Future Folklore; The Art and Craft of Storytelling
Maclaurin Art Gallery, Ayr | Presented by Visual Arts Scotland
About the Exhibition
Visual Arts Scotland invites artists and makers to apply for inclusion in Future Folklore: The Craft of Storytelling, an exhibition exploring how folklore evolves through craft, imagination, and community.
Ayrshire and the wider Scottish landscape is rich with traditions, from selkie myths and fairy stories to Robert Burns’ Tam o’ Shanter. These tales connect us to land and sea, memory and imagination. Folklore is never fixed; it changes with each retelling.
This exhibition invites you to reinterpret folklore from the past, uncover hidden or overlooked stories, or invent the folklore of the future. We are interested in the ways artists and makers use process itself, the act of making, as a conduit for storytelling, where experimentation, material transformation, and the traces of practice can become part of the narrative.
In a time of rapid ecological, social, and technological change, stories help us understand who we are and where we belong. Folklore continues to offer a living framework for exploring identity, resilience, and imagination. Artists and Makers are uniquely placed to carry these narratives forward. By reworking ancient myths or creating new ones, artists can help shape how communities respond to change, find meaning in uncertainty, and imagine alternative futures.
Extended Text
Folklore is not fixed, it shifts with each telling, shaped by the voices, places, and times that carry it forward. Ayrshire’s landscape, from the rugged coastline and its selkie myths to the haunted kirks immortalised by Robert Burns, has long inspired tales of transformation, belonging, and the unseen.
Future Folklore: The Art and Craft of Storytelling brings together artists and makers who use material practice as a way of preserving and inventing stories. Through clay, textile, wood, paper, sound, and performance, they reimagine the myths of Ayrshire while creating new narratives that speak to contemporary life.
The exhibition seeks to ask: What do ancient tales mean in the present? What new folklore might emerge in response to migration, climate change, or digital culture? And how can craft with its roots in skill, touch, and tradition become a language for storytelling in the future? How does art reflect the stories of the past?
Celebrating the imaginative threads between past and present, this exhibition explores the enduring power of art and craft to shape how communities remember, imagine, and connect.
Ruth Addinall, Amanda Airey, Nils Aksnes, Alex Allan, Caitlin Allison, Gary Anderson, Dara Annett, Heather Armstrong, Rachel Ashcroft, Hester Aspland, Natalia Babych, Hayley Banks, Julie Barnes, Jeff Barnhart, Marian Basta, Al Bell, Alexandra Bell, Lynne Bingham, Corri Black, Clare Blois, Sarah Bold, Rebecca Boyd, Rebecca Brannan, Alanna Broadley, Christopher Brook, Mike Byrne, Maria Cadden, Niall Campbell, Grace Campbell, Hazel Cargill, Carmen Carmeli, Aoife Cawley, Louise Cherry, Amelia Clark, Heather Close, Solen Collet, Eleanor Cunningham, Sarah Curtis, Karen Davies, Laura Derby, Lisa Derrick, Sophie Demery, Jean-Jospeh Diez, Lorna Dillon, Emily Dodd, Maureen Doyle, Genevieve Draper, Matthew Draper, Volha Druhakova, Paula Dunn, Catherine Eckersall, Ginny Elston, Georgina Fay, Moira Ferguson, Victoria Filimonova, FC Fisher, Jo Fleming, Linda Foster, Jessie Fraser, Flora Fraser, Jane Gardiner, Anupa Gardner, Clare Goddard, Su Grierson, Liza Green, Liz Green, Jessie Growden, Puyi Guo, Aoife McGuirk, Toni Harrower, Mike Heseltine, Yimou Huang, Weixi Kuang & Junpeng Liang, Niamh Hughes, Olivia Irvine, Jules Jackson, Evie Jamieson, Renate Jephcott, Chloe Jenkins, Ese Johnson, Lucy Jones, Yasmeen Khan, Janette Kerr, Rita Kermack, Peter Kelly, Aileen Keith, Hannah Knechtli, Sarah Knox, Babak Koravi, Lukas Kroulik, Alison Laing, Carolyn Laidlaw, Fionnuala Lanigan, Angela Lawrence, Vanessa Lawrence, Philip Lavery, Yihao Li, Lin Li, Le Liu, Emily Lucas, Shaun MacDonald, Leonie Siri MacMillan, Cara McAllister, Irene McCulloch, Gillian A McFarland, Louise McLaren, Sheila MacNeill, Nicola McInally, Kevin Maclean, Valerie McLean, Zack Moir, Tansy Lee Moir, Satya Sai Mothadaka, Gregory Moore, Siobhan Morison, Sarah Morton, Barbara A Morton, Paul Muzni, Adrienne Murray, Maria Muruaga, Mary May, Miriam Morris, Kevin Morris, Oleg Matveyev, Dawn Martin, Jill Martin Boualaxai, Gillian Mather, Karen Maxted, Aiden Milligan, Sarah Milteer, Sarmed Mirza, Emma Neilson, Nancy Nightingale, Melanie Odonnell, Robby Ogilvie, Claire Ong, Lee O’Connor, Cavan Reed-O’Connor, Maralyn Reed-Wood, Kirsty Reid, Suzanna Reynolds, Rebekah-May Reynolds, Clare Rennie, Dilys Rose, Charlotte Roseberry, John Rowland, Ann Ruddy, Roxy Russell, Maryann Ryves, Gillian Ryan, Helen Ryman, Asher Sahan, Catherine Sargeant, Samantha Sharma, Jane Shaw, Mary Sipe, Lucilla Sim, Adrian Peter Vivian Smith, Jenny Smith, Scott Smith, Steven Smithwhite, Joanne Soroka, Laura Phillips, Michael Spring, Kat Stanley, Mairi Strachan, Jade Stout, Suzzie Swan, Janette Sumner, Emma Sutherland, Katherine Sutherland, Euan Tait, Jonas Tew, Polly Thelwall, Fi Thomson, Gyllian Thomson, Sue Thomas, Becky Thorley-Fox, Sandra Vick, Miriam Vickers, Sarah Wakeford, Gill Walton, Helen Walsh, Hazel Walker, Sarah Wakeford, Douglas Webster, Mark Welland, Eilidh Weir, Jane Wheeler, Anney White, Sarah Wilmott, Elaine Wilson, Alan Wyllie, Christina Yip, Charles Young, Fiona Young, IJE