Following the launch of our Ukraine Appeal in February, artist Beverley Jones started a 30 day fundraising sketchathon, raising over £1,700. Now, Beverley speaks to GiveOut about how art has helped her cope with the world around her and why it was important for her to fundraise for LGBTQI people in Ukraine.
I met my wife-to-be thirteen years ago and we celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary last September. We live in Croydon and have a great local community, we are very involved with the local residents association who are very supportive of us and all the other gay folks in the area. However, I had quite a difficult start in life and art has always been part of how I cope with that. Art helps keep me grounded and connected inside and out. A lot of the work I make celebrates how wonderful everyday moments can be and how extraordinary what we consider ordinary is.
Watching the war in Ukraine begin to unfold was horrendous – so much pointless destruction and misery. I found myself discussing with some artist friends of mine what we could do to help. It’s always a balancing act with art to find something that’s meaningful, possible and appropriate to each person’s practice. In the end, we wound up doing different things. I came up with the sketchathon, which involved doing a sketch each day for thirty days and giving the piece to the person who made the largest donation that day. I thought it would encourage a broader group of people to give over a longer period, while also getting me to sketch more which I hadn’t done as much during the pandemic.
It took me a while to find GiveOut. I knew I didn’t want to work with one of the big aid agencies. I’ve seen through previous work with a charity that had a branch in Haiti that the big organisations often struggle to reach the most marginalised groups when disasters hit. Instead, I asked some friends who have connections to Human Rights organisations what groups they would recommend. They came back with a long list and I realised that I wanted to work with one of the LGBTQI organisations. Most of the aid seemed to be going to families and communities supporting one another; I saw it would be tough for some members of the LGBTQI community who can’t necessarily count on family and social acceptance to access this aid. Also, most refugees are fleeing to places like Poland which has ‘LGBT free zones’ and Hungary with its Gay Propaganda referendum.
For the sketchathon to work, I needed to have a fundraising page which allowed me to contact donors and post updates, LGBTQI charities in Ukraine weren’t going to be able to support this. I then came across the GiveOut Emergency Fund on JustGiving and was happy to see the money go to the groups I had already been looking at. So many LGBTQI organisations are small and don’t have the fundraising infrastructure in place to raise funds quickly when required in an emergency – this is why GiveOut’s Emergency Fund is a great idea. Through receiving this support, groups can continue to help people and individuals like myself can continue fundraising. The sketchathon was a great success! So far, I have raised over £1700 which is more than double the initial target. I hope to keep raising funds over the summer.
You can find all of the sketches on my Instagram account @bevjonesartist. The link to my JustGiving page is on my website here and there are still a handful of sketches available for anyone interested.