This post comes from Creative Carbon Scotland
CCS is one of 14 Edinburgh-based groups to receive support through the City of Edinburgh Council’s new culture fund, running for the first time this year to support of the development of up-and-coming performing work in the Capital City.
The £5000 grant from the fund will support Edinburgh-based actor, clown and theatre-maker Alice Mary Cooper to develop a new performance work Blue Cow in association with Imaginate and Catherine Wheels Theatre Company, as part of CCS’s culture/SHIFT programme.
CCS and Alice have collaborated on a number of projects in the past including our 2015 Arts & Sustainability Residency and ArtCOP Scotland, and more recently exploring community engagement in climate adaptation through the arts in Aberdeen.
Blue Cow will address the question what it means to be ‘contaminated’, evolving from Alice’s passion for environmental issues and desire to make work which helps to shift our wider societal culture towards a more sustainable one.
The new work will contribute to one of CCS’s culture/SHIFT themes – ‘making the invisible visible’ – which seeks to understand how the arts and culture can foster new awareness and understanding of our relationship to the environment and climate change.
Through the Culture Project Fund award, CCS will commission Alice to develop the sonic and video possibilities of Blue Cow, working with award winning Edinburgh based director Caitlin Skinner, Sound and Video Designer Rob Jones and musician and composer Thomas Butler.
CCS will also engage local sustainability practitioners and environmental organisations in the project with the aim of building new understandings of how the arts can contribute to a more sustainable city.
Other award recipients include the Village Pub Theatre, Strange Town and Red Note Ensemble. A full list of 2017/18 Culture Project Fund recipients is available on the City of Edinburgh Council website.
The Culture Project Fund supports the priorities of the city’s new Culture Plan, adopted by the Council last year. The plan was developed through the Desire Lines consultation process with input from creative industries, funding bodies, festivals, performers, artists, producers and venues.
It highlighted a need for greater support of emerging artists and ‘a shared city-wide agenda’ for culture in the Capital, which the Project Fund will help address.
Keep an eye out on CCS news for more information on Blue Cow over the coming months!
The post CCS awarded funding for new environmental performance work in Edinburgh appeared first on Creative Carbon Scotland.
About Creative Carbon Scotland:
Creative Carbon Scotland is a partnership of arts organisations working to put culture at the heart of a sustainable Scotland. We believe cultural and creative organisations have a significant influencing power to help shape a sustainable Scotland for the 21st century.
In 2011 we worked with partners Festivals Edinburgh, the Federation of Scottish Threatre and Scottish Contemporary Art Network to support over thirty arts organisations to operate more sustainably.
We are now building on these achievements and working with over 70 cultural organisations across Scotland in various key areas including carbon management, behavioural change and advocacy for sustainable practice in the arts.
Our work with cultural organisations is the first step towards a wider change. Cultural organisations can influence public behaviour and attitudes about climate change through:
Changing their own behaviour;
Communicating with their audiences;
Engaging the public’s emotions, values and ideas.