The Creative Scotland review that doesn't pull any punches
The Creative Scotland review was ordered last year
Tuesday’s long-awaited report into the independent review of Creative Scotland doesn't pull any punches.
Chair Angela Leitch, a career civil servant who was appointed to lead the review earlier this year, made 36 recommendations for reform of the Scottish Government's culture body.
Her report has described the body as “bureaucratic” and “impersonal”. Ms Leitch also warned Creative Scotland needed to expand its support beyond funded individuals and organisations.
She told Creative Scotland's leadership that it needs “greater ambition, aspiration and appetite for risk”, while governance at the organisation was described as “difficult to navigate and lack[ing] transparency”.
The independent review was ordered to be carried out in September last year in the wake of a controversy of the body’s funding of Rein, a sexually explicit film project, and a dispute with the Scottish Government over cuts and delays to its budget.
Among the recommendations is the call for Screen Scotland, which oversees Scotland’s thriving film and TV industry, to be given the ability “to act and market itself more independently within the umbrella of the national body”.
Last year, Creative Scotland suspended its Open Fund for individual artists and delayed giving organisations and venues clarity over what support was coming - amid a spat with the Scottish Government over funding. The issues were only resolved once the Scottish Budget was published and multi-year funding was subsequently handed out to the vast majority of applicants.
Indeed, the language used in the report over this issue is interesting - and arguably, pointed.
The report says Creative Scotland "chose to delay issuing” multi-year funding contracts and said there was was "potential for alternative decisions to be considered" that were not. This, the report claims, created "strain" between Creative Scotland and the sector.
At the time, the sector, which was hit by on-stage protests held during the Edinburgh festivals, as well as artists demonstrating outside Holyrood, saw the delay as a gamble, but one that was inevitable due to the Scottish Government's funding freeze.
Scotland's arts sector is generally content with the funding it received after this saga, with a few notable exceptions. Yet the suggestion by Ms Leitch the politicisation of the issue could have been avoided should raise a few eyebrows.
The mysterious relocation plans of the Edinburgh TV Festival
An announcement over the past week the Edinburgh TV Festival is mulling a relocation, presumably potentially to a city that doesn’t have "Edinburgh" in its name, came as a surprise, not least to the authorities.
The city council told The Scotsman it had not been contacted by the festival, which was founded in the capital 50 years ago, before it announced it had opened bids to other cities. Organisers cited "major shifts" in the sector and rising costs for delegates.
The festival, which has no permanent staff in Scotland and employs a workforce in its London office, said it would launch a bidding process inviting UK cities to apply to host the television industry event from 2027 onwards.
However, festival organisers said they did not "necessarily" want to move away from Edinburgh, giving me an inkling the highly publicised announcement could be more of a warning shot for funders - or potential funders - than anything else.
In interesting timing, the council, which does not give any money to the festival, is mulling its distribution of funds from the planned visitor levy, which is due to be implemented in July.
A link? Maybe. I couldn't possibly comment.
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