By Alexander Stone
When Visual Arts Cheshire handed over a cheque for £450 to St Luke’s Hospice in February 2024, the sum represented something larger than its face value. The donation, presented at VAC’s Barons Quay gallery to the hospice’s corporate and community fundraiser Angela Slack, was the culmination of the organisation’s third 20×20 exhibition – a format that turns amateur and professional artists into fundraiser contributors with a single rule: produce work measuring exactly 20 centimetres square.
The 20×20 Model
The concept is deliberately inclusive. Submissions can be paintings, photographs, collages, textiles, ceramics, or any mixed-media construction, provided they fit the dimensions, remain unframed, and sell at a maximum of £20. Artists pay a £2 entry fee, with £1 from each submission directed to the chosen charity. In 2023, that charity was St Luke’s Hospice, based at Grosvenor House in Winsford, Cheshire.
The exhibition ran from late November through December 2023 and drew 450 entries from adults and children across Cheshire. That figure represents a 28 per cent increase on the previous year’s haul of 350 submissions, and the gallery pulled in up to 85 visitors per day during peak periods. VAC committee member Phil Carswell noted that the format removes barriers to participation: “People don’t have to feel that they need to be particularly artistic – it’s just the images we want. So long as it is 20cm x 20cm and can be put onto a piece of card, wood, or canvas without a frame, we will display it.”
The financial mechanics are straightforward. With 450 entries at £2 each, VAC generated £900 in entry fees. The £1-per-piece donation to St Luke’s accounted for £450. The remaining £450 covers VAC’s operational costs for the event – gallery space at Barons Quay, materials, promotion, and administration. The organisation operates as a Community Interest Company (registered company 09594617), meaning its surpluses are reinvested into community activities rather than distributed as profit.
St Luke’s Hospice: Funding Context
The £450 donation lands in a funding landscape defined by chronic underfunding. St Luke’s Cheshire Hospice, established in 1984 and employing approximately 170 staff, requires roughly £5 million annually to maintain its services. The hospice receives just 14 per cent of its income from the NHS Integrated Care Board, meaning 86 per cent of funding must be raised voluntarily. In 2023, the hospice reported a budget deficit of approximately £350,000, driven by a 60 per cent increase in utility costs and rising staff expenses tied to National Living Wage uplifts.
The hospice’s financial position improved dramatically in 2024–25 thanks to legacy income totalling £2.9 million, including a single bequest of £1.8 million – the largest individual legacy in its history. That windfall produced a group surplus of £2.6 million, up from £488,183 the previous year. However, the hospice’s annual report cautions that excluding legacy income, it would have reported an operating deficit. As the report states: “Our fundraising and communications teams continue to face challenging times trying to encourage the public to join mass participation events and other fundraising initiatives.”
Community-led initiatives such as VAC’s 20×20 exhibition sit within this fragile ecosystem. They are not primary revenue drivers, but they perform two critical functions: they generate unrestricted income and they embed the hospice’s presence within local social networks. The lottery, now in its 32nd year, remains St Luke’s single largest source of income, having raised over £13 million to date and currently funding one in every five patients. VAC’s contribution operates at a different scale, but its value lies in visibility – hundreds of people handling artwork, visiting the gallery, and encountering the St Luke’s name during the exhibition.
VAC’s Broader Community Role
Visual Arts Cheshire was incorporated on 16 May 2015 as a Community Interest Company, registered at The Withens, Withens Lane, Weaverham. Its stated objective under SIC code 90030 is artistic creation, and it runs a programme of exhibitions, workshops, and events throughout the year. The organisation holds a Summer Art Trail annually and produces the Northwich Calendar, with proceeds from calendar sales directed to a local food bank. In 2018, VAC introduced the Children’s Art Trail, which has since become a permanent fixture – the 2024 primary school exhibition was displayed across Weaver Hall Museum and the Lion Salt Works, and the children’s work was reproduced as railway posters permanently installed at Northwich station.
VAC received a Highly Commended award at the Cheshire West and Chester Council’s Community Arts Awards 2024 for its work promoting visual arts in Northwich and beyond, as we covered in our analysis of Northwich’s gallery revival. The organisation has also navigated a period of uncertainty: the old Northwich Market, where VAC relocated after its Barons Quay residency, is due for demolition, forcing the group to seek new premises while collecting signatures to demonstrate community support.
The 2024 iteration of the 20×20 exhibition will support The Joshua Tree, a Northwich-based childhood cancer charity. The rotating beneficiary model ensures VAC’s fundraising reaches different segments of the local charitable sector, while the format itself – low barrier, high volume, uniform aesthetic – continues to attract growing participation. With 450 entries in 2023 and gallery traffic exceeding 80 visitors daily, the exhibition functions as both an art event and a grassroots funding mechanism for organisations operating under persistent financial pressure.
