Captivate is our nationwide community and partnership programme, which aims to enrich the lives of people from diverse backgrounds across Scotland, through opportunities to see and participate in puppetry, animation and visual theatre in their everyday lives, and to celebrate local communities as places where creativity thrives.
The programme is currently delivered across North Lanarkshire, Uist in the Outer Hebrides, Western Edinburgh and Caithness in the Highlands.
Captivate is a responsive, multi-year creative conversation between Manipulate Arts, lead arts partners, community members, local venues, cross sector organisations and artists in these areas. Through the project we work to present high quality year-round arts performance and engagement opportunities, focusing on exciting, accessible, affordable and highly visual work.
Captivate is our nationwide communities and partnerships programme, through which we are collaborating with communities in the Outer Hebrides, North Lanarkshire and Edinburgh West for a period of three to five years to deliver a bespoke programme of productions, screenings, workshops and co-creation projects in the areas of puppetry, animation and visual theatre.
Our lead partners are Taigh Chearsabhagh (Uist), WHALE Arts (Edinburgh West), Cumbernauld Theatre at Lanternhouse (North Lanarkshire) and Lyth Arts (Caithness). Each year, in conversation with these partners, we co-design bespoke programmes of creative arts activity which creatively respond to the needs and wants of these communities.
We will work in these communities over a minimum period of 3-5 years, allowing us to build deep collaborative relationships over a long period and invest in community creativity. We are in our second year of delivery in Uist, North Lanarkshire and Edinburgh West, with Caithness joining the programme in 2024.
Captivate projects include:
Public Participatory Art Projects – public artworks co-created with community groups and developed in partnership with local organisations.
Enhanced Performance Projects – professional visual theatre for families touring beyond major cultural centres, performed live with wraparound workshop activity for target groups.
Community Storytelling Projects – Accessible verbal and nonverbal storytelling and workshops presented in community spaces both indoors and out, aimed at the youngest children and their families.
Social Art Projects – Targeted workshop programmes in partnership with non-arts organisations which prioritise creative engagement alongside community health and wellbeing, such as our arts and cookery project AnimATE or our Puppetry and Emotional Resilience project in schools.
