Overseeing the site’s thoughtful and sympathetic evolution from a conservation park to a place for creative research and production, those involved in Cove Park’s inaugural programme in 2000 welcomed not just our first six residents, but also visiting artists, writers, architects, designers, curators, and producers from across Scotland and the UK. Joined by individuals and groups from our local community, these first residents and visitors directly informed the development of Cove Park, sharing ideas and helping us to understand the needs of those wishing to produce, share, experience, and take part in ambitious and innovative creative work.

Studios, 2007 (photography, Ruth Clark).

During its first 10 years Cove Park commissioned bespoke accommodation and new studios, so that the site could host up to 12 individuals at any one time and provide professional workspaces. Cove Park’s residents were supported fully by a growing team with the specialisms required to develop its programme. Cove Park’s first full-time Director was appointed in 2004. Our commitment to fair pay for artists was established through the provision of appropriate fees, materials, and travel allowances.

The average number of Awarded Residencies during this period was 56 (individuals and groups taking part in our core May-September series of residencies), and the programme developed to include longer term fellowships, commissions of new work, and residencies dedicated to choreographic development, jewellery and silversmithing, and collaborative practice. New community-focused projects – such as the After School Art Club and an Argyll-wide Artists in Schools programme – were created in partnership with local primary and secondary schools.

Partnerships with leading UK theatres and performing arts venues played a significant role in Cove Park’s first decade. Critically-acclaimed projects, such as ‘Juliet and her Romeo’, directed by Tom Morris and presented at Bristol Old Vic in 2009 with a cast of octogenarian actors, was developed and rehearsed at Cove Park. Fuel Theatre worked with Cove Park to bring many leading theatre makers and artists during this period, and a choreographic development programme brought leading choreographers to work with dancers, musicians, dramaturgs, and designers.

Work produced at Cove Park was presented nationally and internationally, creating new connections and the foundations for future partnerships. Our first commission resulted in a major new work, developed and presented at Cove Park in 2006, by visual artist and 2005 Turner Prize winner Simon Starling. A six-month Henry Moore Fellowship for Abraham Cruzvillegas in 2008 led to a solo exhibition of new work at CCA Glasgow.

Cove Park’s first international residents arrived in 2003, initially through graduate student exchange programmes, and subsequently through literary translation and poetry programmes. By 2010, our international work extended to Australia, China, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Palestine, Sweden, and the US.

Architect Andy McAvoy with dance artist and choreographer Vanessa Smith, 2004.

Cove Park’s second decade saw the expansion of its residency, creative learning and engagement programmes, and commissions, established through many more local, national, and international partnerships and collaborations. In 2016 this work was enhanced significantly by the Jacobs Building, a purpose-built and award-winning space designed by CameronWebster Architects, housing meeting rooms, work and events space, a library, offices, and open plan kitchen, with views down Loch Long to the Firth of Clyde and the Isles of Arran and Bute.

The Jacobs Building, which includes two accommodation spaces and studios, was transformational for Cove Park. The average annual number of residents rose to 99 and in 2016 we launched an expanded public engagement programme, bringing new groups and individuals of all ages from our local community and beyond to take part in events, workshops, screenings, and performances held within the Jacobs Building’s generous and flexible rooms.

Music residencies continued to be a feature of our programme, which in 2012 involved the commission of new work from the composer Shiori Usui in partnership with BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and in 2018 a residency for composer, performer, and music technologist Jenn Kirby.

Although our commitment to the support of individual and collaborative artists, creative practitioners, and companies continued throughout this period, Cove Park began to involve in its work researchers, educators, and specialists from other fields such as anthropology, social and political sciences, geography, medicine, and political ecology. Introducing other voices and perspectives at this time laid strong foundations for our current work connected to the environment, Scotland’s natural heritage, and the global climate crisis.

Residents on the balcony of the original Artists Centre, 2011

In 2018, Cove Park became one of Creative Scotland’s RFOs (Regularly Funded Organisation), securing multi-year funding to underpin our growing programme. New residencies dedicated to literary translation, moving image, experimental film, and participatory arts, were established during this period, and a European Residency Programme, devised in response to Brexit, led to more partnerships and collaborations with cultural organisations based in EU nations.

