April 2025
Firstly, we would like to thank all of the individual artists, collaborators, and collectives who applied to our recent general call for applications for Awarded Residencies in 2025 and 2026. The response to this biennial call was very positive and we are grateful for the time and focus everyone has given to this process. The awards will be announced in late June.
In April we were delighted to welcome artist, designer, and independent curator Josefin Vargö back to Cove Park. This residency, supported by Swedish Arts Council, allows Josefin to continue work initiated during her Food Ecologies Residency in 2024, a programme developed in collaboration with IASPIS: International Programme for Visual and Applied Arts.
Josefin's residency ran in parallel with the first of a series of residencies for the Scotland-based artist David Osbaldeston, made possible with support from VACMA, Upland, and The Hope Scott Trust.
Our Open Residencies this month also welcome folk singer, songwriter, and theatre maker Michelle Burke, painter and writer Maddie Burnett, curator and writer Isobel Cawley with lecturer and writer P. Harvey Newall, academic, writer, and researcher Kate Keohane, visual artist Flora Litchfield, visual artist Ondine Gil, artist Jenny Mulder, artist filmmaker and film educator Lucy Parker, and designer and writer Dan Zell.
We're excited to welcome National Theatre of Scotland to Cove Park this month with Through The Shortbread Tin. Written and performed by Martin O'Connor and directed by former Cove Park resident Lu Kemp, this new NTS production will be performed at our local Cove Burgh Hall on 25 April.
From Edinburgh University we welcome political and intellectual historian Emil Chabal with research colleagues for a research residency focusing upon race, identity, and political mobilisation in France and the UK since the 1970s.
Meanwhile, in Sweden, weaver and textile artist Mariam Syed continues her Bernat Klein Fellowship with a two-week residency this month at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm.
Read on for programme announcements including the 2025 Emerging Visual Artist Residency, the Bridge Awards Residencies, the Smith Residency, the Fuel Residency, Earth Month Residencies, a call for applications for the Highland Boundary Fault Commission, NAARCA Residencies 2025, an invitation to our ongoing summer series of Open Fridays, and news of our forthcoming Saturday Studio workshop.
Image: The Bridge at Cove Park (photography, Ruth Clark).
Emerging Visual Artist Residency 2025
Following a call for applications, we're delighted to announce that this year's Emerging Visual Artist Residency has been awarded to the Glasgow-based interdisciplinary artist Olivia Priya Foster.
Olivia's work focuses on rurality, specifically in Argyll, where she grew up on a farm. Foster explores her dual cultural identity and the intersections of South Asian and Scottish heritage. Often working with sculpture, performance, moving image and sound. Foster’s practice deals with themes of displacement, queer rurality, sustainability, land, energy, migration and diaspora within the context of Scottish landscapes. Olivia graduated from The Glasgow School of Art in 2024.
We are grateful to the Bridge Awards for their ongoing support of this residency.
Image: 'black sheep' (2025), Olivia Priya Foster, Hebridean wool painting stretchers, audio: 17 min loop image by Julie Howden.
Bridge Awards Residencies 2025
Now in its third year, the Bridge Awards Residencies offer vital time and support for artists based in Scotland whose careers have been impacted by a breast cancer diagnosis.
We're delighted to confirm that the five artists taking part this year are: artist and creative facilitator Jo Arksey, visual artist Jackie Bell, digital artist Alison Clifford, filmmaker Diane Devlin, and writer Catherine Simpson.
Taking place in May this year, the residencies will include a workshop led by Scottish Ensemble. We are grateful to The Bridge Awards for supporting this programme and to Maggie's, the cancer care charity, for their advice and help.
Images: above, 'Fitted'; short film written and directed by Diane Devlin (courtesy of the artist); below, 'tenter'; Jackie Bell 2023, oxidised steel, textile, salt (courtesy of the artist).
The Smith Residency 2025
We are thrilled to announce that the second Smith Residency has been awarded to Anouk Verviers. Anouk is an interdisciplinary artist, performer, and researcher whose work investigates systems of power, examining how they affect bodies and shape entanglements between ourselves, others, and matter around us. Working with bodies, wood, metal, clay, archives, and everyday objects, she creates installations, sculptures, videos, sound works, and performances. More information on her work is available here.
