Funding Socials: Arts, Culture & Heritage Edition

The loudest introvert in the room, lover of music, boxing, and football. A big advocate for capacity building, empowering communities, and always up for a coffee, a blether, and a biscuit! I have been working with the National Lottery Heritage Fund for just over 3 years.

Karen leads on our work within Place, Partnerships and Communities. The Place, Partnerships and Communities team covers areas including Gaelic Arts, Scots, Traditional Arts, partnership development with local authorities and other regional and national bodies across Scotland, and strategic initiatives including the Place Partnership Programme and Culture Collective. 

We'll also be joined by Esme Leitch, Place, Partnerships & Communities Officer for Creative Scotland.

Markus is the Senior Capacity Programme Manager for MGS and brings an understanding of organisational resilience, partnership development, and identifying new approaches. In his work, Markus aims to strengthen the resilience of the whole sector ecosystem by seeking out collaborative opportunities to develop new ways of working. Markus engages directly with museums and galleries in Scotland, advising on specific situations. He also gathers an understanding of common challenges and collaborates with colleagues across MGS to develop and deliver support programmes to address development needs. Markus works with existing partners and support agencies, as well as building new strategic relationships. Markus supports the Head of Museum Development in the management of the Museum Development team, directly managing team members delivering work in the areas that they lead on.

Following an early career in the private sector during which she was responsible for multiple retail sites in areas across the UK, latterly managing large scale visitor centres, Linda moved into local economic development. Initially as business adviser to a portfolio of high growth companies before moving on to manage a range of business and social enterprise programmes.

Over the years Linda has worked with 100s of community led organisations and social enterprises and has seen at first hand the positive benefits ownership of assets can bring to communities; improving the sustainability of their organisations, protecting and developing services and creating jobs. Within her current role at COSS she has a particular interest in exploring the underlying enterprise models and innovative options for sustaining community assets into the future.

Marcella is one of the lead business associates with Social Investment Scotland and CEO at Hymans Robertson Trust. Marcella also leads on the Creative Scotland programme the CultureXcelerator supporting creative leaders with expert strategic support/crictical friend to work on key areas of the business requiring support such as finance or planning.

Kieran started his career as a youth worker at The Prince’s Trust, devising and delivering training programmes. He has held senior management roles in business development for a range of arts, volunteering and youth organisations for over 15 years.

Kieran was Chief Operating Officer at food waste and food poverty fighting organisation, FoodCycle. While there, he grew the organisation’s presence from 14 to 30 locations around England in under two years, through a social franchising model.

Most recently, Kieran was Scotland Manager for Big Issue Invest, where he delivered a multi-agency partnership, engaging the private, public and third sectors in mentoring and lending money to early-stage social ventures. He is a keen cyclist who enjoys giving back by being on the Board of Social Enterprise Scotland.