About HI-Arts

HI~Arts, or Highlands and Islands Arts Ltd, is the arts development agency for the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

The organisation was founded in 1990 to help service and deliver the HI-Light Festival Year of the Arts (1990-91), but has taken on an ever-increasing responsibility for cultural support and development ever since.

HI~Arts works on behalf of Highlands and Islands Enterprise and as a Foundation organisation of the Scottish Arts Council to undertake an ongoing programme of arts development and promotion, and to offer support to artists throughout the Highlands and Islands through a range of consultancy, information services and small grant funding for professional development.

Since its inception, HI~Arts has been responsible for collating events information from across the region.  This was first published in the form of a quarterly supplement to the Press and Journal newspaper, but transferred to the web in the late 1990s.  Today, HI~Arts promotes event information online for over 5,000 events across the region every year.

In June 2003, HI~Arts launched an online Arts Journal to complement its events guide, including features, interviews, event reviews, news and comment from the cultural sector of the Highlands and Islands.  This ever-growing web resource now receives over 10,000 unique visitors every day from across the globe, demonstrating the significant interest in the region's culture.

In addition to this core work, HI-Arts is renowned for devising creative and sustainable solutions to the challenges of arts development in a predominantly rural area.  Through a range of major ongoing projects including the Screen Machine mobile cinema (www.screenmachine.co.uk), The Booth Online Ticketing Service (www.thebooth.co.uk), the piloting of a national Crafts resource (www.craftscotland.org), and a major arts in childcare project "ArtsPlay", HI~Arts is proactive in supporting the cultural sector to make connections between audiences, the arts and artists.

HI~Arts currently operates projects in audience development, the growth of the music industry, support and development for writers, the development of the professional theatre companies, and the establishment of a major online portal for the heritage sector.

For more information, go to www.hi-arts.co.uk or email info@hi-arts.co.uk.