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Applied Arts Scotland

@appliedartsscotland

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A membership organisation run by makers for makers giving an authentic, collective and professional voice for the sector. Posts by Advisor @helenvoce.

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OPPORTUNITIES & MORE FOR MAKERS

A weekly selection of upcoming opportunities for #AASMembers & #makers in #Scotland in support of sustaining their making practices.

Visit the ‘Opportunities and more for makers’ 🔗 in our bio ⬆️ for a full list of opportunities compiled by AAS.

🔸 @craftscotland
‘Journal Craft Award’
Apply by 19 October 2026
Grant for makers to make innovate work that explores ideas around new materials or processes.

🔸 @creativescots x local partners
‘Visual Artist & Craft Maker Awards’
Apply by 20 October 2026
Small grants for craft makers and visual artists to support their creative & visual development.

🔸 @luminatescotland
‘Older Artists Bursary’
Apply by 22 October 2026
Small bursaries of £500-£1,000 for artists aged over 50 working in all artforms & media at the early stages on a new artistic career. Three round brooches made of composite materials set in metal, with text ‘OPEN CALL:
Jorum Craft Award. DEADLINE: 19 OCT 2026.’ by @appliedartsscotland

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9 hours ago

Advancing Rural Heritage Together.
See us on @stvnews tonight at 6pm.
Cultural Heritage in Rural Remote Areas for Creative Tourism and Sustainability.
@culturality_project taken in Newtonmore, Highland, United Kingdom by @appliedartsscotland

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3 days ago

DIRECTOR

🔗 Discover more in our bio ⬆️
🗓️ Apply by noon, Monday 16 November 2026

We seek a part-time Director to help steward #AAS alongside the Board, Advisors & the existing team of freelance operational & project support. The role will provide a centralised coordinating function, supporting us to achieve our aims by ensuring that actions are followed through, opportunities are identified at an early stage & processes are robust. This is an exciting opportunity to strengthen the organisation & create conditions that enable makers & making to flourish.

Aligned with our ‘Organisation as a Garden’ (more via 🔗 in our bio ⬆️) ethos, we consider this role to be one of a ‘Head Gardener’, overseeing & stewarding the maintenance, development & presentation of AAS.

🌱 If you’ve got green fingers & are interested, discover more about the Director (aka Head Gardener) role in the downloadable Recruitment Pack. Key information:

▪️Fully remote working
▪️50% FTE (equivalent to 17.5 hours)
▪️£21,000 salary (equivalent to £42,000 gross)
▪️Contributory pension
▪️Online interviews on Tue 8 December 2026
▪️Start date on or after Mon 11 January 2027

For an informal chat or more information about the role, please contact #AASChair, Lynne Hocking, chair@appliedartsscotland.org.uk.

The role is funded via @creativescots’ Multi-Year funding for Organisations. Text ‘Applied Arts Scotland Director.’ by @appliedartsscotland

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3 days ago

MAKING PLACE SPEAKERS

🔸 Making Place: Heritage in Action & Cultivate
📍 @highlandfolkmuseum / Taigh-tasgaidh Sluagh na Gaidhealtachd
🗓️ Friday 16 & Saturday 17 October 2026
🔗 in bio ⬆️ to discover more & book

On the second day of Making Place, conversations & activity shifts from encountering heritage to thinking about what happens next & how to share it.

Join panellists @lynnesloom, Ruth Abigail Oliver, @rosemary_jamesbeith & @dippinglug to explore how contemporary communities of making can grow from our heritage & place.

Questions to be considered include how knowledge of making is carried between generations, what makes this knowledge visible & valued, what happens when traditional knowledge meets contemporary practice, & what does reciprocity look like between makers, communities, organisations & places. The aim is not to reach consensus but to identify ideas worth cultivating.

