Creative Industries

The Creative Industries team works to develop and promote ways of working that will enable the future sustainability of creative businesses. We aim to support the ways in which people can turn their creative motivations into ways in which they can earn a living. In doing this we recognise that value comes in many forms – cultural, social and economic, and that our future economy depends upon all of these working in harmony.

We have nurtured an infrastructure of independent creative area networks and sector development bodies across Scotland, helping them to operate with confidence and clarity. We have an explicit focus on creative digital development and on areas of practice such as design and craft, while also working across all the artforms and disciplines of Creative Scotland.

We have helped to provide new financial tools to enable creative businesses to realise their potential and have helped new ideas to emerge and prosper. Overall, through growing stability and enabling sustainability within places and sectors we have begun to support the kinds of innovation, specialisation, localisation, learning and resilience that we need to help make Scotland’s creative economy work in the 21st century.

Creative Industries team

• Jessica Bonehill – Creative Industries Officer (Crafts)
• Clive Gillman – Director of Creative Industries
• Andrew Leitch – Creative Industries & Capital Projects Officer
• Morgan Petrie – Creative Industries Manager
• Ashley Smith-Hammond – Creative Industries Officer
• Jackie Stewart – Creative Industries Officer
• Helena Ward – Creative Industries Manager

Organisations working in the creative industries

Our work in the creative economy is deeply intertwined with the work of other public sector agencies, specifically the enterprise and skills bodies such as Scottish Enterprise, Highlands & Islands Enterprise, South of Scotland Enterprise, Skills Development Scotland, Business Gateway and Scottish Funding Council.

We are an active partner in the national Business Support Partnership and the Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities as well as UK-wide research projects such as the Creative Industries Policy & Evidence Centre.

We support many of the Regional Growth Deals active across Scotland and work with many of our local authorities in developing and delivering creative economy initiatives.

In addition, we hold lead relationships with cultural organisations working in digital, craft, design and those independent organisations working to undertake local creative development such as Creative Edinburgh, Creative Dundee, Creative Stirling and others.

We lead on the introduction of many new initiatives into the work of Creative Scotland, covering areas such as social enterprise investment, community wealth building, and green initiatives such as resource sharing as well as innovation and digital development activity in areas such as XR, VR and games. The team includes artform specialists for craft, design, and digital as well as expertise on capital projects.

Relevant funds

Our work is focused on sectoral or place-based interventions that support multiple creative businesses.

We work with National Lottery Funds to support activity that produces public benefit through growing strong creative communities.

A main source of funding is Open Funding:

We manage a number of open access schemes including:

• Go See Share – Support for creative businesses to undertake trips or remote meetings allowing them to gain knowledge and insight, build relationships and then to share this knowledge back in Scotland
• Create: Networks – This fund helps creative businesses create and develop local creative business networks)
• Our Crowdfunding programmes, such as Creative Scotland Crowdmatch
• Occasional schemes such as
  • Digital Pivot, which supports organisations and individuals exploring the potential of creative digital technologies
  • Radical Care, an action research project to support those working in the creative industries with care responsibilities
• We also manage the Own Art scheme in Scotland, which enables artists’ work to be affordably purchased.

Get in touch

We’re very happy to talk to you about projects that might be eligible for our support.

If you’ve never applied before, get in touch to talk about your ideas and ask any questions. We might be able to give examples that make the criteria clearer or tell you more about how our funds work.

You can get in touch with the Creative Learning and Young People team by emailing [email protected]. Explore the team member list to find out who’s who.