partners: Scotland's artist residency programme

Partners is a National Lottery-funded initiative giving communities with little experience of the arts new opportunities to engage with professional artists. 

The artist will be based in, and work in collaboration with, a local community.  Priority will be given to proposals which are in Social Inclusion Partnership areas or which involve people who have few or no opportunities to participate in the arts.  As part of the residency, the artist will also have time to develop their own work.

The partners scheme has already funded, amongst others:

• a pioneering initiative in Inverurie, where GPs will be working with a visual artist to improve the health of a range of patients;
• circus skills courses for up to 30 schools in the Glasgow area;
• the development a community-led internet channel in Aberdeen
• a writer-in-residence working with the prison community at HMP Glenochil and
• the transformation of a hard-to-let house in Clackmannanshire into a base for a writer-in-residence.

Chairman of the Scottish Arts Council, Richard Holloway, said: ‘One of the things we have learned from all the research that has been done into what is now called social exclusion is that the people caught in that particular trap are not only money-poor, they are culture-poor.  That’s where this brilliant new programme ‘partners’ comes in. 

Since the culture-poor find it almost impossible to access the transforming possibilities of art, art has decided to come to them.  Like most brilliant ideas, it’s simple, but offers a genuine opportunity to change lives.’

More on partners Browse through this section to find: links to and information on partners funded residencies, features on partners projects and  a notices page with news and opportunities relevant to the partners programme.  There's also a professionals area with guidance and useful information for hosts and artists currently working in a partners funded residency.

partners: Scotland's Artist Residency Programme is supported by the National Lottery through the Scottish Arts Council