new thinking into the world.

Established in Glasgow in 1992, our practice uses creative learning and environmental innovation, involving audiences in physically redefining urban and rural landscapes, revealing how places shape, and are shaped by, people.

Our first permanent work, The Hidden Gardens, was founded in 2002. As Scotland’s first sanctuary garden dedicated to peace, it has become a much valued part of Glasgow’s cultural life. Speed of Light and Ghost Peloton are large-scale collaborative events that use film, photography and live choreography of endurance runners and cyclists in programmable light suits, to bring chosen environments to life.

Kilmahew/St Peter’s, the resuscitation of St Peter’s Seminary in Cardross, will be the world’s first intentional modernist ruin that will deliver a new model for rural arts and heritage engagement. The intention is to preserve a raw sense of otherness, excitement and revelation that will embolden future generations of artists to make brilliant new work in the 21st century.

SPEED OF LIGHT, YOKOHAMA

I am delighted to present NVA’s annual report for 2013/14. This has been a huge year for the company. Following the acclaim of its première at the Edinburgh International Festival 2012, NVA’s ground-breaking participative performance piece, Speed of Light, went global. At the end of last year we presented Speed of Light Yokohama, our first presentation in the Far East, and Speed of Light Salford which brought The Quays, Greater Manchester’s waterfront, to life.

The phenomenal success continued this year and in October 2013 Speed of Light Ruhr connected towns and cities across the Ruhr Valley in North West Germany. A work built on local volunteer participation; it is a significant departure for NVA to have a piece capable of touring worldwide yet still responding every time to a new locale, a new creative team and new athletes. Speed of Light will continue to evolve in the coming years.

This year also saw a massive step forward for the plans for Kilmahew/St Peter’s, NVA’s sensitive re-purposing of the Category A Listed St Peter’s Seminary buildings near Cardross in Argyll & Bute. Arguably the most important 20th century building in Scotland, this modernist ruin currently sits hidden in the overgrown but atmospheric Kilmahew woodland. The proposals were given a substantial boost this year through grant awards from Heritage Lottery Fund, Historic Scotland, Creative Scotland and very generous private donations. With planning consents secured and a large proportion of the funding in place, the coming year will see enabling works commence on site, leading to a fuller development in 2015. While, of course, major projects like this need to be financed, this kind of investment goes beyond money and the board is very grateful for the institutional and individual backing for Kilmahew/St Peter’s secured this year.

Finally, I am very pleased to report that we were able to expand our board membership this year. New board members bring new ideas and a fresh perspective and we have a strong team across the organisation to take NVA’s unique work to a wider and global audience for many years to come.

chairstateMentDaviD cook Chairman NVA

SPEED OF LIGHT, RUHR

innovative, exciting, engaging

SPEED OF LIGHT, RUHR

innovative, exciting, engaging

supportive of our vision for kilMahew/st peter’s

of local93%

participants age range

16 - 67

15,000+ auDience MeMbers

45,520

9,120

4,700 volunteer hours

2 artworks

new filM 563 articles in 203

national, regional anD local MeDia

of participants said involvement in Speed of Light increased their running and improved their health & wellbeing26%

£5Million

1,000,000 +s

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capital funDing secureD

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websiteviews

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2international iconic locations

new speeD of light runners

volunteer hours

of participants said that their involvement had increased their enthusiasm for arts and culture 64%

volunteers

of participants said involvement in Speed of Light increased their running and improved their health & wellbeing

£5Million 2,038 iMages aDDeD

to nva’s Digital archive

53 citiesrepresenteDbY RUnning AMbAssAdORs

capital funDing secureD

290

websiteviews 6public art

perforMances

nighttiMe shoots

photography 2creativepartnerships

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120£4 Million+LOcAL, NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL

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SPEED OF LIGHT, EdinbURgH

inforMative, accessible, stiMulating

SPEED OF LIGHT, EdinbURgH

inforMative, accessible, stiMulating

knowleDge exchange

A key tenet of our work is to create ‘entry points’ where thousands of people every year have the opportunity to feel that their own creativity is valued and celebrated.

We have chosen Kilmahew/St Peter’s as the ideal platform to consolidate twenty-five years of public art practice. The revitalised site will become a resource where landscape is a place of artistic excellence, knowledge exchange and learning. The long-term plans will see NVA as the creative producer presenting and curating an annual programme of events and activities with emerging and established artists that will offer learning potential across the creative industries.

