2026

So, this is what Alan Turing’s statue looked like on his birthday!

You did this, once again you came together and did this, and you raised 3612.55 for Special Effect.

We had donations from the following countries!

• Australia
• Austria
• Belgium
• Canada
• Germany
• Italy
• Luxembourg
• Netherlands
• Romania
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• United Kingdom
• United States

…which is really quite humbling.

Accounting!

Okay, the accounting part:

There were 63 (compared to 58 last year!) donations through the website for a total of £1667 or 1612.55 after fees.

There was one separate large donation of £2,000. They went directly to Special Effect (we direct all particularly large donations directly to Special Effect because of things like PayPal fees and GiftAid).

That’s a total amount raised of 3612.55 for Special Effect and The Open Voice Factory.

We withdraw the payment to Unity Bank

(I’ve always wondered about the choice between withdraw without fee and withdraw with fee; it feels like a trap)

• The flowers cost 260, which was slightly above the budgeted amount, but looked amazing - our volunteers managed to get in touch with an enthused florist, which is something I never had the energy for at this point in the event. The receipts are here.

• This leaves 1352.55 to transfer after expenses.
• 75% of 1352.55 is 1014.4125 for Special Effect
• 25% of 1352.55 is 338.1375 for The Open Voice Factory

This the same calculation in QuickBooks

I’m currently setting up all the relevant payments in our account so that trustees can approve. I’ll update this page when they do.

As a very strange thing… So normally, each year we put out the flowers and over the course of the day the display gets bigger as more about more people adding things (at least once, this included a party hat, which I’m not entirely sure was what we were going for, but I liked the spirit). This year, we put them out, took our photos, and by the time the news crews got there the next day, a good proportion of the flowers were missing (you can see the difference if you look at the photos below and the news) - my mum popped over to check later in the day and even fewer were there. We don’t know what happened. Possibly someone thinking the event had already happened and tidying up for us? Possibly someone thinking they had a better use. There didn’t seem to be any signs of vandalism, but we have no idea.

Right, bit of a photodump: