Yr pwyllgor i'n gweithio, i fod yn cyfatho i'r cyfathai jacson carlaw MSP, I would like to welcome John Scott MSP to the meeting. Our first item of business today is a decision to take agenda items 3 and 4 in private. Our members agreed. Our second item today is an evidence session with Creative Scotland on sustainable funding for the arts and creative organisations in Scotland. I would like to welcome the witnesses Janet Archer, chief executive officer of Creative Scotland and Ben Thompson, the interim chair of Creative Scotland. Janet Archer has indicated she wishes to make an opening statement. Is that correct? Can I ask you to be as brief as possible? Of course I know that many members have questions that they would like to ask you. Of course, thank you convener. Good morning everyone and thank you to the committee for inviting us to give evidence this morning. We're here to talk about sustainable funding for the arts and creative organisations in Scotland. Creative Scotland's most significant means by which we provide this is via three year regular funding. Our first round spanned 15 to 18 and our guidance for the second round, 2018 to 21, was published in November 2016. The process and guidance for regular funding was tested with sector representatives who worked with us to review the guidance prior to us going live. I want to start by saying I'm profoundly sorry that the delivery of this process has been a negative one for many and we can't let this happen again. My role as chief executive of Creative Scotland is to take ultimate responsibility for everything that Creative Scotland does and I'm currently in dialogue with everyone involved at every level in the process and I'll make sure that we learn from this moment and resolve all the outstanding issues fairly and openly. I'd like to offer some context which I hope the committee will find helpful. Regular funding is an open application process. This time we had 184 applications and we've funded 121. Overall, we've committed to spending 33.9 million on regular funding, one million more a year than previously and that was due to a 6.6 million uplift from the Scottish government for which we are very grateful. Regular funding is no longer reliant on the National Lottery as it previously was. We previously put 6 million of national lottery funding into regularly funded organisations. So many of you will be aware that between September and December last year we were scenario planning some very difficult budget predictions. In the end, the budget prediction was better than we expected but it's important however to recognise that the 21% uplift that we communicated is made up of £10 million per screen which is set against hard economic targets and 6.6 million to replace the lost lottery income for the arts as I've already outlined. That means that our regularly funded budget effectively remains at stand still. Despite this we've been able to support 121 excellent organisations across Scotland, across art forms for the next three years. At one point last autumn we thought we might only have been able to fund about half of those. The new organisations, the network, haven't had a lot of press so I'm just going to just tell you a little bit about those. It includes 19 organisations who are new such as Alchemy Film Festival in Hoig, BodyServe Scotland in Murray, Starcatchers, Scotland's National Arts and Early Years organisation, Lyra based in Craigmiller in Edinburgh, Toonspeake which provides free high quality drama and theatre activities for young people aged 11 to 25 in Glasgow, Theatre Gwylio, The Acclaimed Gallic Theatre Company and The Tinderbox Collective based at the North Edinburgh Arts. Making funding decisions is never easy, nowhere more so than in Scotland where I think creative talent and ambition far outweighs the funding that we have available, particularly in the context of increased reliance on creative Scotland as alternative sources of support come under increasing pressure. I fully understand that even those who've received standstill funding, even those organisations are really struggling but as stated in our arts strategy we're committed to working with all organisations to support them to build resilience in the future. Overall the applications we received total 33% more than are available budget and that created a real challenge for us particularly when organisations ask for an average of a 23% uplift. We've tried to help by supporting all organisations coming out of regular funding through providing transition funding of between six and 12 months at the same level that they're currently funded at. We're also in the process of meeting organisations to explain our decisions and where they've been unsuccessful, discuss alternative routes to funding and how we might be able to support them in the future. Regular funding is one of our three routes to funding sitting alongside open project and targeted funding which includes screen and over the coming three years we expect to distribute about 83 million of government and national lottery funds a year across these three funding routes. One immediate thing that I want to tackle which is really important to me is to make project funding more straightforward for artists and artists led organisations. I completely appreciate and recognise that the regular funding process has been more challenging this time round than it needed to be both for those applying and for our staff and it's clear that the introduction of the Turing fund which was based on a review of Turing which included consultation didn't chime with everyone in the theatre sector and it's not seen as a replacement for regular funding and that's one of the reasons why the board elected to take stock increase the budget available for regular