Remarkable Scottish culture funding outcome after more than two years of stress and anxiety

As Scotland's biggest cultural celebration ended last August, the mood across the arts landscape could not have been bleaker.

On-stage protests by Edinburgh International Festival and Fringe performers were swiftly followed by a mass demonstration outside Holyrood over the sudden shutdown of a critical fund for artists.

Creative Scotland's pulling of the plug was widely viewed in the industry as a high-risk gamble but described as "unavoidable" given a Scottish Government freeze on more than £10m of its budget.

The government was forced into a swift climbdown which allowed the artists' fund to reopen, but then announced it was putting Creative Scotland under review.

Within weeks, Creative Scotland's plans to announce its first long-term funding programme since 2017 were put on hold, leaving the entire arts industry in limbo.

The outlook for cultural institutions has dramatically transformed since then, culminating in the new £208m funding announcement from Creative Scotland that is significantly better than anyone had predicted.

Creative Scotland has offered three-year deals to 251 of the 279 applicants who reached the final stage of a process that started in the summer of 2023.

A further 13 applicants who did not meet its criteria have effectively been thrown a lifeline in the form of a year of "development funding," including the Traverse Theatre and the Scottish Poetry Library.

Crucially, Creative Scotland has been able to provide long-term funding to every organisation that met its key criteria - a remarkable outcome given the levels of stress and anxiety across the industry ahead of its decisions.

There has been understandable euphoria and relief from the 141 organisations that have secured long-term funding for the first time and others genuinely fearful of missing out.

Although some applicants have reveal that their funding has fallen well short of what they asked for to balance budgets and deliver planned programmes, they have been in the minority.

Crucial votes of confidence have been delivered to some of Scotland's most troubled cultural institutions of recent years, including the Belmont and Filmhouse cinemas in Aberdeen and Edinburgh, as well as the Aye Write book festival and Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, the Brunton Theatre Trust in East Lothian and Summerhall arts centre in Edinburgh.

Given the undoubtedly positive picture that has emerged after more than two years of uncertainty for the whole sector, it does seem desperately unfair for Cumbernauld Theatre, in Lanarkshire, to be the only organisation cut adrift from long-term funding, when many other regional theatres have secured uplifts. It seems inevitable that it will now head into a lone battle in pursuit of a rethink.