£99,000 grant lets experimental arts festival carry on legacy of Arches
A NEW festival of experimental art to carry on the legacy of a major Scottish arts venue which shut amid controversy last year, has been backed by nearly £100,000 in arts funds.
The Arches, a famed arts and club venue in Glasgow, was shut in 2015 after its licensing hours were curtailed amid Police Scotland warnings over drug use.
Now Creative Scotland, the nation’s main arts funding body, has provided £99,000 to Take Me Somewhere, a festival in the spirit of many of the acclaimed performances staged at The Arches, which will be held in venues across Glasgow in 2017.
Creative Scotland said the festival will “build on” the work of the venue under Central Station, which is currently vacant and with no imminent prospect of reopening.
Jackie Wylie, former artistic director of The Arches, said: “This support from [Creative Scotland’s] Open Fund will allow us to pilot a new way of working across venues in Glasgow and beyond and we’re delighted to have such fantastic collaborative support from Scotland’s cultural organisations.
“We hope that this introductory programme in 2017 will develop in the future into a focal point for our incredible contemporary performance community and we can’t wait to share this first outing with Glasgow’s audiences next year.”
The festival will aim to “take audiences beyond The Arches to somewhere new, whilst providing a crucial support structure to Scotland’s most innovative and exciting community of artists and makers”, a funding outline said.
Creative Scotland has announced funding worth £900,000 for 41 projects.
Grants ranged between £1,000 and £130,000.
In literature, awards have been made to writers Janice Galloway, Robin Lloyd-Jones and Kathleen Jamie for the development of new work while StAnza International Poetry Festival in St Andrews has received funding towards its 2017 and 2018 festivals.
Other beneficiaries include the Scottish Historic Buildings Trust which has received funding for a project to create a new piece of public art to “reflect the values of Scottish biologist, sociologist, geographer and philanthropist Patrick Geddes around the restored Riddle’s Court in Edinburgh’s Old Town”.
New Glasgow-based theatre company Blood of the Young have received £65,000 funding for a new touring production of Daphne Oram’s Wonderful World of Sound.