Leading playwright calls for overhaul of Scottish arts funding to be halted

Scotland’s leading contemporary playwright David Greig has called on the country’s arts agency to “immediately suspend” its overhaul of Scottish arts funding.

His dramatic public intervention, in an interview with The Scotsman and in an open letter to the Creative Scotland agency, promises to rock the country’s arts policymakers in an escalating row.

Mr Greig said Creative Scotland was “haemorrhaging trust” over its plan to move nearly 50 Scottish arts organisations from annual to one-off funding.

“They have to respond very quickly by suspending this decision and admitting that a mistake has been made,” he said. “For me, this is about the health of the culture of this country.”

Creative Scotland’s chief executive Andrew Dixon is expected to face a grilling over funding issues at a “roadshow” event in Edinburgh today.

He also faces wider concerns about the stability of funding for major theatres in Scotland, it is suggested, as well as smaller touring theatre groups and galleries.

Mr Greig has been a key figure at the National Theatre of Scotland, with a string of major productions in the UK and internationally under his belt, from Dunsinane to The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart.

He stressed that his work is not funded directly by Creative Scotland, casting himself as responding to other people’s concerns. He said the arts community understood that government funding has been cut, but no artist, producer, journalist, writer or musician supported the change.

A Creative Scotland spokesman stressed that the agency had invested £66 million in the “creative sector” in 2011 to 2012.