2021 Awardee: Mollie-Mae Aiken

I can’t describe how thankful I am to have this unreal opportunity thanks to Dewar Arts Award. I work hard every single day and my dream is coming true. This has been an opportunity of a lifetime and I couldn’t thank them enough for it. 

YEAR OF AWARD: 2021
AGE AT AWARD: 18
ARTFORMS:
 
 
 

Biography

Mollie-Mae Aiken is a talented young dancer from Rothesay. She has been trained in Highland Dancing, and has achieved much success on the competing circuit. She placed in 3rd for two consecutive years at the Cowal World Championships of Highland Dancing. An overall 1st place in a competition in Inveraray qualified her to be part of the Argyll and Bute team that competed at the Oban Championships.

How the Award Helped

Funding from the Dewar Arts Awards supported Mollie-Mae to attend Hamilton Theatre Arts and further her dance training.

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I can’t describe how thankful I am to have this unreal opportunity thanks to Dewar Arts Award. I work hard every single day and my dream is coming true. This has been an opportunity of a lifetime and I couldn’t thank them enough for it. 

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27 March 2023

New original soundtrack from Blair Mowat

Dewar Awardee Blair Mowat has composed the music for the new ITV drama ‘Nolly’, created by Russell T. Davies and starring Helena Bonham Carter.

Blair Mowat received a Dewar Arts Award in 2008 to help support his postgraduate studies at Bristol University. He graduated from the university with an MA in Composition for Film and Television and his career has gone from strength to strength since then.

A prolific composer of scores for film, theatre and television, he now has well over two hundred credits. His clients include the BBC, Channel 4, the English National Ballet and Royal Shakespeare Company. Most recently, he has worked on the ITV mini-series Nolly, created by Russell T. Davies and starring Helena Bonham Carter. The soundtrack album is now available to purchase on digital platforms, or you can stream a track below.

Congratulations Blair – we can’t wait to see what you do next!

Read Blair’s Awardee Profile

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1 February 2023

Join our board

Would you like to help support the brightest and best of Scotland’s young artistic talent? We are seeking new trustees to join the Dewar Arts Awards board.

The Dewar Arts Awards are seeking new Trustees, with relevant knowledge and experience, to join our Board and support the brightest and best of Scotland’s young artistic talent. We are a grant making charity that funds exceptional young artists in any discipline who do not have the financial means to achieve their full potential.

You would be joining a Board with a strong mix of governance, creative and social experience which has led to 1,121 young people being awarded over £6m in funding over the last 21 years. As a Trustee you will be expected to enhance our ability to make the right, life changing, decisions for young people and in turn ensure the future of the arts in Scotland and its impact on the rest of the world.

We’re keen to hear from individuals from any art form but are particularly interested in those with experience of theatre, visual arts, literature, craft, and those who work across mediums reflecting new ways of thinking and working.

As essential as your expertise in the arts, is your lived experience of growing up, learning or working in Scotland, which will help us to better understand some of the challenges our young applicants have. As a charity we value legal and compliance, research and evaluation, cultural education, and financial input, as we oversee an asset portfolio that is managed by professional fund managers. If you have a blend of the above, we would be pleased to hear from you.

Trustees meet five times a year in person across Scotland or online when appropriate. Applications are sifted and collated by the charity’s Administrator but there is preparation required in reading the applications so that you can make grant recommendations and take part in discussions about applicants at the meeting. The number of applications range from 12 to 40 per meeting. There are sub groups which you may be asked to join which meet in between Board meetings usually online. This is a voluntary role but expenses will be reimbursed.

To apply please send your CV and covering letter to admin@dewarawards.org for the attention of the chair.

For more information on the Dewar Arts Awards, please visit: www.dewarawards.org

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19 December 2022

Awardee’s short film qualifies for the 2023 Academy Awards

Screenwriter Hannah Kelso’s ‘Night of the Living Dread’ is long-listed for Best Animated Short

Dewar Awardee Hannah Kelso wrote the screenplay for ‘Night of the Living Dread’, a comedy horror that has now been longlisted in the Oscars Best Animated Short category.

Hannah received a Dewar Award in 2018, which helped support her MA Screenwriting studies at the National Film & Television School. Of her Dewar Award, Hannah said: “This industry is highly competitive but I am now in the right place and equipped with the right tools for the future”.

Congratulations Hannah – we can’t wait to see what you do next!

You can watch the trailer for ‘Night of the Living Dread’ below:

 

Read Hannah’s Awardee Profile
Watch Night of the Living Dread

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2021 Awardee: Gina Wright

"This Dewar Arts Award has allowed me to experience a wonderful first year at RCS Juniors. I have been able to gain expertise from acclaimed musicians from all over the world as well as make life-long friends."