Cove Park created many more fully-funded opportunities for early career visual artists, musicians, writers, and designers – including a new solo exhibition opportunity for young designers at Glasgow’s The Lighthouse – Scotland’s Centre for Design & Architecture – and supported dancers and participants aged 50+ through a partnership with Luminate, Scotland’s creative ageing organisation. Other Awarded Residencies focussed on specific disciplines, such as ceramics, poetry, playwriting, and literary translation.

Nurturing conversations between artists and facilitating peer-to-peer exchange continued to be a vital aspect of our residencies, connecting to the wider engagement programme through landmark events such as a public symposium at Cove Park on women in the arts, with presentations by visual artists Phyllida Barlow and Kate Davis, and ‘The Future of Ceramics in Scotland’, bringing together makers, designers, artists, curators, and collectors from across the UK.

In 2018 Cove Park was awarded the role of lead organisation in Scotland + Venice 2019, producing a commission and solo presentation by former resident Charlie Prodger for the Venice Biennale, and a simultaneous tour across Scotland’s west coast, highlands, and islands for the artist’s new film ‘SaF05’.

Our wider international programme grew to include both a new exchange programme for writers in Scotland and Australia, and the expansion of our Scotland/Japan programme for visual artists, makers, and designers in both nations. Individual artists travelled to us from Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, Finland, France, Gambia, Germany, Ghana, India, Ireland, Malawi, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Quebec, Sierra Leone, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Taiwan, UAE, Ukraine, US, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

The Jacobs Building, 2016 (photography, Ruth Clark).

Coming through the Covid-19 pandemic Cove Park took time to review the ways in which the programme and organisation could respond and adapt to new realities, to ensure our work could continue to be relevant and offer the support artists and creative practitioners require to maintain and develop their work and careers.

In 2020 and 2021 Cove Park designed Crisis Residencies for those most impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, for reasons of economic hardship, health, or isolation. In addition, Cove Park commissioned digital engagement projects as a means of supporting artists and sharing their work. Welcoming residents back to the site after lockdowns highlighted the transformational potential and wellbeing benefits of living and working in a peaceful and supportive rural context. Learning gained during this time led directly to several important new individual and group residencies launched in 2023-2024, for those recovering from ill health, for unpaid carers and former carers, and for refugees and those from other migrant backgrounds.

Rhona Jack, Crisis Residency 2021 (photography, Alan Dimmick).

Cove Park’s commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion was strengthened and embedded further in all aspects of our work during this period. Our residencies included those for early career Gaelic writers and others writing in minority languages, residencies for makers and designers aged 50+, residencies for disabled artists developed with Artlink Central and Project Ability, and a new partnership project with Body Remedy, a Glasgow-based resource for Black people and people of colour who identify as women and non-binary. We increased the level of fees and travel allowances paid to artists through our Awarded Residencies, expressing our commitment to fair pay, and we continue to offer growing numbers of fully-funded residencies to those based in regions which have been underrepresented in our programme to date, such as the Arab world and the global south.

In 2021 we initiated an enquiry into the climate emergency within Cove Park’s annual programme, awarding individual residencies to artists and creative practitioners whose work connects directly to this urgent issue and employs sustainable materials and innovative processes. In the same year, with the University of St. Andrews’ Centre for Ancient & Environmental Studies, we co-devised the hybrid international conference ‘Turbulence, Emergence, Enchantment: A Compendium of Climate Literacies’ including in person at Cove Park and online presentations, discussions, and events. We also held the online event ‘Exploring Environment Through Literature: Kathleen Jamie and Joséphine Bacon In Conversation’. In 2022 and 2023 we launched Ecologies in the Making: Sculpting Futures and Material Futures respectively, two new residencies for national and international visual artists specifically to support materials research and experimentation.

