1/ Commissions

The Stirling Place Partnership developed a programme of activity that addresses defined areas for development in Stirling. Over the course of the Place Partnership, we published specific commission opportunities that would require a focussed project proposal.

These fall into the following areas of interest:

2020/21 - Digital Commissions

Digital Producers, Griffin & Co were appointed to support the creative and cultural community in Stirling to adapt to the changing circumstances created by the coronavirus pandemic and have developed a series of artist commissions and a platform to raise the profile and visibility of the work of our artists in the digital area, making it easier to access art digitally and supporting us to reach a wider audience. Find out more about our Digital Commissions programme.

2021/22 - City Commissions

Artists and creatives can play a vital role in spporting our city to be more exciting to explore and to make our creativity more visible. We worked to develop opportunities to utilise public spaces in the city in new ways to make our artists more visible and to utilise art and design in way-finding, access and in the city experience. Commission briefs were identified with council and other partners, informed by dementia friendly audit programmes carried out by the University of Stirling DSDC.

2020/22 - Community Commissions

A key strand of activity is working with particularly under-served or priority communities outside of the city itself to build our capacity, resilience and networks across Stirling. The first community we focused on is Bannockburn and Eastern Villages of Plean, Fallin and Cowie, where there were already some good examples of local cultural and heritage projects. The following focus of our community commissions was in the Doune and Deanston area. In both cases, the funding became a programme budget for these communities to use with the partnership to enhance their local cultural offer in a way that supported sustainability and reinforced local connections.

2021/22 - CLIMATE CHANGE/COP 26 COMMISSIONS

For Year 3, the theme of our grants and commissions was Unlearning. We designed a commissions scheme specifically intended to encourage a collaborative, peer-learning approach to develop a project around the theme of Climate Change and the Arts in the lead up to COP 26. The experience of the Digital Commissions and the Community Commissions in Year 2 inspired us to combine the two approaches to create a new opportunity for artists to work as part of a creative cohort, collaboratively developing the brief for the commission, and supported along the way through professional mentorship and training opportunities around PR, visibility and digital skills. Find out more about our Climate Change Cohort.

3/ Grants

We delivered a programme of Micro and Open Grants for local creatives to access between £500 and £2,500.

Projects needed to clearly address one or more of the following aims: 

●        Position, mobilise and enable our creative communities to achieve positive change. 

●        Establish a sustainable infrastructure to support and bring together our creative communities within rural and city areas. 

●        Develop pathways for growth and [creative] business development 

We provided a development support service for those applying for grants from us and other public funding so we could ensure applicants understood the process, and put in well thought through a relevant application, building up our experience doing so over the year. Place Partners had a clear role in assessing and deciding grants with support from Creative Scotland staff.

In Year 3 (2021), we additionally ran two open project opportunities on the theme of Unlearning, to be interpreted in a broad sense as a way to start conversations, challenge, and reshape the approach to issues such as: Climate Change and Environmental Awareness, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, and Place-making.