'Transformational' boost for arts organisations, Angus Robertson claims, despite £33.5m funding gap

Scottish Ballet's new production Mary, Queen of Scots will be premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival in August. | Gavin Smart/Scottish Ballet

Culture secretary Angus Robertson has revealed he expects Creative Scotland to deliver "significant" funding increases to arts organisations awaiting vital decisions on long-term support - despite a £33.5m funding gap to meet demand this year.

He has suggested its funding body has been allocated enough resources to ensure theatres, festivals and arts centres do not have to grapple with possible closures, programming cuts and job losses.

The Citizens Theatre in Glasgow is expected to reopen later this year. | Mark Liddell

Mr Robertson has also dismissed fears that Creative Scotland’s new budget will be spread "too thinly" across the culture sector after he suggested the government wanted the number of organisations with long-term support to "more than double."

Industry leaders have raised fears that organisations will be left with "bare minimum" funding when Creative Scotland decisions are announced later this month.

Kirsty Findlay as Maria in The Sound of Music, which will return to Pitlochry Festival Theatre later this year. Picture: Fraser Band | Fraser Band

Creative Scotland has secured a £20m increase for the next financial year for its multi-year funding budget, which currently supports 119 organisations. However it has to decide on 281 new applications worth £87.5m per year.

Mr Robertson has previously declared that he wanted to see the "maximum number" of organisations securing long-term support.

Scottish culture secretary Angus Robertson. Picture: Lisa Ferguson | Lisa Ferguson

Culture Counts, the independent body representing organisations across the industry, said concerns had been raised over a "temptation to spread the jam really thinly" when the final decisions are made.

Mr Robertson was speaking at Holyrood's culture committee a week after MSPs heard claims that a promised £34m in additional funding for the arts this year was "too little too late."

Conservative MSP Alexander Stewart said there was growing evidence that theatres, venues, museums and libraries would still "struggle to survive” or have to “do less” in future.

He added: "They may have to close, they may have to reduce, they may have to lay off people. All that is going to happen in the foreseeable future."

Mr Robertson said: "I very much hope that that is not the case.

"One of the great hopes across the culture sector is that multi-year funding is going to deliver the exact opposite.

"I do not diminish the fact there have been significant pressures and existential challenges.

"I await confirmation from Creative Scotland of the decisions they have made. I do that in the anticipation that it will significantly improve the funding of cultural organisations across Scotland, and it will be transformational for a great many of them.

"I do really think that this year is going to see a significant change, at scale, for the culture sector."

Conservative MSP Stephen Kerr suggested Mr Robertson had "created a scenario where the jam will be spread so thinly that it will make no difference.”

Mr Robertson said: "Notwithstanding the fact that Creative Scotland is an arms-length organisation, it has been working with the government to explain what financial quantum would be required for multi-year funding to be introduced, and the range of organisations that could and would be supported.

"Creative Scotland knows who they are, knows how many there are and knows how much they wish to support them by.

"We support the introduction of multi-year funding. We want to make sure it is a process that works well. We want it to be broader and deeper than the current funding model of regularly funded organisations, and yes, that is significantly more, both in number and in scale of funding.

"I don't recognise the characterisation by others in relation to things being 'spread so thinly,’ but we would be getting into the territory of recommendations I haven't seen and the announcement they are set to make.

"No doubt Mr Kerr and I, and everybody else, will be looking very closely at the announcements they make to satisfy ourselves that the process is as transformational as I hope and believe it will be."