Published: 26 Oct 2021
Forty-one creative projects across Scotland are taking place thanks to £1,019,613 National Lottery funding through Creative Scotland in the latest round of Open Fund Awards.
Artwork by Oktavia Schreiner featured in Thriving in Disturbed Ground at 16 Nicholson Street Gallery.
The latest listings include:
Critically acclaimed outfit Niteworks will record and release their third studio album “Album 3”. The album aims to blend Scotland’s cultural Gaelic and Scots heritage with powerful electronic soundscapes that come alive with Niteworks’ own brand of synth driven electronica.
Niteworks’ drummer Ruairidh Graham said: “We have always been keen to collaborate with many different people in producing our music, but after the past couple of years this has grown in importance as we seek to support each other in the creative industries through difficult times. This award also provides us with the freedom to explore new creative ways of working in order to push our music to new limits and achieve greater success.”
Broken Records, image credit: Rory Sutherland
Following the successful release of What We Might Know in 2018, Edinburgh based band Broken Records will record their 5th studio album which will be released on their own label, J Sharp Records.
On receiving funding of £12,031 Broken Records’ Ian Turnbull said: commented: “The album is due to be released in Spring 2022, and we're looking forward to it building on our previous work by allowing us to show our audience a different side to the band.
“After 14 years we have a dedicated following, and this album will allow us to carry on that interaction by sharing stories and our music from a different stage of our lives to connect to what is happening in their own lives."
POWA (Protection of Womxn in the Arts) is a musical collective run by Ashley Stein and Siobhan Wilson, which provides paid opportunities for women-identifying and non-binary musicians and music industry professionals.
Funding will enable the creation of new commissions. POWA participants are also provided with mentorship, guidance, and professional resources.
On receiving funding, co-founders Siobhan Wilson and Ashley Stein commented: “The money we have received from the Open Fund will allow us to work with a diverse range of artists and share newly commissioned musical works with our members, helping our music and message to reach a wider audience and providing a platform where women can express their experiences.”
Get It Loud in Libraries is expanding into Scotland, bringing the best emerging and established artists to local libraries. Funding will support ten Sunday matinee live library gigs in rurally isolated and city centre libraries working in partnership with grassroots venues to create diverse programmes of activity.
Creative Director Stewart Parsons commented: “Get It Loud in Libraries Scotland is delighted to have sourced much valued funding from Creative Scotland to deliver its innovative work, supporting new live music ecologies, and introducing new library audiences to the very best new and emerging music talent across Scotland's libraries. These will be doorstep gigs with future BRIT and GRAMMY winners, and we just cannot wait to get cracking”
Following their much-appreciated return to promoting live concerts, in conjunction with the Edinburgh International Festival in August, the Soundhouse Organisation looks forward to a return to their favourite venue, The Traverse Theatre in October 2021.
Funding will support new programmes from Glasgow-based contemporary art spaces David Dale Gallery and 16 Nicholson Street Gallery.
David Dale Gallery’s 2021/22 arts programme will continue to be developed through a collection of ambitious visual arts commissions, exhibitions, residencies, and events.
16 Nicholson Street Gallery’s October 2021 - May 2022 programme will see two womxn-led exhibitions and publications continue the gallery’s curatorial project revolving around gender, sexuality, identity politics, and being. Throughout this season several community workshops for mothers will be led by Beth Shapeero in partnership with Empower Women for Change, ‘Freedom in Abstraction: Power in Creativity'.
The gallery’s joint directors and curators Isabella Shields and Aga Paulina Młyńczak commented: “In delivering this project we will uphold our commitment to the support of emerging and early career artists while establishing dialogues between international and local practitioners, creating significant opportunity for a diverse range of artists, performers, educators, activists, and fabricators.”
Visual artist, composer and performer Hanna Tuulikki has been invited to represent Scotland on the world stage in the 23rd Biennale of Sydney held from 12 March – 13 June 2022. For this important exhibition Tuulikki will create a new moving image and sound composition titled Seals'kin that will draw on traditional selkie stories as bereavement allegories, and seal calling an attempt to uncover and offer alternative processes of grieving through kinship.
Hanna Tuulikki says: “For this new moving image and sound work, I plan to engage with how as individuals and communities we might meet and transform climate grief in a world on the brink of ecological collapse.”
