Creative Scotland in ‘not telling people what to do’ scandal

“Incomprehensible wrongness.” “A bloody scandal.” “Get a grip.” This is not, presumably, the reaction Creative Scotland was hoping for when it awarded £14,900 of funding to an STV cookery show – but the above comments are typical of those posted on CS’s Facebook page in the past few days.

Writing in Scottish Review on Tuesday, Kenneth Roy lambasted the “grotesquely skewed” priorities of Scotland’s national arts funding body. “If there was surplus cash to splash around, celebrity chefs in their vintage van might be just about excusable as a fluffy extra to the core activities of Creative Scotland. But there isn’t. Budgets are stretched, fine companies are struggling for survival, important artists feel unwanted in their own country.”

Creative Scotland’s case for the defence is more than a little ironic. The money, it says, is part of a bigger investment programme, supporting various broadcasters “to increase television production generated and made in Scotland, using crews, writers or acting talent based in Scotland… It is not our role to dictate content.” So if STV wants to use taxpayers’ money to make cookery programmes, it is not Creative Scotland’s job to say no.

This is likely to provoke hollow laughter from anyone who has followed Creative Scotland’s woes over the past few months. Trying to tell artists what to make is, of course, exactly what it has been repeatedly accused of recently – prompting culture minister Fiona Hyslop to speak up last week, saying “I feel very strongly that it is not for administrators, bureaucrats or governments to tell artists what to do.”

There will, no doubt, be those at Creative Scotland who now feel that they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t. There will be others who see this as further evidence that the organisation, in its current state, simply can’t get anything right – pressuring artists to fall in line with a government agenda when it’s none of its business to do so, while giving TV producers a free hand when it should be using its influence to raise artistic standards.

Creative Scotland is currently looking for a new media relations and PR manager, presumably to avoid media coverage like this. Poor communication, I can’t help feeling, is not the core problem here.