Creative Scotland has announced £9.4million of funding as part of its Large Capital Programme, with 12 organisations across the arts benefiting from development awards and provisional ‘stage two’ funding.
Organisations working in the visual arts are well represented in the awards. In Edinburgh, Collective Gallery and The Fruitmarket Gallery both receive substantial funding. Collective receives a development award of £94,840 and stage two funding of £905,160. The money will be used to further develop its new City Observatory site on Calton Hill. Fruitmarket receives a development award of £100,000 with stage 2 funding of £1.4million. The funding is to improve exhibition and public spaces and create new dedicated spaces for learning. The gallery hopes to raise £6million in total to complete the proposed work.
Cove Park in Argyll and Bute, which provides year-round artists’ residencies, has been awarded £621,663, the full amount of its stage 2 funding. This will allow the organisation to replace its current artist centre building and adjacent studios. The new, expanded centre will provide dedicated meeting spaces for artists and the general public; public performance and exhibition space, studio space, office and accommodation facilities, and a library/ IT suite.
Hospitalfield Arts near Arbroath is one of the biggest winners. It has been awarded £1million of provisional stage 2 funding for its ‘New Future for Hospitalfield’ project, which will develop facilities and conserve the collections of this historic estate, left in trust in 1890 to support education in the arts. The project includes architectural additions to the estate by architects Caruso St John, responsible for the recently opened Tate Britain refurbishment.
New cultural resource
Other awards include a development award of £100,000 and provisional stage 2 funding of £400,000 for NVA’s plans to create a new cultural resource for Scotland within the 1966 modernist building, St Peter’s Seminary, designed by Glasgow architects Gillespie, Kidd and Coia, and abandoned in the 1980s. The project will create exhibition, performance and workshop space in the former Catholic seminary near Cardross, Argyll and Bute.
Creative Scotland’s capital awards are designed to help organisations undertake major infrastructure improvements and refurbishments, or to develop new facilities that ‘improve the access, presentation and enjoyment of arts and culture in Scotland’.
Announcing the awards, Janet Archer, Chief Executive of Creative Scotland, said: “These funding awards support important elements of the cultural infrastructure across Scotland and will enable exciting and important projects to progress and develop.”
Full details of the 12 awards can be found here.
