C2030 landscape and communities - brief for creatives call off contract-final

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Cairngorms 2030 Land­scape and com­munit­ies pro­ject: Invit­a­tion to apply for a Call-off con­tract for cre­at­ive prac­ti­tion­ers (2026−2028)

The Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity wish to com­mis­sion a range of cre­at­ive prac­ti­tion­ers on a ​‘Call-Off con­tract’. By this, we mean a con­tract with cre­at­ives who, after ini­tial appoint­ment, can be called upon to do small bits of work over the next two and a half years without fur­ther bidding.

We wish to appoint 4 – 8 cre­at­ives that work in dif­fer­ent media. Each piece of work might vary but the main task will be to com­mu­nic­ate or illus­trate the spe­cial land­scape qual­it­ies of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park.

We cur­rently envis­age this will involve some of the activities/​out­puts lis­ted below. We need each cre­at­ive to have skills and exper­i­ence in at least one of these, but not neces­sar­ily more (because these will be covered by all the prac­ti­tion­ers togeth­er). This con­tract is open to all types of cre­at­ive, includ­ing those that have not been form­ally taught or trained in what they do.

1. Land­scape draw­ings or diagrams
2. Land­scape paintings
3. Digit­al illustrations
4. Land­scape photographs
5. Assist­ing com­munity engage­ment events, for example work­shops, guided walk, field sketch­ing, or pho­to­graphy on site
6. Films and video
7. Mod­els or map making
8. Storytelling, inter­pret­a­tion and oral histories

The main pur­pose of these activities/​out­puts will be to con­vey the spe­cial land­scape qual­it­ies of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park and how these are exper­i­enced and val­ued by dif­fer­ent people. They will be used at com­munity engage­ment events and/​or for reports, leaf­lets or webpages.

At this time, we can­not con­firm how many of the dif­fer­ent types of activities/​outputs will be neces­sary because this will be strongly influ­enced by the need to tail­or these to dif­fer­ent groups for our com­munity engage­ment work. We expect most pieces of

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work will take between 1 – 5 days which we will agree with the cre­at­ive prac­ti­tion­er in advance.

We can­not guar­an­tee a min­im­um or max­im­um num­ber of days work to those on the con­tract, but there will always be the option for the prac­ti­tion­er to decline to carry out any work reques­ted, for example because they have insuf­fi­cient capa­city at that time.

1.1 Back­ground

The Cairngorms Nation­al Park is the UK’s largest Nation­al Park at 4,528km². Around 18,000 people live in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park across the areas of Aber­deen­shire, Angus, High­land, Moray and Perth­shire, and about two mil­lion people vis­it every year. You can find out more inform­a­tion about the Nation­al Park on the web­site here.

The Land­scape and Com­munit­ies pro­ject for which this con­tract is required is part of the Cairngorms 2030 pro­gramme, part fun­ded by the Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund (NLHF). More inform­a­tion on the pro­gramme is avail­able on the web­site here: Cairngorms Nation­al Park | Cairngorms 2030 while more inform­a­tion on the Land­scape and Com­munit­ies pro­ject is avail­able at: Cairngorms Nation­al Park | Land­scape and com­munit­ies.

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1.2 How the con­tract will work

This invite goes out ask­ing for expres­sions of interest

Con­tract bidding

• Step 1: A Ques­tion and Answer (Q&A) ses­sion is held and the answers writ­ten up and cir­cu­lated to every­one that attends or expresses an interest
• Step 2: You pre­pare and sub­mit a bid
• Step 3: The Park Author­ity reviews all the bids received and chooses 4 – 8 cre­at­ive prac­ti­tion­ers to be com­mis­sioned fol­low­ing assess­ment criteria
• Step 4: The suc­cess­ful cre­at­ive prac­ti­tion­ers receive a let­ter com­mis­sion­ing them for a peri­od between 2026 and 2028