Making Place: Heritage in Action & Cultivate is possible with @weareinnovateuk funding as part of the EU Horizon @culturality_project & AAS’s Multi-Year Funding from @creativescots. In-kind support has been provided by Highland Folk Museum / Taigh-tasgaidh Sluagh na Gaidhealtachd, @hlhsocial. 4 portraits of women with text 'Making Place. Heritage / Craft / Making / Shared knowledge.' by @appliedartsscotland

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4 days ago

CULTIVATE

🔸 Making Place: Heritage in Action & Cultivate
📍 @highlandfolkmuseum / Taigh-tasgaidh Sluagh na Gaidhealtachd
🗓️ Friday 16 & Saturday 17 October 2026
🔗 in bio ⬆️ to discover more & book

On the second day of Making Place, conversations & activity shifts from encountering heritage to thinking about what happens next & how to share it. Attendees will engage in discussions about & co-design how contemporary communities of making can grow from our heritage & place.

Join the co-design workshop, at the conclusion of the Saturday, as we move towards the next stages of Making Place, events that move across place & time.

Led by @rosemary_jamesbeith, working through three short activities, attendees will explore permaculture principles & how they might inspire collaborative interventions that can nurture the living communities of craft practice rooted in places, & connected across Scotland. Natural systems offer us a way to reflect on the necessity of interconnected, interdependent, & mutually supportive communities of care for regenerating & sustaining growth & development & adapting to changing environments & contexts.

Dr Rosemary James-Beith is a researcher, evaluator, & contributor to Scotland’s craft ecology - as well as Executive Director of @creative_glasgow & freelance arts & culture consultant.

Making Place: Heritage in Action & Cultivate is possible with @weareinnovateuk funding as part of the EU Horizon @culturality_project & AAS’s Multi-Year Funding from @creativescots. In-kind support has been provided by Highland Folk Museum / Taigh-tasgaidh Sluagh na Gaidhealtachd, @hlhsocial. Yellow fungus growing on a damp, fallen tree. by @appliedartsscotland

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6 days ago

MEET VERA AT MAKING PLACE!

At Friday's free Making Place talks programme in Am Fasgadh, hear about Heritage in Action from Highland Folk Museum's Curator Helen Pickles, plus an overview & the possibilities of the @culturality_project from AAS CULTURALITY Project Manager Clare Waddle @yellowbroom_lighting, Living Lab Project Manager @__k.a.t.e._ & @jopudelkojewellery, including an introduction to VERA.

'Who is VERA?' we hear you ask!

VERA (Virtual European Rural Artisans) is the online platform at the heart of CULTURALITY, cataloguing the work of creative practitioners across Europe in 3D, plus their cultural landscapes. Dr Catherine Cassidy @uniofstandrews will provide a step by step guide to uploading your own images & information to VERA, & how to contribute artefacts to be scanned by the University’s Open Virtual Worlds team.

🔸 Making Place: Heritage in Action & Cultivate
📍 @highlandfolkmuseum / Taigh-tasgaidh Sluagh na Gaidhealtachd
🗓️ Friday 16 & Saturday 17 October 2026
🔗 in bio ⬆️ to discover more & book

Making Place: Heritage in Action & Cultivate is possible with @weareinnovateuk funding as part of the EU Horizon @culturality_project & AAS’s Multi-Year Funding from @creativescots. In-kind support has been provided by Highland Folk Museum / Taigh-tasgaidh Sluagh na Gaidhealtachd, @hlhsocial.

🎥 Hattersley Mechanical Loom, @woveninthebone by @appliedartsscotland

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7 days ago

OPPORTUNITIES & MORE FOR MAKERS

A weekly selection of upcoming opportunities for #AASMembers & #makers in #Scotland in support of sustaining their making practices.

Visit the ‘Opportunities and more for makers’ 🔗 in our bio ⬆️ for a full list of opportunities compiled by AAS.

🔸 @nffnuk
‘From fleece to fibre: From farm to finished product’
15 October 2026, Auldgirth
A hands-on day with Ruth Ashton-Shaw following the journey of wool from field to finished product.

🔸 @loewefoundation
‘Loewe Craft Prize 2027’
Apply by 15 October 2026
Global prize recognising excellence, artistic merit & innovation in craft.

