Every other month, Creative Lives runs a micro-grant competition as a means of crowd-sourcing helpful tips from the community.

So far we've asked for your great ideas about looking after volunteers, operating sustainably, using social media, and our most recent competition was about fundraising locally.

Each time, we offer a micro-grant of £250/€290 to our favourite example - and all the good ideas are collated into toolkits to help creative groups across the UK and Ireland.


We're delighted to announce that London-based group, Sweet 'Art are the winners of our local fundraising competition. They raised over £500 for an arts therapy charity with their innovative and fun exhibition.

"We held an 'Art Takeaway'," explains organiser Charlotte Elliston. "We gathered small artworks donated by artists (mainly on paper, low cost, or older unsold works from their archive) and hosted a one day pop-up event. The event was held in a local gallery on a day when it was empty between exhibitions, so they gave it to us free.

"All the works were tacked or bulldog clipped up, and everyone was invited in to purchase the works for the price of a takeaway (everything was between £5 and £20). When the works sold, we packed them in takeaway packaging (cartons that had been donated for free from other local businesses)."

Find out more about Sweet 'Art at www.wearesweetart.com

And you can enter our latest micro-grant competition, 'Let's Talk Tech' here