NEWS
What next for the Creative Scotland funding losers?
Neil Cooper surveys the wreckage of CS’s funding rejections, and asks what impact the decisions will have on Scotland’s cultural scene
COMING UP
• Idlewild’s new album Everything Ever Written – their i rst since 2009 – is released on Mon 16 Feb. • The Edinburgh International Science Festival’s 2015 programme is revealed on Thu 19 Feb. The festival itself runs from Sat 4–Sun 19 Apr.
• Scottish Opera’s new production of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice opens at Glasgow’s Theatre Royal on Thu 19 Feb.
• The Edinburgh International Festival’s classical music events have just been revealed, but the rest of the programme is launched on Wed 18 Mar. The festival runs Fri 7– Mon 31 Aug.
• Glasgow’s Counterl ows 2015, exploring international underground music, takes place Thu 2–Sun 5 Apr. • Dead by Dawn takes over Edinburgh’s Filmhouse for four days of horror shorts, previews and big i lms, Thu 23–Sun 26 Apr.
• Tectonics Glasgow 2015 takes place Fri 1–Sun 3 May, with performers including the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra and electronica pioneer Élaine Radigue.
• Glasgow Open House brings contemporary art to l ats, gardens, sheds and other unexpected spaces around the city from Fri 1–Mon 4 May. • Belle and Sebastian play Glasgow’s SSE Hydro on Fri 22 May, with the Scottish Festival Orchestra.
• Mogwai play two 20th anniversary shows in Glasgow’s Barrowland on Sat 20 & Sun 21 Jun. • The Libertines are the i rst headliners announced for T in the Park 2015. The festival runs at Strathallan Castle, Fri 10–Sun 12 July.
How these companies survive may require some genuine creativity. It may result in a grassroots culture that learns to operate outwith the institutions – and which arguably already exists in lo-i ventures such as Edinburgh’s 30-seat Discover 21 space, the Embassy and Rhubaba galleries, in LeithLate and the Village Pub Theatre, all of which receive little or no public subsidy, but which create increasingly vital work despite this.
Nobody working in the arts is under any illusion that an imposed austerity culture is the cause of the current round of cuts, but Creative Scotland’s top- down philosophy doesn’t help. This is something that needs to be addressed by the organisation’s incoming chair Richard Findlay, a man who, as former chair of bodies including the National Theatre of Scotland, STV and the Royal Lyceum Theatre, arguably has more experience in Scotland’s arts scene than Waverley Gate’s tranche of senior managers combined. There are some eminently qualii ed people working at the coalface of the organisation to enable artists the best they can, but it still isn’t clear who makes the decisions. Ultimately, instead of fostering a culture of competition that creates a scenario of winners and losers as a business might do, Creative Scotland needs to allow artists to lead the way while they get on with the business of administrating, enabling and serving those artists while arguing harder for extra resources. That way, major organisations such as sound, Artlink and Live Music Now won’t be left struggling to survive.
W hen Creative Scotland announced their regular funding decisions the end of last year, it showed just how much Scotland’s arts funding quango hasn’t changed since the appointment of a new set of administrators, following the departure of its previous incumbents at the end of 2012.
towards
While the decisions highlighted justii ed winners, including the likes of Vanishing Point and Grid Iron theatre companies, as well as contemporary music producers Arika, 28 organisations who received money in 2014-15 were declined regular funding for 2015-18. Those who missed out included Scottish Youth Theatre, Vox Motus and Untitled Productions, whose show Paul Bright’s Confessions of A Justii ed Sinner has been lauded at home and abroad. Untitled have announced that the company is being left dormant for the foreseeable future, while Scottish Youth Theatre is to receive funding directly from the Scottish Government for the next three years in the run-up to Scotland’s Year of Young People in 2018. Others who didn’t make the cut included three major Edinburgh galleries – Stills, Talbot Rice and Inverleith House – as well as Artlink, a vital community- based body that provides access to arts for disabled individuals. Neither Aberdeen’s pioneering sound festival of contemporary music nor Live Music Now Scotland, which takes performances to vulnerable people in the community, will receive funding from 2015. A spokesperson for sound described the festival as being ‘in limbo’ until they heard CS’s decision on project funding in March.
12 THE LIST 5 Feb–2 Apr 2015