The Scottish Arts Council is calling for applications from organisations across Scotland for its artist residency programme Partners, a lottery-funded initiative which provides communities with little or no experience of the arts with the opportunity to engage with professional, practising artists.

The Scottish Arts Council is looking for high quality applications proposing projects that encourage close collaboration between the artist and the local community and can demonstrate that those communities have been considered and involved in the development of the proposal.

Residencies can be in any artform, for example the artist in residence could be a musician, dance artist, writer, crafts maker, film-maker, actor or animator. Residencies can be from three months to two years and can include opportunities for international artists to become artists in residence in Scotland.

A wide range of organisations are eligible to apply for grants of between £4,000 and £40,000 including community planning partnerships, health boards, Local Authorities, constituted community groups and individual schools. In particular, the Scottish Arts Council would like to encourage non arts organisations to apply to host residencies.

Priority will be given to projects involving communities who have previously had little or no opportunity to participate in the arts; communities based in areas of multiple deprivation; those involving the health and disability sectors; projects targeting children and young people; and projects involving minority ethnic participants. The deadline for this round of applications is 2 October 2006.

Since the initiative was launched in May 2005 a number of projects have received Partners funding including; a pioneering initiative in Inverurie where GPs are working with a visual artist to improve the health of patients; a musician working with adults with disabilities at a day centre in Drumchapel; a digital artist working with adults with special needs at the Grianan Centre in Stornoway and a dance artist in Stirling working with women’s groups, disabled adults and schoolchildren, teaching a fusion of traditional and contemporary dance.

Commenting on the latest call for applications, Karen Ward Boyd, Project Officer for Partners said: ‘We welcome applications from organisations across Scotland that have ideas for exciting and innovative residencies that will encourage and inspire more people to participate in arts activities.

‘By providing organisations with the opportunity to run residencies and supporting communities to interact with artists, we hope to give them the skills and confidence to plan and develop future arts projects independently.’