Creative Communities Fund
The Creative Communities fund will go towards supporting organisations, festivals and community groups that develop and deliver initiatives focusing on culture and creative arts in their local area.
The Hugo Burge Foundation are interested in supporting people to engage and connect as participants – not just audiences – in creative activities. They hope to enable more people to regularly take part in or practise cultural activities.
Organisations should make use of the funds within 18 months. Maximum: £15,000. Closing Date: 30th September
hugoburgefoundation.org/grants
The National Lottery Film Festival and Screening Programme Fund
This fund supports organisations who are looking to produce film festivals and screening programmes in Scotland for a public audience and meet the aims and eligibility criteria of this fund.
Applicants may apply for personal access costs for the project team in line with Creative Scotland’s guidelines. Minimum: £15,000 Maximum: £45,000. Deadlines: Thursday 13 November 2025. Previous deadline round closed early due to demand.
screen.scot/funding-and-support/screen-scotland-funding/festivals
Community ‘Take the Lead’ Grants
Health Data Research UK’s community engagement work supports groups across the UK to explore how data can improve health and wellbeing. They are looking to support community organisations with an exciting new initiative – ‘Take the Lead’ micro-grants which will enable communities across the UK to take the lead in exploring the role of data in their community’s health and wellbeing.
They are looking to support community organisations working with:
- People disadvantaged in terms of income.
- People from minority ethnic backgrounds.
- Older children and young adults aged 11–25.
- People over 65.
- People living in rural areas.
- People experiencing digital exclusion.
Grants will be open for applications this September, with community groups able to apply for up to £1500 to deliver a standalone project, event or series of activities exploring how data can support their health and wellbeing between January – March 2026. Deadline 13 October 2025 at 5:00PM
Take the Lead community grants – HDR UK
Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Funds across Scotland
The Communities Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund has a strong focus on prevention and early intervention and aims to support grass roots community groups in tackling mental health inequalities and addressing priority issues of social isolation and loneliness, suicide prevention and tackling poverty and inequality.
The Fund will continue to be delivered through locally focused partnership group with many deadlines in October and November – check in your local area for the relevant Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund.
New Heritage Fund How to Apply Video
Hear from Heritage Fund staff and successful grantees about who and what can be funded, how they make decisions and the information they need from you.
Got an idea for a heritage project but not sure where to start? This video is designed to help you understand the requirements for grants and submit a good quality application.
Watch to get a better understanding of the resources they have to support you, hear examples of how to take the investment principles into account, get a step-by-step tour through their application form and learn top tips to give your grant bid the best chance of success.
UK and International Open Awards for Disabled Artists Announced
Unlimited Open Awards offer ten opportunities for disabled artists based in England, Scotland or Wales. These awards offer a grand total of £413,000 to disabled artists with individual awards ranging from £15,000 seed commissions, to £80,000 for major production-ready backing.
As the world’s largest disabled arts commissioner, they’ve been supporting disabled artists since 2013. Their mission is to commission extraordinary work from disabled artists that will change and challenge the world, until the whole of the cultural sector does.
These awards are made possible with the support from Arts Council England, Arts Council of Wales, and Creative Scotland.
Expression of interest applications deadline: Monday 29 September 2025 midday.
Creative Scotland Expanded Festivals Fund
The Expanded Festivals Fund is a new fund, initiated by the Scottish Government and delivered by Creative Scotland.
The Expanded Festivals Fund supports non-profit cultural festivals in Scotland with funding to enable innovation in programming and/or to showcase Scottish and Scotland-based artists and practitioners.
There are three funding strands:
• International Opportunities and Showcasing
• Innovative Programming
• Sector and Talent Development
To be eligible, your festival must be based in Scotland, run annually or biennially and showcase work by professional Scottish and Scotland-based artists of both national and international significance.
You can apply for between £50,000 and £200,000. Stage 1 applications open now – deadline 2pm, Wednesday 15 October 2025.
Expanded Festivals Fund | Creative Scotland
Evaluating Prevention
Many third sector organisations provide support or run services that prevent things happening. However, prevention is hard to evaluate – often questions asked include:
- How do you measure something that hasn’t happened?
