Mosaic Rooms (MR)

This reporting period saw The Mosaic Rooms 10th anniversary programme which launched in April 2018 conclude. The programme’s final three exhibitions included: a contemporary group exhibition of Iranian artists curated by Azar Mahmoudian, from Tehran; the final modernist exhibition curated by Morad Montazami focusing on the work of Moroccan artist Mohammed Melehi; and an exhibition of two contemporary women artists from Morocco, Fatima Mazmouz and Meriem Bennani, curated by Yasmina Naji of Kulte Gallery, Rabat. We returned to our regular programme in September with an exhibition by Indian artist Praneet Soi, based on his time in Palestine. This was a new commission and part of our remit to work with international artists on the region.

Last year we had a 12% audience increase onsite, and this year we saw a further 3% increase on that.

Reiber + Partners delivered the press campaign for three of the programme’s exhibitions, securing coverage in The Financial Times, The Guardian, Time Out and more. The Melehi exhibition in particular leveraged significant profiling which helped boost visitor attendance.

A series of weekly multidisciplinary events related to each exhibition was scheduled. The offer included current affairs panels, film screenings, performances, artist talks and more. The curator of Azar Mahmoudian’s exhibition ran a special event’s programme which focused on profiling contemporary practitioners from Iran. Whilst there has been significant interest in all the events and good attendance, the RSVP levels do not convert into the same number of attendees. Speaking with other spaces this seems to be the same throughout London.  2020 will see initiatives to improve this situation and increase attendance numbers. The period also saw the tenth anniversary of the annual Edward W Said London Lecture take place. Wadie Said chaired a discussion with Susan M. Akram, Hassan Jabareen and Philippe Sands with an audience of 500 guests.

Income from bookshop sales and venue hire were higher than anticipated. The increase in the bookshop’s sales was due to some large single purchases, however there was also more spend on the stock to ensure it supported the varied exhibition programme content. The cafe continues to be active for events exclusively due to the lack of staff and its position within the building.

The final payments from the Arts Council grant towards the anniversary programme following submission of the final report were received and fundraising bids to Cockayne, Mondriaan Fund and Kingdom of the Netherland Embassy for support towards Praneet Soi’s exhibition and publication totalling £47,091.63 successful.

The Mosaic Rooms set up a tour of the Melehi exhibition to MACAAL in Morocco and Concrete in UAE. This is our first touring exhibition and required establishing touring agreements, loans with lenders and other materials. The fees from the venues and their contribution towards transport costs will go towards covering some of the deficit in the Melehi exhibition budget.

During the reporting period we continued to run the Family Fun sessions which are consistently popular. We also piloted two youth projects during the summer and four schools’ workshop projects in the spring and autumn terms. We’ve received positive feedback from the schools’ workshops and are optimistic we’ve developed relationships to make consistent offers which are taken up by the schools going forward. Regrettably, we cannot run the projects with the same youth groups in 2020 due to spaces closing down and restructuring of council spending on these services. Different avenues for the youth programmes will be considered instead. 

An audience consultation session was held in September 2019 on The Mosaic Rooms programme and offer. Feedback from this will be used to feed into our 2020 programming.