Sir Sean Connery`s charity set to open talent centre for Scots in New York

A cultural embassy for talented Scots artists is to be created in New York thanks to a charity founded by Sir Sean Connery, report The Herald.

The Scotland House centre, its working title, will be based inside a converted Manhattan townhouse and will be available to entrepreneurs and artists of all kinds as a base to make their name in the US.
It will also form a place where those interested – culturally or commercially – in Scotland can meet and make contacts with the leading names in Scotland`s arts and business worlds.

In the planning for two years, the idea of a Scotland House is being put into practice by a millionaire businessman called Dr Geoffrey Scott Carroll, executive director of Sir Sean`s Friends of Scotland charity, and Neil Butler, the Scottish secretary of FoS and organiser of the annual Dressed to Kilt fashion show.

The new building will be run by a board taken from the cream of the American and Scottish business and entertainment worlds, and it will be run as a place open to "the talent of contemporary Scotland and those who love Scotland".

The unveiling of the scheme is to be one of the major announcements of this year`s Tartan Week in New York.

Dr Scott Carroll is well connected on the social scene in New York and has worked to make sure a number of "blue chip" names in the US and Britain are waiting in the wings to support the project.

Scotland House should be up and running by the end of this year, once a suitable property has been identified.

Last night Dr Scott Carroll, originally from Peebles, said that when he moved to New York six years ago, he was amazed there was not a single cultural, educational and business centre for Scottish Americans in the city, although many local St Andrews or Caledonia associations were in place.

He said Friends of Scotland are to set up Scotland House to act as a site where businessmen, artists, designers, and all those interested in doing business in Scotland can meet, have receptions, work, hold seminars and form networks.

"There are two types of Scots in America: ancestral Scots and contemporary Scots, the former interested in the traditional idea of Scotland and the latter in the modern Scotland, and at the moment in the US there is nowhere to bring these two groups together," he said.

"You need both; both have their assets and strengths, and you also need the friends of Scotland, those who love the country because they visited the Tattoo or holidayed there.

"There is a large reservoir of goodwill and money in the US for Scotland yet to be tapped and this is a first step."

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