Commoning is a practice of collaborating and sharing to meet everyday needs and achieve well-being, of individuals, communities and lived-in environments through shared resources and community. It is rooted in mutual and reciprocal benefit. 

AAS Members will now cast their vote on the applications they most want to see funded via participatory budgeting. Participatory budgeting is a democratic process where AAS Member votes are used to inform how the total available budget is allocated to applications. 

• All current AAS Members (Professional, Associate and International) are eligible to vote for the applications they wish to see funded.
• All Members who vote will identify a minimum of two applications they would like to see funded
• The number of votes will be totalled for each application.
• Funds will be awarded based on the vote totals starting with the application that received the highest number of votes, until the available £10,000 is allocated.

We received three applications that fit the eligibility criteria. Read on to hear more about them, and details on how to cast your vote.

Round One Applicants

Enhancing Creative Practice through Digital Play. As makers we know the value of creative play. Yet daily pressures squeeze it out. This proposal is siix-month supported activity, motivated by fun, for five AAS members to seriously look into how creative purposeful play can enhance their practice.

Project Lead Ann Marie Shillito.

Read the full application here.

Mearns Creative Collective is a new maker/arts collective meeting monthly to build community, support sustainable careers, collaboration, and knowledge sharing. No arts/makers network or hub exists in The Mearns. We are seeking ways to satisfy those needs through innovative and creative approaches. 

Project Lead Carrie Fertig.

Read the full application here.

Reciprocity: Closing The Loop sharing of skills, resources and insights on sustainable making. 

Project Lead: Inge Paneels.

Read the full application here.

Read through each application then cast your vote using the form below, or click here.

Member vote is now closed

Commoning Craft Fund

A total of up to £10,000 is available for AAS Members to develop activity that supports the maker community in Scotland. 

• Applicants must have been an active Member of AAS as at 1 August 2025, and remain a member throughout the period of the award.
• Applications can be in the range of £1,000 – £5,000 (excluding access costs, funded separately) 
• The activity must address a need or challenge identified by multiple makers in Scotland related to sustaining a making practice, and be related to acts of commoning, mutual benefit and reciprocity. 
• Any type of activity is eligible, as long as it is appropriate to address the need identified. 
• All activity should take place between January – June 2026. 
• Activities can run as a single event or across up to six months. 
• Makers delivering activity should be paid at Scottish Artist Union rates for 2025-26. 
• Activity can be physical and / or digital. Online activity can be supported by access to AAS’s Zoom Workplace Pro account and / or presence on the AAS website, as appropriate to the activity. 
• AAS will promote the activity to AAS Members.
• You must not be in receipt of funding for the same activity from another source.
• You must hold a UK bank account to receive funds.

Participatory budgeting will be used to make the awards. This is a democratic process where AAS Member votes are used to inform how the total available budget is allocated to applications. 

Timeline

• Deadline for applications: 23:59 Wednesday 15 October 2025
• Eligibility assessment of applications by AAS Board and freelance staff: by Wednesday 22 October 2025
• Feedback to applicants of ineligible applications: by Friday 24 October 2025
• Member voting on eligible applications opens: Friday 31 October 2025
• Member vote closes: 23:59 Sunday 23 November 2025
• Applicants notified of the outcome of their eligible applications: by 17:00 Friday 28 November 2025
• Contracts issued and signed: by mid-December 2025
• Funded activity period: January – June 2026
• All funded activity completed: no later than end June 2026
• Evaluation meeting with AAS: after activity completed and before end July 2026

Participatory budgeting and AAS Member voting

If the total amount requested across all eligible applications exceeds £10,000, we will ask AAS members to vote on the applications they most want to see funded. In this case, relevant information from eligible applications will be shared with AAS Members in the member-only section of the AAS website.

• All current AAS Members (Professional, Associate and International) will be eligible to vote for the applications they wish to see funded.
• All Members who vote will identify a minimum of three applications they would like to see funded
• The number of votes will be totalled for each application.
• Funds will be awarded based on the vote totals starting with the application that received the highest number of votes, until the available £10,000 is allocated.

