Give To Gain: Celebrating and elevating women artists through opportunity and visibility

For many years, International Women's Day (IWD) has held a significant focus on celebrating, elevating, and supporting the talent of women creatives and allies, aimed at helping them secure further commercial projects and commissions.

IWD 2026 saw an exciting initiative aligned with the Give To Gain campaign focus, providing a key opportunity for women's art to gain greater exposure and recognition. In association with the Creative Flair and Women in Art communities, the initiative championed visibility, opportunity, and recognition for women in the arts.

The winning work of five women artists, as judged by Women in Art, took over a series of digital billboards in London, UK throughout the IWD period, highlighting women's visibility, representation, and narrative in outdoor space. The selected artworks appeared repeatedly on digital screens along major routes near London’s busiest cultural hubs. Each piece was seen multiple times per hour, transforming a traditionally commercial environment into a site of celebration, reflection, and representation. Hear more about the women artists and their fabulous work here.

Meet the five winning artists following this open call inviting women to submit creative works that explored themes of empowerment, identity, resilience, and creative voice. 
 

Rachel Deacon's Beautiful Fools painting shown proudly at Kings Cross in London

Rachel Deacon's Beautiful Fools original oil on linen painting beamed proudly on a high-traffic London billboard.

"Posing with these Beautiful Fools on my billboard... MY billboard! As part of International Women's Day, I was lucky enough to be one of the winners of the Women in Art prize in partnership with Creative Flair. Five billboards. Five women artists. A collective moment in a public space all around central London. Thank you ! And congrats to the other four artists," said Rachel.

Rachel Deacon is a British painter living and working in London, UK. Her figurative and abstract works exhibit her trademark clean and elegant aesthetic. She has exhibited extensively in London, the UK and internationally since graduating from Chelsea School of Art in 1991. Her distinctive painting style continues to grow in popularity, and she has been published worldwide. Each of her figurative paintings is inspired by a narrative, short story, poem or literary extract.

Rachel does not illustrate the text, but freely interprets it and delights in the re-telling, the sentiment or idea. She explores dimensions, pattern and composition through drawings before presenting her view. The women depicted are self-assured and provocative and often convey an inner strength suggested within the text. Naturally, through her inspiration, her paintings have a sense of narrative within them and are thoughtful or seductive, with quiet dignity and a timeless quality.

More recently, Rachel has started creating more abstract work. These new paintings express a rhythmic arrangement of abstract geometric forms, overlaying of shapes and soft colour. The negative spaces work to create harmony and direction within the composition. Rachel is interested in the experience of finding images and form in, and behind, other shapes and manoeuvring the eye throughout the surface of the canvas. She uses the precision of geometry to create an opposition to the simplicity of the gentle shapes. Muted colour acts alongside substantial contrast, affecting a dynamically-moving image.

Follow Rachel Deacon on Instagram and enjoy her further work.
 

Cecilia Lamptey Botchway's Green Tea adorns a billboard in Shoreditch in London

Cecilia Lamptey-Botchway is a US-based Ghanaian mixed media artist, producing Contemporary African Art and versed in figurative painting, performance, abstractism, and textile making.

She says her Green Tea painting that was shown on a billboard in London's busy Shoreditch area over the IWD period has calming effects on anxiety and stress.

"It's a part of a series of artworks about women finding solitude amid the chaos of everyday life. The painting invites my audience to imagine how modern women explore," explains Cecilia.

Excited to participate in the initiative, Cecilia said: "We made it to the billboard at Shoreditch in London. Many thanks to Creative Flair, International Women's Day, and Women in Art."

Cecilia's practice encompasses ideas about gender roles and womanhood, crafting works and performances that comment on societal challenges my fellow African women face. She was born into a family of painters and textile designers, and my childhood was characterized by lessons in painting, batik, textile making and designing. Taking these lessons, she employs an imaginative approach in the creation of her own traditional motifs that make up the background of her subjects’ paintings. Upcycling mopping wool fibers, she invites her viewers to explore the versatility of contemporary African women with my textured portraits. She is a dynamic artist whose emotive portraits and abstract works encompass heritage, sustainability and the expansive nature of womanhood.

