Scotland’s arts and culture sector is drowning, and there is no life raft.

No skin comes off the backs of governments when cutting the arts is concerned. Publicly funded arts commonly play martyr in budgets, disposed of without a care by artless politicians who see the arts as a luxury, and not a cultural necessity. The rug is always ready to be pulled from underneath the thousands of creatives it serves and provides livelihood to.

The rug was conclusively pulled when Creative Scotland saw £10 million of their budget fade into the aether, only weeks before the £6m Open Fund for Individuals was set to establish the next period of long-term projects. The promised £100m boost from the Scottish Government over the next five years sits in limbo, ignored by those with the power to help preserve and encourage Scotland’s cultural landscape – was the promise serious, or political manoeuvre?

Read more:

Don’t let taxpayer-funded sex film put off funding daring and provocative art

The open fund, an essential driver of many project budgets, provides a vital backbone to the arts in Scotland in lieu of viable commercial opportunities. The state and treatment of Creative Scotland has resulted in a drawn-out will-they-won’t-they game, and creatives seem eternally left to suffer the same woes and sail in the same direction.

The window for open fund applications now closes on August 30th, an unrealistic timeframe for anyone who has even glanced at an arts funding application. The months of preparation and involvement needed, and the long-term planning required of working creatives and organisations, ensures the creative industries will now be gravely worried not only about the immediate future but if it’s even feasible to continue operating at all.

Creative Scotland has been slashed at for the past two years, and a reversal of fortunes doesn’t seem to be on the cards when the renewal of its core budget in October lands and rocks the sector with fear and uncertainty. Across the UK, the various managing arts funding bodies have seen a 16% real terms cut since 2017. Artists and organisations have had to deal with less and less over time, and promised funding from government will only serve to return the creative sector to its previous level. Politicians have allowed our arts and culture to decay, and Creative Scotland and the artists and organisations in its stable are left to bear the brunt and burden.

Performing arts and entertainment trade union Equity protesting cuts to Creative Scotland (Image: Craig Maclean)
Scotland’s creative industries will most likely have to bite the bullet and adapt to this bleak, shoestring existence. Politicians will not play saviour, even if they eventually relent and allow Creative Scotland leeway in immediate funding. It is simply not a priority for them, never will be, and those in the arts are not placed to make the power moves necessary to ensure their own futures. Working artists are put in the losing seat, waiting for crumbs from an already decimated national budget. Meanwhile, the halls of Holyrood ring out with pointless lip service. Please tell us all again how important arts and culture are to the fabric of Scottish society. It’s easier than the effort required to make that reality.

The health of Creative Scotland shouldn’t be such a deciding factor in the health of Scotland’s cultural scenes, yet all the eggs are in one basket. The arts funding model so relied on in post-devolution has had plenty of growing pains, normal for a public body in its infancy, yet it has never truly expanded in its scope and its ambition. This reliance has left the arts at the mercy of external circumstances, where its proportion of the budget easily wavers and disappears depending on the economic climate and the political air. It is not conducive to building and maintaining a deep, sustainable cultural landscape, only leading to ten steps back with every foot forward.

Read more:

How the Scottish Government made a deal with Hollywood and lost

Industry network Culture Counts surmises that Scotland’s arts funding is at an “extremely precarious” level. In other words, the threat is existential, and any solution forthcoming from government will likely be kicking the can down the road. The issues with arts funding, and cultural preservation and promotion in general, go beyond any singular artist or organisation. There is a need for a collective voice, and a conduit for that collective voice, the unions and cultural activists, are currently fighting too many fires.

But perhaps one day Scotland can live up to its artistic and cultural potential. It’s there, and it’s waiting to be recognised and embraced. Public funding and policymaking must be in tune with the needs and growing ambitions of Scotland’s artists, and the swelling of expression and talent must not be taken for granted. It is a cultural travesty that Creative Scotland has been gradually reduced to its current moment, and the solution is not to make an important sector that enhances the lives of us all beg for sweet bloody mercy, again, and again.