If the total amount requested across all eligible applications is £10,000 or below, then all activities will be funded and no Member vote will be required.

Enhancing Creative Practice through Digital Play

As makers we know the value of creative play. Yet daily pressures squeeze it out. This proposal is six-month supported activity, motivated by fun, for five AAS members to seriously look into how creative purposeful play can enhance their practice.

‘Applied Arts Scotland recognise there is a clear need for makers to share their skills, processes and creations with a range of audiences and colleagues’ (quote from DISTANCE Call to Makers).

Last year, two of us focused on play and purposeful play as ways into exploring our creativity, gain resilience, new skills, open new creative pathways. ‘Purposeful meandering’ gave us the freedom to control pace and explore our self-determined, creative path. We gave two presentations on our experiences to our peers (AAS Older Makers group and past members of Making Design Circular). I am now drafting more detailed research around the importance of play for inspiration and stimulating our practices. The interest received prompted this proposal.

Play, like flow, is “a state of mind that we have when absorbed in an activity that provides enjoyment and a suspension of sense of time” (Brown and Vaughan 2009). Playfulness in ‘adults has a positive correlation with an individual’s intellectual curiosity and love of learning’ (Marais 2022) and curiosity is essential to play as it opens our eyes to the new and undiscovered, to seek out new experiences.

Some distinctive features of creative play are divergent thinking, broad associations, cognitive flexibility, problem solving, imagination, improvisation, pleasure, and absorption (Vygotsky, 1976) (Russ, 2014). These are also essential elements of the creative process. (Bateson, 2014). Playful (creative) play may remain without purpose, but it has the potential to provide the experience, environment and insight that can generate new forms of expression or problem-solving techniques (Bateson, 2014). What’s not to like! https://www.britishcouncil.org/programmes/creative-play/defining-creative-play-literature-review-part-2)

The value of creative play is rated on a personal basis as we function differently. The pressure of earning a living from our craft can be an obstacle to squeezing play time in because adult play seems so frivolous, hard to rationalise when time is precious. Having support to take time out from our work to give ourselves permission to indulge in pure play lowers a barrier.

Learning an additional skill through play is a neat way to justify making time to play. This additional skill is digital 3D modelling using a programme geared for play, fun and easy to learn and use.

The enthusiasm that AAS members embraced Distance Virtual Reality project demonstrates willingness to try digital technologies where these are straightforward, accessible and with payback as part of professional development. The digital 3D modelling programme we provide is great for unstructured play, purposeful play, concept generation, prototyping and accessing 3D digital technologies such as 3D printing, with potential to facilitate a more sustainable practice.

This project is an exciting way for me to share my skills and experience and participate too to expand my knowledge with 3D digital play.

Describe the activity, including how this is the best way to address the need / challenge identified at Q4.

This project will give five AAS members the opportunity to explore free play as a methodology and deliberate strategy to unlock new perspectives and ideas.
They will have for 5 months a dedicated laptop pre-loaded with the 3D modelling programme, and ‘haptic’ device. Reason for a haptic system will become clear with use.

Fortnightly online group sessions:

• Support: encourage individual approaches to ‘play’
• Discussions: seriously explore characteristics of play, how creative play enhances individual practice, and impact
• Final session: share outcomes with wider maker community

Topics for discussions:

• Types of creative play: factors linking into play – flow, tacit knowledge, serendipity, curiosity, constraints, etc.
• Toncept generation, prototyping, 3D tech, circular economy
• Issues aligned with AAS’s “making sustainable livelihoods” strategy

Resources (online):

• Presentation/research on ‘play’/‘purposeful play’
• Anarkik3DDesign tutorials
• Signal /WhatsApp group: inter-group communication, sharing information, co-working, assistance

3D Digital Consequences’: last 6 weeks, fun iterative project, swopping 3D digital models to transform. Project consolidates much that has been learnt.

