Thirty creative teams have been awarded £100,000 each to work on developing programmes for the Festival UK* 2022.
In total £3 million has been set aside for research and development of the project which will comprise ten major creative projects all designed to bring people together.
The teams will assemble more than 500 organisations and individuals including freelancers and emerging talent, with a breadth of knowledge and creativity in the Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths (STEAM) fields.
They will comprise partnerships of established organisations such as Edinburgh Science and Edinburgh International Festival from Scotland. (The full list is below) There was an open call for applications and the selection process chose from 299 of them involving 3,000 organisations.
Each team will now develop their own big idea through workshops with the BBC Research and Development team, and the opportunity to hear from high profile speakers representing STEAM. In February next year the pitches will be made to a panel and only ten will be chosen for the 2022 festival. The whole process of developing the festival will be shared as a public resource under a Creative Commons.
The festival will be independently run and led by Chief Creative Officer Martin Green CBE, who has been creative director of Edinburgh’s Hogmanay in the past few years. Read more about Martin’s vision for the event here.
New investment of £120 million will come from the UK Government, including funding to Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The 30 Creative Teams selected for the R&D are made up of 22 UK-wide collaborations, and two each from England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Fair Work and Culture said: “Festival UK* 2022 is already showing us new and exciting opportunities for Scotland’s world-renowned Arts and Technology sectors to work together. There are two unique Creative Teams comprised entirely of Scottish-based individuals and organisations developing their proposals for delivery in Scotland during 2022, as well as a wide range of others in Scotland who will be key partners in other Creative Teams developing proposals for delivery across the UK. We can be sure that all of them are outstanding examples of Scotland’s creativity and innovation.
“I welcome this announcement as a boost for artists, practitioners and organisations across Scotland’s STEAM sectors – and beyond, tapping into our talents, creativity and innovation. I look forward to seeing the proposals that are developed both in Scotland and across the other 4 nations as part of the festival.”
Chief Creative Officer for Festival UK* 2022 Martin Green said: “Festival UK* 2022 is a massive experiment in creativity with the core values of being open, original and optimistic, and encouraging teams to think big. It’s wonderful that so many brilliant people, offering extraordinary creativity across STEAM, want to collaborate beyond their usual disciplines and with people they might not have worked with before. It hasn’t been an easy selection process, so we’re really pleased to hear that some new creative relationships will continue amongst those who were not chosen, as well as being excited to see what the 30 Creative Teams come up with over the next couple of months.”
This was the open call that the teams responded to:
SCOTLAND CREATIVE TEAMS
Aproxima Arts – Cosmo Blake, Angus Farquhar, Caroline Thompson • BEMIS Scotland – Tanveer Parnez • Neil Butler • Celtic Connections – Donald Shaw • Fèis Rois – Fiona Dalgetty, Pàdruig Morrison • getmade design – James Johnson • James Hutton Institute – Nicola Strachan • Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) – Fiona Burnett
Edinburgh International Festival – Fergus Linehan, Brian D’Souza • Edinburgh Science – Simon Gage • Etienne Kubwabo • National Theatre of Scotland – Nic Green, Wezi Mhura, Jackie Wylie • Sky Arts – Vanessa Woodard • University of Strathclyde – Malcolm Macdonald • V&A Dundee – Claire Eva, Sonia Napolitano • 4J Studios – Chris van der Kuyl
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