Open Fund for Organisations Highlights: May 2021
Following on from our two recent posts in April and May highlighting some of the projects funded recently through the Open Fund for Individuals, we wanted to tell you about some of the work being funded through the Open Fund for Organisations.
Over the past year, despite the ongoing uncertainty and changing levels of restrictions, Scottish Book Festivals have been delivering a mixture of fully digital — and some hybrid — programmes of talks, commissions, exhibitions, workshops and events with writers from across the globe. Bloody Scotland 2020 attracted over 600 viewers for their Pitch Perfect session for unpublished writers, welcomed a new sponsor for The McIlvanney Prize and Bloody Scotland Debut Prize, and broke their own record for most-authors-on-a-panel with 26 writers appearing across four hours as part of ‘A Bloody Tour of Bloody Scotland’. In a huge, enthusiastic leap from their usual home in Cove Burgh Hall, the Cove & Kilcreggan Book Festival 2020 delivered a fully digital programme through MyVLF, which allowed them to continue to push boundaries in their programming and take a different approach to understanding audiences through digital data.
With the 2020 edition being one of the last Book Festivals to take place before the Covid-19 Lockdown, StAnza 2021 created a virtual community around poetry for the festival in March, including one-to-one telephone readings, late night audio poetry for bedtime, two poetry trails in St Andrews itself. The festival included work by poets and artists from 19 countries, and they were voted the Best Literary Festival in the UK Saboteur awards. Coming up in early June, Cymera 2021 will be bringing online audiences a smorgasbord of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror writers to suit all tastes, from internationally bestselling authors to Scottish debuts. They’ll be hosting a range of digital writing workshops as well as a quiz, the open mics and a digital Creators Hall, which showcases artists, writers and publishers from Scotland.
As well as contributing to programming costs, the Open Fund for Organisations can support Book Festivals to enhance their work in other ways. for example, Paisley Book Festival 2021 applied for funding to host a digital writer in residence, and through an open-call for applicants appointed Imogen Stirling to host 15 online workshops with Renfrewshire community groups, curate three of the events on the main Book Festival programme, and to write her own response to this year’s festival theme, Radical New Futures.
This blog post happens to be featuring a bumper crop of opportunities around poetry and spoken word. We supported Bakehouse Community Arts to produce a series of short promotional films for 26 Scottish poets and spoken word artists, creating a digital showcase for their own website and for other events programmes. At the end of last year, ConFAB launched the Scottish Youth Poetry Slam Writing Group, an online community for young writers aged 14–17 to develop skills, connect with other creatives and learn from brilliant industry professionals through a monthly guest facilitator.
I Am Loud Productions have piloted Season 1 of Return To Form, commissioning 10 spoken word artists to respond to one of 5 different forms, with this showcase accompanied by workshop-videos explaining how to write in these forms. Supported through a separate application, they have also been following on from an un-funded pilot last year to produce a funded first season of The Loudcast: along-form podcast showcasing the breadth and depth of quality in the Scottish spoken word scene.
Open Book have been continuing their work across Scotland through digital sessions during lockdown. Their weekly shared reading and creative writing sessions have seen some exciting new groups in Scots, Gaelic and Arabic, as well as a group for LGBTQ+ participants and new island groups on Tiree and Uist. Literature Alliance Scotland, a membership network supporting a broad range of Scottish literature organisations and freelancers, have recieved support for a year-long programme called ‘A New Chapter: To Meet the Times We’re In’, offering professional development and resilience opportunities across the Scottish sector.
The Association of Scottish Literary Studies had a pivot to remote working for Issue 39 of New Writing Scotland, which saw nearly 700 submissions for the prose, poetry and Gaelic editors to select from for this annual snapshot of the contemporary Scottish literary scene, which will be published this summer. Extra Teeth magazine are hard at work on Issues 3 & 4, following on from a successful Crowdfunding campaign for Issues 1 & 2. They’ll be bringing bold and exciting new Scottish writing and illustration to audiences through both an increased print run and promotional online events.
If you’ve received funding from Creative Scotland to support the development of your organisation’s work— in any literary form, genre or capacity — and would like to be included in my next round-up, please get in touch viccy.adams@creativescotland.com
*all Creative Scotland funding awards are listed on the Creative Scotland website on a monthly basis.
