What:
A major new interdisciplinary project for the Year of Natural Scotland 2013, Imagining Natural Scotland was initiated by Creative Scotland, Scottish Natural Heritage and the University of St Andrews. Imagining Natural Scotland aims to encourage cross-sectoral engagement and knowledge exchange, among environmental historians, scientists, ecologists, artists, creative producers and curators.

Central to the first phase of the project was a funding stream for collaborative projects where teams had the opportunity to apply for up to £10,000 to support their work.

Why we like it:
Fifteen projects have been awarded funding including artist Duncan Marquiss who will make a film observing his father, the biologist Mick Marquiss and Stephen Hurrell for a short film on the marine environment of the Firth of Clyde. Also funded is a collaboration between electronic composer Mark Lyken, filmmaker Emma Dove and Aberdeen University Ecologists, exploring Scotland’s ecological consciousness through a deconstruction of natural history filmmaking. For a full list of all successful applications to the Imagining Natural Scotland project fund, please visit here.

More: Website | Vimeo | Twitter

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For more creative delights we’ve Spotted on the web take a look here.

Creative Scotland have recently embarked on a programme of change, transforming the way their funding body operates. The key themes of which were announced in the Board statement of 7 December 2012.
They want to hear directly from those they will be supporting. This is your chance to share your ideas, knowledge and concerns in sessions with guest speakers, group discussions and open debate.

They will address the following:
- What kind of future do people working in the arts, screen and creative industries want to see and how can Creative Scotland support that vision?
- How do they get the balance right in terms of supporting the arts, screen and the creative industries? What are the challenges and what are the opportunities and how can we collectively take better advantage of these?

The output from these sessions will help inform future operational and policy direction for Creative Scotland and will influence the change work that will follow through 2013/14.

The Open Sessions will occur across the following cities and dates:
DCA, Dundee on 15 March (Fully Booked)
Dovecot, Edinburgh on 19 March (Fully Booked)
The Beacon, Greenock on 11 April
Eden Court, Inverness on 16 April
Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, Skye, on 23 April
Easterbrook Hall, Dumfries, on 25 April
Platform, Glasgow, on 26 April (Fully Booked)
The Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, on 29 April

Each session will run for 4 hours (with an hour for networking) and refreshments will be provided. Spaces have been very popular and therefore, Creative Scotland are planning to announce additional sessions soon. There will also be opportunities to contribute to the debate remotely via this website and via #csopen on Twitter.

The key themes from these sessions will be presented on this website for further discussion and contributions. Pat Kane, musician, journalist and cultural commentator, will act as informal Chair for the events and will blog about the key ideas being raised.

Find out more:
Website | Twitter

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Browse through our event bulletin to find more events.

Edinburgh based Julia McLean is a trained stop frame animator and model maker.

In 2008 Julia was commissioned to write, direct and animate ‘The Finger Trap’, a short stop frame production which went on to win the Scottish BAFTA New Talent Award for Best Animation in 2009.

Find out more about Julia’s work here & see more of her films on Vimeo.

There are only 8 days left – get yourself featured in our 50×50 promotion and in the running for cash prizes. Find out how here.

Central Station was launched in September 2009. It began life as an ambitious digital project that could be used as a tool to facilitate creative works, as well as a place to make connections. The birth of the project can be read in full here in the opening pages of the Central Station book (it’s an interesting read, you should have a look).

We commissioned projects with professional partners and organisations, such as: Sound Image Art with Roddy Buchanan & Savalas; White Bikes with NVA; Phil Kay does GI; Social Landscape with David Zarah & Patricia Fleming Projects; Shadow Screen with Paul Kerlaff; Art/Roc/Doc to name just a few. We had pop-up events in Glasgow & in Dundee and, on top of this, we gave away £1500 a month to projects within our community. You can read all of these in the Member Fund blog.

It was a self contained community where members were showcased and encouraged to promote and discuss their work and methods. Fast forward to September 2011, and the Central Station community on Facebook & Twitter are just as vocal and active as the membership on the site. Somewhere in the past 2 years artists and creatives have embraced social networks as a form of promotion and audience building. We liked what we saw and got to work on finding ways to shift our methods to better suit the changing environment.

Cut to the new – improved – Central Station.

Our ethos stays the same – we aim to support, showcase and make accessible creative work from Scotland, the UK and beyond. How we go about doing it has changed slightly. With progression in technology comes some brilliant advancements in how creatives can engage online. All of our content is an amalgamation of this engagement.

We’ve selected a handful of networks where we will have a presence. These were chosen carefully from investigating where our site members were uploading their work and from talking to the community. That isn’t to say that we won’t add to them later – we love a social network and are always open to suggestion – we just wanted to stay contained for the moment until we all have a chance to work together in this new wider network.

We’ve divided our networks into two ways of communicating: Creative platforms [such as Vimeo & Behance] to build a database of creatives who want to share their work and find others to work with; and Social platforms [like Twitter & StumbleUpon] to showcase these members of our creative community. It’s more a networks of networks, if you like.

So there you have it. Supported by Creative Scotland and engineered by ISO, Central Station Mark II is just what it says on the tin – The Creative Social Network.

I got my first pay packet at the age of 13 as a stand-in film actor, then various teenage jobs as potato picker, milkman, bar musician and ironmonger’s assistant where my first payslip was a massive £1.25 for 5 hours work.  My first real jobs were as a Youth Theatre Director, Rock Music Promoter and administrator of Major Road Theatre Company. I then went on to be a local authority arts officer in Hull also running film theatres and festivals before moving to Newcastle as Assistant Director of Northern Arts.

As a rock promoter in Bradford I was booking new talent like U2, Annie Lennox, Dire Straits and Elvis Costello and our gigs were renowned for never being more than £1 on a Wednesday and £2 on a Saturday.

With Major Road we took shows to teenage audiences and ran summer residencies building shows in parks and outdoor venues.

I was a local authority arts officer at an amazing time when Hull Truck Theatre Company was selling out Edinburgh with its shows Bouncers and Up and Under. I’ll be best remembered in Hull for the film festival that brought John Cleese, Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam to town.

At Northern Arts where I went on to be Chief Executive I was the ‘missionary’ for selling the arts to places that had no venues. I also developed the major capital strategy and went on to help projects such as the Angel of the North, The Sage Gateshead and Baltic. The hardest job by far was being a milkman which I did with a mate called Peter Gibbs, now the BBC’s weatherman.

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We’ve asked professionals in creative industries what jobs they have had in the past to get their foot through the door (or at least pay the rent). For more in the “My First 5 Jobs” series look here.