Uncertain Times: The impact of Creative Scotland's funding delays

As Creative Scotland's big decision on Multi-Year Funding is delayed once again, we talk to arts organisations and unions about where this leaves the Scottish arts community

Feature by Jamie Dunn | 09 Oct 2024
  • Festival Theatre

The Scottish arts scene is deep in crisis, of that there is no doubt. After 14 years of austerity and still feeling the effects of the COVID pandemic, some venues have shut their doors and others are hanging on by a thread. In some cases – like the ongoing revival of the Filmhouse and the reopening of The Jazz Bar – crowdfunding has been able to resurrect these institutions, for now. But it seems that this grassroots philanthropy is just a Band-Aid for a sector in dire need of investment after years of standstill funding in the face of ever-increasing costs.  

Organisations across Scotland have spent the last few years lamenting the state of public funding. The Scottish branch of Campaign for the Arts, the UK-wide charity that aims to champion and defend arts and culture, has warned that the cultural landscape in Scotland is "at risk of collapse". Museums Galleries Scotland has suggested that dozens of galleries and museums across Scotland could close within the year without immediate investment. Festivals Edinburgh have raised similar concerns about the plethora of festivals in Scotland’s capital. 

And what are the Scottish Government doing in the face of this existential crisis? Dithering at best and exacerbating the uncertainty at worst, as shown by recent events around Creative Scotland's Open Fund. 

– At the end of 2022, the Scottish Government announced £6.6 million of cuts to the Creative Scotland budget; in February 2023, they backtracked in the face of widespread opposition.

– The Scottish Government then re-applied those cuts midway through 2023, with Creative Scotland using Lottery Funding to plug the shortfall. 

– In October 2023, then-First Minister Humza Yousaf pledged an additional £100m for the Scottish arts sector by 2028, but the £6.6 million shortfall wasn’t reversed or addressed. As a consequence, Creative Scotland closed its Open Fund for individual artists this summer.

– After more backlash, the Scottish Government released the £6.6 million they initially promised back in 2022 – a tiny amount of money in the grand scheme of things – allowing the Open Fund to... reopen. 

Last week, the arts scene received another blow with the news that the awarding of much-awaited Multi-Year Funding – given out to organisations involved in sustained programmes of cultural activity – will be delayed by a further three months. This is just the latest delay to Multi-Year Funding, which is the effective replacement for Regular Funding, Creative Scotland's previous long-term funding strand. The last batch of Regular Funding awards was made in 2018, and the programme was due to end in 2021; Regularly Funded Organisations or RFOs have been given standstill funding in the interim.

Culture Secretary Angus Robertson blamed this latest delay on Westminster. “It is only once we have the necessary practical assurance around the Scottish Government’s budget for 2025-26 that we will be able to set our commitments for the culture portfolio,” he said. The UK Government will announce its budget plans at the end of October, with a Scottish budget penned in for December.

'Extremely uncertain future'

As a result, hundreds of Scotland's largest arts organisations, from festivals to theatres to arts cinemas and music venues, have been left in limbo. One of the first organisations to speak out about the delay was Dundee Contemporary Arts. “We are deeply concerned,” reads the DCA's statement. “The impact of this announcement, and the ongoing lack of clarity about the level of additional funding available to organisations through this fund, means that we face an extremely uncertain future.”

When we reached out to DCA to find out what the potential knock-on effects might be from this delay, Beth Bate, Director of DCA, explained. “This delay will affect our audit report and our ability to be declared a going concern, jeopardising our ability to fundraise elsewhere; and will force us to escalate scenario planning for receiving less support than we have applied for, putting jobs and our ability to serve our audiences at risk.” Grim news for Dundee's cultural scene if it was to come to pass.

Another outspoken critic of the government’s delay has been Robert Kilpatrick, CEO and Creative Director of the Scottish Music Industry Association. “To be honest, I felt both deep frustration and concern,” Kilpatrick told us when we asked about his initial response to the news. “Our sector has already been operating on a knife’s edge, and this delay only adds to the uncertainty we’ve been facing. We’re all feeling the pressure, especially after such an intense year working on the application whilst delivering our current programme of work; coming after a really tough few years for the sector generally.”

What’s particularly concerning for Kilpatrick is that organisations still don’t know how big Creative Scotland's pot of money for the Multi-Year Fund will be when it is finally announced. “We urgently need the Scottish Government to confirm that the planned £25 million increase in cultural funding for 2025 will be in place by 1 April, aligning with the start of the Multi-Year Funding period,” he says. “This will at least bring some assurance ahead of the decisions being announced.”

External nighttime photograph of the Tron Theatre in Glasgow.
The Tron Theatre, Glasgow. Photo: John Johnston

So that's the organisations, but what about the workers? We asked Bectu – the Broadcasting, Entertainment, Communications and Theatre Union – for their take on the situation. Their negotiations officer for Scotland, Paul McManus, replied by saying they were not entirely surprised by the delay but were deeply concerned, particularly in terms of the theatre sector.

“Theatre programming works anywhere from six to eighteen months in advance,” he says, “and we know that a number of the Regularly Funded Organisations have stopped programming shows from around next summer onwards due to the current uncertainty.” This, McManus explains, could decimate Scotland’s theatre scene. “As they will now have no idea until the end of January what funding to expect from April, it will be very difficult for them to get quality shows in later in the year, which will have a hugely damaging effect on the income and jobs of our members,” he says. 