The Smith Residency is a residency for a visual artist and recent graduate (graduating
from 2019 onwards) of either The Glasgow School of Art, Goldsmiths University of London, or University of the Arts London. We are grateful to Cove Park Patrons, the Smith family, for making this residency possible.
Anouk was appointed following a call for applications in 2024 and we are very grateful to Rae Yen Song (artist and former Cove Park resident), Rebecca Fortnum (Professor of Fine Art, Associate Dean of Research, Central St. Martins) and Sarah McRory (Director, Goldsmiths CCA) for their advisory support.
Image: Portrait of the artist in her studio (courtesy of the artist).
Fuel Residency 2025
In 2025 Cove Park and Fuel are delighted to partner once again for a series of residencies supporting the development of new work in theatre and live performance.
The participating artists taking part this month are writer and theatre director Graham Eatough, lighting designer Nigel Edwards, writer and theatre director David Greig, set and costume designer
Laura Hopkins, and composer and musician Nick Powell.
Between 2008 and 2013, Cove Park and Fuel facilitated over 80 individual and collaborative residencies for theatre makers. Fuel leads the field in independent producing in the UK’s live performance sector, working with brilliant artists to explore the big questions of our times, shining a light on how we relate to each other and the world around us, and telling untold stories by
under-represented voices. From theatres to car parks, from schools to public spaces, Fuel produces high quality new theatre that reaches diverse audiences across the UK and internationally. Fuel collaborates with outstanding theatre makers with fresh perspectives and approaches who produce shows, performances or experiences which have direct and playful relationships with their audiences.
Image: Graham Eatough, Nigel Edwards, David Greig, Laura Hopkins, Nick Powell at Cove Park (courtesy of Graham Eatough)
Earth Month Residencies
Earth Month 2025 is a collaborative initiative between Goethe-Institut Glasgow, Institut Français d’Écosse, and ClimateCulture, aimed at fostering cultural exchange and climate action through the lens of artistic and cultural practice. Uniting France, Germany, and Scotland in a dynamic, multidisciplinary dialogue around sustainability, this programme brings together two artists – one based in Germany and one based in France – whose portfolios reflect an engagement with climate, environmental, or ecological themes.
Taking place 28 March – 23 April 2025, this programme offers Charlotte Bracho (France) and Antonia Ablass (Germany) the opportunity to explore Scotland’s diverse landscapes, sustainability challenges, and emerging climate solutions. The residency will provide a slow travel experience, with the artists journeying by train and/or boat from their home countries to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Cove Park, and Linkshouse in Orkney.
The residency is realised in cooperation with the School of Fine Art, and the School of Design, the Glasgow School of Art.
Information on special events related to this programme is available here.
Images: above, Charlotte Bracho; below, Antonia Ablass (courtesy of the artists).
Highland Boundary Fault Art Commission:
Tracing Time, Land & Connection in
Cove & Kilcreggan
The Cove and Kilcreggan Arts and Heritage Groups are commissioning a visual artist to create a permanent public artwork marking the Highland Boundary Fault, a significant geological feature of Scotland. The artwork should creatively interpret the idea of ‘signposting’ or ‘marking’ the Fault.
The project will also include a community walking event with a geologist, a Cove Park Saturday Studio workshop for children, and permanent labeling with QR codes for background information. The Highland Boundary Fault runs through the Rosneath Peninsula and marks the border between the Highlands and Lowlands, showcasing distinct landscape and cultural differences.The artwork will connect this site to other locations along the tectonic plate boundary, forming part of a network of site-responsive markers.
For more information and to apply, see the Project Brief. Submissions are due by Thursday 24 April 2025.
If you have any questions about the project, please get in touch with Cat Auburn, Cove and Kilcreggan Arts and Heritage Group.