- How do you know which intervention made the difference in the long term?
- How do you evaluate long term when funding is short term?
- What does a positive approach to prevention look like in practice?
Evaluation Support Scotland offers a general guide to evaluating prevention and links to specific resources and case studies. They stress that evaluating prevention is not about measuring that a bad thing didn’t happen. Instead, you evaluate the presence of positive outcomes for people who may be at risk of negative outcomes.
Find out more about the tools and workshops they offer at Evaluating Prevention – Evaluation Support Scotland
UK & Ireland State of the Sector Survey – open till 31 October 2025
Things are moving fast in creative health – and all around it. We would be very grateful if you could share information about your work with us so that we can better advocate for your priorities. This information guides everything we do, and all of your contributions and the information you share with us will be anonymous.
By filling in the survey you can also enter a prize draw for £250!
This is a partnership between the Culture, Health & Wellbeing Alliance, the Wales Arts, Health & Wellbeing Network, Arts, Culture, & Wellbeing Scotland, Arts Care (Northern Ireland), the Northern Ireland Creative Health Network, Réalta, and London Arts and Health. Funded by Arts Council England.
ACHWS will also be creating a Scotland specific report so we would encourage as many of our members to circulate the link to your own networks and contacts as well as taking the time to fill out the survey for yourself or your organisation. Your support is appreciated.
Survey link – Creative Health: UK & Ireland State of the Sector Survey
Creative Scotland Review
As you are aware Dame Sue Bruce is chairing the review of Creative Scotland. The review will examine Creative Scotland’s remit, functions and how it can best support the culture sector’s ambitions. It will be the first review of Creative Scotland since its establishment in 2010, as part of a wider commitment to review how the culture sector is supported. The remit of the Creative Scotland Review has now been published and is available at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/independent-review-of-creative-scotland-remit
There are a number of round table discussions happening across Scotland over the coming months as the next stage of consultation. Please let us know if you have any comments you would like ACHWS to feed in as part of the round table events if you have not been invited to attend one in your own area. Get in touch at info@achws.org before 20th June.
The Gordon & Ena Baxter Foundation
The Gordon & Ena Baxter Foundation supports a wide variety of capital projects in Scotland’s North-east and Highlands, from shinty sticks and audio visual kits to cutting edge cancer research equipment. Applicants should demonstrate a sound management plan, evidence local support and fundraising and show a clear benefit to their community.
Projects should show innovation and fit within five themes:
- Health and Wellbeing – to support healthy living as well as good nutrition, including Scots culinary traditions;
- Arts and Heritage – to promote and support arts and heritage to widen opportunity, access and participation for all;
- Conservation and the Environment – promoting the conservation and preservation of our natural environment;
- Education – supporting initiatives which broaden horizons, promote responsibility and increase access or opportunity for young people; and
- Sport – to support amateur sporting activity, in particular those which encourage youth development.
Who can apply – Registered charities or constituted groups in Moray, Aberdeenshire, Aberdeen City, the Highlands, Comhairle nan Eilean Siar and Orkney and Shetland.
When to apply – The trustees of the Gordon and Ena Baxter Foundation hold four funding rounds per year.
Deadlines for 2025 are: 25 July 2025 31 October 2025. Next deadline: 25 Jul 2025
How to apply – An eligibility quiz is available on the Foundation’s website: https://www.baxterfamilycharity.org/applications
Community Grant – Last Call
There is still time to apply for a Community Grant by TheGivingMachine whose mission is to provide funding opportunities for all good causes to ensure their sustainable future. As part of this, they launched a new scheme to support good causes – Community Grants. There are 8 unrestricted grants worth £250 each to give away and applications are open to all good causes. Applications open until April 30th Apply here. For more information on TheGivingMachine check out their website: https://thegivingmachine.co.uk/
Social Prescribing for Children and Young People’s Mental Health
The National Academy for Social Prescribing have published a report and a review – How can social prescribing support children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing? The new report, Connected To Thrive, outlines a vision for the future. Read the report and a review of training and development for children and young people’s social prescribing. See here for more details.
