Campaign on Arts and Culture Funding

Campaign For the Arts has launched a new public campaign calling on the Scottish Government to abandon major cuts to Creative Scotland, and to work with Scotland’s cultural sector to find a sustainable future, ahead of the final vote on the Scottish Budget at Holyrood on Tuesday, 21 February.

The petition can be found here, and contains 3 key asks:

  • Reverse the cut to Creative Scotland in the 2023/4 Scottish Budget

  • Support Scotland’s artists and cultural organisations now and in the months ahead, to weather the ‘perfect storm’ of economic pressures

  • Work with the cultural sector to build a sustainable future, restoring and growing investment so that the arts can flourish across Scotland.

These asks mirror those made by the culture sector in recent weeks.

Despite recent political upheval, greater public engagement with this issue will inform continuing conversations around funding with policymakers .

Culture Counts are encouraging stakeholders and their networks (where appropriate) to sign Campaign for the Arts’ the petition, share it with their networks and to consider contacting their MSP to inform them of the impact planned cuts to arts and culture funding will have.

Culture Counts provided the following comment to the press release accompanying the petition:

“Recent years’ events have put Scotland’s culture sector in an increasingly vulnerable position. Brexit, the pandemic and recovery from it, skyrocketing costs and an ongoing cost of living crisis, underpinned by long-term underinvestment, mean that organisations and individuals working in the culture sector are experiencing a perfect storm of challenges.

In recent months and weeks, Culture Counts, the culture sector and Creative Scotland have repeatedly sounded the alarm – making the case that the planned 10% cut to Creative Scotland’s budget will exacerbate these challenges enormously.

In the context of the overall Scottish Budget, arts and culture takes a tiny proportion of total Government investment, for which it delivers an enormous economic, social and cultural return. The close engagement between Government and the culture sector to date has suggested there was a shared understanding of this.

Yet we find ourselves in a position where, instead of protecting Scotland’s culture sector, and enabling our passionate, inventive, creative and highly skilled workforce to unlock the transformative potential of culture across Scottish society, short term, the survival of many organisations and culture workers is at high risk – and the Scottish Government’s plan to enact this funding approach risks their long-term future.”

About Campaign for the Arts:

Campaign for the Arts is the UK's grassroots alliance for the arts, with over 250,000 supporters nationwide. Their mission is to champion, defend and expand access to the arts and culture, for and with the public.

Joseph Peach