Creative spending

Having seen many successful creative projects which exist without the necessity of state funding, I wonder if Creative Scotland is really necessary at all.

Spending more than £83 million per annum on the arts when much of it seems not to be used to good effect in the present economic climate seems unfair to other needy sections of public spending. Would another 1,600 nurses or teachers not be more useful?

It seems quangos like Creative Scotland (and its fellow black hole VisitScotland) find it too easy to spend other people’s money with abandon on central administration, highly paid quangocrats and projects which achieve very little. There are many creative people in Scotland working away without finding the need for a state handout.

Creativity is about freedom of expression and taking artistic risks. It is about bending and stretching the boundaries of the existing culture and finding new pastures of expression.

You cannot put a price on creativity because it is fluid and ever changing in direction. Far better to invest in the education system and develop creative thinking than to waste the money in a bureaucratic top-heavy management-knows-best system.

Bruce D Skivington

Strath

Gairloch, Wester Ross