Annual Report
2022-2023
Time Flies!
As each year passes it’s no less perplexing how rapidly time seems to fly by as The Crud Muffins seek to refine and expand what we do as a non-profit arts organisation to fulfil our sayCRUD mission of nourishing imagination, inspiring creativity and empowering the artist within everyone.
We’ve been kept absurdly busy once again with an array of opportunities in 2022-23 to support, connect and uplift various Fleshkin souls and in turn be supported and uplifted ourselves by the many generous Creative Recreation Until Dawn Supporters of this planet including volunteers, donors, and other kindred spirits.
Our annual report is an opportunity to reflect on our achievements this financial year and give our gratitude to everyone who’s been part of the journey so far. So let’s celebrate what we’ve managed to joyfully bring into the world as we learn and grow!
Arts & Lifestyle Festivals
Our humble roots are deeply connected and forever indebted to the wonderful, wacky and wildly imaginative arts and lifestyle gatherings which inspired the ongoing evolution of our immersive creative spaces and interactive art installations.
The Crud Muffins had the pleasure of opening portals to the NadRad via the CRUD Space at 7 festivals in NSW and Victoria in the 2022-23 financial year, including Sunrise Gathering, Xstatic Wonderland, Glowfest, The Town, Esoteric Festival, Burning Seed and the Phoxtrot Production Launch Party.
We have a 34 generous CRUDS volunteers to thank for the time they donated to bump the CRUD Space in and out at these parties, as well as activate and maintain it over the course of these multi-day events to support visitors in feeling safe and welcome, guide activities as required, and keep CRUD contents and equipment tidy and secure.
Check out the photos below for a glimpse into some of the vibrant festival shenanigans and whimsical spaces we created together!
Local Pop-ups
Whilst there seems to be an abundance of playful absurdity at the arts and lifestyle festivals we open portals to the NadRad at along the east coast, there’s a noticeable shortage of vibrant whimsy in our local community… which is why we’ve been making a conscious effort to engage more with our local community here on the Central Coast, NSW!
We set up the CRUD Space at 14 local events on our home turf including the Country Women’s Association Family Fun Day, Mangrove Mountain Country Fair, Love Trees Love COSS, Woytopia, Central Coast Shelter Youth Week, Central Coast Comicon, Words on the Waves Writers Festival, monthly Sunset Sessions events and Craft Corner pop-ups at Shady Palms and Drifters Wharf.
We even had the opportunity to keep it close to home but extend our reach beyond the Central Coast at an additional 4 events in our neighbouring regions of the Hunter and Sydney respectively, including at the EQ Festival, Float Your Boat, and the Lake Macquarie Festival.
What’s particularly awesome about our involvement with local events is the opportunity to engage different demographics, including families, elderly, kids and teens!
Creative Workshops
Informal artmaking and creative play is a staple in the CRUD Space but The Crud Muffins are equally as excited to deliver focused workshops to support participants to connect with their inner artist.
We were delighted to deliver a range of all-ages workshops at festivals and local pop-ups during the 2022-23 financial year including mask making, badge pressing, pebble painting, and our Silly Scribbles and Wobbly Wibbles art games workshop.
Moving forward we hope to deliver workshops and educational programs with increasing regularity, especially within our local community!
New Endeavours
During the 2022-23 financial year The Crud Muffins took the opportunity to explore new avenues of artistic engagement. This took the form of two private kids parties in addition to vending as a market stall in collaboration with 4 other artists and their wares.
With some thoughtful cultivation both private party pop-ups and consignment art sales at markets may prove to be an exciting way to further our sayCRUD mission and support our continued financial growth to ensure our organisation’s continuation into the future!
Volunteer community
The Crud Muffins wouldn’t be where we are today without the community of kindred creatives and generous volunteers who take time out of their busy lives to contribute to the operation, continuation and enrichment of our non-profit community arts organisation. Without the passion and dedication of our CRUDS vollies donating their time, enthusiasm and expertise The Crud Muffins wouldn’t be the ever-evolving vibrant entity that it’s growing into!
We’ve had more volunteers getting involved than ever before lending a helping hand at the various festivals, community events, pop-ups and working bees we hosted during the 2022-23 financial year!
Commissioned Art
Supporting the creation of collaborative art is an activity at the core of The Crud Muffins non-profit community arts organisation.
During the 2022-23 financial year we had the pleasure of facilitating the creation of 5 commissioned artworks created collaboratively including event-specific colouring-in pieces for some of our our pop-ups, community-created fabric banners for Regional Youth Support Services and the Peninsula Environment Group, and the event art for Burning Seed.
Get in touch if you’ve got a creative project in mind you’d like The Crud Muffins to bring to life and check out what we co-created below!
Show me the money!
There may be parts of the NadRad where money, as we know and understand it, doesn’t exist. But unfortunately that isn’t the case for us Fleshkins here on planet Earth!
