Great Oaks from Little Acorns

Sometimes even a small amount of funding is all that’s needed… Northings asked HI~Arts Director ROBERT LIVINGSTON to introduce their suite of awards schemes for individuals, in advance of a new Northings feature, starting in June, which will showcase the work of recent recipients of these awards.
 

IT ALL STARTED when we became aware that, in one year, no artists at all from the Highlands and Islands had been successful in getting funding for their work from the various awards schemes operated at that time by the Scottish Arts Council.

When SAC helped us out by looking at the records of applications received, it was clear that far fewer applications were coming in from the area than should have been the case on a simple per capita basis.

Fewer applications meant fewer chances of an award being made—a potential downward spiral. So we agreed with SAC to set up a small pilot scheme, matching SAC funding with resources from Highlands and Islands Enterprise.

This initial ‘go and see’ scheme was intended to encourage more artists to think that they should risk applying direct to the Scottish Arts Council, by showing them that the SAC was prepared to dedicate funding to help artists in this area. It proved to be such a successful idea that the SAC quickly moved to expand it, and Visual Artists Awards schemes were soon working in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, and Aberdeen as well as in the Highlands and Islands.
 
For HI~Arts, this has proved to be a very popular and valuable scheme. It’s a way of getting small amounts of money quickly to artists when they most need it. The usual award is for up to £500, but since last year, with additional SAC and HIE funding, we’ve been able to offer a handful of awards of up to £1000 each.

These awards can be for a wide range of purposes: transporting art (and sometimes the artist) to an exhibition, taking up a training option (eg in printmaking techniques), or undertaking a piece of research.

In the last five years we’ve made over 60 such awards to artists ranging from Arran to Shetland. What’s been particularly gratifying is that in the last couple of years an increasing number of awards have been made to young artists who have returned to the Highlands and Islands after finishing art school—a healthy reversal of the previous drain of talent to the big cities.

In fact, it’s been such a successful scheme that we thought we should expand it to other artforms as well, and over time we’ve been able to set up similar awards for musicians, writers, and craftworkers—all with a 50/50 split of Scottish Arts Council and Highlands and Islands Enterprise funds. That means that the total amount of funding available from these HI~Arts schemes for individuals last year was £28,000.
 

Looking over some recent awards gives some insight into the immense diversity of arts activity going on in the Highlands and Islands.

Caithness-based papermaker Joanne Kaar attended a stone-carving course at Taigh Chearsabhagh in North Uist.

Lewis-born poet Donald S Murray travelled from the Western Isles to the Northern Isles to research what became his latest book, Between Minch and Mukkle Flugga, and ended up settling in Shetland!

Inverness drummer Steve Sharpe travelled to Guinea in West Africa to study traditional drumming techniques.

Skye-based video artist Caroline Dear has had work selected for the Kunst-Hand Fest in Germany.

In the coming months, Northings will be providing a showcase for the work of some of these artists, makers, writers and musicians, and telling some of their stories. We hope it will be an ongoing series of tasters of some of the exciting work being made in the Highlands and Islands today.

© Robert Livingston, 2006

Links

• Caroline Dear
• Joanne Kaar