Host organisation: Scottish Sculpture Workshop (SSW)
Project title: Regenerative Materials and Community Knowledge within Arts Practice
Project description

SSW’s vision is to expand the possibilities of what sculpture can be - working towards positive social and environmental change.

SSW is embedded in our rural location, with a global outlook and reach. Our artist residencies and locally focussed programmes are set up to rethink and push material and skills based learning, prioritising process and opening up our workshop space as a site where community, creativity and nourishment are a driving force in all that we do.

In 2025 we completed Phase1 of our capital programme and with this have started to develop a community-led Materials Garden. The Materials Garden is currently formed of a number of raised beds and recently cleared borders that now contain plants for natural dyeing and various willow and small tree varieties for future use in creating armatures, ash glazes and green wood working. These plants are joined by a wide range of pollinators that add to the bio-diversity of the SSW site as well as herbs which can be consumed to support wellbeing.

Our choice of what to grow has come from the participants of our Winter and Spring Community Making Space programmes. It has come through their local knowledge, alongside local farmers and other Lumsden residents as well as artists and makers from further afield ( Laura Spring at Sculpture House Dye Garden, AiAi Studio in Japan and the New Materials Lab, Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht).

The Materials Garden is starting simple and small – cultivating plants that can feed into resident artists and local communities processes. The garden also pushes us, and the people we work with, to think more about where the materials we use originate and the time, energy and other resources needed to grow and process them. It connects us to the seasons and to the specifics of our local climate and environmental conditions, while learning wider global uses and changes. This, in turn, helps us develop and advocate for the use of local and/or regenerative materials within both our communities and residency programmes and within contemporary sculptural practice more widely.

In order to develop our work in this area further we are looking to support a PhD internship for a researcher to work with SSW and our local community through our Community Making Space Programme to explore the potentials and possibilities of working with locally grown, regenerative materials.

Outputs

We are interested to better understand how:

  • regenerative materials are being used by artists, makers and communities across the globe
  • growing and working with these materials positively impacts community regeneration, empowerment, wellbeing and economies.
  • this provides an avenue to rethink material value and agency - understanding materials as active participants within the work
  • provide a space for the transferal of community knowledge of the land within localised geographies
  • we can develop evaluative methods that helps us to better understand the impact of this work within both our local community and wider environment
  • the impact of colonisation and extraction has formed contemporary material practice. Can this work help us reimagine how contemporary art is made within the climate crisis.

This internship will also have opportunities for hands-on working within the SSW site, programme and workshops. We hope that it will also continue the development of the materials garden and Community Making Space programme and provide a depth of research to underpin this work.

Outcomes may include written reports, creative sessions or wider creative interpretations that explore these questions.

Location
We are happy for the internship to be hybrid with a minimum of 1 month spent onsite. SSW can provide accommodation to the successful candidate.
Benefits to the researcher

SSW can provide a welcoming and supportive environment for a researcher to embed their work and knowledge. The context of SSW as a rural residency workshop facility is unique and offers the research time and space for research and reflection alongside an active programme of activities.

The researcher will have access to workshop spaces and to our Community Making Space programme.

SSW has hosted a researcher previously and their experiences can be seen in this video.

Key relationships
  • SSW staff team including technical and programme
  • SSW local community members and knowledge holders
  • Artists on residency at SSW
  • Wider networks and partners connected to SSW including local, national and international networks.
Timescale

Start date (or must start by): February 2026

End date (or must end by): May 2026

Work structure: Flexible but should co-inside with our Community Making Space programme and the planting/early growing seasons at SSW.

Subject areas

This opportunity would be relevant to the following subject areas:

Architecture; Design; Visual Arts; Curating; Cultural Geography; Policy, Arts Management and Creative Industries; Cultural History; Economic and Social History; Post-Colonial Studies; Scottish Studies.

Person specification

A1. Knowledge Base
  • Essential: Subject Knowledge; Research methods – theoretical knowledge; Research methods – Practical application.
  • Desirable: Information literacy and management; Information seeking.
A2. Cognitive Abilities
  • Essential:  Critical thinking.
  • Desirable: Analysing; Synthesising; Evaluating; Problem Solving.
A3. Creativity
  • Essential: Inquiring minds.
  • Desirable: Intellectual insight; Innovation; Argument construction.
B1. Personal qualities
  • Essential: Enthusiasm; Integrity; Self-reflection; Responsibility.
B2. Self management
  • Essential: Preparation and prioritisation; Time management; Work-life balance.
B3. Professional & career development
  • Essential: Continuing professional development; Networking; Responsiveness to opportunities.
C1. Professional conduct
  • Essential: Health and Safety; Appropriate practice; Respect and confidentiality.
  • Desirable: Ethics, principles and sustainability; IPR and copyright.
C2. Research management
  • Desirable: Research Strategy; Risk management; Project planning and delivery.
C3. Finance, funding & resources
  • Desirable: Income and funding generation.
D1. Working with others
  • Essential: Collegiality; Team working; Collaboration; Equality and diversity.
D2. Communication & dissemination
  • Essential: Communication methods
D3. Engagement & impact
  • Essential: Public engagement.
  • Desirable: Policy; Global citizenship.

First published: 9 October 2025

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