£200,000 commission public advisory vote. Survey

As part of the process of developing Lerwick’s formal bid to become the UK’s first Town of Culture in 2028, the £200,000 commission proposals are being put forward for a public advisory vote, running from Monday 19 to Sunday 25 October.

The vote is an opportunity for the public to tell us which projects particularly excite them. The results will be shared with the commissioning panel to inform its discussions.

We have divided the year into three chapters - Inspiration, Play and Launch to help tell the story of Lerwick. Please choose ONE favourite proposal from each chapter.

1.Inspiration(Required.)

Contemporary Broch of Lerwick

We propose to build a sculpture that offers a new space for contemporary cultural activity, modelled on the scale and proportions of the Broch of Mousa. This proposal is an example of the concept of Arte Útil: useful art with a social purpose. The structure is both a public sculpture and a functional building for small-scale, experimental art and social projects. The main structure of Contemporary Broch of Lerwick will be constructed from a galvanised-carbon steel frame and ZAM-coated sheet steel: an external cladding material used in marine environments and harsh climates. The floor will be polished concrete embedded with local stone aggregate, supplied with drainage and incorporating a customised gas firepit with flush steel cover when not in use. The roof will be open to the skies in default position and the Broch supplied with a removable, transparent canopy for flexible use in inclement weather. Seating will be one continuous, concrete seating ring (approximately 30 seats) formed as part of the ground-level works. A continuous, spiral staircase with steel clad balustrade will lead to a viewing platform (approximately 15 standing) at the top of the broch, accessing views into the external landscape and views down into the performance space.

Gathering Light: a constellation of projects, connected by place

Gathering Light is an enabling arts programme that unites creatives, heritage bodies, and residents to transform Lerwick after dark throughout 2028. Rather than isolated, short-lived events, it establishes a programme of complementary creative lighting, projection, and performance projects delivering shared public co-design workshops, multiple artist commissions, and lasting impacts. While including multiple projects appears ambitious, the delivery model is based on Shetland Arts’ successful Remembering Together initiative which commissioned 9 creatives to produce 5 separate covid memorials, a book, and a documentary film within a £70k budget. Gathering Light applies that multi-project efficiency to creative lighting. By pooling production management, shared community co-design labs, and a local equipment pool, the programme supports up to 8 distinct commissions without duplicating overheads: Anchor Projects: participatory multi-arts projection and performance event awakening Fort Charlotte. Sensitive interpretive nightscapes in the historic Lerwick Lanes. Participatory Labs & Trails: guerrilla lighting workshops and a waterfront light trail. Performance: An immersive music production at Mareel. Grassroots Support: open and supported/mentored commissions to develop inexperienced practitioners. There also could be 'Light and Dark' photography trophies donated to agricultural shows and exploration of links with Wild Skies Shetland to deliver a lasting light and dark plan for Lerwick.

HÖMIN

HÖMIN (working title) is a large-scale outdoor dance-theatre spectacle about belonging, created with communities in Lerwick and across Shetland to celebrate Lerwick as Town of Culture 2028. Hömin, meaning twilight, frames an exploration of belonging between past and future: what people carry forward, what they want to change, and why they stay, leave, arrive or return. We are proposing a co-creation process informed Southpaw’s proven co-creation methodology, refined through over 20 large-scale spectacles across the UK and internationally. Conversations, workshops and digital story-sharing will gather local experiences of identity, language, migration and island life. Communities will shape every stage as we combine these stories into interconnected theatrical characters with local writers, develop scenes and create choreography. Professional dancers and community participants will bring these lives to the stage through intimate storytelling and mass movement. Our award-winning work ranges from the National Theatre to car parks in Blackpool. Previous spectacles include a five-storey structure for RISE, moving goods carriages for STEAM, pyrotechnics, double-decker buses and grand pianos amid staged riots (see showreel). With world-class collaborators in lighting, sound and projection design, we turn community stories into powerful dance theatre. We look forward to discovering what we could create together for Lerwick 2028.

MADE OF HERE

DAUR proposes an ambitious, large-scale, site-responsive work created with the people and places of Lerwick. Beginning in the Inspiration chapter, we will spend time in Lerwick listening, gathering, making and building relationships. We will seek out the stories, voices, places and experiences that reveal something about what Lerwick is now — including those that may not usually find their way into how Shetland represents itself. Rather than arriving with a story already chosen, we will bring a way of working. Through encounters with communities, local artists, young people and the places themselves, we will discover what the work needs to become. The people we meet will not simply contribute material; they will help shape and make it. From this process, we will create an extraordinary shared public experience, bringing together performance, design, sound, music, visual art and the town itself. It could unfold through streets, buildings, waterfronts and unexpected spaces, transforming familiar places through the stories discovered there. The ambition is to make something unmistakably of Lerwick: something that could not have been conceived elsewhere, because Lerwick and its people made it possible.