Image: Loch Long (photography, Tracey Bloxham)
NAARCA Residencies 2025
In 2025, the Nordic Alliance of Artists' Residencies on Climate Action (NAARCA) will facilitate two funded residency exchanges taking place between June 2025 and December 2025. The NAARCA resident(s) will receive a fee, materials/equipment allowance, and a travel stipend.
This programme builds upon the research, commissions, and institutional projects NAARCA has launched since 2021 which focus upon the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis, climate justice and the four pillars of sustainability – ecological, social, psychological and cultural.
This residency supports research, the development of existing and new projects, engagement with local communities, and the production of new work and ideas in relation to the NAARCA partners’ unique ecological contexts.
Hosting a NAARCA resident in 2025 are Artica Svalbard (Norway), Cove Park (Scotland), Narsaq International Research Station (Greenland), and Skaftfell Arts Center (Iceland). Each host institution is listed in the Application Guidelines along with their available dates and details about what they offer.
We welcome applications from artists based in Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway or Scotland, working in visual arts, craft, or design and whose practice intersects with themes surrounding sustainability and the climate emergency.
Apply here – all submissions are due Friday 25 April.
Image: Longyearbyen (courtesy of Artica Svalbard)
Open Fridays 2025
Cove Park's Open Fridays are coming back! Beginning on Friday 4 April, our beautiful 50-acre site will be open to visitors every Friday afternoon, between 1.00pm and 4.00pm, until Friday 29 August 2025.
We welcome visitors from our local community and beyond for tours of the site, to meet the team, and learn more about Cove Park’s programme of residencies and events. In our April Newsletter we will share details of a new forthcoming series of monthly Friday Events, offering talks, screenings, readings, studio visits and more.
Open Fridays are free and everyone is welcome. Refreshments will be available.
Please email Rona Grierson or call 01436 850500 to let us know if you would like to visit and if you have any questions about travelling to Cove Park or site accessibility.
Image: Visitors on site at Cove Park (photography, Alan Dimmick).
Saturday Studio Workshop
Creative Campaigners
26 April 2025
Our next Saturday Studio Workshop focuses on how creativity energy can be used in fun and thoughtful ways to pave the way for a greener and fairer future.
Led by former resident, artist, and campaigner Heather Marshall, this workshop will take inspiration from street art and its roots in New York City, where messages were sent across the city on trains in the 1980s, to today's growing trend for eco-friendly, removable street art including paper based tape art, reverse graffiti and moss art.
This free two-hour workshop is for children aged 5-16 and their families or carers. Children over 8 years old may attend without an accompanying adult. If you have questions about workshop accessibility, please get in touch with Emma Henderson (Curator of Engagement). Book via our Ticket Tailor page.
Image: Project Studio, November 2024 (photography, Alex Marrs)
Space Hire 2025
Space Hire welcomes arts organisations, companies, and community groups to Cove Park for meetings and away days. Recent Space Hire participants include: The Common Guild, Comhairle nan Leabhraichean / The Gaelic Books Council, Glasgow International, Missing in Architecture (Glasgow School of Art), The Mount Stuart Trust, Rhubaba, Scottish Opera, and the University of Glasgow (Contemporary Art & Curation).
In 2025 we will continue to offer beautiful spaces and facilities with outstanding views at very competitive rates throughout the year. We are also happy to put groups in touch with local
caterers if lunch is required.
Please submit an enquiry form or contact Nicola Jamieson directly for more information and to discuss your specific requirements.
Missing in Architecture hosted a lunch at Cove Park to bring an interdisciplinary group of researchers, policymakers, community activists, industry professionals and artists, creating an opportunity for cross-pollination of ideas and experiences, fostering long-term collaboration through the meal, titled FOOD FOR THOUGHT. We were delighted to be at Cove Park, the perfect setting for a collaborative lunch! Nestled around the heart of the building – between hearth and kitchen, the building held us and allowed convivial conversation. An opportunity to step out of the city and busy lives, Cove Park and the surroundings allowed us all to slow down and enjoy some time and space to enjoy the tasting and testing of ideas.
Miranda Webster, Missing in Architecture, February 2025
Image: Missing in Architecture event, February 2025.
