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Huntly celebrates £40,000 Creative Place Award

The community of Huntly is celebrating today (January 24) as it is announced that it will receive a £40,000 special award in recognition of being one of the country's most creative places.

Huntly narrowly missed winning the £100,000 award for places with fewer than 10,000 residents, which was awarded to West Kilbride, but its creative programme impressed the judges so much that the town received a special award of £40,000.

The Creative Place Awards celebrate and recognise the hard work and imagination that contributes to the rich cultural life of a community, as well as its social and economic well-being. The Awards are part of the Year of Creative Scotland 2012, a year-long celebration of our nation’s cultural and creative strengths.

The community of Huntly impressed the judges with their long-standing creative programmes which involve the whole community. Huntly has re-branded the town through the use of arts; many of its projects have been led by some of the most exciting international artists. The town developed strong links with the international creative community across the globe through its trailblazing ‘town is the venue’ programme.

The award will allow Huntly to expand its Room to Roam programme by developing new collaborations, including a creative food project, looking at new visual approaches for the town and developing a joined-up marketing approach.

VisitScotland Regional Director Shona Anderson said: “This is fantastic news for Huntly. Our culture is one of our greatest assets and this year offers a tremendous opportunity to bring together local creativity from across every part of Scotland and show our visitors what we’re made of. Tourism is a hotbed for creativity and Aberdeenshire has a long creative history, but it’s only by working together and harnessing enthusiasm that we can truly make the most of the Year of Creative Scotland.”

Andrew Dixon, Chief Executive of Creative Scotland and Chair of the Judging panel, said: “The Year of Creative Scotland and the Creative Place Awards provide a unique opportunity to celebrate and reward places across Scotland that contribute to a Scotland’s strength as a creative nation.

“From the Highlands to the Borders, Scotland is a rich tapestry of thriving and vibrant creative communities. The awards will allow these communities to enhance their creative programmes, which will in-turn raise their profile nationally and internationally and attract further visitors.

“It was tough task for the jury to choose just three out of the nine outstanding places nominated, all of which showed substantial vitality, energy and creativity. This is the first year of the awards and we hope to see even more places putting themselves forward next year.”

Other beneficiaries of the awards are:

• Wigtown - received £50,000 in the category for places with fewer than 2,500 residents. Each year over 15,000 people flock to Wigtown for its hugely successful Book Festival; the award will allow this to be developed into a year-round programme - including a residential creative writing course and a high-profile Wigtown Lecture.

• West Kilbride received £100k in the category for places with fewer than 10,000 residents. The award will allow Craft Town Scotland, a community initiative, to develop a new series of exhibitions for The Barony Centre and develop new programmes to involve younger, and older, members of the community in their creative programme.

• St Andrews received £150,000 in the category for places with fewer than 100,000 residents. The runners up were Irvine and Perth. St Andrews will be hosting its own Year of Celebration in 2012 and the award will allow the town to promote its already rich cultural programme to the UK and International visitors and to support a new community musical theatre production ‘Macpherson’s Rant’ as the years centre piece production.

• Creetown won a special award of £40,000 for community engagement and high levels of participation in high quality arts and creativity.

The Creative Place Awards aim to celebrate the value of creativity to the social and economic wellbeing of smaller communities across Scotland, and to reward the hard work and imagination of such places. The Awards were not open to the nation’s cities. £1million will be invested over three years from 2012 – 2014 through the initiative. The scheme will be open for applications to the Creative Place Awards 2013 towards the end of February. More details can be found here: http://www.creativescotland.com/explore/2012-2014/year-of-creative-scotland-2012/creative-place-awards

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