YEAR OF AWARD: 2021
AGE AT AWARD: 15
ARTFORMS:
 
 
 

Biography

Gina is a violist who was born in Scotland to a Scottish father and a German mother. From a young age she has enjoyed spending time with her family and friends in Germany and Scotland, and likes to share her passion for music by giving small informal concerts to her loved ones.

Gina became a pupil at the Music School of Douglas Academy in Milngavie in August 2020 and started her journey as a student of Dr. Lev Atlas (viola) and Claire Haslin (piano). Although new to the piano she quickly progressed to Grade 6 in her first year, and now enjoys teaching as well as exploring the exciting repertoire the instrument has to offer.

In 2021, Gina received a Dewar Arts Award, which enabled her to become a member of the Junior Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. This opened up incredible opportunities to her, such as playing at the COP 26 Conference in the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall alongside the Undergraduate and Postgraduate students of the RCS.

Since the Award

In March 2022, Gina took part in a masterclass with the Brodsky Quartet where she played the 1st Movement of Debussy’s string quartet in G minor with her school’s senior quartet. Upon receiving an exceptionally high mark after their first performance, the quartet went on to compete in the finals for the Allie Cullen Memorial Prize of the Glasgow Music Festival 2022.

Gina was also delighted to be selected as Principal Viola of the West of Scotland Schools Symphony Orchestra in 2022, and enjoyed playing the viola solos in Vaughan Williams’ London symphony. Additionally, Gina has been privileged to receive two Awards from the Awards for Young Musicians Charity, namely the Hilary McKenzie Johnston Award and the Robert Lewin Scholarship, which was awarded in recognition of a strong commitment to musicianship and musical excellence.

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"This Dewar Arts Award has allowed me to experience a wonderful first year at RCS Juniors. I have been able to gain expertise from acclaimed musicians from all over the world as well as make life-long friends."

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2022 Awardee: Haneen Hadiy

"This award has been a privilege and opportunity to pursue a dream. The award has fully supported me in conducting a solo exhibition in Iraq to reveal my work to the people of my homeland. My years of practice in the making have been immensely involved in my Iraqi culture therefore, an opportunity to visually present my creations in the land of Iraq is a huge successful step forward in my career as a visual artist."

YEAR OF AWARD: 2022
AGE AT AWARD: 22
ARTFORMS:
WEBSITE:https://www.instagram.com/haneenhadiy/
 
 

Biography

Haneen Hadiy was born in Glasgow, Scotland to Iraqi parents in 1999. She started her career as a visual artist at the age of eighteen. Haneen Hadiy has exhibited around Scotland, London, New York and Los Angeles, revealing the unseen attractions of her motherland. In 2018 she organised an exhibition in Glasgow, giving the opportunity for exposure to Iraqi artists living in Iraq. Haneen regularly travels back and forth from Iraq to Scotland to explore her identity within both cultures. When travelling to Iraq, Haneen continuously focuses on revealing the existing scenic attractions of her homeland. Her works are known for their distinctive intimacy and integrity. She continuously experiments through a variety of mediums to explore her family history, cultural heritage, and identity as a diasporic artist.

How the Award Helped

Haneen’s award will support the development and installation of a solo exhibition of her work in Iraq. The exhibition will feature a collection of personal works that address and diminish cultural stereotypes.

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"This award has been a privilege and opportunity to pursue a dream. The award has fully supported me in conducting a solo exhibition in Iraq to reveal my work to the people of my homeland. My years of practice in the making have been immensely involved in my Iraqi culture therefore, an opportunity to visually present my creations in the land of Iraq is a huge successful step forward in my career as a visual artist."

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4 July 2022

Interview with Sarah Rogers, Rojhe Design

We spoke to jewellery designer and maker Sarah Rogers about how a Dewar Arts Award will support the development of her work.

The Trustees of the Dewar Arts Awards are delighted to announce that we have a new £90,000 fund to support ambitious, talented young people across Scotland who have a passion for traditional rural and craft skills.

Sarah Rogers, a jewellery designer and maker, is the first recipient of an award from this funding stream. We spoke to Sarah to find out more about how her Dewar Arts Award will support her work.

 

To find out more about Sarah’s work, visit her website at www.rojhedesign.com. You can also follow her on Instagram and Facebook.

To find out more about our new funding stream, read the news article here: New funds to support talented young people across Scotland

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Jewellery designer and maker Sarah Rogers working in her studio.
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Blog from Jill Miller

Jill Miller, Chair of the Dewar Arts Awards, discusses our new funding stream.

