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Good funding bodies, like good parents, prepare their charges for a time when they are no longer around, says Sam Kitchener.

To make any sort of decision in Scottish arts funding is to make enemies. Either you are seen to be giving money to the wrong people, or not to be giving money to the right ones.

When Creative Scotland awarded Ellie Harrison a £15,000 Open Project grant not to leave Glasgow for a year, in January 2016, they provoked a social media furore. Later in the year, the closure of the permanent gallery at Inverleith House, by Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, after the failure of its application for three years worth of funding as one of Creative Scotland’s Regularly Funded Organisations (RFOs), prompted understandable outrage. It was ‘an extreme act of vandalism’ according to former Turner Prize-winner Richard Wright; writing for Apollo, Catherine Spencer was less censorious, describing the decision as ‘shocking and sad’... Keep reading on Apollo