Scotland’s Winter Festivals aim to mobilise the people of Scotland and those with an affinity to Scotland to join in the St Andrew’s Day, and Burns Night celebrations, boosting Scotland’s key tourism and events sectors and the wider economy, enhancing community engagement and raising Scotland’s international profile.
Our diverse ethnic and cultural minority communities are key elements of Scotland’s past, present and future so we want to ensure that your story, history, and narrative plays a full part in Scotland’s Winter Festivals.
BEMIS, in partnership with the Scottish Government over the last few years, have been providing funding to diverse local community groups to stage their own bespoke celebrations of these days.
For the 2021/22 SWF programme we are providing funding to organisations to celebrate St Andrew’s Day and Burns Night.
- St. Andrew’s Day: Tuesday 30th November 2021
(Events from Friday 26th to Tuesday 30th November 2021) - Burns Night: Tuesday 25th January 2022
(Events from Friday 21st to Tuesday 25th January 2022)
St Andrew’s Day
Building on the success of our Scotland’s Winter Festivals programme, which has been running since 2014, BEMIS are delighted to announce that we will be continuing our collaboration with the Fair Saturday Foundation (founded in Bilbao, Spain) and will integrate our ‘St Andrew’s Fair Saturday Festival’ into the international celebration of arts, culture and diverse communities.
BEMIS and Fair Saturday believe that the arts and cultures of Scotland have a pivotal role to play in helping to shape our cities, towns, villages and communities into thriving, confident and representative places. Thus, like we have for the last few years, we will encourage events to act as a catalyst for additional positive impacts in our communities.
Events can be held from Friday 26th November to Tuesday 30th November 2021.
You can find out more about St Andrew’s Fair Saturday on their website:
Burns Day
BEMIS Scotland are calling on our communities to begin 2022 with a positive celebration of Burns Night on 25 January 2022. Burns Night offers us the opportunity to share food together, if safely, or online. Alongside food, music, poetry, and storytelling are all parts of a multicultural Burns night and can form part of any event. So please, consider joining us and others across the country by taking part in our Scotland’s Winter Festivals small grants scheme and bring multicultural Burns Nights to homes across the country.
Events can take place from Friday 21st January to Tuesday 25th January 2022.
Rami Ousta, BEMIS CEO
The Multicultural Winter Festival program continues to present a unique framework for all to participate, contribute and showcase their cultural heritage at several levels.
Our multicultural heritage in Scotland can only be celebrated and cherished as an exceptional platform through which we can sustain, enhance and progress our active citizenship and inclusive national identity while advancing our community cooperation and active contribution in our efforts to enhance our collective recovery following the pandemic.
We are certainly dedicated to nourishing and advancing our collaborative relationships with the Scottish Government and other key stakeholders to enable and progress equal participation of the diverse communities again.
Jenny Gilruth MSP, Minister for Culture, Europe and International Development:
The multi-cultural celebration of Scotland’s Winter Festivals has gone from strength to strength. Last year’s programme delivered 53 virtual events and reached an estimated 53,000 people across many different communities and I’m sure this year’s programme will build on that tremendous success.
This year the Scottish Government is providing BEMIS Scotland with £82,500 to help Scotland’s diverse ethnic and cultural minority community deliver a fantastic programme of multicultural events this winter.
I invite communities from across Scotland to come together to join in the St Andrew’s Day and Burns celebrations to showcase the vibrancy of modern Scotland in all of our diversity and to celebrate building an ever more inclusive, outward-looking, internationalist and welcoming Scotland, together.
How to Apply
- Guidelines [PDF]
- Application Form [DOCX]
Please submit your completed application form to:
Deadline for applications
- For St Andrew’s Day events: Friday 19th November 2021
- For Burns Night events: Monday 17th January 2022
