CREATIVE Scotland has until the end of the festival month of August to reply in detail to the highly critical, in parts damning, words of the Scottish Parliament's Culture Committee.
It will make for a busy summer in Waverley Gate. Especially as the body has, as well as its normal functions, a review of its funding system to carry out, and, as the new chairman Robert Wilson has now said, a review of its entire form, function and structure. So there's a lot of work to do.
And it seems inevitable that at least some changes will be made, either in structure or in personnel.
Why inevitable? Because if Creative Scotland has one primary task it is to decide who, in the wide and eclectic world of Scotland's culture, gets funding and why. And also, who doesn't, and why not. And to do so clearly and with some understandable rationale.
However, in the last round of Regular Funding, its decision makers managed to create confusion where they should have been clarity, bewilderment where there could have been comprehension, and, once again, alienated artists and companies who, after all, should be the object of their key relationships. That the Regular Funding debacle - if that is not too strong a term, which it may not be - happened after a relatively generous Budget settlement from the Government, rather than savage cuts, adds to the appearance of a wholly avoidable mess. It looks dysfunctional.
I was told last week not to expect fast or dramatic changes at the top of Creative Scotland. And its leadership has issues with some of the Committees assertions and findings. It has also had six months, or so, to begin to mend fences, and contemplate how and why it does things. But Mr Wilson is a new broom. Will he sweep clean?
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