funding and add organisations to the network. We understand that this final stage of the process has created real difficulties. None of us want to relive that experience as it's in three years time and that's why as we've already announced we've committed to a written branch review of how we fund. We'll importantly do this in collaboration with the people and organisations that we fund so we welcome all the constructive communications that we've received of which there's been a significant amount and much dialogue has emerged. We're meeting with the sector representative bodies such as the Scottish Contemporary Art Network, Federation of Scottish Theatre, Literature Alliance Scotland and others whom we already work closely with in the coming weeks to help shape how we approach this review and finally I want to thank the dedicated hardworking and knowledgeable staff at Creative Scotland who work every day to make a positive difference to art and culture in our country. Many have joined us recently over the years of high profile careers in the sector. Others have built up immense knowledge over many years of service. They've all worked thoughtfully and diligently on this regular funding round dedicating a great deal of time, energy and care to the process. We are all committed to doing things differently in the future. Many ideas have surfaced as we've been working through our difficult decisions and we're looking forward to sharing those as we enter into dialogue over the coming months. I'm sure that the sector out there is hearing your apology for what went wrong but you did design the system. When the RFO funding was announced on 25 January, Janet Archer said that the decisions had been arrived at through a careful and thorough decision making process and Ben Thompson repeated that as well. You said that the decisions had arrived at through a clear and careful process but that wasn't true, was it? First, thank you, Janet. If I can say just one correction in your opening statement, I'm not the interim chair of Creative Scotland. I stopped being the interim chair last week. I'm here because I was the interim chair over the period that this happened. Robert Wilson is now the chair of Creative Scotland. I took the job on after Richard Finlay had died for six months so if you just have the minutes as being previous interim chair. Back to the process. The process that we delivered this time round was the same process that we delivered last time round. It involved an initial stage which was to check applications for compliance. We then assessed applications based on our guidance and then we took each application into a balancing process first through the lens of individual art forms and specialisms and then through a broader pool of thinking. In our guidance we were very clear that we would assess based against our 10-year plan, our strategies and our sector reviews. What that did eventually was to generate a set of recommendations that went up to the board for consideration. We tested the process with a small group of sector representatives before we published in November 2016. The difference this time round to last time round was we planned the process to be able to make announcements in October by October which was the period with the time frame that we announced announcements after the 15-18 round in the event because of the late budget announcement which we know was due to waiting for a UK budget announcement. We couldn't announce until January because we received our budget in December and so that's the difference in terms of time frame. I asked you why you said at the time that it had been a clear and careful process when now you're saying it wasn't. It went wrong. From the board's perspective, since I joined in August every board meeting has discussed the RFO process. The scenarios at each board were discussed up until even the December board there were four scenarios being discussed at each meeting because we were unable. Our last board meeting was on the 14th of December before the budget was announced so we didn't have any ideas whether or not we were going to have a 10% cut or a 20% increase and we had to scenario plan all of those but that included looking at all the decision making processes and two of our board members Karen Forbes and Erin Foster sat in on the process to ensure that good corporate governance was being done. So the process certainly from the board's perspective was very rigorous. The team was very rigorous. We had brought in outside consultants to look at each of the sectors. We looked at it both on a sector basis and on an overall portfolio basis and then when it came to January where we were in position to know what the budget was and I'm very pleased to say that at that stage the lottery deficit had been addressed. We had an hour's presentation on looking at each of the art forms and the strategies behind them and why decisions had been made in each of those art forms and we looked at the whole portfolio of an aggregate to look at how that looked in terms of shape, geographic, diversity, EDI, youth, et cetera and then the board had a quite rigorous debate challenging the executive on the decisions and the strategies that they made over the next two hours and at the end of that process all of the at that stage 116 companies that had been organisations that had been recommended to the board were approved for funding going forward. I've spoken to someone who was at that board meeting on the 18th of January. You said at the time that the decision was unanimous but it wasn't unanimous because the issues that have then hit the public realm about, for example, the equalities agenda and the fact that you've taken money away from world-class theatre companies in the disabled sector. That was raised, the