SCAN Summit 2026: Take Liberty – programme announced

SCAN is delighted to announce the programme for our flagship conference SCAN Summit 2026: Take Liberty, taking place at The Briggait in Glasgow on Tuesday 9 June. The Summit is held ahead of a new Human Rights Bill due to be advanced in Scottish Parliament, which will enforce the rights of all people in Scotland to participate in a cultural life. At SCAN Summit 2026: Take Liberty, invited artists, academics, lawmakers and cultural workers from across disciplines will look at this new legislation and our intersecting human rights. A series of talks, activities and provocations will consider the implications of embedding the proposed new legal framework, and what it will mean for both contemporary art practice and civic life. 

  • Schedule10am
    Registration, tea and coffee served

    10:30am
    Welcome from SCAN team and Chair

    10:40am
    Keynote from Dr Elaine Webster

    11:10am
    Panel: How does a human rights-based approach guide your practice?
    With Helen Trew, Dr Elaine Webster, Prof. Ross Birrell
    Chaired by Wasps CEO Kate Gray  

    12:20pm
    Artist talk from Naeem Mohaiemen

    1pm
    Lunch served

    2pm
    Welcome back, mid-point reflections from SCAN

    2:10pm
    Panel: Trans visibility in public life
    With Dr Nat Raha,     So Mayer
    Chaired by SCAN Programme Development Lead Lydia Honeybone

    3:10pm
    Roundtables, audience members can visit two tables during the session

    • Prisons with Arianna Mele, Print Clan
    • Spatial Justice with Simone Stewart, Govanhill Baths
    • UBI with Cleo Goodman, Basic Income Conversation
    • Class with Katherine Murphy, Scottish Working Class Network
    • Trans rights with So Mayer, author
    • Affordable space with Kate Gray, Wasps Studios
    • Highland place-making with independent curator Naoko Mabon

    Plus two non-facilitated tables for unstructured networking

    4pm
    Final thoughts from SCAN

    4:10pm–5pm
    Optional informal networking

Tickets

Tickets for SCAN Summit 2026: Take Liberty are available here. Tickets are free for SCAN members, or a one-off fee of £45 for non-members. You can join SCAN from as little at £25 per year to qualify for a free ticket plus access to our year-round programme. If you would like to attend Summit whilst supporting SCAN’s year-round programme, you can purchase a supporter ticket for £115, with the first 10 supporters receiving a limited edition A2 letterpress print.

Travel bursaries

We have a number of travel bursaries available for those who would otherwise not be able to attend SCAN Summit. To apply, please email [email protected] with a brief note of your circumstances and details of your travel costs by 2 June. Priority will be given to SCAN members. In line with our net zero commitments, bursaries will only be issued for travel by public transport unless travel by car is required for access reasons eg disability, or from areas of Scotland not accessible by public transport.

 

Speaker biographies:

Ross Birrell is Professor of Contemporary Art Practice & Critical Theory at The Glasgow School of Art. As an artist Birrell makes site-specific film works, concerts and installations developed in collaboration with musicians from across diverse musical forms and traditions, including musicians in Cuba and Miami, Esperanza Azteca Youth Orchestra of Ciudad Juarez, Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, and the Syrian Expat Philharmonic Orchestra in a commission for documenta 14 in Athens (2017) Most recently, he developed the short film Who’s Listening? in collaboration with musicians from the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, Gaza, to mark the UN International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People 29 Nov 2025.

Kate Gray is the CEO of Wasps Studios, a national studio and creative workspace provider established by artists in 1977. Under Gray’s leadership the organisation has reframed its work as part of the Creative Land Trust movement, which understands its portfolio of long-term leases and property assets as held in trust for the Scottish arts community. It is operated as a not for profit for the benefit of current and future generations of artists and with wider shared wealth principles.

Naoko Mabon is a freelance art practitioner specialised in curation and facilitation. Born and raised in Fukuoka in Kyushu island and currently residing in Oban in Argyll, the coastline of the Gaels. Driven by her own lived experience as an ethnic minority in the UK and the sense of urgency and responsibility towards environmental and societal planetary issues, Naoko uses arts and her skills as effective tools to generate relationships and changes for an even more just, diverse and sustainable world for present and upcoming generations.

Arianna Mele is the co-founder of Print Clan, Glasgow’s only open access textile printing studio. As part of their mission to provide arts access to disadvantaged communities, they have delivered workshops and events for women in custody.

Naeem Mohaiemen combines films, photography, and essays to explore forms of utopia-dystopia within families, borders, architecture, and uprisings– beginning from South Asia and then radiating outward to transnational collisions in the Islamicate world after 1945. Mohaiemen is co-editor with Eszter Szakacs of Solidarity Must Be Defended (Tranzit: 2023) and author of Bengal Photography’s Reality Quest (2025), Midnight’s Third Child (Nokta/ULAB: 2023) and Prisoners of Shothik Itihash (Kunsthalle Basel: 2014). Several conversations around “nonalignment” as a concept container in contemporary art pivoted after the premiere of his film Two Meetings and a Funeral (2017) at Documenta 14, which was a finalist for Britain’s Turner Prize (2018). Mohaiemen is Chair of the Visual Arts Department, Columbia University, New York.

Katherine Murphy is a working-class, feminist, independent curator and producer from Dundee, now based in rural Perthshire. As a member of Scottish Working Class Network’s advisory board, Katherine advocates for greater visibility, access, and structural support for working-class artists and arts workers across Scotland. Her practice is rooted in care, collaboration, and community building. She works closely with artists to develop interdisciplinary projects that foster long-term relationships, collective knowledge-sharing, and more slow inclusive approaches to cultural production. Across her work, Katherine is committed to creating accessible and supportive environments that centre dialogue, reciprocity, and lived experience.

Dr Nat Raha is an activist-scholar and poet, whose work considers queer, transfeminist and anti-colonial practices of liberation, present, past and future. She is the author of four books of poetry, most recently apparitions (nines) (Nightboat Books, 2024). With Mijke van der Drift, Nat is co-author of Trans Femme Futures: Abolitionist Ethics for Transfeminist Worlds (Pluto Press, 2024) and co-editor of Radical Transfeminism zine. She teaches at The Glasgow School of Art.

Simone Stewart is Arts and Heritage Manager at Govanhill Baths Community Trust in Glasgow, where she leads community-led cultural programmes including the Govanhill International Festival and Carnival. Her work explores how culture can shape civic space, strengthen neighbourhood cultural infrastructure and support community agency in processes of urban change. Alongside her curatorial and civic practice, Simone is an independent researcher interested in the changing role of contemporary art in public life, particularly where artistic practice intersects with environmental questions and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Helen Trew is a seasoned cultural producer with 30 years’ experience in theatre, film and socially engaged collaborative practice. Helen is CEO of Art27 Scotland, currently exploring the implications of the Right to a Cultural Life for all as it becomes part of domestic law in Scotland.

Dr Elaine Webster is a Reader at Strathclyde Law School, at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. She is an interdisciplinary researcher whose work centres on the ways in which human rights-based thinking can influence the way we understand, talk about, and act in ways that protect dignity and promote relationships of care. Her research aims to connect how people understand and use human rights with local–level implementation, by exploring the journey from interpreting legal human rights standards to implementing them in practice from diverse perspectives and through diverse disciplinary lenses. Her research has spanned the rights to be free from inhuman and degrading treatment, to a healthy environment, to health, water, housing, and participation in cultural life.