🔸 @fifecontemp
‘Stories for a Changing World: Reading, Making & Connection with Christina Riley, The Nature Library’
15 & 22 October 2026, online
Explore environmental storytelling through reading, discussion & bookmaking with artist & author Christina @thenaturelib. Woman wearing a patterned knitted hat with a fleece around her shoulders with text ‘From fleece to fibre: Following the journey from farm to finished product. 15 October. Dumfries, Scotland.’ by @appliedartsscotland

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7 days ago

Spent last week with @appliedartsscotland, mentoring two wonderful groups of people as part of the EU's 'Culturality' project.

The project is exploring ways to develop rural crafts and cultural heritage alongside 'sustainable' tourism across nine countries, including Scotland.

Over the week, the two groups took an initial idea and developed it into a workable prototype which was tested with a group of invited guests - local craftspeople, policymakers and those involved in the tourism industry.

Happily, both ideas - a 'crafting connections' card game and an asset-mapping futuring workshop for communities or organisations - were felt to have legs, and have already received invites to be put to use.

It was a very intense week! We did a lot of interrogating language, asking big questions, and detailing issues as well as possible alternatives.

There was plenty of 'trust the process' going on, including from myself, as it was my first time mentoring in this way. But I also found it uplifting, sparky and joyful spending such focused time with a small group of people. It's so rare to be able to do that.

Genuinely grateful and thankful to the crew at @appliedartsscotland - @carolsinclairwilson, @yellowbroom_lighting & @diggorybrown - for inviting me to be part of it.

We were also *extremely* well hosted and fed by Polly and the brilliant team at @dellofabernethy.

Thank you ALL for the chats, ideas, connections and generosity of spirit! It was truly wonderful!

#culturality #ruralcrafts #ruralheritage by @appliedartsscotland

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8 days ago

Last week the AAS CULTURALITY Project Team facilitated our Living Lab @dellofabernethy. Over five days, two groups of collaborators created prototypes from two ideas tackling how to improve connections through craft in rural areas to engage with sustainable tourism.

After a huge amount of work the groups presented their ideas to a public gathering in the Dell’s tepee:

▪️A Crafting Connections Card Game
▪️A Visualisation Tool to Connect to the Future

If you want to learn more about these prototypes, our Living Lab & everything #AAS has to offer, then don’t miss out on joining us at Making Place: Heritage in Action & Cultivate @highlandfolkmuseum, Friday 16 & Saturday 17 October 2026. Discover more via the 🔗 in bio ⬆️.

CULTURALITY is an EU Horizon research project exploring how creative & culinary industries in rural areas currently interact with tourism, & how they could in the future. Over four years, organisations &universities in Scotland, Norway, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Estonia, Romania & Slovenia are collaborating to generate data to support digital archives, & a virtual platform. At the same time, physical research events are being held to listen to the voices of the creative sector in rural areas: the idea being to create conversations & concepts to help design new tools & models of working & generate sustainable forms of income for creative practitioners.

@culturality_project is an international network of consortium partners, funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme, with the Scottish partners funded by @weareinnovateuk. by @appliedartsscotland

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8 days ago

THREAD COUNTS SUPPORT SERVICES
🔗 in bio ⬆️

Within #ThreadCounts, we wish to understand what support systems exist for textile makers in Scotland & how they are experienced.

Do you support textile makers in Scotland?

We want to hear from you if you:

▪️share your textile making knowledge solely as paid employee in a formal education setting (Further Education or Higher Education)

▪️work with or support textile makers but don’t make textiles yourself

▪️make textiles solely within a larger organisation, where the work you make is on behalf of the organisation

The Project Team’s list of over 275 support services can grow & be enriched with knowledge, expertise & experience from industry. We’d love to hear from you.

