Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities

Host organisation: ASCUS Art & Science

Project title: Creative Archive and Content Production at ASCUS Art & Science, Edinburgh

Project description

ASCUS is an ambitious arts organisation who recently celebrated our 10th anniversary of establishing Scotland’s only publicly accessible art-science lab. We now wish to build on what we have created over the past decade by inviting artists to undertake residencies with us. Before we can do this, we want to build our knowledge base, our audience and raise funds to support an artist residency programme. This internship role will play a key part in shaping the knowledge base, communications and development of ASCUS’s profile.

We are seeking a motivated creative professional who will:

  1. Research and develop a creative archive of ASCUS’ past projects:
    You will research ASCUS’ past 10 years of arts programming and prepare a compelling and exciting portfolio of artists who have worked with ASCUS to refresh our archive and share on our website. You will have access to the ASCUS creative archive, the ASCUS Team, including Board Members, and former ASCUS staff and residents as appropriate to build this dynamic profile of the work that ASCUS has done;
  2. Establish a regular knowledge exchange forum and from this, develop monthly blog posts:
    You will contribute to a new knowledge sharing programme by attending and participating in monthly informal online discussions with the ASCUS Team, writing resulting blog posts;
  3. Have access to ASCUS’ lab facilities for your own projects:
    You will have an induction to ASCUS Lab facilities and will have the opportunity to work within the ASCUS Lab on your own ideas and to generate content as part of ASCUS social media strategy;
  4. Share the archive, blog posts and other relevant content via our website and social media channels to help ASCUS work towards achieving our goal to increase our online audiences from 4.6k followers to at least 5k followers by June 2027, by sharing regularly on social media to entice ASCUS’ existing audience, and to develop new audiences.

Outputs

Develop an online archive published on ASCUS’ website of artists who have worked with ASCUS over the past 10 years.

Establish regular knowledge exchange conversations between the ASCUS team and/or artists and write blog posts or opinion pieces following these discussions that ASCUS can continue after the internship ends.

Generate audience growth with online audiences reaching at least 5k followers across social media platforms.

In person/remote/hybrid

Hybrid.

There would be a mix of both in person and remote work, liaising with the core ASCUS team and relevant Board members. ASCUS supports flexible working where possible. In person work would be required to generate content, meet people/network and work with the ASCUS team.

Benefits to the researcher

The placement with ASCUS will enable the intern to develop experience in working across disciplines. Through building the online portfolio, they will develop communication skills, technical skills in our website platform, SquareSpace, and refine their design skills. They will also develop their critical thinking and creative writing through the knowledge exchange forum and related blog posts, understand social media platforms better and be able to build their own networks through the project.

The intern also has the opportunity to benefit from working closely with the ASCUS Managing Director, Keira Tucker and Lab Manager, Sanika Pradhan, with access to work in a publicly accessible lab, developing scientific skills such as microscopy and microbiology techniques, suited to creative practices with an ecological or biological focus, providing them with transferrable skills that equip them to work across disciplines.

The intern will additionally benefit from creative mentorship from one of our Board Directors, artist Louise Mackenzie, who will join the project monthly to offer creative support and take part in the knowledge sharing activities.

Key relationships

The intern will work closely with the core ASCUS team which comprises ASCUS Managing Director, Keira Tucker and Lab Manager, Sanika Pradhan.

In addition, the intern will meet regularly with Board member and artist, Louise Mackenzie as creative mentor, and other Board members as appropriate to the research.

Through the archive building and knowledge exchange forum, the intern will work with current and previous artists, creative professionals and entrepreneurs who have worked with ASCUS. This also may include working with academic researchers from a range of disciplines who were involved in collaborative projects with ASCUS.

The intern will have the opportunity to engage with ASCUS’ public audience through knowledge sharing discussions and blog posts.

Subject areas

This opportunity would be relevant to all arts & humanities subject areas.

Person specification

A1. Knowledge Base
  • Desirable: Research methods – Practical application; Information Seeking; Information literacy and management; Academic literacy and numeracy.
A2. Cognitive Abilities
  • Essential: Analysing; Synthesising; Critical thinking; Evaluating; Problem Solving.
A3. Creativity
  • Desirable: Inquiring minds; Intellectual insight; Innovation; Argument construction; Intellectual risk.
B1. Personal qualities
  • Essential: Enthusiasm; Perseverance; Integrity; Self-confidence; Self-reflection; Responsibility.
B2. Self management
  • Essential: Preparation and prioritisation; Commitment to research; Time management; Responsiveness to change; Work-life balance.
B3. Professional & career development
  • Essential: Responsiveness to opportunities.
  • Desirable: Continuing professional development; Networking.
C1. Professional conduct
  • Desirable: Ethics, principles and sustainability; Respect and confidentiality.
C2. Research management
  • Essential: Project planning and delivery.
  • Desirable: Research Strategy; Risk management.
C3. Finance, funding & resources
  • Desirable: Income and funding generation.
D1. Working with others
  • Essential: Collegiality; Team working; Collaboration.
  • Desirable: Influence and leadership; Equality and diversity. 
D2. Communication & dissemination
  • Essential: Communication methods; Communication media.
  • Desirable: Publication.
D3. Engagement & impact
  • Desirable: Public engagement; Enterprise; Society and culture.

First published: 28 September 2026

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