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, Hogmanay and Burns 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.
Scotland’s Winter Festivals 2020/2021
This year’s SWF fund is a bit different to that of previous years, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictions it has imposed.
Burns Day
BEMIS Scotland are calling on our communities to begin 2021 with a positive celebration of Burns Night on 25 January 2021. Burns Night offers us the opportunity to share food together – in person if restrictions allow in tier 1 and 2 areas, or online if in tiers 3 or 4. 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 Scottish Winter Festivals small grants scheme and bring multicultural Burns Nights to homes across the country
Multicultural Acts of Kindness
We have opened our Acts of Kindness fund to allow local groups to play their part in St Andrew’s Day to celebrate and support and reward others in their community.
We would call on all to utilise St Andrew’s Day as a marked day to showcase such acts of kindness and appreciation. We are opening the small grants fund in this unprecedented year to help organisations and communities to instigate an ‘Act of Kindness’ in and from their communities. These Acts of Kindness could be directed from communities to their local health service, their broader community or isolated community members. An Act of Kindness can be the provision of food, art and crafts materials and online art session to send dedications to frontline workers, recorded video messages, online events, or other new ways of sharing between each other in these difficult times. We will provide guidance in developing social media material to ensure your Act of Kindness is shared across Scotland.
Read more and apply here:
Artistic Messages to Scotland
Working with our long-term partners, the Fair Saturday Foundation (Bilbao) and Celtic Connections international music festival, we want to mobilise community musicians, poets, singers and artists to host online concerts, events or pre-recorded collaborations to be open to the people of Scotland and around the world. All of our events will be uploaded to the international Fair Saturday events platform where communities across the world will have access to the live links and streams you provide.
Artistic Messages to Scotland can be held on or around St Andrew’s Day and on or around Burns Day in January 2021.
In addition, working with Celtic Connections, we will ensure that despite these challenging times Scotland’s minority ethnic communities will continue to play their part in shaping and participating in the world’s best international music festival. We are working with the festival, due to take place in a digital format in January 2021, to ensure that the multicultural Artistic Messages to Scotland opportunity is part of this collaboration.
