Freight, a Glasgow-based design consultancy, was looking for an imaginative way both to promote its creative design skills and to support the arts, writes Jane Macfarlane. The company?s creative team contained a number of football fanatics, so the company was interested in sponsoring a project that combined football and the arts. It approached the Scottish Football Museum with the idea of jointly publishing the first-ever anthology of Scottish football fiction.
While it was immediately obvious that there were many interesting Scottish writers who could be approached, it was agreed that the project should be used to encourage new writing. So a proposal was made to Arts & Business to extend the project to unpublished writers and, through the New Partners scheme, we provided £9,500 to support a programme of community-based creative-writing workshops in various parts of Scotland. These workshops allowed a wide range of people to develop their writing skills with leading writers and resulted in 45 stories from unpublished writers being submitted for inclusion in the book, with five being finally selected.
By now the title had been agreed as ?The hope that kills us?, particularly apt given the current state of Scottish national football! A number of leading Scottish writers, (including Des Dillon and Denise Mina) agreed to provide stories, and Freight arranged for a New York-based Scottish photographer, Paul Thorburn, to create a series of photographic essays on football as well.
Freight Design oversaw the design of the book, which was launched at the Scottish Football Museum to critical acclaim. A number of public readings from the book were arranged at the museum, in libraries and shopping centres, in the offices of Freight Design and the first-ever book reading at a Scottish premier league match. Proceeds from sales have gone to the Football Museum, and the book won the Museums Trading Association Award for Best Publication 2003.
The benefits to the sponsoring business were increased profile and a showcase for its design talent, while the Football Museum shared the publicity and received income from the book sales. For the workshop participants there was the opportunity to develop their creative-writing skills, and for five of them a breakthrough into publishing; the established writers and the photographer had the opportunity to focus their talents on one of Scotland?s strongest passions and so potentially reach a new audience. The Edinburgh-based publisher Polygon has gone on to print a paperback run in conjunction with Freight. And Freight has entered into a number of further sponsorship projects, including the production of two more books.
Jane Macfarlane is Events & PR Manager of Arts & Business Scotland. t: 0131 220 2499; e: jane.macfarlane@aandb.org.uk; w: http://www.aandb.org.uk