National Museums Scotland, National Museums NI, Design-Nation, Craft Northern Ireland, and Craft Scotland are pleased to invite applications for a collaborative exhibition project.
Up to 15 makers who are residents of Scotland and Northern Ireland will be supported to create new, contemporary work inspired by the Museums’ collections and current research into our shared decorative and making heritage, from the Mesolithic to the medieval period. The commissioned work will be shown in a multi-partner exhibition, opening at the National Museum of Scotland in summer 2027 and at Ulster Museum in early 2028.
About the project
This project began as a discussion between members of Design-Nation based in Northern Ireland and Scotland, inspired by the British Museum and National Museums Scotland collaborative 2015 exhibition Celts. Many members view their practice as being part of a legacy of making that connects the nations via shared cultural heritage and traditions of manufacture. While Celts was a stimulus, the project also hopes to encourage new reflections on much longer-term perspectives on Scottish-Irish creative links, building upon active research on museum objects. From the stone tools of early prehistory to the gold jewellery of the Bronze and Iron Ages, remarkable decorated early Bronze Age pots to the scrolling, complex ornament on Iron Age bronzes, and the creative wealth of the early medieval period in bronze, silver, gold, stone, and manuscripts, these artefacts are materially led, beautifully made, functional as well as decorative. They provide a glorious archive of craft manufacture and design for future makers to learn from and draw upon.
Applicants will not be asked to recreate or replicate, but to be inspired by the ancient decoration, craft process, or embodied concepts that they are introduced to through current research on these objects to create something new and unique. The museums will also benefit from learning about craft and technique from the makers who take part.
Find out more at the Craft NI website below.
Open Call for Contemporary Craft Makers
Closing date for applications is 31 July 2025
