20 of Scotland's best grassroots arts organisations

Deveron Projects - Hussein Mitha and Huntly Youth Climate Warriors, The World is Ours In Spite of All (2023). (Image: Alexander Hoyles)

Deveron Projects does not have a gallery. It has a town. For 30 years, the organisation has made artwork across the town and surrounding area through traditional methods like painting and performance, to deeper works founded in connections between people.

It recently acquired a former shop unit on Huntly’s Town Square that is now used by more than 40 community groups to organise together. The artworks made with the organisation have permanently changed the fabric of the town and wider understandings of socially-engaged arts across the UK, from its branding to a seed library, a weeping willow to mark Brexit or a woodland as a monument to peace.

Atlas Arts – Portree, Isle of Skye

Place and time underpin the work Atlas Arts does with artists and local residents. Organising collective art projects across Skye and Raasay since 2010, it has commissioned some of the most quietly ambitious contemporary art made anywhere in Scotland. The work responds to land, ecology and community with rigour and without sentimentality in ways both small and large, finding new ways to bring people together for conversations and creation. Its accessible, collaborative and mobile programme spans 1000 square miles, putting on 100 events a year along with projects in halls, schools, boats, shorelines, archaeological sites, up hills and more.

Outer Spaces – Scotland-wide

Outer Spaces (Image: Grant Anderson)

Outer Spaces was founded in 2021 as a direct response to the pandemic's decimation of artist studio life. The model is elegant: take on leases for empty commercial buildings across Scotland and hand them to artists for free while landlords wait for their next tenant. More than 1,000 artists across 13 local authority areas are now part of the network. Its First Steps programme reserves spaces specifically for new graduates, keeping creative energy in the cities that trained it, instead of watching it be priced out.

Neuk Collective / Door in the Wall – Edinburgh

Neuk Collective access equipment (Image: Chris Scott)

Neuk Collective began in 2020 as a group of neurodivergent artists comparing notes on the barriers they kept hitting in the arts. It has since grown to 250 members across Scotland and is preparing to launch Spectra, a leadership programme designed to put neurodivergent artists not just inside the room but at the head of the table. Its message to the wider sector is clear and backed by evidence: when you design for neurodivergent people, you build a better culture for everyone.

Recoat – Glasgow

When Recoat started out in 2007, it was one of the few galleries in Scotland to platform street art. What began as a small gallery has since evolved into an arts organisation that helps as many people experience, own, or live with art through exhibitions, mural projects, and art workshops. The organisation promotes Scots artists and creates a bridge for international artists to make work in Scotland.

Recoat has gone from a tiny grass-roots gallery space down a side street to a renowned curatorial team being commissioned by agencies and brands, working with the leading mural artists of Scotland and the world.

Counterflows – Glasgow

Counterflows (Image: Brian Hartley)

Alasdair Campbell started Counterflows in 2011 after watching the experimental music scene start to take itself too seriously – exclusive is exactly what experimental music should never be. Initially, Counterflows took place in community spaces across Glasgow, but these days festival passes sell out in a day and the waiting list mounts in the lead up to events. This year’s festival is a testament to the impact the festival is making both at home and abroad, with highlights including Poland’s Remont Pomp group, who work with the Institute for the Mentally Disabled in Gdansk, and a new work from the Kings Park Youth Brass closing out the festival.

Grateful Gallery – Glasgow (Garnethill)

From left, Ciaran, Panda and Colin of Grateful Gallery in Garnethill (Image: Gordon Terris)

Grateful Gallery opened in a Garnethill tenement last summer and has since dominated the conversation around what a gallery should do and who it should be for. Run by local street artists Panda, Conzo, and Ciaran Globel, the space has not only given up-and-coming street artists a chance to get their first gallery showing – it’s also offered people and artists around the world a window into Glasgow’s talented DIY art network.

In the short time it has been operating, Grateful has become a hub for the city’s creatives with its monthly rotating exhibits (and accompanying murals outside). Through its online reach, it has also managed to cement Scotland’s largest city as a destination for world-class street art.

