Creative Scotland was right to be uneasy about how the Scottish Government intervened in a controversial case of arts funding last year, it has been claimed.
It was revealed yesterday that staff and board members of Scotland's national arts body felt "undermined" by former First Minister Alex Salmond's unprecedented intervention into arts funding, in a series of emails obtained using the Freedom of Information act.
Last year, in a controversial decision, Creative Scotland decided that Scottish Youth Theatre (SYT) would not be one of its three-year funded arts bodies.
It led to a storm of criticism and, within a fortnight, a surprise £1m package for the theatre, and other youth arts bodies, it was announced by Mr Salmond in his main farewell speech as First Minister.
Creative Scotland, like other Non Departmental Public Bodies (NDPB), operates at "arms length" from government.
Claire Baker MSP, Scottish Labour's Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Culture, said: "Whilst many people will be pleased that the Scottish Youth Theatre eventually received funding, Creative Scotland are right to raise questions around the way this was secured.
"There needs to be fairness and equity in the funding process and Creative Scotland were set up by the Scottish Government to deliver this.
"If the Scottish Government are now going over their heads with funding decisions it does raise questions over whether the Government still have confidence in this organisation."
The email messages show the intervention was viewed as compromising and undermining the quango's independent decisions.
One says: "This clearly has implications for our credibility as a non-governmental public body."
Another from Iain Munro, deputy chief executive, warns that if an offered £1m is not also shared with other youth bodies "it undermines the entire Regular Funding process and Creative Scotland's status as an arms length NDPB."
Board member Ruth Wishart writes: "I assumed that the collective decision finally taken would be just that. Final.
"I watched the FM's speech on iPayer [sic] last night and clearly, on the basis of his personal experience, he chose to give NYT favoured status and therefore second guess the CS process.
"As a result I find myself in the paradoxical position of being relieved that a solution has been found for NYT...while being simultaneously uneasy that there has been direct political intervention of a kind explicitly excluded by our terms of reference."
She adds: "This clearly has implications for our credibility as a non governmental public body."
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