Creative Scotland’s Youth Arts Bursary Programme is designed to provide opportunities for arts and creative organisations to support early-career artists and creative practitioners aged 18-24 in the arts, screen and creative industries.
Youth Arts Bursary Programme
The cohort of 12 host organisations was announced in October 2021:
Since then, 33 bursary recipients have been selected by host organisations to receive mentoring and develop work.
The programme continues until March 2023 and for many recipients will culminate in presentation of their work.
Discover more about their work as part of the bursary programme on this page.
January - December 2022
Clifftop Projects' supported youth artists Laura Booth and Lou Carberry with £5k grants, mentoring and training over 2022 for them to develop their own practice.
Lou Carberry writes:
The youth artists bursary has been a springboard for both my artistic career and my youth work career hand in hand.
I have spent the last year with the funding received planning and making the largest and most meaningful artwork I have ever challenged myself to create. The project I decided to undertake with the funding was an interactive artwork depicting a timeline of events over the last 42 years of LGBT history within Scotland, since the legalization. I chose to do so as I am a youth worker alongside being an artist. My main goals as an artist is to make the artworld less intimidating for young and disabled people meaning I can share the stories held within my art with a wider audience and encourage societal change.
This project involved months of initial research into historical events, organizations and tabloid newspapers as I wanted as much of a first hand account as possible showing societies views on the community at each crucial point.
After gathering the facts I began sourcing imagery from the dates in question and preparing initial sketches.
The hardest part of the creative process for this project was coming up with the interactive part of the artwork but luckily throughout this project I had been working with a local LGBT youth group.
I brought them all my research, all the facts I had gathered and the imagery of the events. We spent a few sessions going over the history and teaching them what I had learned and then asked them for help. "How would they like to interact with an artwork?" and almost every one answered with touch, the one thing you are warned not to do as you walk into a gallery, that night I went home and came up with the wooden puzzle idea.
I was able to then buy in the materials, pay for access to a workshop in my local area and being the making! With nine events meant nine puzzle pieces in date order but due to the age I am creating this artwork for I cut in some smaller pieces to ensure there was a bit of a challenge when putting the pieces together.
Once the puzzle was cut I put a base on the artwork with the LGBT youth group, giving them a thank you session for helping me throughout the project, them having fun with spray paints is a memory I won't forget. It was up to me from that point on, each week ticking off another event on the timeline beginning with the implementation of section 28, alongside HIV/Aids and ending in the year 2022 where the Gender reform act in being discussed in parliament.
This fund has allowed me to research my own history, create an artwork in response that I am extremally proud of and has helped me create a session that I can travel round Scotland with teaching young people about a marginalized group that desires understanding and acceptance.
I started this year working in retail and crawling to the end of my degree, I am ending this year a youth worker for two local organizations, a sessional youth worker for youth Scotland and an artist with a new passion. This fund has changed my life.
Lou Carberry’s artwork
Clifftop Projects' Youth Artists Bursaries
April 2022 - April 2023
In January 2022, Cove Park announced its Youth Arts Bursary Programme, made possible with an award from Creative Scotland's Youth Arts Fund.
This year-long programme includes 4-week residencies and bespoke mentoring to support Scotland-based practitioners, aged between 18-24, in the early stages of establishing their careers in the arts, screen, and creative industries.
The recipients of the Bursary include:
Design: Mathilde N'Doye (Glasgow)
Digital Practice: Antony Lucchesi (Glasgow)
Literature: Bonnie MacRae (Dundee)
Theatre: Dylan Bonnar (Greenock)
Cove Park facilitated new mentorship connections with established artists and professionals working in these specialisms including culinary artist and chef Marente van der Valk from the Jan van Eyck Academy, digital producer Alex Misick from CCA Glasgow, Tony Award winning Broadway Director John Doyle, and artistic director Liz Carlson of New York Stage & Film.
