CS calls emergency board meeting
Creative Scotland responds to pressure over RFO cuts
Creative Scotland has today, Tuesday 30 January 2018, responded to pressure from across the theatre community at the removal of 20 organisations from its network of Regularly Funded Organisations.
It is bringing forward its board meeting, originally scheduled for February 15, to next week, according to its CEO Janet Archer.
Janet Archer. Pic: Christopher Bowen
In a statement announcing the changed date, Archer said: “we will be taking stock of the decisions made regarding organisations not included in the Regular Funding network, and the options available.”
Archer says that the organisation is “listening carefully to everything everyone is saying. We’re doing that through one to one meetings with organisations and correspondence directly with us.”
A series of strongly worded open letters have been sent to Creative Scotland in the wake of the allocation of its £33 million-a-year allocation of funds for its RFO network.
As reported last week, Edinburgh’s Catherine Wheels and Lung Ha’s theatre companies were both removed from the network, as well as Janice Parker Projects, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society and the Festival City Theatres Trust which runs the King’s and Festival theatres.
“shift the way the sector works”
Creative Scotland has said that it is removing touring theatre companies from the RFO network in an attempt to “shift the way the sector works” and has announced that a new £2million a year fund, ring-fenced for touring the performing arts, will come into effect in June 2018.
However both Janet Archer and Laura Mackenzie-Stuart, Creative Scotland’s head of theatre, have said that they do not yet have a full picture of how the touring fund will work. They want to “co-design it with the theatre sector and get it right”.
In her statement, Archer added: “We will make a further announcement as soon as we can next week, following this meeting.
“It’s important to note that this will not affect any of the 116 organisations, or the transition arrangements, already announced as part of the network.”
ENDS