Having recently stepped into the role as Chair of the Dewar Arts Awards, the responsibility for ensuring that we invest our funds with those who truly need us has never been more pressing.

After two years of a pandemic and the ever-increasing price of food and energy (in fact everything we need in our daily lives), we’re even more focused on connecting with talented young people who need funds to be able to pursue or develop their talent – across any art form.

And now, thanks to the support of the William Grant Foundation, we have additional resources to invest for the next three years. We want to use these funds to extend the work we do to support young people from across Scotland who have a passion and talent in the arts and in related craft areas.

So, if you know someone who is pursuing a specialist craft skill in leather work, glassmaking, jewellery, textiles, wood, stone, instrument making… please connect them with us via www.dewarawards.org

Our application process is simple – visit our Apply page for further guidance and to submit your application. If you require further please contact: admin@dewarawards.org

Read the news article: New funds to support talented young people across Scotland

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New funds to support talented young people across Scotland

The £90,000 fund will enable the Trustees to broaden the scope of their work.

As the Dewar Arts Awards enter their 21st year, the Trustees are delighted to announce that we have a new £90,000 fund to support ambitious, talented young people across Scotland, thanks to support from the William Grant Foundation.

The new fund, to be invested over a 3-year period, will enable the Trustees to broaden the scope of their work. Trustees are keen to receive applications from young people who have a passion for developing their talent or skills across a broad range of interests including:

  • craft skills – supporting training to work with stone, textiles, wood, leather, metals, glass
  • traditional rural skills – you may need help with training / materials / equipment

or

  • you may need help to fund classes or courses that will help you to develop your talent across any art form

The Trustees are committed to inclusion and diversity and are keen to hear from young people of all backgrounds including those who may be care experienced or from under-represented communities.

Applying is easy – find out more and submit your application via our Apply page. However, if you feel you need help you can always contact us at admin@dewardawards.org for further information and support.

The fund is open now and we look forward to hearing from you!

Visit our application page to read further guidance and submit your application.

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Dewar Arts Awards - Supporting Scotland's young artistic talent
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16 May 2022

Jen Hadfield nominated for the Highland Book Prize 2021

The 2007 Dewar Arts Awardee is one of four writers on the shortlist

Dewar Awardee Jen Hadfield has been shortlisted for the Highland Book Prize 2021 for her poetry collection ‘The Stone Age’. Based in Shetland, Jen is a poet and visual artist who has been described as “one of the brightest and most talented poets of her generation working in Britain”.

In 2007, a Dewar Award supported Hadfield to travel to Mexico and research Mexican devotional folk art. This research trip inspired the creation of ‘Nigh-No-Place’, a solo exhibition of Shetland ex-votos in the style of sacred Mexican folk art – ‘tiny, portable, insistently familiar landscapes packed in an array of weathered tobacco tins, incorporating rubrics of very short fiction’.

The following year, Jen published her second collection of poetry, also called ‘Nigh-No-Place’, inspired by her travels in Shetland and Canada. The collection went on to win the T S Eliot Prize for Poetry in 2008, making Hadfield the youngest female winner of the prize. In his role as chair of the prize, Andrew Motion said that ‘Nigh-No-Place’ showed ‘[Hadfield] is a remarkably original poet near the beginning of what is obviously going to be a distinguished career”. His words were proven correct, as Jen went on to win the Edwin Morgan Poetry Prize in 2012, and in 2014, she was selected as one of the Poetry Book Society’s “Next Generation Poets”.

Jen’s most recent poetry collection, ‘The Stone Age’, was released by Picador in March 2021, and has been described by her publisher as ‘an astonished beholding of the wild landscape of her Shetland home’. The collection has now been shortlisted for the Highland Book Prize 2021. Established in 2017, the Highland Book Prize celebrates work that recognises the rich culture, heritage and landscape of the Highlands. Kapka Kassabova, serving on the judging panel for the Highland Book Prize, said of ‘The Stone Age’: ‘In a pantheistic journey of Shetland, Hadfield converses with her environment. The human and more-than-human worlds are perceived to be a seamless whole, and every rock has a voice. This book is a literary, environmental, and spiritual adventure.’

Congratulations Jen – we wish you all the best in the final!

The winning title will be announced at an award ceremony on Thursday 26th May.

Visit the Highland Book Prize website to find out more

Read Jen’s Awardee Profile

If you feel a Dewar Arts Award could support you in your progression as a young artist, or know someone else who might benefit, find out more about how to apply on our Eligibility and Application pages

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