Captivate is our nationwide communities and partnerships programme, through which we are collaborating with communities in the Outer Hebrides, North Lanarkshire and Edinburgh West for a period of three to five years to deliver a bespoke programme of productions, screenings, workshops and co-creation projects in the areas of puppetry, animation and visual theatre.
Captivate aims to enrich the lives of people from diverse backgrounds across Scotland, through opportunities to see and participate in puppetry, animation and visual theatre in their everyday lives, and to celebrate local communities as places where creativity is thriving. The project is a responsive, multi-year creative conversation between Puppet Animation Scotland, community members, key venue partners and creative artists. Through the project we present high quality arts performance and engagement opportunities in each of the three areas.
The focus of this work is to present opportunities that are not currently available in these communities, or have been on a limited basis, due to costs and geographical disadvantages, whilst also building and sustaining the exisiting cultural and artistic offer by working closely with locally based partner venues and organisations. We want to open doors to puppetry, visual theatre and animation as creative practices and performances that are not only visually exciting and adaptable but accessible. Through the project we will work with organisations locally to offer opportunities for engagement with groups within that are not being catered for through traditional venue based or text led narrative offers- and showcase the power of these artforms within creative placemaking.
Read our report from the pilot year!
Find out more about what we’re doing through Captivate around the country in 2023:

Captivate: Edinburgh West
In Edinburgh West we are working across a group of community venues in delivery of our programme which has been developed with our lead partner WHALE Arts Agency and in conversation with Clovenstone Community Centre, the Edinburgh Library service at Wester Hailes Library and The Welcoming charity.
Captivate: Uist
Captivate: Uist is our partnership programme being delivered with Taigh Chearsabhagh and Sgoil Uibhist a Tuath exploring animation through interactive projects and performance across Uist.