30 Jan 2025
Feeling creative? A Dumfries & Galloway competition celebrating the power of art in building community resilience launches this February.
FebCreate consists of 28 daily prompts - one for each day of February - designed to inspire artistic responses that reflect the theme of community resilience.
Participants can respond to as many prompts as they wish, choosing a medium that best suits their creativity - from painting, sculpture, and poetry to digital art, photography, and storytelling.
Winning entries will be on display at a Community Showcase Exhibition in May 2025. Prizes include vouchers, and art and writing supplies.
For the first time ever, the For Enjoyment CIC led competition is being held in collaboration with the National Centre for Resilience and the University of Glasgow.
Professor Fabrice Renaud, Head of the School of Social and Environmental Sustainability, said: "FebCreate 2025 is a fantastic example of how the University of Glasgow works as a civic anchor, connecting with local communities and organisations to make a real difference. By collaborating with For Enjoyment CIC and the National Centre for Resilience, we’re combining creativity and resilience-building to support our region in facing environmental challenges. This partnership shows how art can inspire and empower communities, bringing people together to create a brighter, more sustainable future."
Ailsa Mackay, Centre Director, National Centre for Resilience, said: "Creativity has a unique power to make complex environmental challenges easier to understand and connect us on a deeply human level. At the National Centre for Resilience, we’ve seen how art and creative thinking can spark important conversations, bring communities together, and celebrate the strength found in collaboration."
Frank Hayes, Creative Director of For Enjoyment CIC, said: “For Enjoyment’s annual FebCreate event has been running for six years, and it’s incredible to see how it continues to grow and bring people together through creativity. We are so excited for this year’s collaboration with the NCR and the University of Glasgow as focusing on resilience feels especially important now, and we can’t wait to see the creative results!"
Dr Tawona Sitholé, Lecturer in Creative Practice Education at the UofG’s UNESCO Chair on Refugee Integration through Education, Languages and the Arts and co-founder of Seeds of Thought, will be the NCR’s poet-in-residence during the competition. He will share a Haiku along with each daily prompt, as additional creative inspiration.