Fully funded PhD Opportunity in Aberdeen
Gray’s School of Art at Rober Gordon University has a fully funded PhD focused on arts, health and wellbeing in the context of the Health Determinants Research Collaborative in Aberdeen. Deadline 14 May. They are looking for a practitioner to explore how arts practices working with ethnographic approaches can contribute to understanding and improving health from a community perspective. All details on FindaPHD.
Understanding Scotland Economy Tracker
Last month, the David Hume Institute launched their quarterly report on Scotland’s Economy. The launch event featured reflections from Culture Counts’ Interim Director, Kathryn Welch, as well as Chief Economist for the Scottish Government, Gary Gillespie.
Watch the event here
Mobilising Community Assets to Tackle Health Inequalities
Mobilising Community Assets to Tackle Health Inequalities is a three-phase UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funded Research Programme running from 2021 to 2027.
It is led by the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s (AHRC) Programme Director for Health Inequalities, Professor Helen Chatterjee, and coordinated by the Culture-Nature-Health Research Group at University College London, in partnership with the National Centre for Creative Health.
The research project promote people-powered change, by amplifying lived experience voices. Together, they are exploring how collaborative community, cultural and nature-based activities can improve health inequalities in the UK.
Phase two synthesis and review of case studies is available here. Phase three projects have just been announced and is underway.
Useful Facts from over 100 recent research papers
Culture Counts launched an update to Useful Facts, the index of research on the impact of the arts heritage and creative industries, highlighting key facts and takeaways from a number of new research papers exploring the impact and value of arts, heritage and creative industries.
Explore the updated Useful Facts
The Creative Mind Fund
Museums Galleries Scotland have launch a new fund that will support museums and partnering organisations to engage people experiencing mental health issues. The Creative Minds Fund has been made possible by support from The Baring Foundation.
Any organisation that runs an accredited or non-accredited museum in Scotland, which meets the criteria, can apply to MGS for up to £25,000.
Applications for this fund will open in early November, so if you are interested in applying for the fund, they encourage you to use this time to find a suitable mental health organisation to partner with or if you are a mental health organisation or practitioner to find a suitable museums partner, and to speak with and take guidance from our grants team.
The purpose of the fund
The Creative Minds Fund will support museums and organisations working with people experiencing mental health issues to create engagement opportunities. Projects will involve participants in creative activities related to the museum and its collection.
This fund aims to develop programming that includes and benefits people experiencing mental health issues. It also aims to strengthen relationships between Scottish museums and mental health organisations and increase the museum sector’s confidence and capacity to become more inclusive places.
Who can apply for this funding?
This fund is open to both accredited and non-accredited museums in Scotland. If you are a non-accredited museum interested in applying, please review the criteria on our website.
All museums must apply in partnership with an organisation that provides support or services to individuals dealing with mental health issues. This partnership does not have to be new. Museums and mental health organisations that have existing partnerships are encouraged to apply.
What we can fund
Museums can apply for up to £25,000. This fund can support a wide range of costs for engagement programmes including costs for:
- Materials for activities
- Events
- Exhibitions
- Mental health training and support for participants and project team
- Museum and Heritage skills training for participants
- Marketing, communication and design costs
- Salary cost for new staff, additional staff time and fees for freelancers
- Expenses and travel costs for project team and participants
How to apply
Application forms will be available from early November. All applications must be submitted online via the application portal MGS Online. See more details here
If you are considering applying to the Creative Minds Fund, please get in touch with the grants team at grants@museumsgalleriesscotland.org.uk by the Expression of Interest (EOI) deadline below. The grants team are happy to advise on all potential applications. We know from experience that applicants who talk to us before application are more likely to be successful.
When to apply
Applications open in early November 2024
Expression of interest deadline is 20th December 2024
Application deadline is 15th January 2025
Award announcement is 5th March 2025
Bringing Nature Home
There is a new support for local authorities and community organisations to improve access to green space within our urban neighbourhoods.