Our partnerships with local schools, West College Scotland and the Invisible College (Glasgow University, Edinburgh College of Art, and University of Strathclyde) are well underway. We are currently developing the formal learning programmes for Kilmahew/St Peter’s. New facilities within the Walled Garden will host skills development courses and an annual volunteer programme through partnerships with BTCV and Skills Development Scotland.

Kilmahew/St Peter’s will be a productive landscape where experiential learning will draw imaginative responses from the distinctive surroundings – leaving the uninspiring walls of the seminar room and lecture hall behind.

Partnership working is fundamental to our ability to reach new audiences. Throughout the development of Speed of Light we worked with the Edinburgh International Science Festival to research ways to harvest energy from human movement and design the light suits. This work and the relationship with NVA’s technical and creative team was then developed as part of Generation Science, their national school programme, through a devised workshop Power From the People. Taking the very real challenges of Speed of Light as a starting, point the pupils learned how to produce electricity, and explored how power can be generated through human movement. Over 45 primary schools from across Scotland have now taken part, from the central belt to the Highlands and Islands.

nVA is committed to making creativity and learning part of everyday life. by producing high quality, cutting edge work that is accessible to all, we aim to stimulate ideas and inspire creative ambition.

inspiration, regeneration, transforMation

KILmAHEw / ST PETER’S

inspiration, regeneration, transforMation

KILmAHEw / ST PETER’S

creative placeMakingnVA’s practice is deeply rooted in the idea of public art that responds to a chosen site and the people who live or have lived there. We find ways to delve into a location’s past and disinter things that are relevant to its current evolution.

kilMahew/st peter’s

The plans for Kilmahew/St Peter’s will create a new cultural asset that will be a catalyst for creative transformation and will spark economic development across the region. The site has lain abandoned for more than thirty years and despite its protected status, the buildings are currently in a dangerous state. Without urgent intervention they will need to be demolished.

Over the last five years we have worked with local people, the local authorities and potential funders to find solutions to the seemingly insurmountable issues facing this important but contested site. We have now secured planning consents, negotiated the donation of the site from the current owner, the Archdiocese of Glasgow and raised in excess of £5 million towards the capital repair and regeneration works. We have also developed a sustainable business model and long- term maintenance plan which will ensure the site’s future. The collective actions that will bring Kilmahew /St Peter’s back to fruition will take many years, but every step has value in the site’s transformation from its current state of glorious abandonment.

islanD Drift

As part of the Year of Natural Scotland 2013 celebrations, NVA produced Island Drift, a major collaborative project with the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park. We worked with designers and photographers to transform the islands in the southern reaches of Loch Lomond.

The fourteen main islands form a unique freshwater grouping and contain over 3,000 years of cultural history within an infinitely older natural order of evolutionary and geographical change. NVA created a number of installations using experimental lighting technologies across the area that created a series of striking and dramatic images. The aim was to express a visual representation and renewed interpretations of the National Park that will resonate with new audiences to revitalise this iconic natural landscape and build new interest in the location and its true history.

“ we are prouD that speeD of light ruhr has createD a new iMage of the eMscher lanDscape park.”

Axel Biermann, Executive Director of Ruhr Tourismus GmbH

“ at a local level, there is a Definite sense of soMething finally happening at long last.”

Tahira Nasim Local Community Member

speeD of light ruhr

Speed of Light Ruhr was our most ambitious manifestation of the work to date and the closest to the heart of the work. This major public artwork connected communities throughout the Emscher Landscape Park in the Ruhr Valley in North West Germany. Runners from across all 53 towns and cities in the region undertook nightly runs as they connected and animated the vast industrial heritage sites and unique landscapes. The aim of the collaboration was to improve the area’s image both locally and internationally and highlight its remarkable process of structural transformation, from a vast area of steel and coal production to a 21st century European tourist destination. Following its success as European Capital of Culture in 2010, the tourist authority (Ruhr Tourismus), commissioned Speed of Light to build its cultural profile. New images of the Emscher Landscape Park were catapulted around the world through social media, television and press coverage.

environMentNVA’s work places the environment centre stage, in context and through our approach. By demonstrating responsibility and a commitment to best practice alongside a solution-focused playfulness we inspire positive action and challenge the barriers to change.

This ranges from managing impact, demonstrating carbon reduction in cultural delivery, through to education and raising awareness.

