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Creative Edinburgh Industry Newsletter - Autumn 2026

13 October 2026

July – September 2026 Highlights

I hope you’ve had a good summer and managed to find some time not only to slow down but also to enjoy the city and perhaps see some of the brilliant festivals.

It has been another very full few months for myself and the rest of the Creative Edinburgh team. We’ve been juggling quite a few different things, from developing new partnerships and creating opportunities for young people, to contributing to national conversations about culture and place. Much of our work happens behind the scenes, connecting people, opening doors and trying to make things a little easier for the creative people and businesses we represent. There are a few things I particularly wanted to share with you this quarter.

Local Culture Scotland: Culture is Infrastructure

I’ve spent quite a bit of time this year thinking about what culture means to a place, and what it takes to create the conditions for culture to really become part of the life of a community.

Earlier this year, I was invited to work with Matt Baker, Morvern Cunningham and Simon Sharkey on Local Culture Scotland, commissioned by the Scottish Government as part of the delivery of A Culture Strategy for Scotland. Together, we spoke with more than 50 people working across culture, communities, funding and other sectors, exploring what a genuinely place-based approach to culture could look like. The resulting report, Local Culture Scotland: Culture is Infrastructure for Place-Based Working, was presented to the Scottish Government in September.

There is a simple idea at the heart of the report that we really believe in: culture is infrastructure. It is not an optional extra that we add once the important things have been dealt with. Culture shapes how places feel, how people connect with one another, how communities develop and how people understand where they live. It also has a much wider role to play in health and wellbeing, education, enterprise, regeneration and local economies.

What I found particularly valuable about this work was the opportunity to listen to people working in very different places and circumstances across Scotland. It reinforced for me that there cannot be a single model for cultural development. What works in one place may not work in another, and local people need to have a genuine say in shaping what happens where they live.

The report proposes a new approach to supporting local culture across Scotland, with national coverage but decision-making rooted in communities. I hope it will contribute to a much bigger conversation about how we value culture and how we invest in the places where creative activity is already happening.

I’m really pleased that Creative Edinburgh is hosting the report on our website. If you work in culture, community development, policy or place-making, I’d encourage you to have a look.

Read the Local Culture Scotland report and find out more about the project.

Helping creative entrepreneurs in the city

Back in April, we started working with the City of Edinburgh Council’s Business Growth and Inclusion service and Business Gateway Edinburgh. What started as a brand new partnership has developed beautifully over the past few months, and I’m delighted that we now have a dedicated Business Growth and Inclusion page on the Creative Edinburgh website to help raise awareness about our initiatives focused on supporting entrepreneurship in Edinburgh.

One of the things we hear regularly from our members is that mainstream business support does not always feel designed with creative businesses in mind. The language can be unfamiliar, the advice can assume a particular kind of business model, and freelancers and sole traders can sometimes struggle to see where they fit.

That is something we want to help change.

Our partnership with Business Gateway gives creative entrepreneurs and businesses access to free advice, resources and support around things like business planning, finance, marketing and e-commerce, while also creating opportunities for us to shape some of that support around the realities of creative work.

We’ve also been looking at how this can connect with Pathways to Careers, so that conversations about enterprise and running a creative business can sit alongside the wider support we provide to people starting out in the sector.

I’m really pleased with how this partnership is developing, and I think there is real potential in bringing together Business Gateway’s expertise with our understanding of the creative community.

Take a look at the new Business Growth and Inclusion page and see what support is available.

Discover Creative Careers

We have also recently become an Industry Partner for Discover Creative Careers, working with Creative UK to build on our Pathways to Careers programme.

This feels like a really natural next step for us. Over the past year and a half, our team has spent a lot of time visiting universities and colleges, talking to students and graduates, meeting employers and asking some fairly fundamental questions about what needs to change if we want more young people to see a creative career as something they can genuinely build.

Discover Creative Careers works with young people aged 11–24, giving them opportunities to develop skills, understand the range of careers available to them and, importantly, meet people already working in the creative industries.

There are lots of ways for organisations to get involved, from taking part in a one-hour webinar to hosting traineeships. We are particularly keen to hear from organisations delivering educational activity, working with young people or interested in helping create better pathways into creative work. There is a short webinar on 2 November, from 15:00–15:30, where you can find out more about the programme and how to get involved.

Find out more and register your interest in Discover Creative Careers, or sign up for the 2 November webinar.

If you have questions or would like to get involved, you can also contact Lucy Smith at digital@creative-edinburgh.com.

Bring your team to the Creative Edinburgh Awards!

It’s hard to believe that we are already getting ready for the 15th Creative Edinburgh Awards.

The Awards have always been one of my favourite moments in the Creative Edinburgh calendar. They give us a chance to stop for an evening and properly celebrate the people, businesses and projects that make Edinburgh’s creative community what it is. But they are also about much more than the ceremony itself.

If you work for an organisation in Edinburgh, I’d really encourage you to bring your team along. It is a great way to meet people you might not otherwise come across, discover new talent and projects, and get a sense of what is happening across the city’s creative landscape. For organisations working in or alongside the creative industries, it is also a chance to make new connections and understand more about the people and ideas shaping the city.

And, of course, by coming along, you are directly supporting Creative Edinburgh and the work our small team does throughout the year to champion our creative community.

We would love to celebrate 15 years of the Awards with you on Friday 13 November at Central Hall.

Get your ticket to the 2026 Creative Edinburgh Awards.

What We’ve Been Reading

There has been a lot of thoughtful work coming out across the cultural and creative sectors recently, and I wanted to share a few things that have caught my attention:

If you wish to invite your colleagues to sign up for our industry newsletter, please ask them to follow this link.

I welcome your questions or comments. Please feel free to email me at ola@creative-edinburgh.com

All my best,

Ola

Executive Director
Creative Edinburgh