Holyrood and Creative Scotland in talks to save culture jobs

Discussions are being held between Scottish Government and Creative Scotland to avoid job losses in the cultural sector after leading arts organisations warned last week that they were having to prepare for “drastic cutbacks” amid uncertainty over their funding.

Speaking at Holyrood’s Culture Committee on 19 September, Executive Director of Dundee Rep and Scottish Dance Liam Sinclair revealed the organisation had briefed staff about the possibility of redundancies in the coming year if the government and Creative Scotland can not make tangible financial commitments to the sector in the coming weeks. 

Arts organisations are due to find out next month if their applications for multiyear funding from Creative Scotland have been successful. However, after months of u-turns and despite a promise to increase funding for culture by £100m over the next five years, the government is yet to confirm a budget for the programme to Creative Scotland.

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The fund was designed to make awards on a three-yearly basis, but organisations have been on standstill funding packages since 2018, with current levels of guaranteed funding due to end in March 2025. 

“Most cultural organisations will either be in the middle of or approaching the end of their audit,” said Sinclair. “If you have a 31 March accounting year, you have to file your accounts by the end of December. An auditor is going to ask what your going concern is based on.

“If going concern is based in any way on an annual funding commitment that is currently in question, there is a very real tipping point scenario that could start, quite quickly, to unravel this autumn in terms of going concern being questioned by auditors.”

‘Drastic financial implications’

For the financial year ending 31 March 31, Dundee Rep and Scottish Dance Theatre’s accounts show revenue of £3.5m, down from £4.3m in 2022, with core funding of around £1.9m coming from Creative Scotland.

Sinclair said that he had been working with the company’s board and senior team to model “quite drastic financial implications” for next year “with a cash flow in certain scenarios that do not work”.

“We are therefore looking at a redundancy situation and what those different situations look like,” said Sinclair

“We are being very transparent with our staff about that because that contract of honesty feels really important. We have been briefing them about those consequences.

“We are an incredibly confident sector. Our organisation is one of many who work with a whole range of freelancers that we could not do our work without. In the case of our activity at the Fringe, we are presenting Scotland to the world and are being absolutely recognised for world-class delivery.

“But behind the scenes, we are working on really quite drastic consequences that we genuinely feel have a probability to play out if there is not a stabilising of financial projections from the Scottish Government to Creative Scotland in the weeks ahead. We are really at a pivotal moment.”

Sinclair was one of several cultural leaders who spoke to express concern over the government’s mixed messaging on culture funding and reluctance to make commitments and its impact on the sector in Scotland

In the last week, concerns have been raised over the financial health of other Scottish cultural organisations.

Glasgow Centre for Contemporary Arts has said it will temporarily close from December 2024 to March 2025 to “focus on restructuring and ensuring financial recovery”, while Summerhall in Edinburgh launched an “urgent appeal” for public donations amid concerns it may have to scale back its year-round programming.

Separately, Edinburgh Council also warned that financial pressures will mean that The People’s Story Museum on the Royal Mile will shut until April next year and that Queensferry Museum may face reduced opening hours.