John Lyon's charity Annual Report 2024 - Report - Page 10
CHARITY’S PRIORITIES
Survival
The importance of Arts and culture
When devising the Home-School-Community Strategy,
one of our initial priorities was to ensure that every viable
organisation in the Beneficial Area had the opportunity to
survive and thrive. This would safeguard the best of what
the Charity has in the Beneficial Area as well as 30 years
of the Charity’s own investment. The survival of these
organisations is vital to maintain a vibrant and effective
voluntary sector, which has been particularly important
in the post-pandemic era and during the Cost-of-Living
crisis. The manifestation of this priority was the Recovery
Fund, which allocated £4,000,000 (including £500,000
for refurbishments) over four years to ensure that the
organisations most significantly affected by the Covid-19
pandemic had support with their core costs whilst
securing their future in the post-Covid-19 world.
Arts and cultural activities have been a priority for the
Charity for 30 years. For many children and young people,
accessing the Arts through school may be the only way
they can experience them. Since Covid-19, Arts activities
in schools have continued to be squeezed out of the
curriculum. The Cultural Capital Fund (£3,500,000) seeks
to ensure that post pandemic, children and young people
can engage with creative experiences and can enjoy the
Arts and all the value that they bring.
Engaging physical spaces
Children and young people should have safe, fun and
fit for purpose physical spaces to spend their time in.
Community assets, such as play and youth centres, have
been significantly neglected over recent decades and are
commonly in need of urgent updating and refurbishment.
As the Charity embarked on its six-year response to the
pandemic with the HSC Strategy it was timely to ring fence
£500,000 from the Recovery Fund towards the costs of
small-scale refurbishments.
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JOHN LYON’S CHARITY ANNUAL REPORT 2024
Filling gaps
The Charity is privileged to have an overview of the
Beneficial Area and has gathered a considerable amount
of knowledge about the variety of different kinds of projects
and services delivered within each Borough. As a result,
we have been able to identify areas that are lacking in
certain services compared to other parts of the Beneficial
Area, despite the levels of need still being significant. The
Charity has also contributed towards the development of
several highly successful initiatives and models that have
proven to make an incredibly positive impact on the lives of
children and young people. The Charity frequently observes
that some of these successful projects and initiatives could
be effectively replicated to benefit children and young
people in other areas where there is a gap in similar
service. The Replication Fund (£4,655,000) seeks to support
organisations with the capacity and resource to take strong
services to new areas.
