Creative Scotland's U-Turn

Following the announcement by Creative Scotland, Scotland's public arts funding body, that they were to cut funding to twenty organisations, a number of key figures in the Art world voiced their concerns and launched several petitions urging Creative Scotland to reverse its decision. This coincided with Ruth Wishart and Maggie Kinloch, two members of the Creative Scotland board making the decision to resign.

Thursday night's episode of Front Row on BBC Radio 4 included an interview with Robert Softly Gale and David Leddy, two artistic directors, who discuss how their organisations have been caught up in the funding storm.

Ten days after Creative Scotland announced cuts to the theatre, disabled arts and music groups, an emergency board meeting was held during which they decided to reverse the cuts. Birds of Paradise, Catherine Wheels, the Dunedin Consort, Lung Ha and Visible Fictions will now be given three-year funding deals.

"The £2.6m required for the funding reversal is to be found from ‘targeted funds’, a pot of money which Creative Scotland set aside for specific tasks.

This could mean money taken from the traditional and Gaelic arts, money for its Arts Strategy, cross-border touring or literature translation."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09r3nx5

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15924468.Creative_Scotland_to_revamp_funding_after_U_turns_on_controversial_cuts/

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/creative-scotland-funding-restored-to-five-groups-after-protest-d9g0fkb6z