Everyone feels the benefit when nature is part of our daily lives. Evidence shows it makes us healthier, happier, more connected and more resilient. But years of squeezed resources and competition for urban space means nature, green areas and historic parks have been neglected or lost from many neighbourhoods.
The new strategic initiative, Nature Towns and Cities, aims to enable 100 places across the UK to transform access to green space in urban areas and bring nature closer to home for us all to enjoy.
It is backed by a partnership between the Heritage Fund, National Trust and Natural England, working closely with NatureScot, Natural Resources Wales and the Northern Ireland Environment Agency.
Through collaboration with councils to shape the initiative, building strong networks and funding, we’ll help deliver greener streets alive with trees, river and canal-side paths and historic parks full of energy and life.
New funding available
As part of the initiative, there is £15m available to support local authorities and community partners across the UK to put natural heritage and green infrastructure at the heart of their plans, priorities and investment, improving the climate resilience of their places and enabling access for all. There will be one round of funding with grants available from £250,000 up to £1m.
Who it is for
Projects focused on capacity building that will enable local authorities and their partners to put public green spaces like parks, linear walks, nature sites and community gardens at the heart of their thinking to realise the benefits for health, prosperity, heritage, nature and local pride.
Your application should identify what resources or support you will need. For example: additional expertise to engage local communities, develop partnerships or unlock new investment.
How to apply
Read the full application guidance for a Nature Towns and Cities grant.
Expressions of Interest by 12noon on 12 November 2024.
If your initial proposal is successful, you will be invited to submit a full application between 16 December 2024 and 7 March 2025.
Book onto a free webinar
Join us on Tuesday 8 October at 11am–12.30pm to find out more about the initiative and how to apply for a Nature Towns and Cities grant. Book your place in advance.
New Fund for Arts for Young People
Children in Scotland has launched the Access All Arts Fund is an exciting project to help support children and young people, aged 11-25 and who live in Scotland, to access creative arts opportunities and support wellbeing.
Creative activities are great fun, they help children and young people to learn new skills and they can support people express themselves and feel good, but many young people face barriers to art and creativity, including disability, poverty, and poor mental health.
The Access All Arts Fund was designed to help overcome these barriers by providing direct funding to children and young people to take part in creative activities. This fund has been developed by young people for young people, with children and young people’s voices and ideas are at the heart of the project.
Apply Now
You can apply for the Access All Arts Fund until 5pm on Friday 25 October here and also read more about eligibility. There is also a webinar session to support people applying, taking place on the 15th of October.
Come As You Are – CHWA Guide to Accessible Projects and Events
The Culture Health and Wellbeing Alliance has launched a new guidance resource for embedding access into creative health events and projects.
Many organisations say they would like to be more accessible in their approach, but are unsure about how to do this practically, from where to start, to concerns about costs and time restrictions. This resource is designed to offer some suggestions you might want to consider and highlights some great practice from other organisations.
It also aims to highlight the real costs behind creative a truly accessible event, and can be used alongside the Creative Health Quality Framework as an advocacy tool with funders, commissioners and partners when considering budgets.
Please see the links below to the various versions of the guide.
Guide to Accessible Projects and Events Full Version PDF
Guide to Accessible Projects and Events Easy Read PDF
Guide to Accessible Projects and Events Large Print
Guide for Art Tables in Refugee Drop-in Centres
Borderlands is a community drop-in centre in Bristol and have been supporting refugees, asylum seekers and those with insecure immigration status since 2011. They have produced the Art Table booklet written with people in mind who are interested in setting up an Art Table in a drop-in centre for asylum seekers and refugees. Download your copy here.
A Creative Placemaking Approach
The Stove Network, with support from South of Scotland Enterprise (SOSE), publish an important, new approach to Community Wealth Building and Community-Led Place Development.
The publication, entitled, ‘A Creative Placemaking Approach’ presents a methodology identifying how creativity and culture can work collaboratively with communities and support cross-sector working, addressing civic, economic, and development needs locally with communities.
