Two board members have resigned from Creative Scotland amid growing controversy over its funding decisions.
Ruth Wishart and Professor Maggie Kinloch have stepped down from the body's board, which is due to hold and emergency meeting over the furore surrounding its Regularly Funded Organisations decisions.
Ms Wishart has said it is "dispiriting that Creative Scotland again finds itself a family at war with many of those it seeks to serve."
There has been anger over cuts to touring theatre organisations such as Catherine Wheels and the disability theatre company Birds of Paradise.
They have both resigned with immediate effect.
The arts body has been forced to hold crisis talks to review its funding decisions.
An emergency board meeting is to be held within days to “take stock” of the fall-out from moves to strip 20 companies of long-term funding.
In a blog entry today, Ms Wishart, an experienced journalist, writes: "It's not possible to go into the discussions at the relevant board meeting, not least since, whilst you serve on a board, you are bound by the equivalent of collective cabinet responsibility.
"That is a perfectly sound principle.
"It also, however, causes you to reflect as to whether you can continue to back what you believe to be a flawed decision.
"In the light of the furore over the RFO's, the board is due to meet again tomorrow to examine again the executive's conclusions on regular funding. "Both its remaining members, and the executive, are acutely aware of how important it is to be responsive to genuine concerns and I believe they will be.
READ MORE: Emergency board meeting as Creative Scotland to discuss controversial funding decisions
"When all this blew up, I was bemused to read one critic suggest that the board was stuffed with consultants.
"In fact there is a very wide range of experience of the arts around the table, including people who are practising artists as well as those from the arts education sector.
"They come to their Creative Scotland role as unpaid volunteers with sufficient passion for Scotland's culture to offer their time and talents. Nobody on the board joined to become a saboteur. Similarly the organisation itself boasts people with enormous commitment to the arts community. They have endured a very turbulent few months."
Ben Thomson, the Interim Chair of Creative Scotland said: "We can confirm that Board members Ruth Wishart and Maggie Kinloch have taken the decision to stand down from the board of Creative Scotland.
"Both have made significant contribution to the work of Creative Scotland and to arts and culture in Scotland more broadly and the board would like to thank them for their work over the last few years."
He added: "This includes their contribution to our recently published decisions on Regular Funding 2018-21. These decisions were arrived at through a clear and careful process, involving Creative Scotland’s highly dedicated specialist staff and leadership team, with final decisions being signed off unanimously by the Board.
"Decisions were announced on 25 January.
"As we have publicly stated, given the strength of feedback and reaction to this announcement, we are bringing forward the next Creative Scotland Board meeting to take stock and review the options available, and to find a positive way forward for the people and organisations we support as well as Creative Scotland and our Staff.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here