Celia is the 2025 New York winner of the International Art Prize of Winsor & Newton and Paul Smith’s Foundation Art Prize. She was the 2021-2022 fellow in the Nubuke Foundation’s Young Ghanaian Artists (YGA) in residence. She has participated in several exhibitions and fairs, including 1-54 Contemporary Art Fair, New York, Art X Lagos, Arco Lisboa, AKAA, Paris and Focus Art Fair, New York. Cecilia is a graduate of Yaba School of Art, Design and Textiles: Yaba College of Technology in Lagos, Nigeria.

Follow Cecilia's work on Instagram.
 

Barbara Boekelman's All That Potential Lost towers on an Angel Islington billboard in London, UK

"Immensely grateful and honoured to see my work on a London billboard for International Women's Day. Thank you so much James at Creative Flair, Women In Art, and International Women's Day for selecting All That Potential Lost," said Barbara.of her work that is also on display for a limited time at Luisa Catucci Contemporary Gallery in Berlin, Germany.

All That Potential Lost gives weight to the intelligence, skill, and imagination that never entered the world.

Barbara Boekelman is a New Zealand-based artist from Amsterdam. After attending art school in the Netherlands in the late 1980s, she spent over two decades working in broadcasting before returning fully to painting and completing her MFA at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Barbara now works full-time as an artist, creating large-scale, layered works that build through repetition, concealment, and reworking. Her paintings explore contradiction rather than resolution, holding uneasy social, historical, personal and institutional themes beneath vivid, intricate surfaces where figuration drifts toward abstraction. Her work has been exhibited in New Zealand, the Netherlands, and Germany, including being a finalist and prize recipient in the BBA Artist Prize in Berlin. She lives and works in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Follow Barbara on Instagram and enjoy her outstanding talent.
 

Katie Parkers' Power Play beams bright near Waterloo Station in London 

Power Play reimagines a military tank using delicate pink lace.

"Thank you Women In Art and Creative Flair for choosing Power Play to be displayed on a billboard in Waterloo for International Women's Day. It feels fitting that a work about feminine power, and women unapologetically taking up space, did exactly that… right in the middle of the city. Thanks to everyone who went to see my work on the day and for all your lovely messages. Thanks also to Joe and Charlotte for the original art photography of Power Play in situ," said Katie.

Katie Parker is a UK-based sculptor and installation artist whose work explores control, containment, and power through the lens of femininity, labour, and social expectation. Working with materials and forms associated with domesticity, beauty, and consumer culture, she creates large-scale installations that balance elegance with threat and familiarity with unease. Her practice examines how systems of power shape bodies and identities, particularly through economic pressure, gendered labour, and cultural ideals. Humour often functions in the work as a form of resilience rather than irony, allowing heavy themes to remain survivable without softening their impact. Katie's work is rooted in questions of access, agency, scale, and visibility.

Follow Katie Parker on Instagram.
 

Maya Neill's Femme Maison inspired artwork shown at Tower Bridge in London

Maya Neill is an impressive artist who studied Fine Art at University of Leeds in the UK. 

Her fabulous painting was inspired by Louise Bourgeois’ Femme Maison and was shown on a Tower Bridge billboard.

Maya is a lover of color and words, and is especially fond of pairing them up. She enjoys working with domestic materials and surrealist photography to create pieces that focus on women.

Follow Maya Neill on Instagram and keep an eye on her further fabulous creations.
 

Celebrating the talented creativity of women artists

This exciting Women in Art on the Streets initiative underpins further ongoing efforts to elevate emerging artists through public exposure, accessible opportunities and collaborative community building.

Creative space should not be limited to institutions, but should extend into the streets, everyday life, and the shared visual language of our cities.

But, the mission continues well beyond one day. Because when women’s creativity is visible, culture evolves.