Dartington

Richard also led on an application submitted in July 2016 for an ACE research grant of £188,000 over two years (of which around £100,000 was earned income with the remainder to come from the Arts Council) but this did not succeed. Richard made an application for £5,000 to the new Creative Exchange Fund from the University of Plymouth which failed in May 2017. An application to the Creative Europe EU fund was abandoned at an early stage because of the complexities involved with developing international partnerships without sufficient lead time.

CCANW’s annual report from 11 May 2016-31 March 2017 indicated a turnover of only £1,062 and a surplus of £300. Sally Lai became a fourth Director from 21 December 2016 (resigning 13 December 2018). Up to that time, no Directors were paid and up to the start of 2018 Clive personally covered CCANW’s expenses.

Following Clive’s meeting in 2016 with Professor Jaewon Cho at Ulsan National Institute of Technology (UNIST) during the first phase of their Science Walden Project, when the second phase was announced, one of their committee members visited Dartington in June 2017 and a three year collaborative research project between CCANW and UNIST was proposed.

After exploring several different options, it was proposed in August 2017 that UNIST would pay up to £81,300 over three years 2018-20. The contract was subject to annual renewal and concluded several months early.

Because of administrative complexity, the contract was technically only signed in May 2019 and it covered a period between March 2019 and February 2020. This was an academic contract and required a lead researcher with a Doctorate to be appointed as a Visiting Professor within UNIST, so Richard Povall took on this role. Payments were made monthly into the CCANW account.

On the strength of substantial new funding from UNIST over the Science Walden Project, a new application called Across Borders was made to ACE in August 2017. The application was for a grant of £59,923 (33.1% within a total budget of £180,890) over three years, January 2018-December 2020. Significant match funding included £75,000 from UNIST, £13,000 from Yatoo and £2,000 from the Korean Cultural Centre. The application failed in March 2018. The ambition of Across Borders was to involve artists, curators and researchers from across the UK to produce exhibitions, artist residencies, public events, symposia and other activity in Korea, Italy and England. It was intended to expand our capacity for international working within a new family of artists and arts and ecology organisations, and with a new group of CCANW Associate Artists and Curators.

Because of the failure of the application to ACE, CCANW’s turnover dropped below the threshold of £50,000 for applications to the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and we were forced to withdraw our application for a grant of £95,000 over three years from the Foundation, intended for organisations at a pivotal point of change. In October 2017, Charlotte Rathbone was elected to become a fifth Director.

Because of the start of funding from UNIST, and despite the set-back of failed applications for UK grants, our annual report 1 April 2017-31 March 2018 refers to fees for service (UNIST) of £11,406 within an income of £12,929 and expenses of £8,406 i.e. a surplus of £4,523.

In February 2019 CCANW made another application for £15,000 to ACE for New Project 2019, essentially this was intended to prepare a new five year business plan during the period 13 May 2019-12 May 2020. Unfortunately, we were only able to offer £2,500 cash in match funding, but support in kind amounted to £34,115 because Clive was working three days and Richard one day for no pay. The application was rejected in the following month. An application to the National Lottery’s Climate Action Fund in December 2019 also failed.

CCANW’s annual accounts from 1 April 2018-31 March 2019 showed an income from UNIST of £27,787 and £2,000 from the Korean Cultural Centre within a total income of £36,325; expenditure amounted to £37,889, with the deficit carried forward into 2019/20. The Korean artist organisation Yatoo contributed £13,000 to the Global Nomadic Art Project (see The Ephemeral River above). This does not appear directly in the CCANW financial accounts as the payment was made directly to the project producers, art.earth.

With our only remaining income from UNIST ending in February 2020, at a meeting of the remaining three Directors, Clive, Robert (Daro) and Charlotte on 21 February 2020, it was resolved to dissolve CCANW at the end of March. Our final accounts 1 April 2019-31 March 2020 showed an income of £27,745; made up of £24,289 from UNIST, £1,540 from mentoring, £1,304 from membership subscriptions and £612 in miscellaneous income. Expenditure amounted to £26,316, with the surplus of £1,429 going towards the payment of accountant’s fees.

In December 2022, faced with their own financial struggles, the Board of Directors of art.earth decided to close the Company. Their website is now being developed as an online archive.