While McManus agrees that the Scottish Government and Creative Scotland should have a final budget in place before announcing the Multi-Year application outcomes, he's clearly frustrated by the way this has been dealt with. "Once again a last-minute decision has been sprung on the sector when Bectu and other Creative Industry Unions have been asking both the government and funding bodies for a coherent plan on funding announcements for many months now," he says. 

The inability to look ahead with any certainty is also a big issue for SMIA’s day-to-day operations. “We can’t fully plan our projects or anticipate the level of support our members will need when we don’t know what’s coming,” explains Kilpatrick. “Even though I’m both hopeful and confident that we’ll see a positive response to our application, we’re all bracing for tough outcomes.” Kilpatrick additionally notes that as well as being damaging to the long-term plans of the SMIA and others, it’s also a disaster for those organisations he works with who are relying on this money in the near future. “The lost lead time for planning will present significant challenges for delivering projects and programmes next year; especially for activities that start shortly after the funding period commences in April 2025.”

"People will just leave...": The knock-on effects of uncertainty

The organisations waiting for the Multi-Year Funding announcement are some of the biggest and most well-regarded arts organisations in Scotland, and they’re key to Scotland’s wider arts ecosystem. Many smaller organisations use their infrastructure; dozens of festivals and events rely on using the gallery, theatre and cinema spaces in places like CCA in Glasgow, the Macrobert Centre in Stirling and Eden Court in Inverness, to name just three examples of key venues awaiting the announcement. The organisations waiting on their Multi-Year Funding also employ or commission countless freelance arts workers. “Many of our members at SMIA are small businesses or freelancers who are already under immense strain,” notes Kilpatrick, “and who depend on either work or support from the 281 organisations currently awaiting their fates. The thought of some of Scotland’s core cultural infrastructure vanishing is causing mass concern and worry across the board.”

This uncertainty is troubling for the heads of these organisations, but the stress caused by this delay has also trickled down the chain of command. Over at Glasgow Film, CEO Allison Gardner is having to hold off on vital preparation for next year, but she's also been left to reassure her team. “The news was disappointing, and it does delay our financial planning for 25/26, but it’s also unsettling for staff,” she explains by phone. “We’re very transparent with our staff, which I think is the right thing to do, so they know we’ve applied for this and were awaiting the outcome. So I sent an email to all the staff, just letting them know that it was delayed, but that it won't change any plans for us before 1 April 2025, because obviously we've already done that budget.”

It’s clear that this delay has knock-on effects for every level of arts in the country. Long-term strategies are now up in the air; planning for the future is put on hold; some organisations seem in real danger of closing without further investment. The staff at these organisations are worrying if they’ll have a job after April, and the smaller outfits and freelancers who work with these organisations don’t know what’s next for them either. People are worried, but Gardner is looking for positives. “I'm trying to be glass half-full,” she tells us. “I'm assuming that the delay is because they are trying to get more money for the sector. I don't know that, but I'm assuming from Creative Scotland’s statement that they are having discussions with the Scottish Government; I'm assuming that they're trying to leverage more money.”

Kilpatrick is less sanguine about the situation, and he’s not the only one. “We’ve already seen a significant response from the sector," he explains, "with nearly 2000 artists and industry professionals signing our open letter calling for clarity and reassurance from the Scottish Government. If that doesn’t come soon, we risk losing vital parts of our cultural fabric.” There’s a real danger of jobs being lost in some cases, but that isn’t Kilpatrick's only concern. “In some cases, people will just decide to leave the sector because the stress and pressure have become too much. The strength of our cultural organisations lies in the people who work for them. If you lose the people, even if the organisation survives, the landscape will shift dramatically. And for those who aren’t successful come the delayed decisions, some organisations that have been cornerstones of Scottish culture could disappear forever.”

The arts sector isn’t the only one in Scotland that is underfunded and struggling, of course. There are enormous pressures in health and education, for example, but Gardner makes the point that the arts shouldn’t be treated as if it's a frivolous luxury by the Government; it’s just as important to our society’s well-being. “My husband works in social care and looks after people with disabilities,” says Gardner. “So I get it, the Government has a whole range of other things to worry about, but I genuinely believe proper investment in the arts is for the public good.

"We know at Glasgow Film that coming to the cinema really relieves loneliness in people, it lets them engage with the world, it helps with their health and well-being. The social return on investments like our Moving Memories events and Access Film Club are really important. So it's not just putting money out there for the sake of it, it actually does deliver low-cost education, community engagement, talent development – and these things always will require public funding of some sort and the public benefits hugely from them.”

Gardner makes an excellent point, but you wouldn’t know that the arts were so beneficial to our health and well-being from the lack of investment in the sector in the past few years. Kilpatrick lays out the paucity of this support: “Cultural funding currently represents just 0.56% of the Scottish Government’s total spending, well below the European average,” he explains. “Without significant, sustained investment, the next crisis is just around the corner. We can’t continue with these short-term fixes; we need long-term investment and a genuine commitment to safeguarding our culture.”