Welcome to Creative Scotland’s round-up of international opportunities and information, put together by Kate Deans, Creative Scotland’s International Officer.
First, we would like to take a moment to share our statement on Ukraine. You can read this in full on Twitter.
In this blog, we cover:
Remember that our Creative Scotland Opportunities site is the main resource for events, workshops, funding calls and more, and you can filter by ‘International’ there.
We’re pleased to share with you our brand-new Arts Infopoint UK Visa Guide, launched by Arts Infopoint UK, a collaboration between the four nations’ art councils and agencies. This comprehensive guide aims to help international artists and cultural professionals navigate the UK immigration system and guides them through the visa options available to them when planning a visit to the UK for work purposes. This guide is also useful for UK-based venues and hosts looking to invite artists to the UK for work purposes. This guide was co-drafted by legal professionals; however, it does not constitute legal advice.
Please do share the Visa Guide on your own platforms, and with your contacts, and tag Arts Infopoint UK on Twitter.
At the same time, we’ve also launched a refreshed Arts Infopoint UK website. We’ll be continuing to develop our website over the next few months and welcome your valuable feedback.
For updates from Arts Infopoint UK, sign up to the newsletter.
Scotland had a strong presence at both jazzahead! in Bremen, and ClassicalNEXT in Hannover, two key international trade fairs in jazz and classical music respectively.
At jazzahead!, the Fergus McCreadie Trio featured within the international showcase, with a well-attended panel presentation on Scotland’s jazz scene and festivals and venues as part of the official industry programme. Together with other Scotland-based attendees, and musicians supported by Creative Scotland bursaries, we had a strong trade stand presence, with attendees working together to cover the stand and give information on Scotland’s wider jazz scene to international delegates. Read more about this year’s delegates, and watch our short video presentation for JazzAhead on Creative Scotland’s dedicated jazzahead! webpage.
And at the end of May, Scottish Music Centre hosted Scotland’s trade stand at ClassicalNEXT, with a Scottish delegation made up of artists and various key Scotland-based organisations. You can read more about the delegation on SMC’s website.
Between the 23rd and 26th of May, Showcase Scotland Expo presented the seventh physical edition of The Visit, bringing delegates from Northern Europe, England and Wales to Scotland. This event had been rescheduled from May 2020 due to the Covid pandemic.
For the first time The Visit partnered with Eden Court in Inverness, Lyth Arts Centre and Orkney Folk Festival to take The Visit to the far north of Scotland.
The Showcase forms part of an export strategy for Scottish artists, which has been developed by the Showcase Scotland Expo Steering Group and Active Events. 21 artists were selected to perform - you can read more about them and the programme on the Showcase Scotland website.
Join Trade Support Service in partnership with Arts Council of Northern Ireland on Tuesday 31 May 2022 (14:00 - 15:30) for a free online event on moving artwork and creative goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This training is for artists and creatives and will help them understand how to operate under the Northern Ireland Protocol following the UK's exit of the EU. Some of the issues discussed here will also be useful for anyone seeking to move goods in general internationally.
This event is supported by Visual Arts Ireland, Arts Infopoint UK and HM Revenue and Customs.
Our next coffee morning is Tuesday 7 June, with Una NicEoin from Prime Cut Productions as our guest contributor. On the first Tuesday of every month at 9.30-10.30am, Arts Infopoint UK holds informal coffee mornings to bring together UK-based arts and creative professionals to share cross-border challenges, plans and ambitions, as we navigate the constantly shifting terrain of working internationally currently.
At our last session we covered the more personal aspects of when you invite international artists; communicating with other venues when hosting an artist to make sure their immigration status is safeguarded; exploring more extended visits integrating other projects when sending artists to far-off places to counterbalance climate impact; looking beyond the endpoint of EU-funded partnerships made possible by Erasmus Plus, Creative Europe and i-Portunus, and third country involvement in Creative Europe. Book your place now on any of the upcoming 2022 sessions.
As Perform Europe slowly comes to a close, this ambitious Creative Europe-supported initiative invites you to join them on 13 June 2022, for the Perform Europe Impact event. Hear new policy recommendations and how European institutions can support sustainable and inclusive cross-border presentation and distribution of performing arts in Europe.
The event will physically bring together representatives in Brussels from the European Commission and the EACEA, Brussels-based cultural institutes, media partners and representatives of the performing arts sector as well as the Perform Europe Consortium, Jury, Advisory Group and representatives of the 19 selected project partnerships.
Join them on Monday 13 June at 16:00 CET via their LIVESTREAM on Perform Europe’s Facebook or YouTube channel.
On Tuesday 21 June, 10.00 – 12.00, IETM will host a Members Meetup in London in collaboration with Artsadmin. Coming out of this COVID-19 period, IETM intends to use any opportunity to meet with as many IETM members as possible, to inform them about our upcoming activities and hear about member´s concerns and plans. For more information and to sign up, visit IETM’s webpage.
