From pilot project to not-for-profit organisation
Originally published March 2025 · Updated September 2026
When the Scottish Contemporary Collective — SCCOCO — was first conceived, it began as an experiment.
The question behind it was relatively simple:
What happens if talented artists are given sustained support, rather than simply another exhibition?
The original three-year pilot brought together four emerging artists — Eva Hewitt, Innes MacLellan, Kirstin MacKinnon and Vlada Popescu — alongside experienced practising artists who could mentor, challenge and support them.
The programme was designed to address some of the things that can be difficult to find after art school: time, professional guidance, practical business knowledge, access to experienced artists, opportunities to exhibit and, perhaps most importantly, a community around your practice.
That fundamental purpose has not changed.
But SCCOCO itself has.
The original model
When the project began, Tighnabruaich Gallery and SCCOCO were conceived as two connected but distinct parts of the idea.
The Gallery would provide the public platform and generate commercial income. The Collective would provide the artist-development programme.
We introduced a commission model designed to connect the two.
Emerging SCCOCO artists paid 33% gallery commission, while established artists paid 44%, with 11% of those established-artist sales intended to be reinvested into a Collective Fund supporting residencies, masterclasses, materials, travel and other artist-development opportunities.
On paper, it made sense.
More importantly, it gave us something to test.
What we learned
One of the purposes of a pilot is to discover where an idea works — and where it needs to change.
As SCCOCO moved from planning into actually delivering mentoring, workshops, residencies and exhibitions, it became increasingly clear that the original structure created an unnecessary division between the Gallery and the Collective.
It also became clear that 11% of selected gallery sales would never generate enough meaningful income to support the scale of programme we were trying to build.
The programme was becoming bigger than a project attached to a commercial gallery.
So the model evolved.
What SCCOCO is now
Today, SCCOCO is the organisation.
It is constituted as a not-for-profit and exists to support contemporary artists through mentoring, exhibitions, residencies, masterclasses, professional development and shared learning.
Tighnabruaich Gallery remains the public exhibition face of SCCOCO.
We have retained the Gallery name because it has been established in the village for more than four decades and is recognised by visitors, artists and collectors. But there is no longer a financial separation between “the Gallery” and “the Collective”.
The model is now much simpler.
Emerging artists continue to work at 33% commission and established artists at 44% commission, but all gallery commission is retained by SCCOCO and reinvested into the organisation and its programme.
That means every artwork purchased through Tighnabruaich Gallery contributes directly to SCCOCO's wider work with artists.
More than a commission model
Perhaps the most important thing we have learned is that SCCOCO should never be defined simply by how commission is divided.
The real work happens elsewhere.
It happens in conversations between an emerging artist and someone who has sustained a practice for thirty years.
It happens during a residency when an artist is given time to make without the usual distractions.
It happens when somebody learns how to price their work, speak about their practice, approach a gallery or make a difficult decision about what not to include in an exhibition.
It happens through masterclasses, studio conversations, shared meals, exhibitions, mistakes, successes and the relationships that develop around all of those things.
That is much harder to represent as a percentage.
But it is increasingly what we believe SCCOCO is about.
Building a model that can sustain itself
Another part of the pilot is exploring how SCCOCO can generate more of its own income while extending the value of the programme beyond exhibitions.
We are developing two complementary strands of workshops.
The first will provide free creative workshops for the local community, widening access to high-quality artistic experiences and strengthening the relationship between SCCOCO, Tighnabruaich and the wider community around us.
Alongside this, we are developing a programme of premium paid masterclasses and workshops for practising artists, led by established artists with significant knowledge and experience to share.
The two strands serve different audiences, but together they form part of the same idea: creating a programme that is both socially useful and increasingly capable of generating income to support itself.
There is another important dimension.
We want SCCOCO artists to develop not only their studio practice, but also the skills and confidence to share their knowledge with others. Through experience of workshops, masterclasses and working alongside established practitioners, we hope they can begin to develop their own teaching skills.
For an artist, teaching does not have to sit apart from a creative practice. Done well, it can provide an additional source of income, deepen understanding of their own work and make it more possible to sustain a career in the studio over the long term.
So the workshop programme is not simply another activity for SCCOCO to deliver.
It is part of the artist-development model itself.
Still a pilot
SCCOCO remains a three-year pilot programme, and that matters.
We are not presenting this as a finished model.
We are learning from the artists involved, from our mentors, from exhibitions, from audiences and from the practical realities of trying to build something sustainable.
Some of what we believed at the beginning has been strengthened by experience.
Some of it has changed.
We expect more to change before the pilot is complete.
That is not a weakness in the programme. It is precisely the point of testing it.
What has not changed
At the centre of SCCOCO remains the same belief that started it:
Talent alone does not build a sustainable artistic career.
Artists need opportunity, but they also need time, relationships, practical knowledge, encouragement and people prepared to invest in their development over the long term.
SCCOCO exists to explore what meaningful support can look like when those things are brought together.
And from our base at Tighnabruaich Gallery on Scotland's west coast, we will continue learning, adapting and building from there.
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