As the creative dreamers we are, business and money stuff has been something we’ve had to work hard on getting comfortable with as a necessary reality of operating a community arts organisation. Crunching numbers isn’t as fun as creating banana shrines, but we’re refining our skills in it just the same!
We’re stoked to see our net revenue increase by over $3800 when we compare this financial year to last but there’s more work to be done if we hope to make our dream of a bricks-and-mortar CRUD Space a reality!
Read on to celebrate what we achieved financially in 2022-23 and don’t hesitate to get in touch if you’ve got financial expertise, accounting prowess or book-keeping know-how you might like to volunteer!
Donations and other Contributions
We’re incredibly grateful to have received close to $900 in cash donations throughout the 2022-23 financial year (almost $300 more than last year), as well as numerous material donations of various supplies including acrylic paint, yarn, canvases, fabric and craft supplies! This allowed us to provide art activities for free to visitors to the CRUD Space at the various pop-ups we opened portals to the NadRad at, as well as get new collaborative projects underway to contribute to our forever-evolving immersive installations.
We also received ongoing financial support totalling over $700 from our generous patrons contributing monthly over on our Patreon. The big draw for new Patreon sign-ups is first-dibs on bodoptions. As we move forward we plan to utilise this platform to explore podcast-style content exploring the depths of the NadRad narrative.
Check out the different ways you too can become a Creative Recreation Until Dawn Supporter here! We can’t thank you enough for your continued support of our sayCRUD mission to share the uplifting, unifying, transformative, and empowering capacity of the arts with the world!
Social Enterprise
The Crud Muffins Inc is a non-profit social enterprise. This means that our community arts organisation uses the money we make from selling goods and services towards our mission of nourishing imagination, inspiring creativity, and empowering the artist within everyone. Although we employ commercial strategies, all profits remain within the organisation to further our cause rather than distributing surplus income to maximise profits for external shareholders.
During the 2022-23 financial year we made over $6800 thanks to art merch sales! Much like the last financial year, the majority of this was thanks to Bo Dangle and his Bo-Me’s with 101 bodoptions making up 82% of that figure, further solidifying Bo’s significance within our organisation.
Wanna get the warm fuzzies for helping our non-profit cover operational costs and get some hectic art and handmade items to bring a little more colour and whimsy into your life? Head over to our online shop today!
Workshops and Pop-ups
Opening portals to the NadRad via the CRUD Space at community events, festivals, and galleries is at the heart of we do. We’re passionate about creating vibrant immersive installations to provide a safe, supportive and inspiring space for visitors to explore their creativity, play, express themselves, and reconnect with their inner child.
In the 2022-23 financial year we received over $13,000 thanks to our pop-ups to cover the cost of transporting, creating and maintaining interactive creative spaces designed to nurture visitors’ wellbeing.
Our financial growth in this realm is the most significant of any of our revenue streams and allowed us to finally accommodate an hourly rate for CRUDS activating the CRUD Space at local single-day pop-ups.
Workshops brought in an additional $4400, supporting both our art educational objectives as well as kindred community of creative professionals, talented artists and passionate arts educators.
We’re looking forward to expanding and refining our workshop offerings over the coming year and attending a whole bunch more events with the CRUD Space! Keep your eyes peeled on our What’s On page for upcoming stuff and don’t hesitate to get in touch to book us for your next event!
Moving Forward
The Crud Muffins non-profit community arts organisation is fuelled by big dreams, an active imagination, and a deep respect for the beauty we can create when we unite to manifest a collective vision. The arts have had a profound impact on the individuals who co-founded our whimsical collective and continue to be a meaningful outlet and transformative catalyst for positive growth, reflection and change.
The individuals who volunteer their time on the CRUDmittee and behind-the-scenes to make the CRUD magick happen are continually seeking to learn and improve, connect with others whose skills and expertise can benefit the organisation, and work on ensuring the continuation and sustainable growth of The Crud Muffins Inc.
Do we want to see the whole world transformed into a whimsical wonderland of multicoloured art installations which blur the distinction between material reality and the imaginative realm? Absolutely! But for now we’ll set our sights on the more achievable goal of leasing a commercial space so we can open a permanent public portal to the NadRad on the Central Coast, NSW for all to enjoy.
How soon we get there depends on how well we do financially moving forward…. so expect to see a lot more merch, workshops, and pop-ups in 2024!
Join in the Fun!
You might be just what we’re looking for, the missing piece of the puzzle!
We’ve got this far thanks to just a handful of dedicated individuals volunteering their time to pull ideas out of the NadRad and manifest them into the material realm but we acknowledge our limitations, particularly when it comes to fields our core crew of CRUDS have little experience in such as finance, sales/marketing and administration.
Having only formalised our operations in 2020, when The Crud Muffins became an Incorporated Association and got to put ‘Inc’ at the end of our name, we’re a relatively young not-for-profit. If you’d like to get involved with shaping our community arts organisation in these formative years please contact us to start a conversation about how you might have a part to play in our story!