Ten leading lights of Scotland’s artistic community will pick up a Scottish Arts Council Creative Scotland Award at a gala ceremony at Edinburgh’s Hub tonight (16 Wednesday 2005).

The Scottish Arts Council Creative Scotland Awards, funded through the National Lottery, support the nation’s leading artists to experiment and realise imaginative ideas in a major creative project.

Each recipient will receive £30,000 to develop their project and collect a handmade award by glass designer Anita Pate.  The awards will be presented by Richard Holloway, Chairman of the Scottish Arts Council. 

Dr Holloway commented: 'The Scottish Arts Council Creative Scotland Awards are a window on the richness and variety of Scotland's cultural landscape.  They provide us with an opportunity both to celebrate the wealth of creative talent in our country and to promote and develop the work of some of our best artists.'

The final selection was made by a judging panel chaired by Susan Rice, Chair of the Edinburgh International Book Festival.  Congratulating this year’s recipients, Ms Rice said: ‘This year’s Creative Scotland Awards shortlist was rich in the breadth and diversity of the projects presented and it was a challenge for the judging panel to choose only ten.  All of the artists shortlisted should be recognised for the quality of their work and artistic excellence.   But, in the end, the judges agreed that the final ten represent artists who are constantly pushing the bounds of their own creativity and whose projects each have something valuable to contribute to Scotland’s cultural landscape.’

The ten recipients are:

Claire Barclay
Project: research and studio experimentation that will lead to the production and exhibition of new sculptural works addressing sociological issues and ideologies surrounding crafts. Claire is based in Renfrewshire.

Robin Bell
Project: a new collection of poems based on his observations of this year’s G8 summit at Gleneagles, examining Scotland’s place in today’s global culture. Robin is based in Auchterarder, Perthshire.

Eduard Bersudsky
Project: The Druid Clock – a collaboration with Russian theatre company, Derevo in which bodies of dancers interact with his kinetic sculptures to create a new performance that examines Scotland’s ancient heritage and Northern mythology related to the forest.  Eduard is based in Glasgow. 

Thomas Joshua Cooper 
Project: The World’s Edge – the Atlantic Basin Project – An Atlas of Emptiness and Extremity, a photography project comprising sea pictures made from all the land-based cardinal points surrounding the Atlantic Ocean.

Moyna Flannigan
Project: A contemporary political fantasy, a series of fictional portrait paintings exploring modern day parallels to the political dynasty of Bonnie Prince Charlie.

Valerie Gillies
Project: The Spring Teller, a book of landmark poems inspired by 21 of Scotland’s ancient springs and wells.  By researching their history and legend, Valerie will identify each spring or well’s unique musical and rhythmical calendar and the project will challenge Valerie to create original metres, rhythms and new verse forms – a new poetics for Scotland.

Stephen Hurrel
Project: research and development for a new installation piece that utilises live internet data, sourced from environmental occurrences around the world, to generate and affect audio-visual material in a gallery context.  The project will explore notions of the sublime in art and nature with the tools and knowledge that the 21st century provides.

Janice Parker
Project: research and development leading to the presentation of new choreography, based on collaboration with professional contemporary dance artists, that explores how the movement qualities of people with learning disabilities can provide valuable contributions to the mainstream dance artform.

Louise Scullion
Project: to collaborate with Matthew Dalziel to research and create a series of new artworks for urban spaces, using titanium dioxide, a material new to the market.

William Sweeney
Project: to work with internationally recognised blues harmonica player Fraser Spiers to create a composition combining live performance and electro-acoustics that explores the sensibility of Scottish musicians of the 1960s who defined their identity through the music of Black America.

The Scottish Arts Council Creative Scotland Awards were established in 2000 to reward, honour and celebrate artists living and working in Scotland who had an established track record in producing high quality work, and to allow them to undertake an exciting and innovative project that would otherwise not happen.  The awards aim to raise the profile of the arts and their contribution to Scotland and to allow recipients to experiment, to refresh and exercise their talent and to develop new work.

Culture Minister Patricia Ferguson added her congratulations to the Scottish Arts Council Creative Scotland Awards recipients, saying: ‘In Scotland we are privileged to have such a diverse artistic community and I am delighted that these individuals have received recognition from Creative Scotland.  Their work reflects the enormous breadth and depth of artistic talent in Scotland today, and shows that Scotland’s cultural life continues to grow and flourish.  My warmest congratulations to the Awardees – they have done Scotland proud.’