Part One: Unprecedented and Revitalising | Emerging Impacts and Ways of Working: Reflections from the first year of the Culture Collective
The Culture Collective is a network of 26 participatory arts projects, shaped by local communities alongside artists and creative organisations, and funded by Scottish Government emergency COVID-19 funds through Creative Scotland.
The projects focus on community engaged creative activity, supporting participatory approaches and projects designed and driven by the communities they are based in, where creative practitioners and communities work collaboratively to shape the future cultural life of Scotland.
In February 2022, an evaluation team from the Centre for Communication, Cultural and Media Studies at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh was commissioned by Creative Scotland to undertake an evaluation of the Culture Collective.
This report captures a snapshot of the programme a year into its work and presents key findings for most of the 26 projects, aiming to:
- Provide a snapshot of the Programme during its first phases of activity
- Capture an evolving picture of the projects’ ways of working and notable outcomes emerging as the projects continue to progress their work, noting that project impacts are still developing and will continue to emerge over the months to come
- Reveal potential to build on what the Programme is achieving, collating perspectives on what is important about the Programme for communities, creative practitioners and with respect to cultural policy