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Dateline: 13th February, 2008

Inspire-ed by SAC

The Scottish Arts Council has launched Inspire, a major new Lottery fund for the development of "exciting, innovative projects to inspire and encourage the people of Scotland to participate in the arts and become creative, imaginative members of a confident, cultured nation".

The £8 million fund is designed to encourage:

• More involvement – increasing the number and range of people enjoying and taking part in the arts, particularly arts activity for and by children and young people.
• Wider involvement – making the arts available to those who have had little opportunity to participate in the past; ensuring a fair geographic spread of activities; and supporting projects across artforms and technologies.
• Better involvment – increasing further the quality of arts activities by supporting creative, ambitious projects.

Inspire is an opportunity for a wide range of organisations, including arts organisations, voluntary and community groups, to apply for Lottery funding. Priority will be given to applications which demonstrate that they extend the reach and nature of engagement with the arts, ensure quality artistic engagement and create potential for new, creative cross sectoral partnerships.

A key aim of Inspire is to fund projects which seek to remove any identified barriers to participation in the arts.

There is no minimum or maximum funding level and the application has been designed to be a simple open process to encourage proposals for imaginative and transformative projects. The project must be for the public benefit, meet all or some of the aims of Inspire and demonstrate lasting outcomes to inspire arts, practice and people.

One of the key priorities of Inspire is to remove barriers and engage groups who may not previously have had access to the arts. For example research by the Scottish Arts Council has shown that elderly people or people with disabilities are 13% less likely to participate in any form of culture, and that overall attendance and participation amongst people in deprived areas is below the national average.

The deadline for outline applications is 5th May, 2008. This is a one-off opportunity and there will be no further open submission dates. Final decisions on full application project grants will be taken by February 2009 and SAC expects the majority of funded activity to have taken place by March 2010.

The decision making process is in three stages:

• An initial open Outline Application process with one submission date of 5th May ,2008
• Shortlisted proposals will be awarded development funding and support
• Then a competitive process will run for fully developed project applications with decisions by February 2009

Full details can be found on the SCA website at www.scottisharts.org.uk/inspire

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©Peter Lathan 2008