Alongside the mass political engagement which helped secure Thursday's historic turnout, one notable aspects of the referendum campaign has been the muscular participation of Scotland's cultural sector.

People such as actors David Hayman and Brian Cox, playwright David Greig, author Val McDermid and musician Eddi Reader have been regular, vocal and opinionated players in a vast public debate about the merits of Scottish independence.

Others figures have made splashy interventions: Broadway star Alan Cumming, for instance, who jetted in from New York to support the Yes campaign in the weeks leading up to the vote, and JK Rowling, who donated £1 million to the No campaign and used her website as a platform from which to promote her view that Scotland and the UK were better together.

Rory Bremner, writing in Selkirk newspaper the Southern Reporter, was another Scot who came down on the No side.

The debate in which they have participated has been played out on the airwaves, in television studios, in newspapers and, perhaps most vividly, on social media. It has also found its way into artistic endeavours such as National Theatre of Scotland production The Great Yes, No, Don't Know Five Minute Theatre Show, which took real-time performances and opinions into cyberspace for the world to see.

What has also been notable, however, is the general direction of travel. Most of those in Scotland's cultural sector appeared to have backed Yes. Forming a spearhead of sorts for them and their views has been the National Collective, founded in Edinburgh in 2011 and which operates under the slogan Artists And Creatives For Independence.

Its membership, reach and influence have grown hugely over the last two years thanks to events such as its month-long Yestival tour of Scotland in July. The National Collective has drawn into its fold such sage old heads as novelist and artist Alasdair Gray, actress Elaine C Smith and Scotland's Makar, Liz Lochhead, but it is a ­movement whose most exciting characteristic is the youth of its members.

It's safe to say, then, that among the unhappy Scots post-referendum are a disproportionate numbers of writers, actors, poets, playwrights and other creatives - the people whose work, by and large, defines Scotland's culture and which often gives early voice to its political aspirations.

How, then, will they respond to Thursday's referendum result? If we accept that the years since devolution have seen a flowering of Scottish cultural activity, will it wither in the face of a No vote? Could the opposite happen? And what of the National Collective in the months and years ahead? Predicated on an answer - Yes - can it now reform around a question, and if so, what will that question be?

National Collective member Zara Kitson was one of the organisers of the Yestival tour, and says: "We're having some time now to reflect. But there is a strong feeling that there will be a 'next'. In some shape or form we will continue, but exactly what that will look like now we're not sure.

"There's a lot that people have taken from the National Collective and a lot that we feel we can offer in terms of bringing together culture, creativity and politics in a new and vibrant way. Young people especially have taken a lot from that"

For her, the period leading up to the referendum has been one of the most creative in recent Scottish history. "What really brought up this intense creativity was the time pressure," she says. "That obviously spurred people on. I think it's probably the most productive we've ever been as a nation."

Independence will remain a core theme for the National Collective, she thinks, as will its ideal of bringing together art and politics. But as for the work that its members and the wider arts community will make over the coming years, that depends on the wider political context.

"I think there's still a strong desire for change and it's just about what the next goalpost becomes. So the [artistic] reponse will be driven by what is going to be the political framing," she says. "There's the General Election coming up, that's another focal point for people to push towards, and that in itself will provide a space in which people will want to express creatively. There's the 2016 elections for the Scotish parliament too."

Playwright and author Alan Bissett, a Yes supporter and National Collective-ite, is optimistic for the future of Scotland's cultural sector. Hours after the result, he was having coffee with a theatre-maker and discussing a potential project, he says. The referendum has also given him an idea for a novel.

"I think this is when you'll start to see some of the best work because we're all in pain and that's often a spur for great art," he says. "We have felt so energised by this thing that we're not going to go back to sleep. And also we need to record what happened. We need to process and reflect upon, and get down in a multiplicity of artistic statements, what has actually happened here."

For musician, author and critic Pat Kane, artists and creatives such as the National Collective were "a huge ingredient" in the Yes campaign and brought what he characterises as an innovative, "can-do" culture to the political arena.

"That energy and process simply won't go away," he says. "The Yes cultural activists will hurt a little for a bit, but they will soon start roaming around, looking for their next field of activity, their next constituency of minds and hearts to inflame. It'll be a delight and surprise to see what that will be."

Playwright David Greig agrees it's easier to make art out of political adversity. But he's less confident that the No campaign's victory will prove a boon to Scotland's makers.

"I think it's too soon to tell," he says, but he fears we may have seen the end of a golden age of Scottish cultural activity.

"I think all the Scottish renaissance since pretty much 1945 has been at least half-predicated on the idea, in the background, that whatever appearances may say, we are in fact a country and therefore we have a culture and we have something that you, as an artist, are contributing towards. I think in the immediate aftermath of discovering that more than half the citizenry don't share your enthusiasm, it's going to be pretty hard to translate that into a cultural renaissance.

"We may get some tremendous individual works of art coming out of all of this, but I'm not sure we'll get anything that bonds in the way that, say, the post-1979 vote created a sort of creative kickback."

But he joins Bissett in acknowledging the effect two years of campaigning have had on him. "I think I'm going to be writing about this for years because it was a completely transformative experience to be involved with something as extraordinary as I felt the Yes movement was," he says. "I think the unwinding of that in my own work and thoughts will take a lifetime."

And, like Kane and Bissett, he's heartened by the contribution of the National Collective and its potential to drive Scotland's cultural sector forward. "The thing that has astonished and vivified me has been the National Collective and their generation," he says. "They have been transformed and I think their transformation is more long-term than mine. I think my generation has taken a pretty big knock. But they will carry something forward."