Thread Counts is supported by the National Lottery through @creativescots. Text ‘Thread Counts. Support Services.’ by @appliedartsscotland

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10 days ago

A FOCUS ON WOOD
🔸 Making Place: Heritage in Action & Cultivate
📍 @highlandfolkmuseum / Taigh-tasgaidh Sluagh na Gaidhealtachd
🗓️ Friday 16 & Saturday 17 October 2026
🔗 in bio ⬆️ to discover more & book

Over the two days of Making Place, the open-air Museum will be alive with makers & craft. You will encounter experienced Museum staff introducing rope making in the Croft & weaving in the Weaver’s Cottage, alongside local groups such as The Speyside Spinners & Comhlan Luadh Bhàideanach / Badenoch Waulking Group.

Contemporary craftspeople will also feature, demonstrating traditional techniques, processes & tools, plus how they work with these & modern elements in their creative practices today.

Working in wood, & appropriately located in the Joiner’s Workshop, you will discover:

▪️Dave Robson and Tom Arden of @the_cambium_project_ (Friday) will craft two utilitarian carpentry saw benches, placing focus on the traditional mortice & tenon process of joining wood. One bench will be made using only traditional hand tools, chisels & a brace & bit. The second bench will be crafted using only machine tools.

▪️ @aaronsterrittwoodwork & @woodentom1 (Saturday) will be demonstrating two distinct making processes, drawing on traditional green woodworking techniques.

Making Place: Heritage in Action & Cultivate is possible with @weareinnovateuk funding as part of the EU Horizon @culturality_project & AAS’s Multi-Year Funding from @creativescots. In-kind support has been provided by Highland Folk Museum / Taigh-tasgaidh Sluagh na Gaidhealtachd, @hlhsocial.

📷 1. Highland cup, Wooden Tom, 2. Process, Aaron Sterritt, 3. Mortice & tenon line up, The Cambium Project, photographer Dave Robson. Hand carved and painted wooden mug in the foreground of a Scottish vista of the hills and a loch. by @appliedartsscotland

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11 days ago

A FOCUS ON BARVAS WARE
🔸 Making Place: Heritage in Action & Cultivate
📍 @highlandfolkmuseum
🗓️ Friday 16 and Saturday 17 October 2026
🔗 in bio ⬆️ to discover more & book

The Highland Folk Museum / Taigh-tasgaidh Sluagh na Gaidhealtachd’s small collection of unique Barvas Ware will pique the interest of & inspire attendees of Making Place taking place at the open-air Museum later this month.

Made by women from the small village of Barvas on the Isle of Lewis from the mid-19th century to the 1930s, the crudely made pots are said to be imitations of the factory produced china tea-sets of the time. Hand made from locally dug clay, they were low fired with peat & ‘glazed’ with milk giving the pieces their distinct white-ish coating. It is thought Barvas Ware was made for tourists rather than for domestic use by the islanders.

On the Friday afternoon, Making Place attendees have the opportunity to view Barvas Ware on a tour of the Museum Collections Store in Am Fasgadh.

On Saturday afternoon, using Barvas Ware as inspiration, visitors can create their own small vessels using porcelain. Led by #AASMember @lornafraserclay, the drop in workshop is an exciting opportunity to combine the ideas of traditional making with contemporary ceramics materials. Items created on the day will be taken away to be fired for later collection.

Making Place: Heritage in Action & Cultivate is possible with @weareinnovateuk funding as part of the EU Horizon @culturality_project & AAS’s Multi-Year Funding from @creativescots. In-kind support has been provided by Highland Folk Museum / Taigh-tasgaidh Sluagh na Gaidhealtachd, @hlhsocial.

📷 1. Pieces of Barvas Ware donated by Mrs Quiggin, who is mentioned in I.F. Grant’s Highland Folkways as having seen lots being made first-hand by the women of Barvas, image credit: Highland Folk Museum / High Life Highland, 2. image credit: Highland Folk Museum / High Life Highland, 3. Lorna Fraser, photographer Layton Thompson. Crudely hand made ceramic teapot, egg cup, jug, cup and saucer. by @appliedartsscotland

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13 days ago