Scott Creative Arts Foundation

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Scott Creative Arts Foundation

The Scott Creative Arts Foundation
Charity Registered in England Number - 1168545

04/09/2026

The SCAF 2027 Emerging Artist Award is now open for applications!

This year's theme, Tension, invites artists across Yorkshire to explore the forces that pull, bind, strain and transform. From physical and material tension to social, emotional and historical pressures. It's an open brief that welcomes bold interpretations across image, sculpture, sound, moving image and more...

Our 2027 exhibition will take place at Dean Clough Mill, once the largest Victorian carpet manufacturer in the world and now a thriving centre for culture and creativity. Its industrial heritage and history of textile production make it a powerful setting for this year's theme.

Applications are open until 31 October 2026.
We can't wait to see how you respond.

Apply now: follow the link to creator space in our bio or go to www.scafemergingartist.co.uk

03/09/2026

Finalist Zivarna Murphy's installation My Brownspace, Your Brownspace draws on the eroding East Yorkshire coastline, transforming layered stoneware, porcelain and wild boulder clay into tactile ceramic vessels that reflect on how landscape and identity shape one another. Rooted in her material-led practice, the forms echo fossilised shells, sea-eroded rocks and the shifting cliffs, foregrounding Murphy's positionality as a neurodivergent, mixed-ethnicity woman of colour from a working-class background.

Through impressed shells, fossils and gathered shoreline materials, the work explores how place is inherited and reimagined to create a space that holds both personal and shared relationships to the coastline.

Zivarna is one of ten finalists featured in our 2026 Emerging Artist Award exhibition at the Danum Gallery in Doncaster, open until 19 September 2026. You can also view all finalist works, including Morvarid Alavifard's winning piece, on our Emerging Artist Award website linked in our bio.

01/09/2026

Finalist Karen Horsfall's sculptural work Weight of the Weave reimagines the traditional rag-clip rug, drawing on family craft and the memories embedded within clothing, footwear and domestic making. Rooted in her ceramic practice, Horsfall hand-forms individual clay clips from leftover material and stitches them onto jute sacking, echoing how rag rugs were historically created from unwanted garments passed through generations.

Horsfall's work reflects her ongoing interest in how identity, labour and lived experiences are held within everyday objects. Draped over a chair as though resting on the maker's knees, Weight of the Weave recalls both the physical weight of the rug and the emotional weight of the stories it carries.
Karen is one of ten finalists featured in our 2026 Emerging Artist Award exhibition at the Danum Gallery in Doncaster, open until 19 September 2026. All finalist works, including Morvarid Alavifard's winning piece, can also be viewed on our Emerging Artist Award website linked in our bio.

29/08/2026

Finalist Lydia Ridley's painting The Accusation of Joan Jurdie confronts the misogynistic histories embedded within her hometown of Rossington, drawing on the story of Joan Jurdie who is known locally as The Witch of Rossington and was accused of witchcraft in 1605 and 1608. Building from Ridley's figurative practice, the work uses religious and mythological desthetics to explore how symbolism, queerness, mortality and identity intersect across time.
In the piece, a contorted female form claws against her constraints, acknowledging the connection between past and present. A commentary on how violence against women persists, and how societal ideals continue to shape who is persecuted and why.

Lydia is one of ten finalists featured in our 2026 Emerging Artist Award exhibition at the Danum Gallery in Doncaster, open until 19 September 2026. All finalist works, including Morvarid Alavifard's winning piece, can also be viewed on our Emerging Artist Award website linked in our bio.

28/08/2026

Finalist Dee Holt's mixed-media photographic work Against Forgetting layers contemporary photographs with historical postcards, cartographic fragments and collected Scarborough ephemera to explore how memory, place and landscape are preserved over time. Rooted in her experimental, research-led practice, Holt embeds location directly into her images through analogue processes, archival material and site-responsive approaches that reflect her interest in environmental awareness and human impact. By combining past and present visual records, Against Forgetting considers how landscapes are documented, experienced and remembered.

