We are, as you may have noticed, in the midst of an awards season.

Equally, I suppose, that may have passed you by entirely, in which case I doff my cap. However, for much of the media, in all its multifarious 21st-century manifestations, the doling out of prizes and ranking of artists has become an obsession and a major plank of the cultural agenda.

The Forward Prize for poetry has just gone to Kai Miller, with the Man Booker novel award and the Barclaycard Mercury music prize to come. The Turner Prize exhibition has opened in London, with Scottish art again well represented.

The Gramophone Awards produced musical success for Scots to boast of and the nominations for the UK Theatre Awards include a disproportionate number of projects from north of the Border, with the involvement of Glasgow's Citizens a key ingredient in most of them. The hoopla of the MTV Europe Awards in Glasgow is to come and we have recently had the Reality Television Awards. No, really. The list is endless, and, you might argue, worth less the longer it becomes.

There are prizes for preserving the past just as there are prizes for making the new and exciting, but the Theatre Buildings At Risk Register is more in the nature of an anti-prize, and I think we could do with applying its philosophy in other areas. A little less of the ­ self-congratulatory jamboree and a little more of the taking stock and noticing what we may be in danger of losing would do no-one any harm.

The Theatre Trust Charitable Fund is behind the register, which has been a significant campaigning tool for the preservation of the infrastructure of historic venues throughout the UK.

The 2014 register was revealed last month at the Theatre Royal, Brighton, the venue chosen because the Grade II* listed Brighton Hippodrome is right at the top of that list, a turn-of-the-last-century Frank Matcham-remodelled variety house that may now become a cinema complex if it is saved.

The good news was the list is shorter than it was in 2013, reduced from 48 to 33, and mostly for positive reasons of preservation, rather than the failure of demolition (four of those 48 have been lost in the past year).

Also at the top of the trust's priority list are the Plymouth Palace and the Victoria Theatre, Salford, both facinating but neglected late 19th century buildings that remarkably still have original features intact.

Of the 33, 28 are in England and the other five are in Wales, with Scotland contributing none to the list. This is an anti-prize of which we can be proud, if not complacent. It was not always thus, and the Theatre Trust has trained its gaze on many Scottish problems in the past, while a whole other list of venerable venues - particularly in Glasgow - were long gone before it ever came into existence.

But this year's report acknowledges that Scotland is taking its theatre buildings seriously.

"With the removal (from the list) of the Tivoli in Aberdeen, now reopening as a theatre, and the Old Athenaeum in Glasgow in a new use (it is now the Hard Rock Cafe next to Buchanan Street Subway station) ... there are now no theatres at imminent risk in Scotland. However we are keeping a close eye on the Byre Theatre ... (and) are also pleased the trustees of Leith Theatre Trust continue to work with Edinburgh City Council."

On Thursday Creative Scotland announced £1.35million of capital funding, which included an award toward the restoration of Campbeltown Picture House, and the Theatre Trust report confirms that there has been intelligent use of National Lottery and other funds in Scotland in the care of our cultural infrastructure.

Whether we are adequately supporting the creation of work to fill the venues is quite another question, but that in itself is a prize worth hanging on to.