IT IS ONE of the pillars of Scotland’s cultural landscape and the lifeblood of dozens of arts companies across the nation.

But in a tumultuous winter period, the reputation of Creative Scotland was sullied by the decision to cut funding to some of the country’s most celebrated drama and music companies.

It was a move that provoked a backlash, with suitably dramatic repercussions.

In the end Scotland's national funding body was pressed into an unprecedented U-turn. It also lead to the resignation of two board members and saw chief executive Janet Archer and Ben Thomson, the interim chair, being hauled before the Scottish Parliament to be grilled by furious MSPs.

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Now a cache of internal documents shows that the workforce within Creative Scotland had been caught off guard by the crisis – and only learned of the true scale of funding cuts through the media.

The emails and documents show the Ms Archer, seeking to placate and comfort clearly angered staff as the fall-out from the funding decisions.

Those controversial RFO decisions were announced on January 25, and the U-turn, following an emergency board meeting, announced on February 6 - these dates providing crucial context to Ms Archer’s communications, given to The Herald under Freedom of Information legislation.

In the nearly 30 documents, many heavily redacted and received under Freedom of Information legislation, the internal strife and an element of dysfunction caused by the decision-making is clear.

In one, Ms Archer notes with regret that staff did not know about the full list of funding decisions before they were publicised.

Another email shows that a senior member of staff does not understand why one key arts company was refused funding.

Ms Archer also writes to underline that staff should not feel “undermined” by the funding choices and in yet another says she knows staff feel “exposed and unsettled” by the furore.

In a February 5 email to a senior member of staff, Ms Archer writes: “It concerns me profoundly that you don’t understand the rationale for [a company’s] final award.”

She adds: “It concerns me hugely that we didn’t get the communication right last week and I’m deeply saddened by the fact that some staff weren’t aware of the final list before it was made public... I agree we need to work to rebalance across the art forms but achieving that will require careful discussion and planning if we are going to take sectors along with the process.”

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In general Ms Archer’s notes and emails are level-headed and full of dismay, only occasionally hardening.

At one point she notes: “There’s been some media criticism of our artistic judgement. I won’t tolerate that.

“Creative Scotland’s art form specialists are hugely experienced and all of them have significant experience of working in their sectors.”

Neil Cooper, The Herald’s theatre critic, said the documents demonstrated that "Creative Scotland as an organisation is in a state of disarray from the top down".

“It is clear too that the shambles surrounding the [funding] decisions was caused by poor management and poor communication at the very top of the organisation, and that if organisational dots had been joined from the outset, that the resulting furore need never have happened.”

He added: “This appears to confirm what some of us have believed since the last Creative Scotland stooshie in 2012, that a simple change of personnel has not changed the organisation’s embedded managerialist culture one iota.”

In 2012, Creative Scotland's first chief executive Andrew Dixon resigned amid a storm of protest from artists over the direction of the quango under his leadership.

The previous year hundreds of leading artists penned a letter criticised the management of the body and its strategy.

Emails linked to the more recent controversy show how Ms Archer appeared contrite and remorseful about how it was handled.

“While it may not feel like this at the moment, the board absolutely didn’t mean to undermine all of the thoughtful and careful work by staff that had done into the assessment and balancing process” she wrote.

“I’m sorry that we didn’t manage to communicate to staff effectively at Monday’s meeting.... I completely agree that the leadership needs to take collective responsibility for all the decisions taken....neither Ben [Thomson, interim chairman] or I intended to criticise the process carried out by teams.”

In a revealing email dated February, Ms Archer talks to Iain Munro, the deputy chief executive, before her appearance at the culture committee of the Scottish Parliament.

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She notes that “whatever we say in the committee needs to be an accurate reflection of fact” and goes on to say that “For the record....I also expressed some anxiety about treating theatre differently, however on balance in light of the strong recommendations from the theatre team, I greed to support the proposition put forward.”

This seems to show that Ms Archer had not been completely sold on the idea of withdrawing funds from the theatre groups in the first place.

On February 27, she wrote to the Senior Leadership Team and said: “Like you all I am deeply concerned worried about the toll the process has taken on everyone involved.”