Included here is documentation of the work that was done by Antony Lucchesi and Mathilde N'Doye while in residence at Cove Park.
ectype is a new website and creative resource by artist Antony Lucchesi.
The website hosts a collection of digital resources such as images, videos and audio which are available under a creative commons licence (CC BY 4.0) meaning anyone can use the resources for free as long as appropriate credit is given to the original creator.
The first collection of resources on the website contains a series of 100 digital files, ranging from images to 3D scans, which were made on site at Cove Park while Antony was in residency as part of the Youth Arts Bursary programme.
Mathilde N’Doye is an interdisciplinary artist and chef whose work incorporates community arts, installation and social sculpture.
Their current practice investigates food and commensality, exploring the heritage of food and its link to cultural identity and history. Through sharing food within curated environments, their work tells stories of embodied knowledge and social actions, engaging others through the familiar action of eating.
Offering encounters with ingredients and the living world, the work queries the origins of taste, smell and feeling within participatory settings.
Mathilde reflects upon their own experience, using memory and senses as the materials to build upon their research-driven practice. During their time at Cove, Mathilde researched their family history and heritage specifically in relation to food.
They became particularly interested in the effects of French colonization on Vietnamese cuisine, the evolution of cultural cuisine and storytelling through taste.
“The idea for ectype came from my research into the value of digital media. As it is an infinitely replicable medium, its value derives from its ability to be shared, modified and reused, which is unique compared to any other artistic medium.
What also emerged during this period of research was the need for more open and collective sharing of ideas and resources within the visual arts.
The creative process can often feel like a private act done behind closed doors, and talking about your creative influences can sometimes feel like a taboo subject. I think it’s important that we look at ways in which we can, as artists, share our thoughts and processes in a way that demystifies the creative process, so that it is seen as something anyone can participate in.”
- Antony Lucchesi
A second collection of resources for ectype is currently being developed as part of Tinderbox Collective’s Room to Play programme where Antony was selected as one of the participating artists. The website can be found at ectype.online.
All images courtesy of Mathilde N'Doye and Antony Lucchesi
Cove Park Youth Arts Bursary Programme
April 2022 - March 2023
Thanks to Perth Theatre’s successful application to the Creative Scotland Youth Arts Fund: Bursary Programme, Erin Bates, Skye Beautyman and Genna Allan are gaining hands-on experience working in Scenic Art, Wardrobe and Learning and Engagement respectively.
The Youth Arts Fund: Bursary Programme was developed by Creative Scotland to provide funding to organisations to host up to 5 bursaries for early-career artists and creative practitioners aged between 18 and 24, who have a lack of accessible support to develop their creative careers, to create new or develop existing work.
As a host organisation, Perth Theatre is supporting the young people to build contacts, create and present ambitious work, build experience, identify ongoing opportunities and plan for next steps beyond the bursary. Each trainee has a dedicated mentor who is responsible for ensuring they get the most out of the 6-month placement.
Erin Bates (19) who went to Pitlochry High School and Breadalbane Academy and has been working as a scenic artist on shows including Oh When The Saints, Don Quixote and Jack and the Beanstalk said:
“I applied for the bursary after finishing school, to get more experience before I potentially go off to uni as I didn’t know what course or career I should choose. I enjoy art and design.
So far I’m really enjoying the bursary and I wish there were more opportunities like this available for school leavers to provide more hands on experience.”
Skye Beautyman (19) who went to Dunoon Grammar School and is working with the Perth Theatre Wardrobe team to create costumes across a range of shows said:
“I applied for this because I am going to study costume design and construction next year but wanted to gain some more hands-on experience inside a theatre, and this has been the perfect opportunity.
Everyone has been so inviting and generous in sharing their knowledge and even though I've only been here for a couple months, I really feel at home in the theatre. I've now had experience of every part of a production, from start to finish, and having that amazing feeling of seeing pieces on the big stage that you have helped with.”