Compared to residencies/workshops, digital technology makes project more inclusive, accessible, wider ranging, over a longer time span:

• Not geographically constrained
• Activity: own time, place, pace, within context of disciplines
• No 3D digital experience required: confidence using digital technology necessary (online tutorials, group meetings. Useful apps eg screen capture, image editing, etc.)

Hands-on play best way to discover affordances/constraints of new-to-you technology.

Anarkik3DDesign is innovative. Force feedback haptics enables users to feel and touch their virtual models:

• Haptic capability: facilitates, encourages play
• Virtual touch: weird at first – like playing with real world objects
• Learning a digital skill: neat way to justify indulging in play time
• Haptic device provides full 3D interaction: natural coherent interface

In searches most activities are about children’s play. https://tinyurl.com/4huadjct
Closest adult activity: 2-hour online CPD workshop exploring creative approaches to digital learning and teaching in an interdisciplinary space, for tutors delivering all creative subjects. https://tinyurl.com/f63mm3yb

Digital ‘gaming’ and tech toys also change ways in which we play, experience playing. Tech toys (al. T. H., 2018) can reduce levels of creativity and autonomy. https://tinyurl.com/bdeetx7t

My project is distinctly novel, combining adult ‘play’, exciting immersive 3D digital technology and welcome funding to support participants. 3D touch capability is immersive as it taps into how we naturally interact with the real world. This differentiates Anarkik3DDesign from standard computer aided design programmes, making it great for playing both freely and with purpose.

Start Date 06-01-2026

End Date 30-06-2026

Provide an outline of what activities will take place, where, when and for who.

Jan 2026: preparation / project set-up

• 6 to 15 Jan: Select participants
  • Prepare/check kit: Laptops loaded with 3D modelling software
  • Prepare instructions/info packs:
• 15 to 31 Jan
  • pack/send kit to Participants
  • Agree dates/times of bi-monthly online meet-up
  • Agree: group Signal, Zooms recorded, transcribed/AI summarised.
• Feb: Participants start exploring digital play!
• 2 Feb (day to be agreed)
  • Group tutorial: Introductions. Training session on basic digital tools, health and safety guidelines
  • Overview of play as a creative methodology
  • Participants’ own time: self-directed play sessions, experiment freely, try new approaches, share discoveries in Signal group.
• Mid Feb: 1st zoom: themed discussion re digital play, highlight playful techniques / open-ended exploration
• End Feb: 2nd zoom: Participants define individual challenges, drawing on month’s playful experiments, questions
• March: Exploring Play:
  • Participants’ own time: continue self-directed play sessions, sharing.
• Mid March: third zoom: reflections/discussions on elements that affect play re flow, tacit knowledge, curiosity, serendipity, constraints etc
• End March: fourth Zoom: Online discussions on moving to purposeful play
• April: Purposeful Play in Practice
  • Participants’ own time: continue self-directed play sessions, sharing.
• Mid April: fifth zoom: Mid-project review: participants share progress.
  • Discuss sustainable practice, how digital technologies might enable this
• End April: sixth and last Zoom: time for questions
  • Intro to 3D Digital Consequences, a voluntary ‘end of project’ mini project
• May: Development & Collaboration
  • Participants’ own time: continue self-directed play sessions, sharing
  • Continue development of individual or collaborative work, with access to support and peer feedback via Signal/
• Mid May: 3D Digital Consequences: 1st SWOP
• End of May: 3D Digital Consequences: 2nd SWOP
• June: Reflection and Sharing
  • Participants’ own time: continue self-directed play sessions, sharing
• Early June: 3D Digital Consequences: 3rd and final SWOP
  • Share in Signal/Substack: Individual documentation of process and outcomes through digital journals, photographs, and video diaries
  • Feedback/collate draft report/presentation 22nd June
• 22 June: open Zoom meet-up (recorded): Presentations re Group reflection session and evaluation on fusion of play, purpose, and digital making, models from 3D Digital Consequences presented, participants present their journeys, findings to audience of peers, and the wider public
• 30 June: end of Project: Participants return laptops and haptic devices to Anarkik3D
  • Finalise outcomes arising from project for July evaluation meeting.

