Can you tell us a bit about how anam creative started, and its journey over the past 4 years?

anam started in 2020 as a music collective/online space for collaboration. We managed to secure some project funding in 2021 which brought together seven emerging creatives, commissioning remote interdisciplinary collaborations. This allowed us to form our original collective and core team who later set up anam creative as an organisation. Since then, we’ve hosted a number of multi-arts events bringing together a wider community and received funding from Creative Scotland and Youth Music to run more large-scale collaborative projects, which paid artists fairly for their time! Our core team are all emerging artists, working largely voluntarily and are focused on supporting artists aged 18-30, enriching our communities and the Glasgow arts and music scene.

How would you describe the experience of going to one of your events for the first time?

We focus on booking artists from different genres and backgrounds, with no clear headliners for our events, which creates an environment where different scenes come together. We’re so lucky to have been able to book some of Scotland’s most exciting upcoming artists despite using smaller venues to support an intimate atmosphere. Our audiences are truly part of our community!

We’re interested in creating immersive events with projected and sometimes interactive visuals. Shout out to Niki Zaupa, our resident VJ and legend.

Tell us a bit about the process of selecting who you work with, are there mutual interests or focuses of the artists and events you support?

We support the intersections of traditional and contemporary creative practices in all the work we do. In our projects, we select artists via open calls, where we aim to put together collaborative teams that will work well as a group; be this in skill-sharing, collaborative making or in learning from other life experiences. We get an overwhelming amount of applications for these projects and selecting such a small number of artists can be really difficult. Hopefully, we’ll get some more funding this year and be able to continue these projects.

Our team all love going to other events, where we find artists we like and ultimately book to play at our own shows. We always curate our nights so that they follow unique trajectories with diverse sounds.

What advice would you give emerging creative practitioners wanting to explore ideas and opportunities?

Our advice would be to engage with your community and collaborate as much as you can! Ask questions to the people and organisations around you that you look up to. Most people are very keen to support. Keep creating and enjoying the process, because that is the most important thing and if you’re enjoying making the work then the work will develop into something good and the opportunities will come.

If you are a musician aged 18-25, Youth Music offers some great opportunities. Also check out Help Musicians and PRS Foundation who both have a bunch of funds available. For other creative practices in Scotland, there’s Creative Scotland Opportunities or Creative Entrepreneurs Club who are a great organisation who can give you access to experts in the creative industries. For women and non-binary artists then get involved with our friends Flos Collective, they run some amazing events and workshops. Also, give us a message, we’re always happy to help young and emerging artists when and where we can!

What’s in the future for anam?

We’re in a bit of a transitionary period at the moment, looking towards sustainability for our organisation so that we can keep offering opportunities to emerging artists. The funding landscape is pretty competitive at the moment and very time consuming, but we’re still going! The aim is to be less funding reliant so that anam creative can keep doing the work we do. We’ve got an album of music coming out in June from our ‘music collab’ project and some more releases later this year. Keep your eyes peeled for some more events and commissions in the future.

Find out more on anam creative through their website, where you can explore their upcoming events and support them through their shop and donations. @anam__creative

Event photographs courtesy of Abe Howell, Hamish MacDonald and anam creative.