Creative Scotland, the national leader for Scotland’s arts, screen and creative industries, today announces almost £500,000 investment in eight new innovative and interdisciplinary creative collaborations.

The Vital Spark programme, made possible through Scottish Government’s Innovation Fund, encourages experimentation, radical new work and innovative approaches to engaging with audiences.  Selected projects include dynamic collaborations exploring the crossovers between art and medicine; art and language evolution; and an international collaboration inspired by the films of Alfred Hitchcock and co-produced with London’s Southbank Centre.

Vital Spark awards of between £30,000 and £99,953 support collaborations between talented artists and professional practitioners working across a broad range of sectors including the creative industries, medical and education sectors.

Venu Dhupa, Director of Creative Development said; “The Vital Spark awards are a unique opportunity for artists to forge new partnerships and experiment with professionals working in other sectors.  Intriguing mixtures of language evolution and music, film and promenade theatre or public sound performances will stretch individual creative practice and lead to ambitious new work. Investing in talent is integral to Creative Scotland’s role and I look forward to seeing the work that is produced from these awards.”

Fiona Hyslop, Minister for Culture and External affairs said; “The Vital Spark Awards celebrate two of Scotland’s great strengths - innovation and creativity. The winning projects, with their collaborative approach, are sure to inspire and provoke thought and at the same time will enhance our nation’s global reputation for creative excellence.”

Vital Sparks winners 2011 are:

• Award winning actor and director, Cora Bisset, playwright, David Greig, digital media artist, Kim Beveridge and Edinburgh based electropop musicians, Swimmer One will create a performance event which will bring together leading Scottish Bands with leading Scottish writers to be released as compilation album and performed as live event. (£85,000)
• Inspired by the films of Alfred Hitchcock, choreographer and performer, Colette Sadler (Stammer Production) will work with Visual Artists, Rafael Vincent and Austrian composer, Noid, to create a piece exploring the themes of strangeness’ and disorientation.  Familiar meetings in a stranger place than home will be co-produced with the Southbank Centre (London) and Jardine D’Europe (a network of European dance institutions) and will tour Europe with performances at Glasgow (Traverse), Nottingham (Dance 4), Belgium (Vooruit) and Berlin, Germany (Sophiensaele). (£58,000)
• Turner prize nominee, Christine Borland, who works in the territories of art, ethics and medical humanities and Brody Condon, a New York based new-media artists have teamed up with Glasgow Sculpture Studios and a team of medical education experts to create a live performance. Circles of Focus explores the cross over between art and autonomy and will tour medical and arts institutions across Scotland as part of the Mobile Clinical Skills Unit. (£93,294)
• Visual Artists, Thomson and Craighead, and sound designer John Cobban from Glasgow have collaborated with writer Steve Rushton based in Rotterdam and GPS software developer Matt Jarvis based in the Netherlands to create a documentary artwork made entirely from information found on the World Wide Web.  The documentary will explore the notion of belief as mediated by online social networks. (£30,000)
• Visual artist and musician, Raydale Dower will join forces with Glasgow School of Art’s Digital Design Studio (DDS) in partnership with Arup Acoustics, one of the world's leading acoustic consultancies and Tramway to develop a series of installations and performances exploring sound as sculpture and ambisonics audio technology. (£62,000)
• Visual Artist, Graham Fagen and Theatre Director Graham Eatough, will collaborate with film-maker Michael McDonough (Winters Bone) to develop Crime and Punishment, a live event and an installation that will be shown at Glasgow’s Tramway and a film that will be film shown through Scotland and internationally. The project is one of the key commissions within the Director’s programme for Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art 2012. (£99,953)
• Edinburgh-based arts collective/ experimental pop band, Found have joined forces with Glasgow-based singer-songwriter, Aidan Moffat, and Professor Simon Kirby from the University of Edinburgh’s Language Evolution and Computation Research Unit to develop, Unravel, a new form of dynamic non-linear storytelling that reacts to audiences and context.  Works will be exhibited in at Inspace, Edinburgh and SWG3, Glasgow. (£40,000)
• The Scottish Poetry Library will collaborate with Reel Festival on a programme of exchanges with Scottish, Syrian and Lebanon writers, musicians and film makers. (£30,000)

Vital Sparks investment creates a unique network of partnerships that allow for in-depth research, enhancing both the artist’s professional practice and the audience experience. Previous Awards (2010) are now coming to fruition with the Inventors of Tradition project – created by  Atelier (Beca Lipscombe and Lucy McKenzie), Panel (Catriona Duffy and Lucy McEachan) and exhibition designers Martha - currently on Stockwell Street, Glasgow until the end of February, and Rob Drummond’s Wrestling show opening at the Arches this Wednesday.