Creative Scotland Awards
Introduction
Gillian Ferguson
Pernille Spence
Stephanie Smith/Edward Stewart
In 2000 the Scottish Arts Council launched the Creative Scotland Awards to reward, honour and celebrate Scotland’s leading artists and help raise the profile of the arts, by providing artists with a record of major achievement with the opportunity to realise their creative ideas in a major project.
Eighty-eight visual artists, musicians, writers, dance artists, film makers and crafts makers have benefited from the awards and a wide range of innovative projects have been developed across artforms. From a 24 hour global concert connecting singers and listeners live by telephone, to an experimental dance/physical theatre performance featuring dancers interacting with kinetic sculptures.
A number of projects supported by Creative Scotland Awards have recently reached fruition including Gillian Ferguson’s The Human Genome - Poems on the Book of Life, Pernille Spence’s Here Now, There Now, and Stephanie Smith and Edward Stewart’s Enter Love Enter Death.
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Award winning poet Gillian Ferguson recently launched her project The Human Genome: Poems on the Book of Life online. The project consists of four volumes of poetry interwoven with short extracts from academic papers, interviews, newspaper reports and books, explores The Human Genome - the entire genetic code of three billion letters required to create a human being. |
The project also looks at Comparative Genomics; the comparison of the incredible genetic similarity among all living creatures, the linguistic metaphors used in genetics and the biblical idea of the 'word' of life.
Gillian launched the project online to expand the audience for her work and develop an interactive ‘living’ work, inviting suggestions, comments and ideas that might be woven into the project in the future. The website for The Human Genome has received 6000 hits since it was launched in early June.
Visual, new media and performance artist Pernille Spence recently unveiled her project to surprised commuters on trainlines from Aberdeen to Dundee, Dundee to Edinburgh and Edinburgh to Glasgow.
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Here Now, There Now featured a series of surprise performances on the landscape along some of Scotland’s busiest commuter routes. The event which took place from 4-6 June featured subtle changes to the landscape including text works and performers running, dancing and exploring the land along the route which were only visible to train passengers. |
Visual artists Stephanie Smith and Edward Stewart held an exhibition featuring new work developed as a result of a Creative Scotland Award at Inverleith House earlier this year.
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Enter Love Enter Death featured sculptural installations exploring intimacy and threat. The installation consisted of a series of girder-like sections integrated into the building’s seven rooms, positioned at eye level to confront and obstruct the viewer, making the entire structure only comprehensible in the mind’s eye or imagination. |
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In light of the Scottish Arts Council’s transition to Creative Scotland, the Creative Scotland Awards are currently under review and have been suspended for 2007/08. The Scottish Arts Council intends to report on the review in the autumn. |
For information on other projects visit the Creative Scotland Awards website. |