Scotland’s leading artists have been invited to apply for Scotland’s most prestigious arts awards - the 2006 Scottish Arts Council Creative Scotland Awards.

Now in their sixth year, the National Lottery funded Creative Scotland Awards were established to reward, honour and celebrate established artists in Scotland and to raise the profile of the arts and their contribution to Scotland.

The awards are among the richest in Europe with up to ten artists awarded £30,000 each to provide them with a unique opportunity to experiment, refresh and exercise their talent, and to realise imaginative ideas in a major project. They also receive a beautiful glass award created by Scottish glass artist Anita Pate.

The Scottish Arts Council is encouraging artists with a record of major achievement in their field to apply for the 2006 awards which will be presented at the awards ceremony next March – an event which has now become a key date on the cultural calendar.

Graham Berry, Chief Executive of the Scottish Arts Council said ‘These awards have raised the profile Scotland’s artists and given them the opportunity to work on a major project within Scotland. Many of Scotland’s most renowned artists have been past recipients of the awards and the Creative Scotland Awards have made many excellent and innovative projects possible.

‘We are encouraging artists from all disciplines to apply and we fully expect this year’s applications to present the same high calibre of exciting proposals as we have seen in previous years.’

Previous awards have lead to outstanding projects and collaborations including -

Eddie McGuire used his Creative Scotland Award in 2004 to develop a project in collaboration with the Chinese ensemble Ocean and his own group the Whistlebinkies to create a performance which fused Scottish and Chinese traditions. The final performance was performed at the Celtic Connections Festival in 2005.

Glass maker and musician Alison Kinnaird combined her two specialist areas to create a visual installation. Supported by the Creative Scotland Award the resulting Psalmsong has been exhibited in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and will soon be on exhibition on the Scottish Parliament.

Poet Kathleen Jamie received a Creative Scotland Award in 2001 to enable her to visit mystic sites around Scotland such as Bannockburn and St Kilda and produce an new body of poems with strong Scottish Imagery and landscape. The resulting collection of poems ‘The Tree House’ went on to win the Forward Prize for poetry in 2004 and the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year in 2005

Application forms are available by contacting the Scottish Arts Council Helpdesk on 0845 603 6000, e-mail help.desk@scottisharts.org.uk  or on the Scottish Arts Council website – www.scottisharts.org.uk

The deadline for applications is 28 October 2005.