News – SAC reveals spending plans

£7.7m has been added to the Scottish arts budget from 2007 as part of the arts funding shake-up announced by the Scottish Executive in January, and the Scottish Arts Council (SAC) will be spreading the money between artforms and initiatives designed to boost audience development and to support disabled and culturally diverse artists.
Dance funding will more than double, increasing from £1.1m this year to £2.6m from next April. Literature and the visual arts will also receive significant increases and a new £840,000 fund will be established to support work in different areas of the country, covering networks of venues in rural areas, small festivals and mid-sized venues in cities. An additional £500,000 has been made available for awards, bursaries and fellowships for individual artists, and £1.4m is budgeted for audience development initiatives.

The additional funds were announced by the Scottish Executive in January as part of the deal that transferred direct control of Scotlands national performing companies to the Executive. SAC has been attacked by politicians and artists for subsequently adjusting its funding structure, cutting funding to some organisations to establish a more flexible funding system. Further criticism has been voiced at the funding bodys decision to publish on its website summaries of all funded organisations grant assessments and artistic evaluations. Speaking at the launch of the spending plans, Graham Berry, SACs Chief Executive, said that the new funding plans would help SAC to fulfil its commitment to enabling the best quality and most diverse art to reach the greatest numbers and broadest range of people and places throughout Scotland.