Investing in the arts infrastructure

Details of four new arts building projects in Shetland, Greenock, Aberdeen and Edinburgh, highlighted in the infrastructure features section, have come a stage further with the help of awards totalling £11 million of National Lottery funding from the Scottish Arts Council.

These four grants represent the culmination of the Scottish Arts Council’s major capital grants programme which has invested over £147 million of National Lottery funding in arts buildings of all sizes across the country.  The success of the programme can be seen in infrastructure projects in all parts of the country with artists and communities benefiting from greatly improved, and often award winning, facilities.

The arts play an important role in sustainable communities. They are a focus for renewal in rural and urban areas. They assist in the well-being of individuals and communities by encouraging and enabling social interaction. 

They give the young, the vulnerable and the disadvantaged a voice and they are an investment in the creative energies and skills of future generations.

The Scottish Arts Council’s programme for capital investment uses National Lottery funding to support the development of the arts in Scotland. It does this by helping to provide a sustainable network of accessible arts facilities.

Grants are awarded for:

• a wide range of equipment
• the development and improvement of arts buildings
• for artists’ work in public places within Scotland.

We continue to encourage and support projects of high quality, including innovative approaches to delivering the arts as well as buildings of architectural merit.

The Scottish Arts Council believes that Capital funds should be used to ensure a fair spread throughout the country of artistic activity that is inspiring and transforming lives.

We acknowledge that it will not be possible from the funds available to provide extraordinary projects in every artform in every region. Instead we see that an extraordinary project can have a transforming and inspiring effect on its constituency in many ways.

An extraordinary project will do so through a wide and imaginative variety of means that may well incorporate other artforms and other partners. What is important is that everyone in Scotland is within reasonable reach of some transformational and inspiring artistic activity.