FUTURE Culture, a new podcast series delving into what lies ahead for Scotland’s creative communities, has been launched online.
Commissioned by the Culture Collective, it will feature a series of conversations over the coming months with artists and creatives working on a variety of community-based arts projects around Scotland.
The first episode looks at environment and climate, featuring artists and facilitators from Govanhill Baths Community Trust’s Occupy! project; the Tay region’s Cultivate project; the Safe Harbour: Open Sea project in Fittie, Aberdeen; and Skye’s Aiseirigh project.
Episode two will visit the Creative Islands Network, which provides communities from Lewis, Harris, Orkney, Shetland, and North Uist with the opportunity to take part in activities and workshops that aim to improve quality of life.
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The podcasts are hosted by LeithLate founder and Culture Collective creative lead Morvern Cunningham, who said anyone interested in the future of culture in Scotland should tune in.
“It feels like we’re at a turning point as we begin to emerge from the last 24 months, and there’s a sense that conversations surrounding systemic change in the arts and in society, first initiated during lockdown, are not going away,” Morvern said.
“The Future Culture podcast examines topics important to community-based art projects and their practitioners in a really refreshing way, bringing a host of voices from the Culture Collective network to provide new insights and perspectives.
“Anyone interested in the future of culture in Scotland and beyond should be tuning in and reflecting on the provocations examined each week, culminating in a live episode with some of the freshest voices in Scottish culture in conversation today, on March 11. Both I and podcast producer Halina Rifai are very proud of the series so far.”
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Released weekly, each episode will examine pertinent issues such as the role of creative, participatory projects in tackling climate change and how creativity supports health and wellbeing, as well as asking who is typically excluded from creative work and projects and exploring how linguistic and geographic diversity can strengthen communities and creative lives.
Every instalment will include conversations with the people steering the projects. The series was commissioned by Culture Collective, a network of 26 participatory arts projects shaped by local communities alongside artists and creative organisations, created and established in 2021. In six parts, the podcast is based on Starting Points, the Culture Collective event series that took place late last year.
Listen: culturecollective.scot/podcast
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