Five participants: current Applied Arts Scotland members. Final online meeting on June 22nd open to all AAS members. Meeting open to non members – agreement of the 5 participants required.

Requested budget £4803

Reciprocity: closing the loop sharing of skills, resources and insights on sustainable making.

Describe the need /challenge to be addressed, including how you know this is faced by other makers in Scotland.

Closing the Loop (CTL) group of 20 makers was founded in 2020 as an AAS members group focused on circular economy activities.

The research group grew from a workshop of the same name which AAS delivered in March 2020, in association with Creative Informatics. The Think Plastic: Materials and Making exhibition at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh was the resulting work from the research and practice-based findings of the Smart Plastics group led by two AAS members (Carol Sinclair and Lorna Fraser) and was funded by Interface.
The workshop’s title drew on the concept of circular economies, as described by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation as looking ‘beyond the current take-make-waste extractive industrial model’, to offer an alternative framework based on three principles: 1) design out waste and pollution, 2) keep products and materials in use and 3) regenerate natural systems.

CTL has a limited membership of 20 AAS members to keep the group viable and request for additional membership and for the sharing of information has been made by several other AAS members as sustainability is of interest to the broader AAS membership.

Over the years the CTL collective has thrived by sharing resources, knowledge and insights in how to make better, more sustainable choices. We would like to share these resources with other makers for the benefit of all. However, these valuable exchanges are often ephemeral and lost in group chat trails, email conversations or online meetings.

The founding members of Closing the Loop – collaborated, exchanged materials / processes / and skills during a mini-residency at Hospitalfield in March 2022 – and exhibited in |MATTER| Earth, Materials + Making at The Barn Arts, part of their ‘Crafting Interconnections’ season, 10 September – 11 November 2022.
The potential exists for this group to extend their learning to wider making and creative communities, whether through creation of a website to document and share findings or delivery of training modules (in-person or remote/digital).

There are significant opportunities for AAS to provide further support and provide leadership for the sector. The urgent need for behavioural change in our society to address the climate emergency is something that makers feel particularly strongly about but often feel frustrated by the lack of clear information and guidance to help their decision making. Influencing governmental policy and funding strategies related to this (including through membership of existing networks) is a key priority for AAS.
The Reciprocity project thus seeks to create opportunities to develop resources to share that reflect CTL learning with the broader AAS membership.

Describe the activity, including how this is the best way to address the need / challenge identified at Q4.

Whilst CTL meets predominantly online in monthly meetings, in-person meets up have also been initiated (e.g. the mini residency at Hospitalfields in 2022 and the MATTER exhibition workshops in 2023) where materials were swapped, skills and tools shared.
The CTL Reciprocity project will run two in-person workshops that will enable this sharing and offer this to the wider AAS membership. These two workshops will act as national assemblies which are open to any AAS member. One event will be hosted in a rural area and one in an urban area, as CTL members have found that rural and urban makers face similar but also different challenges, which we want to capture.
Furthermore, the workshops will also act as a data gathering exercise on useful resources that support a creative craft business in all its sustainable endeavours. This includes signposting on how to source sustainable materials, re-use facilities and sustainable business practices as well as information hubs and useful blog site. CTL would like to enquire what resources members might like to support sustainable making? This will help inform a short report that will reflect on a possible update to the Craft Toolkit sustainability module which several CTL members contributed to in the past. Whilst there is not enough scope within the current funding call to support an overhaul of the module, CTL can co-design a ‘needs’ briefing document that will provide evidence of need and wants.

Start Date 30-01-2026

End Date 21-06-2026

Provide an outline of what activities will take place, where, when and for who.

An Accessibility Fund will be made available with bursaries to support those living in rural areas with inadequate transport links and members who may have additional needs, childcare costs or any other accessibility needs.

