Joyful Funding Announcement
We are over the moon to share Creative Scotland’s confirmed support for Gaada over the next 20 months. The funding, which comes from the Extended Open Fund for Organisation, totals £192,319 and will enable Gaada to embark upon its most ambitious work to date - a 20 month cultural programme titled ‘Toogs: Digging a Deeper Creative Ecology’.
Moora toogs is an old Shetland dialect word meaning “ant hill”, which comes from the Old Norse maurr (“ant”) + þúfa (“mound”).
A fragment of this word survives today in the place name Toogs – the girsey mound on which Gaada’s building stands.
The programme will follow on from 5 years of creative community building and Gaada’s completed purchase of the former Methodist Chapel in Burra Isle, using funds wholly raised through its half of the shared revenue made from artist workshops and editions.
With building security now in place, and a recent match-investment from HIE’s Young Business Capital Grant – this programme will focus on increasing access to the now community owned Toogs Artist Workshop, through new open-access workshops, editions, bursaries, peer group, artist talks and exhibitions in collaboration with local artists and national cultural organisations.
This funding will also enable the creation of a new staff post with a focus on programming and alleviating some of the administrative burden currently on our development and workshop staff. This in turn will greatly increase the amount of time Gaada can allocate to supporting artists accessing workshop facilities to produce new work, whilst also crucially enabling a continuation of our ongoing Future Site collaboration with Assemble which is creating a plan to transform the Toogs site into a world-class, sustainable, fit-for-purpose and fully accessible creative facility. Collectively this programme represents a continuation and deepening of Gaada’s support and investment into developing a suitable, sustainable, and secure facility to support high quality and ambitious artist work in Shetland for many years to come.
We are incredibly blyde of the support this programme represents, running for 20 months alleviates the precarity of year-on-year funding, and provides Gaada staff with much needed peace of mind. This funding represents an exciting investment from Scotland towards Shetland, securing good jobs and excellent developmental opportunities for artists.
More details on the programme will be shared next week, but for now we just want to say thank you to Creative Scotland for their practical support which has nourished Gaada over the years. Our next step is to finish our crucial annual application to the Shetland Charitable Trust, our second core funder. Their local investment is equally vital, as it represents opportunities and support for Gaada’s Shetland-focused activities which help create a more inclusive art scene. So we better get on with it…..