Lost Map Records – Isle of Eigg

On the tiny island of Eigg off the west coast of Scotland, you will find one of the country’s most distinctive record labels. Lost Map, run by musician Pictish Trail (Johnny Lynch), has been one of our most quietly original cultural exports for thirteen years, proving that geography only acts as a barrier if you let it. Its roster spans folk, electronic, post-rock and the all-around undefinable.

The label sustains itself through PostMap Club, a network of hundreds of subscribers who receive new music each month in exchange for helping the firm survive outside of the streaming economy. For over a decade, Lost Map has worked to create a supportive, DIY ecosystem where artists can make adventurous music and still feel part of a community.

Pop Mutations – Glasgow

Pop Mutations was born through lockdown when the bookers behind Stereo, Mono, The Old Hairdresser’s and The Flying Duck asked each other the same question: What would happen if we started promoting our own shows in our own venues?

They road-tested the festival with an 80-artist-strong online festival during the pandemic, and since then, the not-for-profit collective has hosted a string of in-person festivals across Glasgow (and sometimes Edinburgh). The line-ups are, in the words of promoter Ross Keppie, “strongly curated and diverse”. Between these and their annual Freakender Festival, Pop Mutations has become the go-to for discovering something new in a city with no shortage of live music.

 Sonic Bothy— Glasgow

Sonic Bothy (Image: Brian Hartley)

Sonic Bothy brings together Disabled and non-Disabled musicians to create genre-defying experimental music. Since the charity was founded, hundreds of participants have honed their musical skills through its regular workshops and artist development programmes, going on to perform in front of live audiences across Scotland and beyond. There is no right or wrong in experimental music, and by nature, the genre has been a leveller with participants: there is no right way to play, no experience required.

The ensemble that has grown from that work performs original, access-shaped pieces on professional stages; last April, a protest piece about the loss of accessible public toilets closed the Counterflows festival to a room of 500. No one is left behind at Sonic Bothy.

Buzzcut – Glasgow

BUZZCUT presents artist Amber Helene Muller St Thomas (Image: Polina Teif)

When the National Review of Live Art closed in 2012, a group of Glasgow artists refused to let the infrastructure disappear with it, and Buzzcut was born. The festival is home for the weird, the risky, and the not-quite-finished when it comes to performance with a sense of gathering and mutual support at the heart of it. Over the years, the biennial festival has grown into a community as much as an event.

Between its Emerging Artist Award and its programmes like Double Thrills, Buzzcut has become a place for artists to experiment and given audiences a way in without making art feel too exclusive or difficult.

Alchemy Film & Arts – Hawick, Scottish Borders

Bolex/16mm workshops in Wilton Lodge Park, Alchemy Film & Arts (Image: Alchemy Film & Arts)

Alchemy Film & Arts runs the UK's only festival dedicated to experimental film and moving image – all from the sleepy town of Hawick in the Borders. The annual festival works with artists and communities regionally, nationally, and internationally to bring people together in a town with no multiplex. Since it was founded in 2010, Alchemy has expanded into a year-round offering, providing resident opportunities that allow

Matchbox Cine – Glasgow/Dundee

Matchbox Cine loves weird films. The exhibitor and distributor of cult films, past and present, prides itself on championing “the orphans, outcasts and outliers” of cult cinema. Founded in 2010, it has evolved from short film nights into a major platform, producing unique festivals like KeanuCon, Cage-a-rama, and its flagship, Weird Weekend. Matchbox is also quietly one of Scotland’s most committed access advocates, with all events featuring non-theatrical audio description as standard.

Co-director Sean Welsh describes the relationship with major venues plainly: they can rely on us more than we can rely on them. In a city as cinema-loving as Glasgow, Matchbox helps bridge the gap between audiences and non-mainstream programming.