The publication aims to support a vision of place and community where: creativity is used to develop a resilient and fair, future society, built on community wealth building principles, innovation, and long-term thinking. It is the culmination of over 10 years of rural-based practice in the South of Scotland alongside wider research and consultation already carried out by The Stove Network, including Scotland’s first Creative Placemaking Forum, ‘kNOw One Place’ hosted in Dumfries in 2022.
Museums Small Grants Fund
The Small Grants Fund supports museums to develop their work and deliver against the priority areas of Scotland’s Museums and Galleries Strategy. Accredited museums can apply for up to £15,000.
The fund can support:
- Small-scale project work
- Acquisition of equipment and other resources to address time-specific needs
- Preparation and scoping work to plan and inform future strategic development
Round 2 of the fund is currently open for applications. Please note you must submit an expression of interest to our grants team by 12 July 2024 at 5pm if you wish to apply. The fund closes for applications on 31 July at 5pm
NESTA – Arts & Culture Impact Fund
A £23 million social impact investment fund offering loans between £150,000 and £1 million to help organisations in the arts, cultural and heritage sectors build resilience and deliver social outcomes.
The fund sets out to achieve several objectives for the arts, cultural and heritage sectors to provide organisations with appropriate and bespoke repayable finance, support organisations to better monitor, evaluate and communicate their social impact and attract additional investment into the sector to help organisations thrive, support more organisations to benefit individuals and communities through their work and to promote the wider positive impact the arts, culture and heritage have on society.
Building on the success of the Arts Impact Fund, our new fund is the largest arts and culture social investment fund in the world and is available to organisations across the UK.
Socially driven arts and cultural organisations across the UK are invited to apply for secured and unsecured loans between £150,000 and £1 million, with a maximum repayment period until May 2030. Find out more and apply on the Arts & Culture Finance website.
Third Sector Social Prescribing Support
The Scottish Social Prescribing Network and the Scottish Link Worker Network who, in collaboration with NHS NES, have created a social prescribing landing page which is accessible to those working in the third sector.
The page contains a range of collected resources for community link workers and social prescribers or others within our network topics such as health literacy, realistic medicine, and mental health.
You will need a TURAS account to access the courses, but it is easy to set one up if you don’t already have one. To set up an account, select ‘Register’ at the top of the page here.
Music Can – brings music into the heart of meaningful care
Music Can has a fantastic website with a wide range of information and toolkit with free resources for health and social care practitioners, music organisations and the general public, to help make music a part of good health and social care.
Music Can recognise there the urgent need to reimagine health and social care. Starting with dementia and they aim to make music part of personalised and meaningful care to improve the health and wellbeing of thousands.
On their website you will find links to help you make music a part of personalised care for people living with dementia and connect you to the music you want, in the ways you want to experience it. Music Can enables you to search for activities in Quick Guides, learn more in the Music Care section and find support near you by using the Directory.
Where We Meet: our good practice guide for arts organisations and artists
The Scottish Refugee Council has just launched an exciting new good practice guide Where We Meet, for arts organisations and artists with lived experience of displacement.
This new resource is a working document commissioned by Cross Borders, a Scottish Refugee Council project. It responds to the potential for artists, creative practitioners and arts organisations to co-create inclusive spaces for healing and belonging.
There is an urgent need to co-develop spaces to examine inequalities and perceived social differences – to exchange values, perspectives and forms of knowledge that nurture the imagined alternative realities and futures that can lift us up and guide us through the divisions of modern borders and polarised political systems.
Where We Meet is based on years of work in arts and community development, of coming together, strengthening creative networks, and to collectively voice and share advice and learning around managing and addressing barriers in arts and cultural industries.
It includes key topics and issues – working with lived experience, advocacy and freedom of expression, developing trusting relationships, navigating language, learning from intersectional approaches and much more.
The resource aims to demystify some of the skills, processes and ethical considerations that contribute to modes of good practice within a growing, complex area. Where We Meet
Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival Launch Good Practice Resource
Join the Mental Health Arts Festival for the launch of Performing Anxiety, an ambitious new good practice resource for people wanting to make live artistic work about mental health.
