In 2013, we will be work­ing with all the Roof­less part­ners; Shet­land Arts, South Ayr­shire Coun­cil, Dum­fries & Gal­loway Coun­cil, Holy­wood Trust, The­atre Modo, The Helix Trust, Falkirk Com­mu­nity Trust and British Water­ways, to share exist­ing work and cre­ate new work. This will lead to a col­lab­o­ra­tion across the Roof­less net­work in 2014.

Roof­less is Scotland’s biggest, most ambi­tious out­door arts pro­gramme, designed to engage directly with tens of thou­sands of peo­ple in com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try, in Ayr­shire, Shet­land, Glas­gow, Dum­friesshire, Aberdeen­shire and Falkirk.

Artist Olivier Grossetête’s “People’s Tower” for Roof­less @ Mer­chant City Fes­ti­val 2012

In its incar­na­tion in 2012, Roof­less, cre­ated and pro­duced by Scot­tish arts com­pany UZ Arts, worked closely with part­ners from each region as well as artists from across Scot­land, the UK and Europe to cre­ate five large-​scale, spec­tac­u­lar, out­door arts events (every­thing from inter­ac­tive sculp­ture to pyrotech­nic the­atre), hap­pen­ing within communities.

Although each project is dis­tinctly dif­fer­ent and rooted in the local his­tory and cul­ture of its region, they all came about through a series of par­tic­i­pa­tion events and work­shops, var­i­ous com­mu­nity groups work­ing with pro­fes­sional artists towards a spec­tac­u­lar finale.

Dub Mush­rooms per­form­ing at Greyfri­ars Kirk for Dum­fries & Galloway’s Halls of Fame

Roof­less has also been build­ing up a net­work of like-​minded artists and pro­duc­ers involved in pub­lic art across the coun­try. Many of the areas we’ve worked with are those iden­ti­fied in 2008’s Tak­ing Part report as the least likely to engage with art events, whether due to eco­nomic dis­ad­van­tage or, in more rural areas, geo­graph­i­cal spread. As Roof­less also runs across acces­si­ble dig­i­tal and social media plat­forms, we can con­nect com­mu­ni­ties across Scot­land and the world on an even larger scale.

Roof­less is funded by Cre­ative Scot­land, IN SITU, South Ayr­shire Coun­cil, The Helix Trust, Dum­fries and Gal­loway Coun­cil, The Holy­wood Trust, Shet­land Arts, Shell and The Reach­ing Out Project Aberdeen­shire. Roof­less is proud to have been part of The Year of Cre­ative Scot­land in 2012 and will con­tinue as part of The Year of Nat­ural Scot­land in 2013.