Funding for Mull and Iona arts trail
Funding has been awarded for a new art trail showcasing creative talents on Mull and Iona in time for Easter.
Financial support from the Scottish Government’s Scotland Loves Local fund means Visit Mull & Iona (VMI) can keep on artist Alicia Hendrick to co-ordinate and deliver the project.
VMI chairperson Margaret Matthew said the islands already have a flourishing cultural scene and the funding will help highlight this vibrant aspect of island life even more.
‘The Scotland Loves Local award, that will provide an Art Trail and associated website, will help inform and encourage both locals and visitors to explore the creativity on offer in the islands,’ she added.
Once up and running, the Mull and Iona Art trail will be the first stage in a campaign supporting the cultural life of the islands.
People living there and visitors alike will be encouraged to explore the arts with the help of a special map highlighting locations and venues that can be visited - a new website will also be created.
Visit Mull and Iona hopes the Art Trail project will help bring in a new audience of arts admirers and culture seekers.
The Scotland Loves Local Fund is administered by Scotland’s Towns Partnership.
Alicia said the art trail project is still in its early days but is likely to take the form a map and an artists’ directory, marking out venues and artists to flag up the vast wealth of creativity across the two islands: ‘It’s an opportunity to build on our cultural heritage. It’s for the local audience as well as visitors. We are a big island including Iona, it may be that people in the north are not so aware of what’s happening in the south and vice-versa. It will link artists up as a way of networking too. It might be that we can all come together for some kind of future funding for more projects.
‘It’s early on but the possibilities are already exciting. We want to make sure the map will be an asset for now and in the future. Through this time of Covid, a lot of artists who are self-employed have lost out on a lot so they need all the support they can to be visible,’ added Alicia who was formerly An Tobar’s Arts Officer and has her own studio on Mull.