A DRIVE to launch a scholarship in honour of Scots polymath Alasdair Gray has finally succeeded after being backed by the Saltire Society.

The independent Scottish cultural charity has announced that the first Alasdair Gray Bursary will be awarded this November to an outstanding student of the arts.

The announcement follows a campaign by the Songs for Scotland project for a scholarship to be created in honour of Gray. The £1000 bursary is hoped to be the first in a series of annual scholarships and will be given to an outstanding post secondary student in any of the fields of music, fine arts, theatre, dance or cultural studies.

“We are delighted to be able to honour one of Scotland’s most highly regarded creatives through an Inspiring Scotland Bursary, while offering a fantastic opportunity for a young artist to research and explore their own creative ideas,” said the society’s programme director, Sarah Mason.

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Gray, who is wheelchair-bound after a serious fall in 2015, attended the launch and an opening of an exhibition of his signed, limited edition screen prints at the Saltire’s Edinburgh offices. The free exhibition runs until April 29 and includes his latest limited editions, Ozymandias and The Tower of Babel. A group of prints matching those on display will be available to buy at the exhibition, with a percentage of the value of sales going towards the bursary fund.

“Alasdair is extremely pleased that his efforts and mine, and yours – if you are one of the many who backed the 2016 Songs for Scotland Project – have resulted in the creation of this bursary,” said Kevin Brown, of Songs for Scotland. “The new Saltire Society managed bursary promises to ‘give forward’ to our next generation for a long time to come.”

Gray has been a leading Scottish cultural figure for decades. As the author of more than 50 titles, including Lanark, he has been described by Irvine Welsh as “one of the most gifted writers who have put pen to paper in the English language” and by Will Self as “perhaps the greatest living writer in the archipelago today”.

Also a playwright, poet, muralist, illustrator, pamphleteer and literary historian, Gray is well known in Glasgow for his public artworks, including the murals in the Oran Mor and globally for his book illustrations. His paintings have been acquired by numerous public collections, including the Kelvingrove Gallery, the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art, the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art, and the British Council Collection.

The 82-year-old said he was delighted the Saltire Society had launched the bursary in his name.

“It helps if you can find someone who likes your work and is prepared to finance it, and that’s not easy,” he said, adding that he was relieved he did not have to choose the bursary award winner.

“I was asked some years ago for advice on how an artist could work and I suggested they sub-let rooms in a house because you could have a steady income and you could work without distraction.

“The young artist thought I was making fun and of them and I wasn’t.

“It’s very difficult indeed to persuade someone to support you.

Unless they see your work and decide it’s great and give you enough money to work on the next one.”