Genna Allan (23) who studied for a BA Hons in Acting with Creative Enterprise from New College Lanarkshire in collaboration with Queen Margaret University has worked with the Learning and Engagement Department as Assistant Director on the Perth Youth Theatre mainstage show and leading PYT classes as well as working with ESOL classes and helping at schools workshops.
She said: “I have really enjoyed my time as a youth arts bursary with the Learning & Engagement team, without the bursary I wouldn’t have been given all of the opportunities I have been able to do”.
Perth Theatre
April – July 2022
Across 10 weeks, 5 selected artists formed a collaborative learning community to explore the forms and ethics of their arts practice, supported by industry professionals, to make new work for in-person public audiences in July 2022.
Each artist was furnished with a trainee bursary of £2000, access and wellbeing support, bespoke sessions with a creative mentor, dedicated time with a professional producer, professional development planning, a go-see fund as well as their own production budget to spend on making the work.
The Trajectories End Event was an evening of live performances, installations and interactive experiences exploring belonging, place and Glasgow that took place on 1 July 2022. Based at Civic House for 10 weeks, the 5 young artists collaborated and devised original work that responded to site, space and their stories within it.
Photography Credit – Tommy Ga-Ken Wan, Fraser Scott
Filming Credit – Fraser Scott
A collective statement from the artists:
“From prisons and playgrounds to galleries, from the torment of our minds to the feeling of laughter, we are bonded to each other by experience, place and the urge to belong.
But belonging isn’t simply the act of habitation.
It’s putting your hands in history, smiling at strangers, stepping over shattered bottles and viewing different prisms of experience.”
See more content from Trajectories, including all the artists' performances, check out the YouTube playlist
Playdate – Julia Hegele
Excerpts – Lily Carmen Smith
Trajectories - Scottish Youth Theatre
July 2022 - June 2023
In 2022, Fife Contemporary were able to advertise a Youth Arts Bursary to support a young maker from Fife to realise their career ambitions as a craft artist.
“I'm very grateful for all the people I've met through the programme, and the opportunities I've learned about, which I'll still be able to use to help my development in the future.”
Cerys Williams
Youth Arts Bursary Recipient
Through the Youth Arts Bursary, Fife Contemporary have been working with a young designer, Cerys Williams, to support her to develop her practice as a jeweller. The project has enabled Cerys to learn new techniques from experts in their field, as well as connecting her with a business mentor and the expertise of the staff at Fife Contemporary.
This has all helped to provide her with the skills and confidence to thrive within the sector. Cerys has leapt into the programme with both feet, and has developed new skills and contacts to enable her natural creative talent for design and making to flourish.
Image Credits: Jewellery and Photography by Cerys Williams
Fife Contemporary
Throughout 2022
Developed by The Work Room & Barrowland Ballet, the Rosina Bonsu Bursaries were part of Creative Scotland’s Youth Arts Bursaries programme to supported talented young people recognising the challenges beging faced through the Covid-19 pandemic.
The bursaries provided early career dance artists with paid time over 6 months and the wrap around support from both organisations, to instigate and develop their own creative projects. Catriona Robertson was one of the bursary receipiants alongside Lesley Howard and Clare Adams.
The bursaries were named in honour of Rosina Bonsu who died in 2020, to make her incredible influence in Scotland. Rosina was an inspired dance artist, choreographer and educator who generously nutured young artists throughout her career.
"In 2022 I was fortunate to receive the Rosina Bonsu Bursary through the support of Barrowland Ballet and The Work Room. With this support, I was able to develop and build on skills in leading a creative and choreographic community workshop with Clifftops Projects' Intergenerational Dance Company." Catriona Robertson
"This is an excerpt from a duet that I began creating with the support of the Bursary. I am interested in the role of vulnerability within the creative process and woked collaboratively with the dancers to explore this through choreogrpahic material and improvisation. We worked together to find a balance of connection and individuality." Catriona Robertson
Film by Joseph Dalton, featuring Lesley Howard and Amy Dakin Harris