The national arts funding body, Creative Scotland, has defended hiring consultants to garner the public's opinion of their work only weeks after finishing a major consultation exercise of their own.
The body, which last week announced a chief executive, Janet Archer, is commissioning a survey of 1200 members of the public, as well as "stakeholders", in a tender worth up to £45,000 for the consultancy firm that wins the job.
The survey is required to "monitor changes in perceptions of Creative Scotland and satisfaction with our services" as well as "improve our intelligence on the media impact of our communications".
Mark Fisher, a theatre critic, said: "Just when it seemed [Creative Scotland] had got the message, it's back to its old customers, consultants and impacts tosh" while the poet Elspeth Murray said: "Free tip for [Creative Scotland: your 'customers' don't like being called 'customers'."
The advert comes only a day after a review by musician and writer Pat Kane, of the recently concluded Open Sessions staged by the body, said its use of "financialised and corporatised" language had to change.
A spokesman for Creative Scotland said the work was a piece of research, similar to previous surveys commissioned by the body, was a vital piece of work.
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 hereComments are closed on this article