Inspiring Scotland's Communities

Inspiring projects that will connect people and their communities through the arts and encourage long-lasting links between people, places and ideas are the next development of the Scottish Arts Council’s Inspire fund.

Announced in February, the Inspire fund aims to increase participation in the arts by providing more, wider, better participation with the arts:

• More – increasing the number and range of people enjoying and taking part in the arts, particularly arts activity for and by children and young people.
  
• Wider – making the arts available to those who have had little opportunity to participate in the past; ensuring a fair geographic spread of activities; and supporting projects across artforms and technologies.
  
• Better – increasing further the quality of arts activities by supporting creative, ambitious projects.

Applications were invited for projects that demonstrated innovative ideas to meet the aims and visions of Inspire which include: extending the reach and nature of engagement with the arts; ensuring quality artistic engagement; creating potential for new, creative cross sectoral partnerships; and demonstrating lasting outcomes to inspire arts, practice and people. Over 400 applications were received and 13 were awarded funds in July to further develop their application.

‘Inspiring Communities’ has been developed in response to the ambition shown by many projects rooted in the communities that proposed them and which demonstrated how the community had, or would be, intrinsically involved in achieving a genuinely participative programme or project, but which did not clearly articulate how that would be achieved.  Although the applicants successfully met the Inspire vision, many did not express clearly enough how the artistic ambition would successfully meet the Inspire aims.

Almost 300 applicants from the original 420 will be offered the opportunity to be reconsidered against the Inspiring Communities criteria of:

connecting people and their communities through the arts and
encouraging long-lasting links between people, places and ideas
An invitation for projects to participate in the Inspiring Communities development does not guarantee the application will be successful overall. Funding remains extremely competitive with a potential 295 applicants seeking over £51 million in support, with an available budget of £4.3 million.

Applicants shortlisted for Inspiring Communities will each receive up to £10,000 development funding to progress their outline project idea into a fully developed project plan for consideration at Stage Two of the application process. While funding for shortlisted applications will be ringfenced, the process is still competitive and funding for projects will be dependent on a successful application at Stage Two, the result of which will be announced in Spring 2009.

Iain Munro, Co-Director and Head of Lottery, said: ‘Inspiring Communities is a natural development of our ambitions to develop significant opportunities for more, wider and better participation in the arts.’

Notes to editors

1. The deadline for responding to the Inspiring Communities invitation applications is 31 October 2008. No new projects will be accepted: Inspiring Communities will be based on applicants original Inspire application and 295 will receive an invitation to participate in Inspiring Communities by 1 October 2008.
2. Final decisions on project grants will be taken by the January 2009 and the majority of funded activity will be expected to have taken place by March 2010
3. The 295 applications total a request of £51,022,475
4. The Scottish Arts Council is a Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB) which was established by Royal Charter in 1994 and is also a Lottery distributor. The organisation serves the people of Scotland by fostering arts of excellence through investment, development, research and advocacy. Our corporate aims are: to support artists to fulfil their creative and business potential; to increase participation in the arts; and to place the arts, culture and creativity at the heart of learning. We invest £60m each year, including £15 million of National Lottery funding. For more information visit: http://www.scottisharts.org.uk/
   

Contact email(s)

media.office@scottisharts.org.uk

Issued by: Scottish Arts Council