Stainless Steel Memorial Butterflies & Charity Fundraising Installation
Handcrafted stainless steel butterflies
Created for Ashgate Hospice
Installed at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire
Large-scale charity fundraising and remembrance campaign
The Ashgate Hospice Butterfly Appeal was created as a large-scale fundraising and remembrance project, bringing together thousands of individually handcrafted stainless steel butterflies in a temporary installation at Chatsworth House.
Each butterfly could be dedicated in memory of someone special, allowing supporters to contribute to the hospice while receiving a permanent handcrafted artwork to keep after the public display had ended.
Seen together across the grounds of Chatsworth, the individual butterflies became something much larger: a striking collective artwork representing remembrance, connection and the many lives touched by the hospice.
The campaign proved highly successful. Chatsworth reported that sales of the butterflies generated more than £100,000, while Ashgate described thousands of individual dedications and significant public and media engagement around the installation.
From individual keepsake to large-scale installation
A key part of the project was designing an object that could work at two very different scales.
Individually, each stainless steel butterfly needed to feel special enough to become a lasting memorial piece for a supporter to take home and display in a garden or interior.
Collectively, thousands of butterflies needed to create a visually compelling installation capable of filling a significant landscape and attracting visitors, photography and wider attention to the fundraising campaign.
The reflective stainless steel allowed changing daylight and the surrounding landscape to become part of the installation, while repetition created a sense of movement across the grounds.
Art as a fundraising experience
Projects such as the Butterfly Appeal offer charities something beyond a conventional fundraising product.
The artwork can become part of the entire campaign experience:
supporters make a donation and dedicate an individual sculpture; the individual pieces are brought together as a large temporary installation; the installation creates an opportunity for visits, press coverage, sponsorship and social media; and afterwards supporters take their sculpture home as a lasting reminder of the person or cause it represents.
For memorial campaigns in particular, this creates a tangible connection between remembrance, fundraising and art.
The Ashgate campaign also benefited from corporate sponsorship from Graysons Solicitors, demonstrating how this type of project can bring together a charity, sponsor, venue, artist and supporters within one highly visible campaign.
Bespoke fundraising sculpture campaigns
I work with charities, hospices, fundraising teams, corporate sponsors and organisations to develop bespoke sculptural fundraising campaigns.
The artwork does not need to be a butterfly. A design can be developed specifically around a charity, location, campaign theme or symbol that has particular meaning to its supporters.
Depending on the project, this might include:
memorial butterflies, dragonflies, flowers, birds, leaves or other symbolic forms;
personalised or engraved elements;
hundreds or thousands of individually produced sculptures;
a temporary collective installation before the works are distributed to supporters;
sculpture trails or displays within gardens, estates and public venues;
corporate sponsorship and branding opportunities.
The aim is to create something that is visually memorable as an installation, meaningful as an individual object and commercially viable as a fundraising campaign.
Interested in creating a sculptural fundraising campaign?
If your charity or organisation is considering a large-scale memorial, fundraising or supporter-engagement campaign, I would be pleased to discuss what could be developed specifically for you.
Find out more about my charity fundraising projects, or contact James Sutton Sculpture to discuss an initial idea.