Our climate crisis programme during this period included several major national and international collaborative projects. In 2021, Cove Park was announced as the winner of Future by Design, a British Council Architecture, Design, Fashion initiative designed to inspire global dialogue around climate change, with a specific focus on engaging young people in Ghana and in Scotland. This led to the development of a prototype Outdoor Classroom at Cove Park, designed, and built by young people in collaboration with Scottish architect Tom Morton and Ghanaian architectural scientist Mae-ling Lokko.

Outdoor Classroom at Cove Park, Future by Design, 2021

This aspect of our work was embedded in our Creative Learning & Engagement programme. In 2022, we were a partner in Net Zero Youth Voice, delivered in partnership with Imperial College London and the artist Louis Brown, bringing teenagers from Argyll together with young people from south London. Mapping Ocean Change through Art took place in the same year, with workshops at Cove Park involving artist Jennifer Argo and marine biologist Dr Neil Bonas.

In 2022, we created two community fruit, vegetable, and flower gardens on unused ground on the Rosneath Peninsula, and in the same year initiated a partnership with the Jan van Eyck Academie’s Food Lab programme in the Netherlands, offering Food Lab residencies at Cove Park and producing the Food Art Film Festival in collaboration with CCA Glasgow in 2023. These programmes involve environmentalists, academic researchers, educators, and activists in our work through residencies, symposia, and engagement projects relating to the climate and biodiversity crises, climate justice, and food sovereignty.

Cove Park is a co-founder and active member of NAARCA: Nordic Alliance of Artists’ Residencies on Climate Action, a consortium of seven organisations in the Nordic region focussed upon the potential of residencies as testing grounds for climate adaptation, mitigation, and societal and political strategies for change. Working in partnership with Argyll & the Isles Coast & Countryside Trust (ACT), Cove Park is the Argyll Beacon, one of 13 Climate Beacons in Scotland bringing artists together with environmentalists and regional groups concerned with the impact of climate change. Our work with NAARCA and ACT is ongoing and will continue to inform our programme during 2025-2028.

Our current and future programme is being developed in ways which are sustainable and responsible, both in environmental and economic terms. In 2023, we moved from an annual to a biennial open call for Awarded Residencies, meaning we can now plan our programme over a two-year period, ensuring we operate more efficiently within the resources available, and offer artists support over a sustained period of time: international artists come to us for longer residencies, often connecting travel to Cove Park to other research or touring schedules, and UK-based artists are invited to structure their residencies flexibly during the two-year period, to allow for other professional or caring commitments. We now offer slow travel bursaries, supporting travel via land and sea to reduce carbon emissions.

In 2023, British Council Scotland invited Cove Park to be one of five Scottish organisations hosting cultural producers from Ukraine through its Scotland + Ukraine Art Residencies, offering time away to reflect and consider future work for themselves and the wider arts sector in Ukraine. Other new international partnerships in 2023 and 2024 – the Mophradat Art Time Residency, the Paolo Cunha e Silva Art Prize, and Busan Cultural Foundation – reflect our commitment to international working and partnerships, building community through cultural exchange between Scotland and countries such as Morocco, Portugal, and South Korea.

National and international partnerships are key to two further programmes developed in 2023, Musical Theatre Writing and Bernat Klein Fellowships. The former project brought together every major producing theatre in Scotland to work in partnership with India’s national performing arts centre and Broadway producers in the US. The latter involves a partnership with the Bernat Klein Foundation to explore the international impact of the Serbian-born Scotland-based textile designer Bernat Klein via residencies and educational projects developed between Scotland and Scandinavia.

Cove Park continues to find new ways to support composers, musicians, and sound artists. Individual artists – such as Nabihah Iqbal, Coby Sey, and Felix Taylor – have taken part in our programme through both Awarded and Open Residencies; collaborative and group residencies have taken place via our partnerships with Cryptic and Making Tracks. Our growing commitment to music extends to new partnerships with organisations such as Counterflows, the Glasgow-based contemporary music festival, and the planned addition to the site in 2025 of a new, acoustically-treated Sound Studio. This Studio will be the focus of our celebrations in 2025 as Cove Park marks its 25th anniversary.

Making Tracks Residency, 2021