Claire Barclay will develop new work for a large-scale exhibition at MAC Belfast in spring 2022. New print and sculpture works will occupy the five gallery spaces in the gallery’s building, including two substantial installations.
surrogate productions will adapt and stage the Scottish and UK premiere of autofiction novel Who Killed My Father, based on the book by Édouard Louis, translated by Lorin Stein.
surrogate’s Artistic Director Nora Wardell added: “We're excited to welcome audiences back to theatres with such a moving and empowering piece that resonates so beautifully with our changing lives today. A rare text for surrogate's second work - both a deeply personal story of love from son to father and a defiant call for social justice.”
Edinburgh-based theatre company, SALTYDOLLS – a partnership of Estlin Love and Fiona Oliver-Larkin will research and develop ABATTOIR. A 50-minute feminist, two woman show, ABATTOIR was born from a provocation made by Morag Deyes of Dance base during a SALTYDOLLS residency - “When are you going to make a show about the DARKNESS of MOTHERHOOD?”
Shortlisted for the 2020 Phil Fox Award, Nibble Nibble Gnaw is a new play by emerging Scottish playwright Isla Cowan, exploring hunger and consumption in contemporary society. Inspired by the story of Hansel and Gretel, this twisted fairy-tale follows a brother and sister as they make their way in a monstrously middle-class world, battling addiction and disorder.
Forest VIDEOLAB will see twelve immersive audio-visual displays over twelve months encouraging audiences to reconnect with nature in a new and exciting way. Through a series of unique, site-specific, public video projection mapping artworks with original soundscapes visual artist and creator Mettje Hunneman will highlight and transform public green spaces and question our place in nature:
“Artistic collaborations that would not previously have been possible can now come about, and resources that were previously inaccessible are now available. Everybody on the Forest VIDEOLAB team is now very excited to launch these beautiful creations into the public realm.”
Image courtesy of SpACE
SpACE, a platform for architecture, carbon and the environment is set to open in Edinburgh.SpACE - the Space for Architecture + Carbon + Environment – will include public pop-up exhibition, event space and online venue extending for 5 weeks from 1 November to 4 December 2021. SpACE is housed in the former Fire Station at Edinburgh College of Art – a highly visible and publicly accessible venue in central Edinburgh.
Rab Bennetts, architect and founder of Bennetts Associates and Chair of SpACE said: “There could hardly be a more appropriate moment to engage with the public about the impact of our buildings and places on climate change. As the world’s eyes are on COP26 in Glasgow, our parallel event in Edinburgh can show how the changes that are essential to our homes, workplaces and public buildings are not only possible but can also result in a cleaner, healthier and more enjoyable built environment.”
Creating Comics UK (CCUK) is curating, producing, marketing, and broadcasting an online series of twelve 15-minute episodes featuring women-identifying and non-binary creators and professionals from the UK comics and graphic novel industry.
Curated around the themes PRODUCTION, IDENTITY, FAN CULTURE and STORYTELLING, with three episodes per theme, these videos will be compiled from edited recorded video interviews with nine invited guests.
Creating Comics’ Amy Galloway said: “The aim is to provide an informative, attractive, and inspirational resource that will draw on the experiences of underrepresented groups, providing viewers with a new perspective on comics as a creative industry.
“This series builds on our previous project, Creating Women pilot series 1 (CWS1) which broadcast a nine-episode YouTube web series from May to July 2021, the first of its type to represent the diversity within the comics industry and its surrounding culture.”
Creative & Cultural Skills (CCSkills) Fair Access Sector Support Programme – Scotland is designed to inform, educate and empower Scotland’s arts and creative sector to adopt inclusive and lawful recruitment practices that support the development and inclusion of a more diverse range of talent across the sector, with an emphasis on supporting young people aged 16-24 from underrepresented groups and disadvantaged communities.
Iain Munro, CEO, Creative Scotland said: “It’s great to see so many projects continue to benefit from Open Fund awards. Thanks to the generosity of the National Lottery players, who raise £30 million for good causes across the UK every week, these awards are creating many invaluable opportunities for people and communities across Scotland to engage with the arts while enabling artists and creative organisations to develop and grow.”
The National Lottery has raised more than £41 billion for more than 565,000 good causes across the UK since 1994. Thanks to National Lottery players, up to £600 million has been made available to support people, projects and communities throughout the UK during the Coronavirus crisis. https://www.national-lottery.co.uk/
Creative Scotland is the public body that supports the arts, screen and creative industries across all parts of Scotland distributing funding provided by the Scottish Government and The National Lottery. Further information at creativescotland.com. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Learn more about the value of art and creativity in Scotland and join in at www.ourcreativevoice.scot
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