WHALE Arts has been successful in its application to Creative Scotland for Multi-Year Funding for 2025-28. We will be joining the MYF Portfolio for the first time, which this time has seen 251 organisations across the country awarded funding.
WHALE Arts CEO Kate Griffin said:
We are extremely pleased and thankful that WHALE Arts has received multi-year funding from Creative Scotland to continue delivering our creative programme for our community. This support ensures that we can keep providing meaningful, inclusive, and inspiring opportunities for local people to connect, create, and thrive. With this investment, we look forward to deepening our impact, nurturing our artists and celebrating the creativity of our community.
Congratulations to our partners who also received funding! Starcatchers, Sistema Scotland Travelling Gallery, Art in Healthcare, Edinburgh Book Festival, Edinburgh Art Festival, Manipulate Arts, Push the Boat Out, Tortoise in a Nutshell, Theiya Arts and our Creative Community Hubs partners Craigmillar Now, North Edinburgh Arts and Lyra. Looking forward to more collaborations 2025-2028!
Kate Griffin, CEO , centre, with Board Members Eunice Main and Allan McNaughton
WHALE Arts are delighted to announce the appointment of Kate Griffin as our new Chief Executive, replacing Leah Black, who leaves us in July 2024 after 6 years at WHALE.
Kate brings a wealth of experience and insight to the role, having held the posts of Interim Chief Executive since August 2022 and Head of Programmes prior to that. She has worked for more than twenty years across the creative sector, with a focus on national arts programmes and creative education.
Dr Andrew McNiven, Chair of Trustees, WHALE Arts
Kate’s expertise in the challenging and exciting field of community arts, her excellent interpersonal, management and strategic skills, and her deep understanding of Wester Hailes, allied to her ability to advocate for this community at regional and national level ,will, we feel sure, enable her to provide excellent opportunities for our participants and our community. On behalf of the WHALE Board, our members, participants and staff team, we wish her all the best in her new role.
We would like to thank Leah Black, our outgoing Chief Executive, for her excellent work as WHALE Chief Executive since 2018, and especially during the pandemic. WHALE Arts ability to adapt and work in supporting our communities during this difficult period was outstanding and widely recognised. We wish Leah good luck in her new exciting role leading Foundation Scotland’s Regenerative Futures Fund.
Kate Griffin, CEO, WHALE Artssaid:
I’m absolutely thrilled to be appointed as WHALE Arts’ CEO. I’m looking forward to working with the team, participants, members, volunteers and Board at WHALE Arts to continue our award-winning work as the creative heart of our community
WHALE Arts, the community-led cultural anchor organisation for Wester Hailes, is delighted to announce the formal completion of a Community Asset Transfer for the land upon which their purpose-built arts centre was built in 2001.
Established by local people in 1992, WHALE Arts provides a wide range of creative opportunities, classes and workshops for the people of Wester Hailes, as well as hosting several other community-facing organisations and services, including: Sistema Scotland Big Noise Wester Hailes, Starcatchers – Scotland’s Arts and Early Years organisation and SCORE Scotland.
Their current community-owned building opened to the public in 2001, however the site itself has, up until now, been held on a 25-year lease from City of Edinburgh Council. The land which has been secured also includes WHALE’s community garden and a small, adjoining woodland area, all of which has now been brought into community ownership, thanks to a grant of £125,000 from the Scottish Land Acquisition Fund.
The organisation celebrated the successful completion of the process last Wednesday, 29 May 2024,with a ribbon cutting ceremony with members of the community who had taken part.
Interim WHALE Arts Agency CEO Kate Griffin said:
We’re thrilled to have completed the Community Asset Transfer process and are very grateful for our partners’ support to make it happen. Working together the WHALE Arts team, our Members, volunteers and artists look forward to seeing our award winning projects developing and thriving in our space at the creative heart of our community.
Securing this land for the whole community successfully completes a five-year process that began in the spring of 2019, during which WHALE Arts has consulted extensively with community members, local partner organisations and a range of other stakeholders, to ensure that all aspects of the transfer process aligned fully with the aspirations of the community.
There will be a public event to mark the completion of the CAT process at WHALE Arts from 11.30am – 1.00pm on Wednesday 29th May, so please join us for a brief ribbon-cutting ceremony with some light refreshments, and help us to celebrate the start of a new and exciting chapter in the story of this community-led (and now fully community-owned) creative powerhouse.
In 2022 we celebrated 30 years of WHALE Arts – which means 30 years of creativity in the community of Wester Hailes. To celebrate, WHALE Arts invited over 500 guests to a party on 20th August 2022…
