Following on from the success of the Beltane Sparks programme in 2019, the four Edinburgh Universities are delighted to announce a call for the new ‘Creative Sparks’ programme, bringing together researchers and artists to create impactful engaging experiences for the public.
Successful applicants will get the opportunity to work with independent creatives and artists to develop new and innovative partnerships, focused on engaging the public in research. Groups will then have the opportunity to pitch for funding to deliver pilot activities and supported in the development of larger scale Creative Scotland bids.
The call is open to researchers from the four Edinburgh Universities (the Beltane Network) with an interest in public engagement, from PhD students to Professors with any level of and public engagement experience. During the half day workshop, attendees will work in cross-disciplinary groups with an artist to come up with innovative public engagement projects within cross-institute, multi-disciplinary teams.
The Beltane Network is the cooperative partnership between the four Edinburgh Universities, designed to support and advance a culture of public engagement with research at its partner universities. It aims to make it easier for researchers to undertake excellent, impactful public engagement with research and for partner organisations and individuals to locate and work successfully with our researchers.
Teams will pitch their idea, Dragons-Den style, to a prestigious panel, who will award £2000 to the winning team to pilot their idea.
All applicants must be available to attend the workshop in Edinburgh from 1-5pm on Wednesday 22 September at the Eric Liddell Centre, Edinburgh/
Timescales and Decision making
Please apply to take part through this short application form by 12pm on the 1st September.
Your application will be assessed by a selection panel of public engagement experts from the four Edinburgh Universities. We will inform applicants of the outcomes of the decision-making process by 10 September, so please save the date. Any questions, please contact the public engagement leads at your institution:
Heriot-Watt University – Dr Laura Wicks – engage@hw.ac.uk
Edinburgh Napier University – RIEevents@napier.ac.uk
Queen Margaret University – Kim Stuart – kstuart@qmu.ac.uk
University of Edinburgh – Dr Fiona Murray – ero-public.engagement@ed.ac.uk
