STIRLING CULTURAL STRATEGY CATALYST

CULTURAL Rucksack

Cultural rights for everyone in Stirling

What is this?

The Cultural Rucksack takes its name from a model that originated in Norway — a metaphorical backpack filled with cultural experiences and entitlements that a person carries with them through their life. In the Stirling Cultural Strategy, this idea was initially explored through the lens of schools and young people: a pledge that every child, during their time in education, would experience a core set of cultural activities as a right, not a privilege.

But the strategy quickly recognised that the conversation needed to go further. Cultural entitlement doesn't stop at the school gate. The question it poses — what should every person in Stirling be able to access, simply by virtue of living here? — applies to all of us, at every stage of life.

That is the bigger ambition of this catalyst: to develop an approach to cultural rights that runs through everything Stirling does — in its communities, its care settings, its schools, its public spaces, and its investment decisions.

Our vision

Stirling adopts an approach to cultural rights that runs through all areas of cultural provision — where the measure of success is not how many people attended an event, but how many people who previously had no reason to feel culture was for them have begun to feel otherwise.

Get involved

Are you a school, community organisation, cultural venue, artist, or local group interested in contributing to the Cultural Rucksack in Stirling? We'd love to hear from you.

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Updates

This page will grow as our Culture Collective artist programme develops. Survey data from residents and the sector, collected from summer 2026, will help us map where cultural entitlement is strongest and where the gaps remain. Check back for progress.

The challenge in Stirling

Stirling presents a paradox. Home to 94,000 people, over 14,000 university students, and one of Scotland's most celebrated historic landscapes, it is a place with immense cultural richness. Yet it also has some of the deepest and most persistent inequalities of any local authority in Scotland.

The gap between the highest and lowest earners here is among the widest in Scotland. Two of Raploch's data zones sit in the most deprived 5% nationally, with a further five within the most deprived 10% — and the number of Stirling residents living in the most deprived 20% actually increased between 2016 and 2020. Life expectancy for women ranges from 71.9 years in Raploch to 87.5 years in Kippen and Fintry — a 15-year gap within the same local authority area.

Geography compounds inequality in Stirling in ways that are often invisible. Rural areas that appear prosperous on the surface can in fact be among the most access-deprived in Scotland. Eight of Stirling's rural data zones sit in Scotland's most access-deprived 4%, with much of the rural north among the most deprived 5% nationally for travel times to services including GPs, schools, shops, and post offices. And 21% of Stirling's children — over 3,200 young people — were living in poverty in 2019/20. In the Dunblane area that figure is under 3%. In Plean and Rural South East Stirling, it is around 24%.

These are not just statistics about poverty. They are statistics about who gets to take part in cultural life — and who doesn't. Proximity to culture, financial access to it, and the psychological sense that it is for you and your community: all three are profoundly shaped by where in Stirling you live.

What are we doing?

Culture Collective - Scene Stirling has secured £176,000 through Creative Scotland's Culture Collective programme, creating 9 artist roles over an 18-month participatory arts programme. These artists will work alongside communities across the Stirling area — bringing creative activity to people in the places they already are, rather than expecting them to travel to it. This is Cultural Rucksack thinking in action.

The Scene Stirling Culture Collective is coordinated by Artlink Central on behalf of Scene Stirling, with a Lead Artist supporting and connecting the programme across all host partners and leading on the Cultural Rucksack strand. Rather than working to fixed outcomes, the programme places artists within communities to grow opportunities through participatory arts — allowing projects to develop organically, led by the people and places involved.

The eight host organisations represent the breadth and diversity of Stirling's cultural life — spanning urban and rural communities, venues, grassroots festivals, equalities organisations, and environmental action. None receive regular multi-year public funding, reflecting the programme's commitment to reaching those parts of the cultural ecosystem that need it most.

Other Examples in Practice

Create and Converge — Macrobert Arts Centre and Artlink Central Working with 68 young people across 6 groups — including care-experienced young people, young carers, LGBTQ+ young people, and young people with additional support needs — this project placed young people at the centre of their own creative journeys. Their work was later showcased at Stirling 900: Culture at the Castle, demonstrating that community-created work belongs on the same stage as any other.

Big Noise Raploch — Sistema Scotland Now in its second decade, Sistema Scotland's Big Noise programme has supported over 500 children and young people in Raploch through music. It remains Stirling's most powerful demonstration of what sustained, community-embedded cultural investment can achieve — and a proof of concept for what cultural entitlement can look like in practice.

Resources