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A History of a Charity in Twenty Objects - #4

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#4. ‘History on the Sly’ Magazines (2000 to 2004) ‘Guy Fox History on the Sly’ was officially launched at the new Tate Modern on Friday 14 th July 2000. That sounds impressive, right? A launch event at Tate Modern!  And we s’pose it was. But it didn’t start out that way.  Let’s back up a bit.  Just before the first magazine went to press, Manjeet Edwards of the Peabody Trust called Kourtney and encouraged her to hold an event to celebrate the magazine.  Kourtney looked at her budget – the same one that had not stretched to meet the delivery costs (See Object #3 ). There was about £35 left, certainly not enough for a party! Food and drinks, maybe, but a venue? No way. Another ‘hmmmmm…’ moment (there’ve been a lot of those over the years).  And then a crazy idea (there’ve also been a lot of  those  over the years!): What if Tate Modern would allow us to hold a launch event?   The thought bubbles circled: ‘You never know…’  ‘They

A History of a Charity in Twenty Objects - #3

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#3. Blue Trolley (May 2000) What you see here is our Transportation Department – our battered, beloved blue trolley.  When Kourtney applied for that grant from the Peabody Trust ( Object #2 ), she included a budget. Having never done a funding budget before, there were bound to be some mistakes.   Indeed, that budget wasn’t even a twig compared to the robust, well-researched budgets that we submit in our funding applications now. It guesstimated the various line items and confidently stated: “I will re-work / re-design the project to accommodate the funding which is made available to me.” For Distribution Costs, Kourtney guessed ‘£200 to £300’. After all, how much could it cost to send out 5,000 magazines to 65 primary schools? Well. A lot more than you might expect.  (In fact, distribution is one of our most expensive activities. Often,  SENDING  a Guy Fox book is double the cost of  PRINTING  one! ) As we said, there were bound to be some mistakes. You