Then, when a piece of work comes up …

Arran­ging a piece of work

• Step 5: The Park Author­ity con­siders the piece of work and who on the call-off con­tract would be best to do this in terms of their skills and experience
• Step 6: The Park Author­ity con­tacts the cre­at­ive they think is most suit­able and asks if they are will­ing and avail­able to do the work with­in the timescale
• Step 7:
  • If the chosen cre­at­ive says yes, the Park Author­ity asks the cre­at­ive to pre­dict the num­ber of days/​hours to com­plete the work* and any oth­er costs
  • If the chosen cre­at­ive says no, then the Park Author­ity will ask the next best choice and so on…

Cre­at­ing piece of work

• Step 8: The cre­at­ive car­ries out the piece of work, liais­ing closely with the pro­ject lead from the Park Authority

* Times­cales and costs may be changed later if both parties agree

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1.3 How to bid

To get on this call-off con­tract, you will need to:

A Express an interest

1. Firstly, express your interest by email­ing us by 17:00 on Thursday 3 Septem­ber 2026 with just your name and email address.
2. We will then invite you to an option­al online Ques­tion and Answer (Q&A) ses­sion on Tues­day 8 Septem­ber 2026 at 6.30pm and/​or to sub­mit any ques­tions you have by email by 17:00 on Fri­day 11 Septem­ber 2026.
3. We will email every­one that has expressed an interest in the con­tract the answers to all the ques­tions raised by Fri­day 18 Septem­ber 2026.

B Sub­mit a bid

1. After the expres­sion of interest pro­cess (A), you can sub­mit a bid by email which needs to be received by Fri­day 2 Octo­ber 2026 at 17:00.

Your bid will need to include three parts:

Part A Skills and exper­i­ence. A writ­ten descrip­tion of your spe­cif­ic skills and exper­i­ence, includ­ing work in or about the Cairngorms land­scape (or a sim­il­ar land­scape). This should extend to no more than two A4 pages.

Part 2 Costs. Your half day and full day rates and stand­ard rates for travel (car/​bike mileage) and sub­sist­ence, includ­ing VAT if applic­able. Expenses will be reim­bursed at cost price to a lim­it agreed in advance.

Part 3 Examples of work

• For images and writ­ten descrip­tions, these should extend to no more than five A4 pages in total.
• For film or audio, pro­vi­sion of a link to a film or record­ing avail­able online that lasts for no longer than 5 minutes total (or only the first five minutes will be listened to or watched).

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If it is easi­er, links can be provided to images, text or films that have been pos­ted by the cre­at­ive prac­ti­tion­er on social media chan­nels such as Ins­tagram although, as described above, we will still only look at the equi­val­ent of about five A4 pages or 5 minutes on these platforms.

Your bid needs to demon­strate the following:

• Exper­i­ence of pro­du­cing high qual­ity cre­at­ive out­puts. The cre­at­ive is not required to be able to cov­er all the dif­fer­ent activities/​out­puts lis­ted on page 1, but it will be import­ant that they explain clearly which ones they can provide.
• A clear under­stand­ing of the dis­tinct­ive qual­it­ies of the Cairngorms land­scape or one part of the Nation­al Park.
• The abil­ity to cre­ate artist­ic out­puts that can engage the pub­lic about the landscape.
• An abil­ity to com­mu­nic­ate clearly thoughts, ideas and plans.
• Exper­i­ence of work­ing col­lab­or­at­ively with oth­ers and fol­low­ing a brief.

The appoin­ted cre­at­ive prac­ti­tion­er will be required to work closely with the pro­ject lead based at the Park Author­ity office in Grant­own-on-Spey. Most liais­on is expec­ted to be via email or video con­fer­en­cing (eg Microsoft Teams or Zoom), although there will also be occa­sions when it will be best or neces­sary to meet in per­son and/​or on site.

See Annex I for tender details and Annex II for our stand­ard Terms and Conditions.

Bids should be sub­mit­ted by email to: carolinestanton@​cairngorms.​co.​uk. All bids will be acknow­ledged by email.

1.4 Con­tract value

The Park Author­ity estim­ates the total max­im­um value of this work over the two years (Octo­ber 2026 — Octo­ber 2028) will be in the region of £25,000, includ­ing VAT split between 4 – 8 cre­at­ive prac­ti­tion­ers, although this amount may change over time. No work is guar­an­teed and there is no min­im­um or max­im­um num­ber of days offered.