Choice of venue will be made to be easily accessible by public transport and accessible at the venue itself. Timings of the events would also recognise caring or childcare travel needs of participants. The online plenary with recordings and online resources will also ensure the project is as widely accessible.

CTL members will co-design, prepare, plan and deliver each event.

Workshop One (rural): one day workshop will bring makers together to share materials, skills and tools over shared lunch and particularly focus on challenges faced by rural makers when trying to establish sustainable making practices.
An informal workshop will encourage makers to share excess materials, share tools and knowledge. This part of the day will focus on physical making materials, tools and methods.

A co-designed led session will focus on best practice in relation to the circular economy where CTL members will share resources and invite others to contribute. This active data gathering exercise will focus on digital resources that can be shared online with the wider AAS community.

Workshop Two (urban): one day workshop will bring makers together to share materials, skills and tools over shared lunch and particularly focus on challenges faced by urban makers when trying to establish sustainable making practices and will follow the format outlined above.

Reporting: CTL members will analyse the data gathered, start a database collation, report on workshop evaluation and writing up of toolkit module needs and consult with with the wider CTL group for review before sharing them with the wider AAS membership.

Database: prototype of database to share resources with wider AAS.

Plenary: CTL members will host an online plenary to share the findings and resources collated in the Reciprocity project with the wider AAS community.

Requested budget £4760

Mearns Creative Collective is a new maker/arts collective meeting monthly to build community, support sustainable careers, collaboration, and knowledge sharing.

No arts/makers network or hub exists in The Mearns. We are seeking ways to satisfy those needs through innovative and creative approaches.

Describe the need /challenge to be addressed, including how you know this is faced by other makers in Scotland.

There are many makers and creatives in The Mearns, but a cohesive cross-disciplinary community doesn’t currently exist, instead existing groups are media specific. Cross pollination is critical to innovation and diversity of practice is our strength. Collective participants have voiced concerns about the lack of an arts hub, studio space, or regular gatherings to build community, resilience and cross-disciplinary collaboration and inspiration. Our network organically grows group cohesion and addresses the needs of the creatives in the Mearns, be that for a hub (gallery + studios + labs), cross-disciplinary opportunities or an innovative network form that has yet to be defined. All while building knowledge and experience to help professionalise emergent makers, address challenges related to rurality, encourage new projects, and grow creative interest and industry in The Mearns.

Diversity is strength and cross pollination is critical to innovations in practice. The importance of makers and creatives supporting one another especially in a rural context is deeply important to wellbeing and long term career sustainability. Many participants have expressed concern that the networks and spaces that do exist in The Mearns are for a single medium or only offer occasional gathering or exhibition opportunities, There is no network dedicated to supporting across disciplines and through every aspect of the cycle of being a maker/creative.

We aim to redress this lack through innovative and dynamic responses to the challenges, the participants, and potential opportunities that arise. Initially we seek this funding to support our collective, working towards prototype methods of building systems of engagement, collaboration, and support in a rural context, without a dedicated venue.

As much of Scotland is a rural economy in which makers are active participants, we are confident this is an issue faced by many other communities. Our shared questions: How do we create a real and active support system and network without a venue? How do we bridge the physical and psychological barriers to come together for creativity and sustainability? These can lead us to developing a prototype that can help inform other networks of makers across rural areas of Scotland.

Our Collective participants have already let us know that we are serving this voiced need: “I feel like I have finally found my tribe” and another who has been a frequent visitor of Deveron Projects artist socials in Huntly, despite great distance, as “these are my people”. Mearns Creative Collective is making space for our creative people, our tribe, in an historic landscape that attracted and holds us, as we reciprocally through our practices and meetings, care, tend, and cultivate each other and our beloved Mearns.

Describe the activity, including how this is the best way to address the need / challenge identified at Q4.