Following their Spring Plenary meeting in Brussels in April, IETM, an international network for performing artists, holds their next Plenary in Serbia from 29 September to 2 October. The meeting will include an artistic programme, a day-time programme with talks and participatory discussions, a pre-meeting trip, and plenty of training, pitching and networking opportunities.
The Institut français du Royaume-Uni and the four nations arts councils and agencies launches Magnetic. Under the branch of Fluxus Arts Projects, Magnetic is a joint Franco-UK initiative that brings together eight venues to create a new programme of artists’ residencies: four in France, and four across the four nations of the UK.
Designed to foster artistic development through exchange and to enhance sustainable cooperation between the UK and French visual arts scenes in the longer term, the programme will gradually build an expanding network of partner institutions with shared commitments and values.
Eight artists will be selected for residencies of 2 to 3 months across the network of eight institutions. Societal and environmental issues will be at the heart of this programme, the residencies will be situated, with the selected artists expected to work in resonance with each specific context –geographical or historical, societal, artistic etc. Artists will receive a threshold monthly fee of £2000/2500 € as well as curatorial mentoring.
The deadline for applying is May 30 2022 – for more details on how to apply, visit Creative Scotland’s webpage.
The aim of these awards is to help facilitate partnership and collaboration between artists and/or collectives in the UK and countries eligible to receive ODA (Official Development Assistance). For more details about the selected ODA-eligible countries, see OECD’s website.
In total, micro grants of up to £2500 will each be awarded to approximately 10 pairs of disabled artists per round, and projects must take place between the start of July and end of October 2022.
Deadline is Thursday 9 June at midday - for more details on how to apply, with various access formats available, visit Unlimited’s website.
The Arts Explora – Académie des beaux-arts European Award is a leading award championing new dialogues between arts and audiences. Open to all non-profit European cultural organisations, the European Award encourages new forms of audience engagement and participation in arts and culture, supporting innovative projects, across all art forms, that can be shared, replicated and scaled across Europe. Three prizes of €50,000 each and one Audience Choice award of €10,000 is available, and this runs alongside a platform for sharing and disseminating best practices and an annual gathering. Deadline is 31 August, with the award ceremony in December.
Read more on the Art Explora website.
Introduced by the European Cultural Foundation (ECF) in 2020, the Culture of Solidarity Fund was originally set up as a corona-response mechanism for pan-European cultural initiatives.
Today, with pooled resources from a group of European co-funders, the Culture of Solidarity Fund was relaunched as a pan-European effort at the beginning of the war in Ukraine to respond to local cultural emergency needs. After an initial phase of cultural emergency relief, the Fund is now open to individuals, collectives and organisations from all sectors and civil society at large that propose short-term or mid-term European cultural initiatives in the following three areas: counteracting disinformation, misinformation and propaganda filter bubbles; providing and nourishing safe cultural spaces for individuals feeling their homes and look for shelter; counteracting forces of fragmentation through artistic and cultural expressions.
Read more on the European Cultural Foundation website.
A series of calls have opened in March under Horizon Europe, the EU’s Research and Innovation funding programme, covering important topics like climate adaptation and resilience, health, sustainable rail system, clean energy technologies and many others, including at least a couple of calls with a focus on culture and the arts. More on the European Commission website.
Open throughout the year, Scottish Books International’s Author International Travel Fund is available to Scottish writers who have been invited overseas to promote their work. Applicants can apply for a maximum of £1000 to support travel costs towards their trip. There are no deadlines, and applications are accepted each quarter as long as there is budget left, taking around four to five weeks to turnaround.
See our previous July 2021 update for a summary of the working groups and who is taking part in discussions.
Recent updates from DCMS:
Get a flavour of European-wide discussions and projects at #AmplifyinAction - part of Europe Day 22 on May 9th, a day full of online and offline activities across Europe jointly curated by Culture Action Europe (Brussels), Centre for fine arts – BOZAR (Brussels), the European Cultural Foundation (Amsterdam) and De Balie (Amsterdam). (Re)watch the programme on the Europe Day website.
Mariya Gabriel’s May update covered frontloading of the EU’s Education, Youth, Culture and Sport budget to support Ukrainian refugees to have continued access to learning, pursuit of research, and artist mobility and protection of Ukrainian cultural heritage.
Creative Scotland, in collaboration with people and organisations from across the culture sector in Scotland, and with the support of Scottish Government, launches a new initiative aimed at promoting the value that art and creativity contributes to all our lives.
With a dedicated website at its centre, Our Creative Voice is a new platform for demonstrating the tangible benefits that art and creativity contribute to our lives.
Several case studies, such as North Lands Creative, show the way in which international working can weave into and enrich local activity, and be sure to share your own stories too!
And finally, here are some core sources of information on international working:
Don’t forget that all events, workshops and funding opportunities can be found if you filter by ‘International’ on Creative Scotland’s Opportunities website.
