Scotland's national arts funding body will at long last advertise its vacant chief executive post next week – but on a lower salary than the previous head's.

The new chief executive, The Herald understands, will be paid about 10% less than the £120,000 received by previous leader Andrew Dixon, who resigned last year.

News of the development came on the day of the first of Creative Scotland's public idea-gathering exercises, the inaugural Open Session in Dundee.

The session heard from speakers and representatives of the arts world who questioned the basis of Creative Scotland – formed in a merger of the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen.

The Dundee meeting was the first of eight this month and next, involving around 700 people in the arts and creative industries, as part of the organisation's bid to reform itself after a disastrous 2012. The meetings feature talks followed by discussions and are chaired by musician and journalist Pat Kane.

The director of Dundee Contemporary Arts, Clive Gillman, said the words of Creative Scotland chairman Sir Sandy Crombie in 2010 were particularly problematic, when he spoke of the body, which distributes £80 million a year in Government and lottery funds, expecting a "return on its investment".

Mr Gillman said: "I don't think that can ever happen and I don't think that will ever provide us with a way of going forward."

Mr Gillman added that from its inception, the body has had no clear vision of what it does.

Writer Jenny MacFie, in her presentation, said Creative Scotland had been set up with a "banking structure" that was never going to work and was not "fit for purpose".

The body will also appoint a director of operations, Janine Hunt, for the first time to oversee the running of the organisation and to aid the interim director of finance as its current director of finance, Alison Hagan, leaves for the National Theatre of Scotland.

In a change of title, Iain Munro is now officially interim chief executive until a successor to Mr Dixon is found.

Kenneth Fowler, head of communications, said the open sessions were part of the changes being wrought after last year's crisis "when it was clear we just were not getting it right".

"It was clear we were alienating the very people we wanted to be working with," he said.

"This is a pivotal point for artists and the creative industries in Scotland and we want to get it right. I am not saying [artists] will like us all the time, but we do want to reach a state of equilibrium.

"We want to be a partner, not a leader, an enabler, not as a dictator or, dare I say it, as a commissioner."