A Week of Culture, Place and Possibility

It’s been a really inspiring week at Narture.

We were delighted to welcome 23 Scottish arts organisations to The Auld Toy Shop in Ayr for the first in-person get-together of the new Culture Collective cohort.

Culture Collective is a Scottish Government initiative, delivered through Creative Scotland, supporting creative practitioners, organisations and communities to work together on community-engaged creative projects and explore how culture can create positive change locally and nationally.

Find out more about Culture Collective

For some of the organisations joining us, this is their first Culture Collective project, including us at Narture. Others are taking part for a second time, having been involved in the programme when it first began during Covid.

It was brilliant to bring everyone together in Ayr — to share experiences, get to know one another and talk about socially engaged arts practice, place, communities and the role culture can play in shaping the places we live.

What do you bring to the table?

That was our theme and provocation for the day.

As well as hosting the gathering, we provided a three-course hot lunch from our bakery and kitchen, welcomed everyone into The Auld Toy Shop and gave tours around our six spaces.

We also spent time making together, with Riso printing and lino printing workshops led by local artists Aimee Kent and Kayley Mullen.

Each organisation was asked to bring along papers, images, words or other materials that meant something to them — things that represented their organisation, their communities and their practice, as well as what they hope to bring to the project and to the table over the coming year.

We then used these to create two-colour Riso prints and begin building a collective zine — a shared piece of work bringing together all 23 organisations as we begin this new Culture Collective journey.

It felt like a fitting way to start: different people, places, experiences and approaches coming together to make something collectively.

You can find out more about Culture Collective and previous projects across Scotland at Culture Collective Scotland.

Culture as infrastructure

There was something particularly timely about all of these conversations, as this week also saw the publication of Local Culture Scotland: Culture is Infrastructure for Place-Based Working.

The report, commissioned by the Scottish Government, explores how culture can be embedded more meaningfully within place-based working across Scotland.

It proposes a national approach that would support grassroots culture in communities, give cultural organisations greater agency to work across sectors in their local areas, and put decision-making closer to the people and places it affects.

Read more about Local Culture Scotland

The report was authored by Matt Baker, Ola Wojtkiewicz, Morvern Cunningham and Simon Sharkey, following detailed consultation with more than 50 stakeholders from the culture sector and other sectors involved in place-based working.

Culture isn’t an add-on to a place. It is part of the infrastructure of a place.

Culture can create opportunities for people to meet, participate, learn, make and connect. It can help bring empty and underused spaces back into use, build confidence and relationships, support local economies and give communities opportunities to imagine what their future could look like.

This is something we’re thinking about every day through our own Culture Collective project at Narture.

What does Ayr need to thrive creatively?

That is the question at the heart of our project.

We don’t want to start with a predetermined programme and simply deliver it. Instead, we’re working alongside local people and communities to listen, explore and develop ideas together.

We recently opened a call for socially engaged creative practitioners to work with us, and received 70 applications from artists and creative practitioners interested in helping us develop the programme across food, arts and music.

We’re currently shortlisting and will be announcing the artists we’ll be working with over the coming weeks to activate and develop The Auld Toy Shop.

The aim is to bring together a group of practitioners who can help us explore what The Auld Toy Shop — and Ayr more widely — could become when creativity, community and place are put at the centre.

Sharing our work in Ayr

The week ended with another important conversation, as today we had the opportunity to present our work to the Pride in Place Board in Ayr.

It was a great opportunity to talk about what we’re doing through Narture, our Culture Collective project and The Auld Toy Shop, and to share our vision for how culture, creativity and community can contribute to the future of Ayr.

Our vision is simple:

To encourage places where society values art and artists believe they can make a difference.

And our mission is to breathe new life into town centres by transforming empty spaces into places where people connect, learn and make.

We want to champion arts and culture, provide affordable and accessible opportunities for creativity, develop skills and employment and create pathways into meaningful work across both food and the arts.

Seeds of hope

This week also brought another significant announcement for Scotland’s cultural sector, with plans for a £15,000-a-year minimum income for artists moving forward.

Read the Herald Scotland article

At a time when the cultural sector in Scotland feels extremely precarious and fragile, it is motivating to see these different threads — and seeds of hope — beginning to emerge across the country.

There is clearly a huge amount of creativity, knowledge and experience already sitting within our communities and cultural organisations.

The opportunity now is to create the structures, investment and trust that allow that work to grow.

We’re delighted to be part of these conversations and excited to see where they lead.

For us, it comes back to the same thing: how can creativity help places thrive, and how can we make sure everyone has the opportunity to be part of it?

We’re looking forward to continuing our small part in building a more creative, connected and ambitious future for Ayr.