Events

EMCC & Culture Counts: Summer Working Group, 6 August 2025

Culture Counts and EMCC are inviting participants to join a short-life working group, aiming to share learning and advocate for fairer and more inclusive cultural policy as we approach the 2026 Scottish elections. We will be hosting three online sessions over the summer, which offer space to discuss and explore together the conditions, barriers and opportunities of a cultural sector that is of, by and for everyone in Scotland.

Our third event:

• Wednesday 6 August, 3pm-4.30pm, online
  Host and speaker TBC.

Purpose and approach

We will kick-off each event with a series of prompts for discussion. These may come from one of the commissioned artists who recently created work under the theme of “dreaming of a fairer future for culture”, and / or from an invited guest with experience to share. We’ll then move into more open discussion, asking attendees to share their experiences of working to create a more accessible and inclusive cultural programme. We’ll be asking you to reflect on challenges and barriers, as well as successes and enabling factors. We hope that these events will be both an opportunity to learn from, and share with, a network of peers, and also offer an opportunity for us to think together about how we might advocate (at a Government and policy level) for a cultural environment that helps this kind of work to thrive.

What to expect

You may attend one or more of these events; it is not expected or required that you are able to attend all three. We will be capping numbers at 30 people per event, to help us chat and share openly together. If interest exceeds these numbers we may be in touch to ask that you attend a smaller number of events in the series, to enable a diversity of views to be heard. Creative-sector freelancers are welcome to attend, as are those from cultural organisations of all kinds, and membership / network bodies too. The online meetings will operate under the Chatham House rule, meaning that we (and you) may draw from the discussions shared in future work, but may not attribute anything said to any person or organisation. 

Sign up: https://forms.gle/Ffrfhdg7UoAp9hvA9

This work is supported by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, and delivered by Culture Counts and EMCC with support from Matt Hickman and Ica Headlam.