We have pioneered innovation through our environmental animations, often reconfiguring lighting technologies to enable our work to take place in natural settings without damaging the surrounding environment.

Many of the locations in which we present work are not perfect – like history itself, they are in transition, and all the more interesting for that. Speed of Light Ruhr articulated the relationship

between the region’s 20th century industrial heritage and the ambitious environmental transformations which have created carefully sculpted green corridors – the invisible asset that connects all of the reclaimed industrial sites into a seamless whole. Previously blighted by pollution and environmental devastation, the Emscher Landscape Park in Ruhr is one of the world’s greatest and most imaginative land restoration projects.

MesMerising, generous, iMMersive

KILmAHEw / ST PETER’S

MesMerising, generous, iMMersive

KILmAHEw / ST PETER’S

the year to coMe

A new iteration of Speed of Light, Ghost Peloton will take the work into new creative territory, using cycling as the core of mass communal movement. In collaboration with Leeds-based Phoenix Dance Theatre, film and live performance will bring together dancers, a peloton of stunningly illuminated cyclists, and iconic Yorkshire locations. The film will be broadcast during the Tour de France television coverage, reaching an anticipated audience in excess of 180 million viewers.

Street Level Photoworks have been commissioned by NVA to deliver the Island Drift wider engagement programme with primary school pupils from across Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park. They will also work with college students from Glasgow to explore some of the innovative techniques involved in the creation of the Island Drift photographic artwork. Highlights will be showcased alongside the final presentation of the main Island Drift installation in Glasgow in 2015.

In 2014/15, we will be working towards the completion of our Stage 2 lottery funding bids to Heritage Lottery Fund and Creative Scotland for Kilmahew/St Peter’s. A design team will be appointed to take the vision for Kilmahew/St Peter’s to a fully designed, costed and d e l i v e r a b l e r e a l i t y . L a n d s c a p e w o r k s w i l l c o m m e n c e with the removal of the invasive Rhododendron Ponticum from the site and initial steps will be taken to return the building to a safe and accessible state. Development funding will also support continued fundraising and community engagement activities to take place.

Ghost Peloton will be a highlight of the cultural celebrations for the Yorkshire Festival, marking the grand départ of the Tour de France 2014.

48%Project Costs

34%staffing

18%Overheads

Creative scotland Revenue Funding £ 212,000Earned income from Commissioned Events £ 203,209grants & Other Project Funding £ 151,282Other income £ 2,826

TOTAL INcOmE £ 569,317

Project Costs £ 260,673staffing £ 183,160Overheads £ 99,026

TOTAL ExPENDITURE £ 542,859

financial suMMary

expenDiture

37%Creative scotland Revenue Funding

27%grants & Other Project Funding

36%Earned income

incoMe

balance sheet at 31.3.14

ASSETSProperty & Equipment £ 248,719 Cash & debtors £ 283,579

Total Assets £ 532,298

cURRENT LIABILITIES Loan £ (10,408 ) due to suppliers £ (52,583 ) deferred income £ (176,634 )

Total current Liabilities £ (239,625 )

TOTAL ASSETS LESS cURRENT LIABILITIES £ 292,673

LONG TERm LOAN £ (75,482 )

NET ASSETS £ 217,191

FUNDS

Unrestricted Funds £ 217,191

boarD & staff

Morag bain Exhibitions Manager, Architecture + Design Scotland

JuDe barber Director/Architect, Collective Architecture

nancy braiD Consultant

DaviD cook (Chair) Chief Executive, WASPS

angus farQuhar Creative Director, NVA

burness paull llp Company Secretary

faith liDDell Director, Festivals Edinburgh

brian Mclaren Business Development Director, EKOS

anDrea Miller Freelance TV Producer

ellen potter Executive Director, NVA

peter lawson Solicitor/Partner, R. & J. M. Hill Brown & Co.

aDaM scarborough Office Manager

Jo cook Finance Manager

celia garcia Website Administrator

speed Of Light

cristina arMstrong Project Manager

nikki kane Project Coordinator

phil supple Associate Director

JaMes Johnson Head Designer

Kilmahew/st Peter’s

peter thierfelDt Fundraising Consultant

island drift

Jane connarty Project Manager

bOARd MEMbERs

CORE sTAFF

PROJECT sTAFF

funDers & supporters

NVA 15 North Claremont Street Glasgow, G3 7NR T: 0044 (0)141 332 9911 E: contact@nva.org.uk

www.nva.org.uk