Arts and culture overview

The Arts Service supports and promotes a wide range of cultural activities and events, provides information about sources of arts funding, and other resources as well as help with planning and coordinating arts activities and events for local festivals and galas.

If you would like advice and support to implement your own programme, please contact the Arts Service.

East Lothian Visual Artists and Craft Makers Awards (VACMA)

Run in partnership with Creative Scotland, the Visual Artist and Craft Makers Awards (VACMA) are available for individual artists and makers, based or resident in East Lothian.
The purpose of these bursaries is to support visual artists and craft makers in their creative and professional development.

The VACMA scheme offers two levels of bursaries:

• Bursaries of £1,000 (For applicants that have been practicing for over 5 years, regardless of whether they have gone through formal education or not.)
• Early-career bursaries of £500 (For artists and makers who have graduated within the past 3 years or those who can demonstrate experience of the public presentation of their work within the same timeframe.)

In addition, requests for support towards Personal Access Costs will be considered. Personal Access Costs are treated separately to your bursary request, this is to ensure that applicants with access needs are able to use the full bursary for their planned activity.

Further funding rounds will be announced here.

Creative Scotland

Creative Scotland distributes funding for the arts, screen and creative industries from two primary sources, the Scottish Government and the National Lottery.

Creative Scotland funding opportunities