Performing Anxiety was created as a response to a significant increase in the number of artistic projects explicitly addressing mental health, often drawing on people’s lived experience. It covers everything from autobiographical shows about anxiety and depression to participatory projects working with vulnerable people.
The resource exists in various forms – a five-episode podcast, a 60-page publication, two specially commissioned written provocations by theatre-maker Selina Thompson and artist and activist the vacuum cleaner, a set of evolving good practice guidelines, and a series of interviews with artists – all available here.
Performing Anxiety is designed to be a living, evolving resource, and SMHAF expects its initial set of guidelines to be constantly updated and expanded in response to feedback, as it shares the resource across a series of live and online events throughout 2024 and 2025 and more voices join the conversation.
The first of these events will be this online launch and discussion event on Tuesday 16 July, with special guests Mariem Omari of Bijli Productions and Nye Russell Thompson of StammerMouth, winner of the 2023 Mental Health Foundation Fringe Award. Book your place here
Communities Mental Health & Wellbeing Fund for Adults
The Communities Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund for Adults (the Fund) was established in October 2021 and to date has distributed around £36 million to community initiatives supporting mental health and wellbeing across Scotland.
The fund aims to develop a culture of mental wellbeing and prevention within local communities and across Scotland with improved awareness of how we can all stay well and help ourselves and others.
The Fund has a strong focus on prevention and early intervention and aims to support grass roots community groups in tackling mental health inequalities and challenges such as social isolation and loneliness, suicide prevention, poverty and inequality.
This Scottish Government fund is delivered and managed by Third Sector Interfaces (TSIs) in partnership with a range of public bodies such as integrated health and care authorities, Community Planning
Partnerships and local mental health leads.
To find out more about the fund and if it is still open in your area contact your local TSI
The Gordon and Ena Baxter Foundation
The Gordon and Ena Baxter Foundation supports a huge variety of projects across the Northeast of Scotland and the Highlands and Islands from charities that cover one or more of the following: Education, Health, Care, Sport, Arts and Heritage, and Conservation and Environment.
Find out more here
Inchrye Trust
The Trust is a grant-making charity and although the objectives set out in its trust deed are far-reaching, the trustees wish to focus their help upon organisations and projects that address social issues particularly relating to education, health and well-being, and inclusion.
Decisions are made in March and October each year based upon applications received by the end of the previous month.
Grants generally range from £300 to £5,000 and the trustees favour making a series of smaller grants to small organisations for whom annual grant payments over three to five years will make a sustained difference. Therefore, applications for large projects or from national charities are discouraged as they are unlikely to be successful. The trustees will not consider applications from individuals.
Find details of how to apply here
Creative Ageing What Next?
A short collection of essays from practitioners in creative ageing about what the future of the movement could look like. It includes pieces on questions and issues such as:
How can creative ageing be wider and more inclusive?
How we can remove barriers for older emerging and professional artists?
Why arts for older people are less well supported than those for the young?
Find out more here
What does living with trauma feel like?
The Scottish Recovery Network shared a short film which uses storytelling, photography, and artwork to explore different experiences of living with trauma.
It was created by Chloe, Laura, Martin, Holly and Ruth who make up the With Us, For Us Lived Experience Project Group in collaboration with Scottish Recovery Network and Voices of Experience (VOX).
The group came together to inform the design of services for people living with trauma and/or who have been given a diagnosis of personality disorder. As a peer group they have found their voice and want to share their perspectives and experiences more widely.
View the film here: A free accompanying Living With Trauma photobook is also available to download under the video on the Youtube page.
National Centre for Creative Health Toolkit
The toolkit aims to support systems to work with their communities and to develop their own approach to Creative Health strategies.
It focuses on Creative Health in three areas: In Systems; In Context; and In Action.
Although it was developed with NHS England in mind it is a useful resource for to support systems to work with the assets in their communities and to develop their own approach embedding the benefits of creativity in all health and social care systems, from integrated care system planning to delivery by grass roots organisations. The toolkit will support commissioners, link workers and the voluntary community social enterprise sector to work collaboratively and deliver better health outcomes for communities and individuals.
