New Creative Scotland award: ‘Shore’

Invisible Dust is delighted to announce that we have just been awarded £69,900 from Creative Scotland which enables us to launch of Shore, with artists Margaret Salmon and Ed Webb-Ingall.

Shore is an ambitious multi-art form project that aims to spark a Scotland-wide conversation about our relationship to the seas and oceans, and the role of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in preserving, or ‘shoring up’ our endangered aquatic worlds.

Award winning artists Margaret Salmon and Ed Webb-Ingall will each create a new film in collaboration with marine scientists and coastal communities across the Isle of Arran and Wester Ross region. In their contrasting Island and Highland coastal positions, these two sites provide an ideal setting for these artists to explore the relationship between humans and the seas using their onshore and offshore MPAs as a fertile lens for this enquiry.

‘Shore’ is funded by Creative Scotland with the additional support of the Wellcome Trust and scientific partners Scottish Natural Heritage, Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS), and University of Edinburgh. Creative Scotland gave 33 organisations across the arts £750,000 for support for cultural activity across Scotland. The awards are supported through National Lottery funding.

“We are delighted to see this bid succeed. The project aligns strongly with our marine science research themes, as well as our work as a learned society. As part of this project, we hope to help develop an ongoing and inclusive, Scotland-wide conversation about the stewardship and health of our oceans” Dr. Raeanne Miller, Knowledge Exchange and Communications Manager, SAMS

These films will be toured in partnership with LUX and Regional Screen Scotland. Launching at Coast on Arran in June 2018, the tour will go on to Atlas Arts, Skye; Taigh Chaersabhagh, North Uist; Timespan, Helmsdale; DCA, Dundee; Dynamic Earth, Edinburgh; and to Barra, Ullapool and Gairloch with Regional Screen Scotland’s mobile ‘Screen Machine’. A final legacy documentary of the tour plus the film screenings will also mark Scotland’s National Marine Centre grand opening in 2020.

 “We are thrilled that Creative Scotland has awarded Open Project Funding to Shore. Margaret Salmon who is known for her elegant and beautiful filmmaking and Ed Webb-Ingall who works with pioneering community film methods will collaborate with marine scientists and local people to create new films. Invisible Dust has set up exciting new partnerships to tour the artists’ films to ten venues across Scotland – sparking a national conversation through art about our relationship with the sea and the role of Marine Protected Areas preserving Scottish wildlife“. Alice Sharp, Director Invisible Dust

Alongside the screenings there will be additional content co-curated with each host venue; interactive talks and debates providing local context; and a community platform that will form a ‘chain’ debate across Scotland captured by an additional filmmaker following the tour who will invite each venue’s audience to respond to the concerns of the previous, and so on.