Royal Scottish Academy

ABOUT THE AWARD 

The Elizabeth Lornie Photography Award (£5,000) is for artists working in photography in Scotland. The award is funded by Elizabeth Lornie’s Charitable Trust (formally The Morton Charitable Trust)  and administered by the Royal Scottish Academy and consists of: 

• Monetary award to research, develop and produce a new body of work in photography.
• Exhibition of selected completed work, along with other RSA winners, at the Royal Scottish Academy at a future date.
• Acquisition of work into the prestigious RSA Permanent Collections.

ELIGIBILITY 

• Artists must be working in still photography (includes digital & analogue)
• Artists must have been born in Scotland, or have studied at a Scottish art school, or have been resident in Scotland for at least 3 years.
• Undergraduate or postgraduate students are not eligible.

CONDITIONS OF ENTRY 

• Entry conditions and requirements must be strictly adhered to or applications may be rejected.
• A shortlist of artists will be invited to present their project to the Panel of Adjudicators on Monday 10 November 2025.
• The decision of the adjudicators is final and no correspondence can be entered into.
• The award should not be used as a capital grant.
• The award winner will be announced by the end of November 2025.
• The award should be completed by November 2026. 
• The winner will exhibit selected resulting work at the RSA the following year in consultation with the Academy. Further arrangements will be determined in consultation with the winner.
• The Royal Scottish Academy reserves the right to accession one representative work from the artist into the RSA Permanent Collection.
• The copyright of all works remain with the artist but it is a condition of entry that the Royal Scottish Academy reserves the right of reproduction of all submitted and resultant works for publicity/educational/reference purposes in connection with the award.
• Personal information supplied by applicants on registration/application forms will be held securely by the Royal Scottish Academy in accordance with The EU General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).

APPLICATION

The application requires the following:

• Contact information
• Artist Statement (max. 100 words, about your artistic practice)
• Up to 5 key artistic achievements (max. 150 words, noting projects/exhibitions/awards or other      achievements)
• Summary of post-secondary education (date commenced, date completed, course details & qualifications; institution)
• 25 word summary of proposed project
• Desired travel destination (only if applicable to the project)
• Proposed project start and end date
• Proposal (max. 300 words, about your proposed project)
• Supporting visual material: you may submit a maximum of 6 JPEGS.

CRITERIA

Applications will be assessed against the following criteria: 

• Coherency of proposed project and the potential to further develop and enhance practice.
• Quality of visual material (please note that a crucial part of the selection process is based on the review of applicants’ visual material and as such we strongly encourage applicants to submit the highest quality visual material.

DEADLINE

The deadline for applying to this award is Sunday 21 September 2025, 5pm.