Regional Screen Scotland / Screen Machine – Highlands & Islands

Regional Screen Scotland works to enable more people in more places to share great screen experiences. (Image: Regional Screen Scotland)

The Screen Machine is an 80-seat cinema on the back of an articulated lorry that has been driving to communities with no other access to film since 1998. It visits 44 locations across the Highlands and Islands, including Down Memory Lane screenings designed for people living with dementia. In 2025, it raised £1.5 million to commission a new vehicle after a public campaign, with the new Screen Machine due in 2026. The set-up has been crucial for allowing children who grow up in remote communities a stellar cinema experience. It’s also a reason to book the babysitter and get together with your community to share news, have a chat, and enjoy a great film.

404 Ink — Edinburgh (2016–2026)

404 Ink was founded in 2016 by Heather McDaid and Laura Jones on the straightforward premise that the books they wanted to read weren't being published, so they would publish them themselves. What followed was a decade that punched so far above its weight class it made the weight class look arbitrary: the Nasty Women anthology (commissioned in a week, in direct response to Trump's first election) sold out in days and became a cultural moment. 404 Ink closes this year, but its impressive track record includes Saltire Award wins, a number one spot in The List Hot 100, and a roster of writers who would go on to become some of the most important voices in Scottish literature. The gap it leaves is not metaphorical.

Stewed Rhubarb Press – Scotland

Stewed Rhubarb, run by Duncan Lockerbie and Charlie Roy, publishes poetry pamphlets with the care and seriousness usually reserved for full collections. They understand that for some writers, it will be the first time their work has existed as a physical book you can hold, launch, and see on a shelf.

Recent titles have woven together Scots, Gaelic and English; interrogated the silences of museum collections; and tracked colonial legacy from Scotland to West Africa and back. It is a small press with an outsize sense of what poetry is for, and a quietly extraordinary track record to match.

Taproot Press – Edinburgh

Taproot Press (Image: Andrew Redmond Barr)

Taproot Press was founded during lockdown by two university undergraduates who published a collection when no one else would. Six years later, Patrick Jamieson and Daniela Silva have an award-nominated list that spans literary fiction, memoir and poetry in English, Scots and Gaelic, including a novel about Scotland's Jewish community and a grief memoir that interrogates what a short life deserves to be remembered. They are still not paying themselves enough. They are also, self-evidently, building something that matters.

Glasgow Zine Library – Glasgow

Glasgow Zine Library (Image: Areil Balcony/Glasgow Zine Library)

Glasgow Zine Library started in 2013 as an unfunded zine fair in the upstairs of a pub. It is now a registered charity in Govanhill with a collection of over 4,000 zines, a programme that welcomed 11,000 people last year, and a festival that drew visitors from Korea, the US, Germany and France. Its most important insight is also its simplest: you can make a zine without thinking of yourself as a zine-maker. The library holds thousands of examples of people who needed an outlet that didn't exist elsewhere and made one anyway.

The Stove Network – Dumfries

While many arts organisations ask what culture can do for the community, The Stove Network asks the opposite. It started in 2011 with a pop-up T-shirt factory, a crowdsourced town charter and an unlikely river race from the sea to the centre of Dumfries. What it was really asking was: what should this place become, and who gets to decide? Fourteen years later, it is a nationally recognised creative placemaking organisation, a café, a regional network and a key partner in the Midsteeple Quarter regeneration. Its development director Katharine Wheeler puts it plainly: culture is not a nice extra. It is how communities build the confidence to change things.

Creative Dundee – Dundee

Creative Dundee Pecha Kucha Night (Image: Aylish Kelly)

Creative Dundee began in 2008 as a blog that Gillian Russell ran in her spare time, because the grassroots creative energy in the city had nowhere to be seen. It became a social enterprise in 2013 and now supports a network of creative freelancers, businesses and community organisations in a city where the creative industries employ around 3,500 people — most of them working in the informal supply chains that no official statistic captures. Its Amps Community Ideas Fund recently seeded Dundee's first Open Studios and the Dundee Radio Club. The organisation does not make art; it makes it possible for other people to make art.

Look out for our new Arts supplement next Thursday for the best in Scottish theatre, visual arts, music and comment