Dee is one of ten finalists featured in our 2026 Emerging Artist Award exhibition at the Danum Gallery in Doncaster, open until 19 September 2026. All finalist works, including Morvarid Alavifard's winning piece, can also be viewed on our Emerging Artist Award website linked in our bio.

27/08/2026

We’re happy to share that one of our 2025 EAA finalists, Layla Jabbari, has received a spotlight article through exhibtd. Checkout the article and read about Layla on their website via their tagged Instagram or search Layla Jabbari exhibtd online. Congrats Layla!

26/08/2026

Finalist Lucy Kent's mixed-media work The Beginning is the End and the End is the Beginning reflects on her family heritage in Wakefield, where her grandad worked as a Market Gardener and rhubarb grower for over fifty years. Rooted in her multidisciplinary practice between drawing and sculpture, Kent brings together paper, textiles and metal for the first time, exploring the delicacy of materials through intensive, repetitive making processes.
The work's three sections echo the transient nature of life, connecting themes of death, rebirth and transformation with the history of the Rhubarb Triangle and the traditions that shaped her upbringing.
Lucy is one of ten finalists featured in our 2026 Emerging Artist Award exhibition at the Danum Gallery in Doncaster, open until 19 September 2026. All finalist works, including Morvaria Alavifard's winning piece, can also be viewed on our Emerging Artist Award website linked in our bio.

24/08/2026

The run of our Emerging Contemporaries exhibition continues in the wonderful venue of Scarboroughs Maket Hall Vaults, open for visitors to view for free! So if you're planning to be in Scarborough in the next couple of weeks, be sure to schedule a visit on one of our open days!

The exhibition brings together the work of 13 regional artists in emerging stages of their creative practices to showcase their experimental works in a unique and quirky venue. The show is up until the second of September, and current invigilation dates are: 20th, 2lst, 22nd, 24th, 25th, 27th, 28th, 29th August 2026.

Additional dates will be announced via SCAF stories. And once again, a huge congratulations to all the artists for making such amazing works.

22/08/2026

Finalist Maria Donnai's mixed-media sculpture A Delicate Interface reflects on the fragility of nature through the interplay of porcelain and glass.
Her recent work draws on heritage craft techniques, and utilises delicate materials to explore environmental vulnerability. In A Delicate Interface, three thin glass strips formed using pâte de verre (an ancient glassmaking method) rest on porcelain supports, each containing impressions of shells and ammonites. Inspired by the fast-eroding East Yorkshire coastline, the layered materials echo the geological strata visible in the cliffs, inviting reflection on how our landscapes shift and why they must be protected for future generations.

Maria is one of ten finalists featured in our 2026 Emerging Artist Award exhibition at the Danum Gallery in Doncaster, open until 19 September 2026. All finalist works, including Morvarid Alavifard's winning piece, can also be viewed on our Emerging Artist Award website linked in our bio.

20/08/2026

Finalist Martin Gittins' painting 'Emergent Form 1: Rosedale' traces the layered histories of the North York Moors, combining observed landscape with imagined architectonic forms to reflect on how industry leaves its mark across time. Rooted in his interdisciplinary background in architecture, Gittins' practice explores the shifting relationship between geology, memory and human intervention. In this work, the remnants of the Rosedale ironstone works intersect with speculative structures, inviting viewers to consider how landscapes are continually reshaped, reinterpreted and inherited.

Martin is one of ten finalists featured in our 2026 Emerging Artist Award exhibition at the Danum Gallery in Doncaster, open until 19 September 2026. All finalist works, including Morvarid Alavifard's winning piece, can also be viewed on our Emerging Artist Award website linked in our bio.

Address

The Art House (Thirsk), The Old Barn, York Road
Thirsk
YO73AD

Telephone

+441423314103

Website

https://linktr.ee/scafoundation

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