View the toolkit here
New Guide to Setting Up Peer Support Groups
ACHWS is aware that many of our network members are interested in peer support – either they are already part of a group, want to set a group up or want to know how to find peer support. This is an area we are exploring as a network so watch this space for more on this subject.
In the meantime, for those planning to set up a peer support group, the Culture Collective have just shared a new guide by visual artist and arts facilitator Marie-Claire Lacey.
She has put together a resource to help you establish your own peer support group, giving you a framework to think through and decide what your group will look like. It outlines areas to contemplate such as the practicalities, the structure and roles and safeguarding considerations.
The resource covers a range of topics including how the group will operate, creating principles and boundaries that will define the group and planning how to address issues that may arise. If you are interested then download the booklet to find out more.
Edinburgh Art Festival’s visually-impaired-friendly DIY Art Kit
Edinburgh Arts Festival has just launched their new visually-impaired-friendly DIY Art Kit and are looking to distribute it (for free) to art, healthcare, and community work professionals. The pack is entitled Drawing – the space in between. It is a booklet with creative exercises and step-by-step instructions. It was designed by the artist Louise K. Fraser in collaboration with a group of visually impaired creatives. It works for all age groups and abilities, especially those with vision impairments or dexterity issues. People can explore it individually or in a group session. It comes by post with all required materials, and they are happy to send it out for free. You can view a PDF version online here.
The Culture Collective website has a fantastic library of resources including some really handy toolkits check them out here. They include:
How Good is our Hall? – toolkit
If you have or are thinking of setting up or improving a community space to deliver arts and culture engagement, then the ‘How Good is our Hall?’ toolkit might be of interest. It was designed and developed by Claire Abbott as part of her role as Legacy Practitioner with the Safe Harbour: Open Sea Culture Collective project in Fittie, Aberdeen and shared by Culture Collective as one of their online resources.
Based on the Place Standard: How good is our place? Toolkit, ‘How Good is our Hall?’ uses the values of community learning and development to start conversations about community halls.
The tool provides prompts for discussions, allowing everyone who has an interest in a community space to consider a range of elements – from access and transport to green space and sustainability – in a methodical way.
Although the tool was developed with and for the community of Fittie, it can easily be adapted and used for any kind of community, and any kind of space they use.
It can offer a mechanism to start dialogue, deliberation and consensus, and to navigate the friction that can often arise from different perspectives on a community’s priorities.
The tool pinpoints the assets of a hall and community as well as areas where there is room for improvement, provide evidence for funders and stakeholders, and help inform conversations about legacy and the future.
The toolkit itself takes the form of ten indicators, each of which are scored on a scale from 1 to 8, with a range of prompt questions to inform thinking about each element. Download the tool and scoring indicators here.
WHO What is the Evidence on the Role of the Arts in Improving Health & Wellbeing. A Scoping Review
This is not a new report but one that is definitely worth a read as it is based on over 3000 studies globally that identify and evidence the important role for the arts in prevention, management, treatment and increased general health and wellbeing. What is the evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being? A scoping review (who.int)
Public Health Scotland’s strategic plan 2022 – 2025
Public Health Scotland’s strategic plan 2022 – 2025 – recognises that health and wellbeing go far beyond hospitals and that to create a Scotland where everybody thrives means looking beyond the NHS to the building blocks of health and wellbeing.
They talk about working in close collaboration with local and national partners to use data and evidence to reduce the number of children living in poverty, empower local areas to address pressing local public health concerns, improve mental wellbeing by taking a public health approach and create an economy that prioritises wellbeing and population health.
See the full report at A Scotland where everybody thrives: Public Health Scotland’s strategic plan 2022 to 2025 – Our organisation – Public Health Scotland
The National Lottery Community Fund Scotland
The National Lottery’s new strategy to 2030 aims to help communities to enable people to live healthier lives as one of the top four priorities and are looking to fund
projects that: – take a preventative approach, enable communities to take positive action to improve the health & wellbeing of their communities, help reduce health inequalities and increase opportunities for community participation to shape better health services.
Check out the funding options at Funding | The National Lottery Community Fund (tnlcommunityfund.org.uk)