Open Call for Contemporary Craft Makers

Up to 15 makers who are residents of Scotland and Northern Ireland will be supported to create new, contemporary work inspired by the Museums’ collections and current research into our shared decorative and making heritage, from the Mesolithic to the medieval period. The commissioned work will be shown in a multi-partner exhibition, opening at the National Museum of Scotland in summer 2027, and at Ulster Museum in early 2028. 

About the project

This project began as a discussion between members of Design-Nation based in Northern Ireland and Scotland, inspired by the British Museum and National Museums Scotland collaborative 2015 exhibition Celts. Many members view their practice as being part of a legacy of making that connects the nations via shared cultural heritage and traditions of manufacture.

While Celts was a stimulus, the project also hopes to encourage new reflections on much longer-term perspectives on Scottish-Irish creative links, building upon active research on museum objects. From the stone tools of early prehistory to the gold jewellery of the Bronze and Iron Ages, remarkable decorated early Bronze Age pots to the scrolling, complex ornament on Iron Age bronzes, and the creative wealth of the early medieval period in bronze, silver, gold, stone, and manuscripts, these artefacts are materially led, beautifully made, functional as well as decorative.

They provide a glorious archive of craft manufacture and design for future makers to learn from and draw upon.  

Applicants will not be asked to recreate or replicate, but to be inspired by the ancient decoration, craft process, or embodied concepts that they are introduced to through current research on these objects to create something new and unique. The museums will also benefit from learning about craft and technique from the makers who take part.  

Applications will be accepted from makers who are residents of Scotland or Northern Ireland, whose work is inspired by the contemporary legacies of Scotland and Ireland’s shared cultural heritage, and whose practice incorporates traditional techniques and processes, utilising materials historically pertinent to the North such as wood, ceramic, bronze, silver, gold, stone, glass and textiles. We are particularly interested in applications from makers whose creative practice and work bridges the ancient and the contemporary. 

Successful applicants will be awarded a £5,000.00 fee to cover: 

• Research and development of a new piece/body of work.
• Material and equipment costs
• Time, accommodation, and travel to both National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh, and Ulster Museum in Belfast for a one-day knowledge exchange workshop at each venue on Thursday 4 December 2025 (National Museums Scotland) and Thursday 22 January 2026 (Ulster Museum). Both venues can support online access to the discussions held at each workshop for any participant who is unable to make it in person.