Creative Lives Awards

Celebrating the achievements of community-led creative groups

The Creative Lives Awards celebrate the creative groups that enhance people's lives in villages, towns, and cities across the UK and Ireland. Since 2010, we've invited community-led groups to share their activities and achievements, so that we can give you a well-deserved moment in the spotlight.

Our Award winners all use creativity to bring people together. Groups might take part in singing, dancing, painting, crafting, performing, playing music, or any other creative activity. All of them provide vital opportunities for people to find community, express their creativity, make friends, learn new skills, boost their wellbeing - and have fun together!

The 2024 Creative Lives Awards are now open for entries!

Learn more and check your eligibility

Please read our rules and guidelines, and check the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), before you start filling out your application form.

Enter the Creative Lives Awards

You can either complete your application form online, or by downloading the form and returning it to us via email at [email protected].

Application form for the Creative Lives Awards 2024 (online)
Application form for the Creative Lives Awards 2024 (.docx)

The closing date for applications is 11.59pm on Monday 13 May 2024.

Please get in touch at [email protected] if you have any further questions, if you need further support completing your application, or if you need any of the information or forms in a different format. Good luck!

A Celebration of Humanity

Want to learn more about the Creative Lives Awards? You can read about some of our previous winners below and the wonderful work they do, or check out a list of our recent winners here. We hope they will inspire you to tell us all about your group!

The Survivor Arts Community

Survivor Arts Community is a Glasgow-based project set up to address isolation among survivors of sexual abuse or domestic violence.

During the pandemic, they ran ‘Freehand’, an online illustration workshop series that culminated in a digital exhibition during winter/spring of 2020/21.

Survivors’ artwork was exhibited alongside professional illustrators’, and illustrations were showcased to the public in an online launch. Through this public engagement, the group challenged misconceptions about survival and abuse.

Feedback captured the positive impact taking part in the project had both on the participants’ artistic skills and their wellbeing:

“It allowed us to show ourselves as complex individuals who are more than just the label survivor,” said one participant and “Having the opportunity to participate in Survivor Arts’ projects is an important aspect of the healing process," said another.

Angela Spoto, one of the coordinators of Survivor Arts Community said: "Not only did our project provide survivors with an opportunity to learn new skills, grow as a community of survivor artists and have a safe space to create and share their experiences, but it also embedded survivors more firmly in the Glasgow art community."

Learn more about Survivor Arts Community