15 July 2025
A cultural shift to open collaboration: Sculpture Placement Group.
William Grant Foundation
Key learnings:
- Rethinking the lifecycle of artworks can create new opportunities for artists and audiences.
- Planning for legacy and sustainability from the start can help arts projects leave a lasting impact on communities, whilst minimising environmental impact.
- Testing and adapting approaches and resources with others helps generate new learning for all.
- Unrestricted funding creates the flexibility and trust needed to sustain agile ways of working that prioritise ‘learning through doing’.
Sculpture Placement Group (SPG) is a Scotland-based social enterprise quietly reshaping the visual arts sector with tools and initiatives that address economic, environmental and practical challenges around sculpture practice (and beyond).
We’ve written before about SPG and the positive impact the organisation is making at the intersection of the arts and sustainability through pioneering artwork reuse and redistribution models. Their work is rooted in action research – learning by doing, testing, refining, and sharing openly. In the spirit of this action learning approach, we thought it would be good to explore how SPG is evolving.
SPG directly supports artists – especially those who face systemic barriers – while also strengthening the arts sector through collaborative projects, shared resources, and practical tools. Alongside this, SPG is developing inclusive approaches to address the challenges of the climate emergency that could offer valuable learning beyond the arts.
Learning through doing
Over time, the small team at SPG have moved towards creating open source resources that can outlast individual projects and be adapted by others, supporting both equity and sustainability across the sector.
The Brolly by Maria Gondek at Platform, Easterhouse.
Photo by Matthew Barnes.
For example, their original sculpture loan scheme, which connected stored sculptures with community spaces, has now evolved into an open source toolkit.
This shift helps artists and organisations broker their own local placements and build more meaningful, direct relationships while also freeing up SPG’s time to pursue new activities, like the matchmaking events they’re now planning in partnership with The Travelling Gallery. These events bring together visual artists and organisations or people that are potentially interested in hosting their sculptures.
The Circular Arts Network (CAN) is another example of this open approach. Originally launched as a Scotland-based sharing platform for surplus art materials, SPG discovered that groups across the country wanted their own versions. Instead of scaling centrally, SPG decided to make CAN open source so local groups can adapt it with their own branding, language, and networks.
The long game
Making resources open source, however, is not without its challenges. It requires time, patience, and technical resource, but it’s a decision that keeps SPG firmly aligned with their mission. It’s about trusting that in the long run, this openness will lead to better, more useful tools for everyone.
Workshop with Leith Primary School – making banners using materials found on CAN.
Photo by Hannah Ayres.
This open sharing not only widens access but creates a cycle of shared learning, where SPG can also build on the adaptations and improvements made by others. As Co-founder Kate V Robertson puts it:
“To get CAN properly listed as a downloadable WordPress template is taking months. But the good thing is, once it’s properly open source, anybody can improve it, and those improvements are stored and can feed back to us. It’s future-proofing it – not just for us, but for everyone.”
New tools for a sustainable future
Refining this iterative approach is central to SPG’s latest development – the Art Planner tool. This step-by-step project planning resource helps artists and organisations build sustainability, legacy, and ethical decision-making into their work from the start. Developed using the Google Design Sprint process – a rapid prototyping approach that SPG recommend to others – the tool reflects learning from years of hands-on experience, including how to keep artworks in circulation and minimise environmental impact.
Rather than launching it all at once, SPG is taking a phased, collaborative approach – working closely with arts organisations across Scotland to test and refine the tool in real-world contexts. It’s a more deliberate, sustainable way of working that embeds learning into the tool itself.
Facilitative role of flexible funding
As they reflect on their journey so far, SPG highlighted the facilitative role flexible funding has played in their evolution. Unrestricted funding has allowed them to stay climate-focused and agile – pivoting when projects need to change direction – and to invest time in thoughtful, open-ended learning processes that are not easily accommodated within rigid funding structures.
For SPG, this flexibility is fundamental. As Co-Founder Michelle Emery-Barker, says:
“There have been projects where we’ve thought, ‘We didn’t anticipate having to spend a lot on that area, and actually, it doesn’t need what we thought, it needs something else.’ And being able to say, ‘Well, do you know what, let’s spend a bit of the William Grant Foundation money on that because that’s going to make a difference to that project’ – you just can’t do that with a lot of arts funding.”
Unrestricted funding has supported the organisation’s ability to offer fair pay to staff, to remain responsive to emerging opportunities, and to maintain their integrity as an organisation committed to action research and collaboration.
Beyond the arts
We’re proud to be supporting SPG through our Scottish Culture and Heritage strand and to help tell the evolving story of their work. Their learning offers lessons that extend beyond the arts. The team’s commitment to open source resources, their collaborative approach, and their use of existing methodologies like the Google Design Sprint process provide valuable insights for anyone looking to broaden and deepen the impact of arts or social projects.
Read more about Sculpture Placement Group here.
