In January 2019, in consideration of the changing context within the European Union, the British Council / Creative Scotland Partnership launched an open call which sought to support projects aimed at strengthening or establishing new relationships and networks between the Scottish arts sector and European peers.
A total of 89 proposals were received and partners were delighted at such a response, seeing it as demonstrative of the strength of Scotland’s creative links with Europe and of the level of interest in forging new partnerships. Just over £138,000 was committed to support 16 projects covering a range of art forms, a wide geographic spread in Scotland and collaborations with 15 European countries. Full details of all the projects supported can be found here.
The grant recipients were brought together for a learning, sharing and peer support event at British Council Scotland in June 2019. It was a fantastic opportunity for the partners to hear in more depth how projects had developed, and it became evident that two themes connected many of the projects taking place: equalities, diversity and inclusion (EDI) practice and a focus on work with Nordic countries.
Project leads have since shared a wealth of rich material with us. We have been using this material to share some of the project’s stories, initially focusing on the theme of equalities, diversity and inclusion (EDI). Find out more and read these eight EDI case study blogs here.
We turn our attention now to three further Scotland/Europe 2019 projects all of which involved collaboration with peers in Nordics countries. Find out more about these three Nordics case study blogs here.