issue of the fact that you were cutting children's theatre in the year of young people was raised by your board members and so there's really no excuses but you went ahead anyway. I think in any process like this there are going to be reservations. Everyone around the board had reservations about certain things. There were two particular organisations that had been significant organisations that had been added from the December board meeting which certain board members felt shouldn't be part of RFO, should be handled in a special way and that we then took a further 48 hours to consider those and they were added to the RFO but everyone agreed that the 116 list was to be funded. I would say that virtually every board member had raised concerns which is absolutely the natural process of wanting to take a difficult decision like this and we had looked at areas like youth and education and geographical diversity and the balance between networking organisations and direct organisations and had a very robust discussion about it. You said you looked at geographical diversity. In 2014 you covered 21 local authority areas and you still cover 21 local authority areas. You haven't actually improved your geographical diversity. Can I take that? Just for clarification on the unanimous word, since Ben steps down on new chair chaired his first meeting very recently and the board considered the word unanimous, the use of the word unanimous, the meeting that took the RFO decisions took place in January. The board reflected on the minute and amended it to say majority decision and that was put in place after the meeting but, as Ben has said, overall the board made the decisions and signed off the recommendations that the executive made in January. That's quite a big mistake to say some things unanimous when you actually had a huge barny at the meeting and the members of your own board flagged up exactly the kind of problems that's the reason why you're here before us today. The other thing is that I've been told that it's highly unusual for board members to get papers and then those papers are changed at the last minute, just before the 18th of January meeting, to change the funding decisions that had previously been made. There were two relatively small changes made between the 12th of December when the papers were due to be sent out and were sent out, sorry 12th of January when the papers were due to be sent out and the 18th of January they were discussed at the board and I don't think it's unusual in a time when a lot of, we only knew the budget after the 14th of December at a time when considerations were going on that there would be a couple of small changes in the board. Going through a long process, the deadline for these applications was April and the fact is that you did get your extra money from the Government. How many organisations were tagged as fundable by your specialist teams and those decisions were then overturned by management? How many times did that happen? I can get the exact data for you on that point because we were scenario planning against a number of different scenarios so just to be really clear from October we were scenario planning against standstill, the potential will not uplift minus 15% and minus 30% so each of those scenarios had different groupings of organisations. We know for example at Firex that I have said that the specialist recommended them for funding and it was an executive management decision that overturned that and there were lots like that. I mean we have had probably an unprecedented amount of communication from the sector in a short period of time and there are many examples of people who your specialist who you've praised recommended for funding and your executive team overturned that. So overall 156 applications could have been funded to £123 million. Our budget was obviously not £123 million so our process as published took into account assessment and judgement and we knew that we would never be in a position as we are with all of our funds in open project funding we're currently funding 30% of the applications that we get. We get many applications which are fundable, which we're not able to fund and consequently we have to make decisions based on our strategies. I'll just pass on to Claire Baker shortly but I just wanted to go back to this issue. You've continually said that your processes was very careful. I was speaking yesterday to Frank McConnell from the choreographer for Plan B, the dance company in the Highlands which didn't get its lost its RFO funding and you've put in place transition funds for companies that have lost their funding. He said to me that they were offered £108,000 of transition funding. Some companies have been offered 12 months but no reason was given for the fact that they got £6 months funding of £108,000. He went for the meeting at Creative Scotland on 16 February, the debrief meeting with Claire Byers, her head of arts and engagement. She asked Plan B to submit a half sheet of A4 paper on how they would spend that £108,000 of transition funding. She then, according to Frank McConnell, said that you can spend it on anything you wish, save taking a holiday in the Bahamas. She said that she needed to sign it off and send it to the auditors. It took Plan B the best part of five months to work up its artistic ideas and application form for somebody to turn round and say that you can just have a half A4 paper that I can just give to the auditors and you can spend it how you like. It's A, it's patronising to them and it seems to me to absolutely blow hole through your assertions that you have a very careful process and you're careful with the way you spend public money. Obviously, convener, it's the first time I've heard that account of that meeting and I