Pioneers of Lerwick

A major contemporary performance celebrating Lerwick’s cultural pioneers and social innovators. Those who shaped Lerwick’s cultural heritage laid the foundations for future generations to create something truly extraordinary. Chris Stout and Catriona McKay would create an ambitious new work combining music, dance, song and visual design to tell the story of Lerwick through the lives of visionary figures including Arthur Anderson, Rhoda Butler, Dr Tom Anderson, Peerie Willie Johnson and Haldane Burgess. The work would also explore Lerwick’s enduring connections with Norway, recognising how centuries of seafaring, trade, migration and cultural exchange have helped shape Shetland’s distinctive identity. This shared heritage would provide a rich creative thread, connecting the town’s past with its continuing relationship with the wider North Atlantic. Newly composed music and reimagined traditional material would bring their stories to life, combining the talents of Fiddlers’ Bid, Chris Stout and Catriona McKay, the Lerwick senior and junior orchestras, jazz and traditional musicians from across Shetland. Traditional Shetland dancers would work alongside contemporary performers, with local poets, singers and designers contributing to a distinctive, multidisciplinary production. Rooted in Shetland’s rich cultural heritage yet looking firmly towards the future, the performance would celebrate the imagination and determination of those who shaped Lerwick while creating new opportunities for young musicians and artists to collaborate with established professionals. Beyond the performance, our ambition is to establish a lasting cross-genre orchestra in Shetland, bringing all musicians together to learn, compose and perform. This would be more than a celebration of Lerwick’s past: it would be an investment in the island’s creative future.

The Shetland Feast

The Shetland Feast is a bold, community-led celebration bringing together growing, food, music, cooking and traditional skills, culminating in a shared Feast Day at Midsummer 2028. Beginning in January, lead designer James Johnson will create a large-scale contemporary planticrub: a sheltered, productive space where growing food becomes a way to bring people together, share skills and make culture. Traditional stone-building techniques will create opportunities for apprentices to learn skills that might otherwise be lost. Working with communities, schools, growers, artists, cooks and musicians, the project will celebrate Shetland’s heritage while exploring new ways to live sustainably and creatively together. A musician in residence and emerging artist in residence will help shape a programme of music, workshops, talks, performances and community-led events throughout the growing season. People of all ages and abilities, particularly children, will get their hands dirty, growing potatoes, leeks, broad beans and kale, sharing food traditions and learning from one another. Local chefs will turn the harvest into a feast made and enjoyed together. At Midsummer, Shetland will come together to celebrate food, music and the power of collective creativity, with Celtic Connections and the Shetland Folk Festival collaborating to bring the celebration to life. A short film will share the journey beyond the islands. The planticrub will remain open and ungated, a lasting gift to Shetland: a place for future generations to grow food, share knowledge, make connections and belong.

Welcome to Lerwick

We propose a large-scale publicly-sited sculpture for Chapter 1: Inspiration, creating a welcome to Lerwick and a confident visual focus for the UK’s first Town of Culture. We imagine a sculpture that is joyous, bold and relatable, yet idiosyncratic and unique to Lerwick. We would develop the sculpture in dialogue with the creative and visual culture of Shetland, and the ambitions of Lerwick 28. The sculpture acts as a prompt for a longer conversation. Our project will expand across the year to actively develop this, working with Shetland artists on two further funded commissions. The commissioning process will carry conversation forward through mentoring and exchange between artists. The successful commissions would be in dialogue with our sculpture and the stories it’ll explore, and be presented publicly during 2028, Our project would be accompanied by a creative evaluation process. This would be embedded within engagement activities with collaborators and communities, and directed by the questions we ask in Q.10. The insights from this evaluation process would be shared through the project’s online platform and in-person events and coincide with Chapter 3: Launch. This would carry the conversation forward, generating greater recognition and support for Shetland’s creative and cultural practice.

Working Title: Untitled – A Nature-Based Immersive Experience.

Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF) proposes an ambitious, nature-based immersive artwork exploring the intricate relationships between humans and the more-than-human world, inspired by Shetland's extraordinary natural environment. Working at the intersection of art, science and technology, MLF creates multisensory experiences that reveal the hidden systems connecting all living things, inviting audiences to encounter nature from radically different perspectives. Building on works such as Of the Oak, which explores the interconnected life of a single oak tree; Breathing with the Forest, an immersive journey into the respiratory rhythms of a forest; Sanctuary of the Unseen Forest, exploring our relationship with the natural world; and In the Eyes of the Animal, which invites audiences to experience a forest through the senses of its inhabitants, we envision a new commission responding to Shetland's unique ecology. Through immersive moving image, spatial sound, scientific research and storytelling, the work could bring audiences into closer connection with the island's landscapes, marine ecosystems and living networks. The precise format and creative direction would be developed in dialogue with local environment, scientists and environmental organisations, creating an experience rooted in Shetland yet resonating far beyond it.

THANK YOU