One of the key figures at the national arts funding body, Creative Scotland, is to leave to help write the government's new culture strategy.
The director of arts, Leonie Bell, is to join the Scottish Government for 18 months to help write the strategy, which was a manifesto commitment of the SNP in the Holyrood elections last year.
Ms Bell, who under her new employment not be able to be part of the key decisions over Creative Scotland's regularly funded organisations this year, is to head the "cultural engagement team" at the government's culture and historic environment division.
Ms Bell has made a mark on Creative Scotland since becoming director of arts, where she leads decision making on
the arts, dance, literature, music, theatre and visual arts.
The recent Arts Strategy, published in August last year, believed to be largely penned by Ms Bell, called for better artist pay and a shake up of "disengaged" arts boards.
The SNP manifesto said the new cultural strategy would be "be based on the principles of access, equality and excellence."
Ms Bell has become one of the key figures in arts strategy in Scotland - she will now oversee the Government's first official national arts strategy, which will itself have an impact on the work of Creative Scotland.
Creative Scotland has advertised for a fixed term replacement.
A spokesman for Creative Scotland said: "While this secondment presents a great opportunity for a key member of our Leadership Team to contribute to the development of this important strategy for Scotland; it also presents an exciting opportunity for prospective candidates to take up a key role at Creative Scotland, supporting the arts, screen and creative industries.
"As such, we are currently conducting a recruitment process for a replacement."
Yesterday Creative Scotland announced it has awarded over £800,000 through the Open Project Fund in December 2016 to 36 recipients, including individual artists, musicians, dancers, writers, community arts, festivals and organisations working across the arts, screen and creative industries.
More than £750,000 of these awards are supported through National Lottery Funding.
Recipients include the artist Luke Fowler, the writer Jenni Fagan, Black and White Publishing, the Scottish Contemporary Art Network and the Traditional Music & Song Association of Scotland, among others.
A spokeswoman for the Scottish Government said: "Leonie Bell will lead work on cultural engagement and the co-ordination of the development of the National Culture Strategy.
"Ms Bell has extensive experience supporting and engaging with artists and cultural producers throughout Scotland.
“The National Culture Strategy will deliver an ambitious and creative vision for the whole of Scotland’s diverse culture sector, based on the principles of access, equality and excellence.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel