CREATIVE SCOTLAND needs a new hole in its funding like a hole in the head.
It has been a largely miserable year for the national arts funder.
Mired in a long and loud controversy over its long term funding decisions for arts companies, it has, in the wake of that stramash, also lost its chief executive, Janet Archer.
Its new chairman, Robert Wilson, is overseeing an overhaul of its funding and internal structures.
However, these issues, although dramatic and high volume, could soon recede into the safety of memory and distance if another and abiding fear - a long term and irreversible reduction in National Lottery funds - comes to fruition.
READ MORE: Scotland's new screen agency is launched
Members of the Creative Scotland hierarchy, which is currently led by interim chief executive Iain Munro, have long looked nervously at the dwindling income from the Lottery.
It must be particularly urgent, given that its new screen body, Screen Scotland, has just been launched: a significant portion of its funds are from the lottery.
Indeed the proceeds of the National Lottery is crucial to the body's spending power: around a third of the quango's coffers are filled by the proceeds of scratch-card players, or people hoping to change their lives forever with a miraculous Lotto win.
Since the inception of the Lottery in 1994, and its dedication to supply the arts with the proceeds of mass gambling, the fear has always been that the cultural world may become dependent on money from a source which could wax and wane in popularity.
READ MORE: Turmoil at Creative Scotland
The trend, in lottery income, is down, as insiders have long noted: this year's £27m in lottery cash for Creative Scotland was a reduction from £29.2m the previous year.
If these funds were to plummet, because of the success of rival lotteries, newly strengthened by the proposals set out by the Department of Culture, Media, and Sport, it could directly lead to cuts in spending.
And perhaps even the Scottish Government, who have thus far shielded, relatively, the arts from savage cuts.
A major drop in Lottery funds would be a tough hole for public money to fill.
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