There is a pos­sib­il­ity that this con­tract may extend bey­ond 2028. If this was to occur, then cre­at­ive prac­ti­tion­ers would be invited to re-sub­mit a bid with revised costs if they wished.

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1.5 Copy­right

See the Terms and Con­di­tions (T&C) in Annex II. If you envis­age the copy­right T&Cs raise any prob­lems for you, please get in touch as we are happy to dis­cuss altern­at­ive options so they can work for every­one (we would share any options that we dis­cuss with all bidders).

1.5 Bid­ding timescale

Activ­ity	Date/​Deadline
Invite pub­lished	August 2026
Expres­sions of interest to be submitted	Thursday 03/09/26
Q & A session	Tues­day 08/09/2026 at 6.30pm
Dead­line for sub­mit­ting questions	Fri­day 11/09/2026
Ques­tion answers circulated	Fri­day 18/09/2026
Bid dead­line	Fri­day 02/10/26
Bid eval­u­ations by	Fri­day 16/10/26
Con­tract award date	Wed­nes­day 21/10/26
Con­tract com­mence­ment date	Monday 26/10/26

1.6 Billing & Pay­ment Information

The Park Author­ity usu­ally pays in arrears with­in 30 days of an invoice being received as set out in our Terms and Con­di­tions in Annex II. It is will­ing, how­ever, to con­sider altern­at­ive arrange­ments to sup­port dif­fer­ent prac­ti­tion­ers. This could include staged pay­ments on receipt of an invoice to cov­er the vari­ous ele­ments of the com­mis­sion (mater­i­als, expenses etc). These altern­at­ives would need to be dis­cussed and agreed in advance of work being car­ried out and con­firmed in writ­ing, so both parties are com­pletely clear about the arrangement.

1.7 Eval­u­ation process

Each bid sub­mit­ted will be reviewed by three staff mem­bers at the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity who will indi­vidu­ally score the bid out of 100% based on the following:

Cri­ter­ia	%
Price	10%
Stand­ard day rates and expenses
Tech­nic­al (Qual­ity)	90%
With the qual­ity ratio being divided into the fol­low­ing weighting:

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Cri­ter­ia	%
Demon­strate exper­i­ence and under­stand­ing of the dis­tinct­ive land­scape qual­it­ies of the Cairngorms	30
Rel­ev­ant exper­i­ence of cre­at­ive practitioner	30
Demon­strate clear communication	20
Exper­i­ence of work­ing col­lab­or­at­ively with oth­er spe­cial­ists and the public	20

Scor­ing

The basis for the bid scor­ing is shown below:

Score	Defin­i­tion	Descrip­tion
4	Excel­lent	Response is com­pletely rel­ev­ant and excel­lent over­all. The response is com­pre­hens­ive, unam­bigu­ous and demon­strates a thor­ough skill and under­stand­ing of the require­ment and provides details of how this will be met.
3	Good	Response is rel­ev­ant and good. The response is suf­fi­ciently detailed to demon­strate a good skill/​under­stand­ing and provides details on how the require­ments will be fulfilled.
2	Accept­able	Response is rel­ev­ant and accept­able. The response addresses a broad under­stand­ing of the require­ment but may lack details of how the skill/​require­ment will be ful­filled in cer­tain areas.
1	Poor	Response is par­tially rel­ev­ant but gen­er­ally poor. The response addresses some ele­ments of the skill/​require­ment but con­tains insuf­fi­cient detail or explan­a­tion to demon­strate this.
0	Unac­cept­able	Nil or inad­equate response. Fails to demon­strate the required skill or an abil­ity to meet the requirement.

Fol­low­ing eval­u­ations of all the bids received, the Park Author­ity will decide wheth­er to pro­ceed with the con­tract and, if so, which 4 – 8 cre­at­ives score highest.

Bid­ders should be aware that if their response to any of sec­tions does not achieve a min­im­um score of 2, then their bid will not be taken forward.

Please con­tact the pro­ject lead if you would like any oth­er inform­a­tion at: carolinestanton@​cairngorms.​co.​uk