I run a small art shop and art classroom in Banbury, Oxfordshire. It's a small family business and we teach hundreds of people each year a large range of fine art skills such as painting, drawing and art history, as well as a wider appreciation of art.
In April 2016 my mother, Margaret who also worked at the shop was diagnosed with cancer of the peritoneum thought to have stemmed from un-diagnosed ovarian cancer. She was given just three months to live.
As she grew ill she was frightened she would be forgotten, and I set to work in trying to think of ways in which my shop could honour her memory and her passion for art. We didn't have much money when I was a child, but she and my father often went without to help me with my career in art - paying for picture framing for my exhibitions, driving me to exhibitions and so on... and then it struck me!
I chatted with mum about creating a memorial fund in her name which win enable me to provide free art education to underprivileged young adults that didn't have the support perhaps that I did. She was thrilled at the idea, and so the Margaret Whitehouse Memorial Award was born.
I am starting a free art education programme for young adults aged 18-25 who love art, but have had no access to any formal art education including GCSEs, and who now do not have the finances to attend and lessons.
The Margaret Whitehouse Memorial Fund provides free art education (including materials) for three young adults for 2 and a half hours a week in our regualr weekly classes for six months which totals around £1,000, then after the six months, the three leave and another three take part in the 6 month programme.
The free art education programme is only available to successful applicants, and runs from July to December, and January to July.

My business will be funding this on its own as a way of giving back to the art community, and so this page is for any additional donations which will help support the programme.