Creative Colleagues - July 2025

JULY 2025

CREATIVE COLLEAGUES Creative Lives’ in-house magazine

HAVE YOU SIGNED UP FOR EASYFUNDRAISING?

So far, 4 colleagues have signed up to easyfundraising - and between them have raised almost £100 of unrestricted funds for Creative Lives in just two months.

Imagine what we could raise if all staff and board signed up!

Please consider registering, so that when you shop online at over 8,000 retailers and services (including the ones in the logo festival above), we can add to our core pot. Especially if you are booking travel or buying items for work!! It’s SO simple to use - just sign up at www.easyfundraising.org.uk/creative

THE QUICK CATCH-UP IDEAS FOR NEWSLETTER MICRO-GRANTS? As you may have seen, we’ve started running micro-grant competitions in our newsletter every other month. It’s a great way to crowd-source tips and advice, and so far we’ve asked groups to tell us how they use social media and how they look after their volunteers.

So if there’s something you’re keen to gather ideas on, let Kelly or Gareth know and we’ll turn it into a competition!

RESPONSE TO CREATIVE SCOTLAND REVIEW Jemma recently submitted Creative Lives’ response to the independent review of Creative Scotland, led

by Angela Leitch CBE. In it, we detailed the benefits of everyday creativity, and laid out a series of recommendations for how Creative Scotland might best serve our sector.

You can read the response on our website here.

CONTRIBUTION TO CREATIVE HEALTH BOOK Creative Lives was recently asked to contribute a mapping case study to a new book entitled Creative Health in Systems: the People, Priorities and Challenges Shaping Integration, due to be published by Routledge later this year. The book is aimed at health leaders interested in utilising creativity, and creative practitioners keen to align with health systems.

We have contributed an article detailing our mapping work in Norfolk & Suffolk and Essex, and look forward to seeing the finished book once it’s out.

CRM FULLY UP AND RUNNING Creative Lives is now using open-source CiviCRM as its contact database. Our main focus for the next two months will be ensuring that the CRM is fully populated with all our contacts, from across all areas of our work.

If you have a list of contacts, or a spreadsheet of creative groups, stored somewhere in the Shared Drive, please make sure that they're on the CRM or ask Gareth for help!

ON THE HORIZON ESSEX RESEARCH CONTINUES We’re delighted that Natasha Richards-Crisp is returning to work with us, once again in partnership with Essex County Council.

Natasha will be with us from now until the end of May 2026, working on Stage 2 of the Essex creative health project and helping to take forward recommendations from the Stage 1 report.

NEW FREELANCERS BEING RECRUITED Two freelance producer roles are about to be filled at Creative Lives. The Community Producer in Rotherham will join us from late July to the end of October, to help plan and deliver a four-week programme of creative activity, as part of the Children’s Capital of Culture celebrations.

While the Producer in Slough will join us from August 2025 until January 2026 to deliver a six-month programme of creative development and radio broadcast, as part of our Creative Lives On Air collaboration with BBC Radio Berkshire. We look forward to welcoming our new colleagues soon!

LISBURN TRAINING Until March next year, we’ll be working with the Island Arts Centre in Lisburn and Castlereagh on an ‘Artists Development and Creative Mapping’ project.

Seonaid delivered the first session in June, ‘How to plan, design and deliver an arts-based workshop', and the next one (themed around artists’ mental health and wellbeing) is scheduled for September.

DISABILITY RIGHTS UK PROJECT STARTS We have now started work on ‘Make it Together’, a new project being led by Disability Rights UK in which Creative Lives is a partner.

The project will support communities in Barking & Dagenham, Devizes in Wiltshire and Manchester to design and develop inclusive opportunities for everyday creativity, and support disabled people to participate in it. A ‘Creative Connector’ will be recruited in each area to map local creative groups.

Creative Lives will run an online training session for the Creative Connectors on mapping local creative groups, and will organise four online Creative Network sessions to bring groups from the three areas together.

GETTING TO KNOW...

KELLY DONALDSON Creative Lives Editor

What’s your first memory of being creative?

I was always making up dances in the house and garden (see pic!). But when my mum finally took me to ballet classes aged 4, I was devastated - too many rules!

If you could click your fingers and be proficient at any art/craft form, what would it be?

Playing percussion. I’d love to join an amateur orchestra, but you need to be grade 5+, and it’s impossible to find a marimba to practice on as an adult!

Which do you prefer: river walk, beachside stroll or hill climb?

Beach stroll, no question. Shoes off, staring out at the horizon - there’s nothing finer.

You’re planning a day of live music and can book any 5 artists (living or dead) – who’s on the bill?

Kate Bush, Barbra Streisand (back when she could still hit the notes), Taylor Swift, The The, Billy Bragg. Topped off with a 90s rave DJ until the early hours.

What inanimate object in your home most sums you up?

The set of Matryoshka dolls my dad brought me back from Moscow when I was 15. Like most people, I bring out a slightly different version of myself for each occasion.

What’s your favourite quality in a person?

Empathy and enthusiasm both have top billing.

Which do you prefer – chocolate bar, slice of cake or biscuit?

Cake is the clear winner (preferably chocolate or red velvet).

If you could choose any work of art to hang in your home, what would it be?

West Point, Prout’s Neck by Winslow Homer (or any painting with waves in it).

Which country have you never visited but would love to?

Canada Tell us one thing your colleagues would be surprised to learn about you I’m about to do a 14-day run at the Edinburgh Fringe, in Oscar Wilde’s ‘A Woman of No Importance’ - my first time acting on stage since 1993. Aaagh!!!!

PHOTO FINISH Each month, we ask a colleague to capture an aspect of their life, at home, or out and about.

"Taking my 92-year-old grandmother's advice that if kids are having a tough time take them outside, get them in water or give them a paintbrush. I think that's probably true for adults, too." Sophie Fraser, Place Coordinator