Funding

Spark Centre does not receive any central government funding and relies entirely on grant applications to funding bodies and donations to carry out its work.

Courses are funded – tutor salaries and art materials – by applications to various funding bodies meaning a significant amount of time is spent by staff on applying for grants. This is lengthy process that can often led to applications being declined, particularly so in the current challenging financial climate.

With our diversification into offering programmes for participants with a broad range of needs, we hope not only to see our work benefiting more widely but also to increase the scope for funding.

We aim to build greater awareness of our organisation as we head into 2012 and increase the number of supporters we have who are willing to donate regularly to help us to build a more balanced fund-raising programme.

These are some of the ways you could help by…

Giving funds:

- purchasing artwork, income on work sold is split between the artist and the studio.
- via the website on our ‘Give a Little’ page (click here)
- by setting up a regular automatic payment. Click here to become part of our Friends and Patrons scheme.
- by sponsoring an artist to cover their course fees for a class, a term or a year.
- by gifting a bequest to Spark Centre in your will.

Support in kind:

- by volunteering to help at an open day, exhibition or event.
- by volunteering to help with studio tasks such as packaging cards & artworks ready for events.
- offering a professional service eg. insurance cover or business expertise in your field.

Spreading the word:

- advocating for Spark Centre, talking about us to your friends, family, co-workers and networks.
- befriending us on Facebook, visit our Spark Centre of creative development page (click here).
- distributing our newsletters around your community.
- providing a community/corporate space for our artists’ work to be exhibited.

Joining a class:
- we want all our classes to be full, see our current programme to see if there is a class for you.   If there isn’t, let us know. We want to provide the art & self-development programmes that people want.

We are pleased to be in discussion with several organisations with whom we hope to work to increase our diversity.  If you belong to a group or organisation that you feel may be interested in our programmes, please let us know. 09 845 5361 or info@sparkcentre.org.nz