Briefly, this funding will help support the Collective as it comes together to further identify and plan what ways we can meet the above needs. This funding is helping support us while we research and map our goals and how to get there.
We discussed at our last meeting how to address our needs, in order to write this application collectively and this is what was shared:

Meetings have to take place face to face
Meetings need to be consistent
Meetings need to be working towards an end goal
We need to build in testing of the prototype/theory that emerges

From these needs, we have drafted a skeletal plan, which may evolve as we continue down our path of collaboration and collective design. Our plan therefore includes continued monthly salons, centred on sharing food, as well as three half/full day intensive gatherings which will include:
A facilitated intensive to define and map our goals as a collective
A work day that either is a skill share, collective creative work or mini collaboration exercises, or a mix of these or other ways of working
An evaluation and reflection point to refine and plan onward work

The funding request will cover the hiring of space sufficient for us to meet and work together and pay the facilitators for their time developing plans and programmes that help us along our way. We are also seeking funding to support our participants in researching existing models of artists and maker communities that are thriving in the rural context and how this might evolve without a dedicated venue, or if it is leading to an eventual venue acquisition.

The research will include speaking to conveners of existing models and exploring making, producing and creating a rural context without a venue, gallery or stage. Learning from these existing programmes will help us open up our concepts of what is possible.
We are also in the position of turning the maker/space relationship on it’s head. By empowering the makers and creatives in The Mearns to determine for themselves the outcomes they want, they can then draw power to create something that can be innovative and sustaining.

What sets us apart from other collectives operating in areas in Scotland is our interest in creating deeper connections and collaborations across our network as well as seeking to build and engage with the wider Mearns area to help encourage more creativity to emerge. From experience we know collaborations across disciplines can lead to entirely new audiences as well as stretching practices, making them more sustainable, innovative, raising profile and the breadth of future commissioners, customers, and community.

Start Date 05-01-2026

End Date 28-06-2026

Provide an outline of what activities will take place, where, when and for who. 

1. Research: Co-founders Carrie Fertig and Eve Mosher will research other venue-less, local-to-their-area maker/creative groups including Angus Creatives, Rural School of Economics and Borderlands in Middlesborough. Carbon footprint in mind, Fertig/Mosher will meet over Zoom for 1.5 hour learning sessions with representatives of these organisations to learn from their strategies for honing, strengthening, and stretching maker/arts community-building in areas where no physical hub exists.

2. Meetings: Our group will meet monthly at different venues across The Mearns (southern Kincardineshire) to grow and strengthen the community of makers/creatives in the area, where no cross-disciplinary network, gallery, or other arts centre exists. Each monthly meeting will begin with a pot luck meal, followed by facilitation determined by each host in turn. We have been fortunate to have our first three meetings in large houses or buildings owned by some participants, but have already run out of sites that can fit our increasing participation. Sites will be determined by host, within six weeks of the next Collection.

3. Intensive retreats (4 hours) to define and map our goals as a collective through a facilitated work session. This may be planning, mapping and goal-setting or it might be collective creative work and/or mini collaboration exercises, sharing skills, and other ways of working. It might also emerge as a blend of the two. Each will include a period to reflect, refine and plan onward work.

We have grown organically; the founders sent invitations to all Mearns-based creatives they knew, adding names from recent North East Open Studios catalogues. Invitations for the 1st Collection came with encouragement to share the invite with other maker/creatives recipients thought would be interested. Our Collective has grown through presence at art events outside The Mearns. Word of mouth doubled attendees from Collection one to Collection two, and we continue to grow. Our Collective includes folk working in stained glass, ceramics, jewellery, enamel, mixed media, poetry, flameworked glass, painting, socially engaged practice, and facilitation. Each of us strive to put planet first through sustainable, circular economy, and climate crisis solutions within their practices and that of the Collective, from car pooling, our exclusively vegetarian and vegan food we prepare for our pot lucks, to working with other makers, the public, and organisations on bringing environmentalism to the fore of daily life.

Whilst I have received funding from Creative Scotland in the last three years, no other MCC participant has.

Requested budget £4197