ABOUT US
Supporting Arts & Living Heritage in Scotland
Who Are We?
Incorporated in late 2024, Expressing Scotland is a Community Interest Company (CIC) based in Scotland. We exist to celebrate and support cultural expression in Scotland in all its guises. From community cultural activities, to local traditions and living heritage projects, to individual expressions of identity, to professional creative and artistic endeavour, it all has value.
What We Do
As experienced specialists in the worlds of arts and living heritage, we provide strategic and operational support and mentorship to cultural leaders, individual cultural practitioners and bearers, groups, and organisations working in the broad areas of arts, everyday culture, and living heritage to better carry out their work and achieve their goals.
Strategic Support
We support clients to strategise in the following ways.
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act as an expert sounding board;
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carry out scoping research/consultation
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review relevant reports and academic literature
We support clients to raise funds for their work. We can:
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Appraise and critique funding applications
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Write funding applications on your behalf
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Offer high-quality funding workshops
We support clients with cultural documentation or research, feeding into, or underpinning, other strategic work. We can:
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Carry out ethical ethnographic fieldwork
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Train others to carry out ethical ethnographic fieldwork
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Carry out literature reviews on topics related to art, culture, and living heritage
Operational Support
We support clients to deliver cultural programmes. We can:
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Curate, produce, and manage engaging cultural programmes e.g., live music programmes.
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Provide expert cultural project management support.
We support clients to monitor, evaluate, and learn from their work. We can:
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Appraise and critique M&E plans
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Support with the creation evaluation frameworks
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Carry out evaluations
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Write engaging evaluation reports
Our Services
We do two things: provide business and
operational support; and run not-for-profit
arts & living heritage projects.
Business Development Support
We have helped many organisations, groups, and individual practitioners to strategise, develop business plans, and write and submit funding applications.
By way of example, we recently successfully supported several organisations through Creative Scotland's Multi-Year Fund (MYF) process, raising just under £1 million for important arts and heritage activity.
Operational Support
We have supported organisations to curate and deliver festival programmes, manage cultural projects, & monitor and evaluate project activity.
By way of example, we are helping a minority-led organisation to evaluate a 2.5 year project exploring the uses of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
Our Projects
We use our profits to co- or match-fund meaningful not-for-profit
projects focused on art and living heritage. Examples include:
A Survey of the Living Music Practices and Traditions of Glen Esk and its Surrounds
Written Scots/Doric in the Environment
The Art of Family Life
The Glenesk Folk Museum and Expressing Scotland CIC are working to survey the musical practices and traditions of Glen Esk, Edzell, and Brechin area in Angus today with a view to developing the museum’s sound archives and compiling a report. In addition to being a valuable historical resource for the future, this report will inform the museum's work on living culture and heritage for the coming years.
In 2011, for the first time in history, the Census collected information about the status of the Scots language in Scotland. It showed, unsurprisingly, that the North-East of Scotland had the highest density of Scots speakers in the country. While it would appear that the number of people using Scots/Doric as their primary vehicle for communication is decreasing, there seems to be, what some have called, a 'renaissance' of sorts in its uses in other domains of life. This on-going project documents some of these changing uses, looking at the presence of written, rather than spoken, Scots/Doric in public places where it perhaps would not have featured widely in the past. It focuses primarily on Aberdeen city, where North-East Scots has arguably become more visible in the cityscape than ever before. This documents examples of this phenomenon and seeks, over time, to learn about and understand it. This is done through interviews with both those who make these expressions as well as those who perceive and react to them.
Recognising the inherent relentless creativity of young family life, this project seeks to document and better understand the expressive forms that emerge between parents/guardians and young children in everyday life. Outputs from this project include articles in academic journals, conference papers, and public talks.
Our Team
Simon Gall, Director
I have 20+ years of experience working in the world of culture as a development professional, performer, and fieldworker/researcher. I have worked in senior roles in university departments, third sector organisations, devising, securing funding for, and delivering numerous cultural projects and programmes. I have also worked as a funding assessor and panellist for national and local cultural funders such as Creative Scotland, Aberdeen City Council, and Dundee City Council.
As an ethnologist, I document, research, and write about culture in everyday life, publishing in academic journals and presenting papers at major conferences. I am passionate about celebrating and, where desired, supporting informal cultural expression. I hold a MLitt with Distinction in Ethnology and Folklore from the Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen.
As a musician I perform, tour, and record with the award-winning band Salsa Celtica, Cuban band Son al Son, and Edinburgh-based salsa dura band Latina Turners. The work I did with Clype from 2015–2018 saw us nominated for Album of the Year at the BBC Alba Trad Awards in 2016 and, in 2017, I was nominated for Scots Singer of the Year at the same awards. With these bands I have toured widely across the world and performed at prestigious festivals, venues, and events such as Glastonbury Festival, Celtic Connections, The South Bank, and so on.
What Our Clients Say
LET'S CHAT
We'd love to hear from you
We’re always delighted to hear from people with a passion for art and living heritage. Please get in touch using the form. We respond to every message.
