Exclusive:Culture crisis escalates after Creative Scotland snubbed by Scottish Government

Scotland's culture funding crisis has escalated further after it emerged Creative Scotland will be left empty-handed when it is due to decide on £87.5 million

worth of applications for long-term support.

The Scottish Government is refusing to commit funding to its own arts agency's next long-term programme, which was due to be announced in October and has been several years in the planning.

Ministers have ruled out an urgent rescue package for the arts despite nearly two years of lobbying from Creative Scotland and arts industry leaders to tackle a “perfect storm” of factors said to be crippling organisations, including reduced audiences, inflation, the cost-of-living crisis and dwindling local authority funding.

The Scaff, by Stephen Christopher & Graeme Smith, was staged this year as part of the lunchtime theatre series A Play, A Pie and A Pint. Picture: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

Three-year settlements for arts organisations were a key pledge in the SNP’s manifesto for the 2021 Scottish Parliament elections “to aid future planning and recovery” as the industry grappled with the impact of the pandemic.

More than 280 venues, festivals, events and organisations face being left in limbo until January – two months before existing funding is due to run out – due to the uncertainty over how much will be available over the three-year programme.

Creative Scotland’s failure to secure a deal ahead of its decision-making deadline will be a huge blow to Scotland’s culture sector weeks after industry leaders warned John Swinney that arts organisations were facing a “fight for survival".

In a letter to the First Minister, the Culture Counts network, which represents more than 70 different organisations, said: “Our reputation and ambitions as an international cultural leader are now at serious risk.”

The Girls of Slender Means was recently staged at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh. Picture: Mihaela Bodlovic

The industry’s snub has emerged despite the Government pledging to "more than double" culture funding less than a year ago – and warnings from Creative Scotland that one in three arts organisations are at risk of insolvency and 900 jobs are under threat without urgent intervention.

Creative Scotland, which would only have around £40m a year available if it is left on standstill funding next year, had been hoping to secure a share of £100m in new arts funding repeatedly promised by the Government in recent months.

Despite a Government pledge that an additional £25m would be allocated to culture in 2025/26, Creative Scotland’s support is now not expected to be confirmed until the Scottish Budget in December.

Chief executive Iain Munro warned MSPs in January that if Creative Scotland was left on standstill funding, it faced having to make “fundamental decisions” that would lead to “the collapse of parts of the sector”.

Anne Kidd, Joanna Tope, Irene Macdougall and Blythe Duff starred in the Tron Theatre production of Escaped Alone, which won three honours at the annual Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland recently. Picture: Mihaela Bodlovic

He said: “With the prospect of new resources coming on stream, we want to see as much as possible as soon as possible, and we certainly want clarity to enable us to make decisions in the autumn.”

Creative Scotland’s next long-term funding round has already been delayed by four years due to the prolonged impact of the pandemic and uncertainty over the Government’s commitment to the crucial programme.

The arts body had hoped to secure a long-term funding commitment in December 2022 after announcing plans to open up applications the following spring and make the new funding available from April 2024.

Months after issuing its first warnings about a “perfect storm" putting the future of organisations at risk, Creative Scotland announced in November 2022 that existing deals would remain in place until March 2025.

Iain Munro is chief executive of Creative Scotland (Picture: Kat Gollock)

New applications were finally opened up last autumn and Creative Scotland announced in April that 281 applications worth £87.5m per year would be going through to its final decision-making round.

The Scottish Government claims it has already started rolling out the promised £100m by allocating an “additional” £15.8m to culture this year.

However, Creative Scotland has insisted that its share of £13.2m has simply maintained its “historic levels of funding”, after it had a funding cut imposed last year and it was ordered to use its reserves to avoid passing this on to organisations. Overall culture funding has gone up just £2.1m, to £196.6m, since 2022.

A Government spokesman said: “Scottish Budgets are published annually, so that spending can take account of annual funding from the UK government, alongside devolved tax revenues. As is the case every year, we will not have the detail of our own funding position until after the UK government’s autumn statement.

"We will bring forward our draft budget to be published by the end of the year and Creative Scotland, as is normal practice for all of the public sector, will be informed of its indicative budget. The last time Creative Scotland made multi-year funding decisions was in January 2018, after receiving budgetary information from the Scottish Government.”

Culture Counts director Lori Anderson said the coming round of Creative Scotland funding decisions were likely to have “significant repercussions” for the nation’s cultural landscape.

Lori Anderson is director of the Culture Counts network.

She said: “Despite the current Scottish Government pledging in the 2021 SNP manifesto to agree three-year funding settlements for core funded cultural organisations, this has not come to fruition and Creative Scotland’s budget is currently only confirmed to March 2025.

“The current available budget stands at around £40m for applications totalling £87.5m, leaving huge uncertainty for cultural organisations awaiting these vital decisions. We welcomed ministers’ commitment to invest at least £100m more annually in arts and culture by 2028/29.

"But bringing more of this funding forward now, and the Scottish Government and Creative Scotland aligning their planning in October, would enable strategic planning and vital investment for Creative Scotland, the sector it supports and the communities it serves, when it is most urgently needed.”

A Creative Scotland spokeswoman said: “Both Creative Scotland, and the broader culture sector, have been requesting longer-term certainty in budgets from the Scottish Government for many years. The timeline for the multi-year funding programme has been in place for some time.

"We do not have any confirmed budgets from the Government beyond March 2025. We’ve only ever had a one-year budget commitment, so all multi-year funding contracts are required to be reviewed annually and are subject to change, depending on the budget made available to us.

"Decisions regarding multi-year funding will be made based on the budget knowledge we have available at the time.”