will go back to Claire Byers and ask for her feedback. I will also go back to Frank McConnell, who I've known for many decades, and ask him to talk to me directly about that meeting. He also said that it's very difficult to talk to anyone directly at Creative Scotland, but I'll pass on now to Claire Baker. On the additional funding amounts, and at the meetings that I attended with sectors, it was explained, and I'm sorry if it wasn't explained well enough, the reason for extending it out on transition funding was because we had said that the decisions were going to be made by the end of November and because of the fact that we weren't in a position until middle of December to know on the budget that had to be pushed out until the end of January, so we gave the extra funding so that people had a full six months from the end of January of financial support and they wouldn't be in a position of having too short a period to be able to readjust strategies if they weren't going to get funding going forward and that was communicated to the sectors. Can I just be clear that the board exercise in returning to the budget took into account the fact that we'd included sector development organisations in the initial set of recommendations. We hadn't moved the budget over at that point because that's what we'd said. We'd always based the budget on the same figure that we used for 15-18 in the event. What the board elected to do was to extend the budget to account for an extra million a year to accommodate the spend that we were spending on sector development organisations in order to allow some additional arts producing and touring companies back into play. That's obviously a huge criticism that you've moved money away from artists to development organisations, I think 4.7 million you've moved away to development organisations, so that's funding bureaucrats instead of artists. I'm keen to move on to Claire Baker. Thank you, convener. I'm sure that it's been noted this morning that Janet Archer has given a profound apology for the recent events that we've had. I also noted when you talked about the new organisations, which I think you said were 90 new organisations. It does include organisations working with early years, perhaps organisations working in areas that don't receive regular funding in the same way that we've been used to. I do take those points on board, but I think that there are issues here that need to be scrutinised if we're going to look at how Creative Scotland distributes funding into the future and what has gone wrong in the recent set of circumstances. In addition to the convener's questions about this year's RFO announcement, we have all, as MSPs, received a number of representations, particularly theatres, working with young people and providing artists for young people and also from the disability community. On 6 February, a decision was taken by the board to reverse some of the funding cuts. Can you explain on what basis the decision was made that some organisations had their funding reinstated, while other organisations who we've received representation for didn't have their funding reinstated? You have been at pains to stress that this was a detailed and thoughtful process to reach the original conclusion, and yet within two weeks there seems to have been a turnaround for some organisations but not for others. Yes, so the board looked at all of the organisations which had been assessed as being fundable but hadn't been funded and had an account of all of those organisations in terms of their assessments and some narrative in relation to how the recommendations had been finalised and the board took its decisions in the context of all of the organisations that had been assessed as fundable but not funded. Some advice was provided in relation to the organisations that had assessed strongest. Out of that, obviously we couldn't fund all of those organisations and the board discussed and debated that advice and also other organisations on the list, so we spent some time, I can't remember how much, but the extent of the board meeting where the board asked questions about organisations on that list and we had a significant number of our leadership team in the room, our director of arts, director of strategy, deputy chief executive, director of finance, director of communications and the project manager that oversaw RFO in order to be able to ensure that we had the right information available to the board in making those decisions. From the representation of our from the sector and among MSPs, nobody disagrees with the decision to reinstate the funding for those organisations but we have had representation to suggest that it's those that are the most organised, that can be most vocal, that can have the most profile around their cuts, who have managed to have their funding reinstated while other organisations haven't, even though they can show that they are providing a good quality and high level work that they are still not to receive any funding. So just to be clear, the board looked at the highest scoring, highest assessed organisations and three of the organisations that were selected for funding were in that category. The board then looked at its commitment to equalities in the context of the equalities impact assessment that we had produced by that point and the board also looked at our guidance from the cabinet secretary in relation to the additional £6.6 million, which I think is illustrated in your committee papers, asks us to think about children and young people. There's a question that those weren't taken into consideration prior to the decision being made, the equality impact assessment or the fact that it's the year of the young people or the government's policies around equality within the arts. It just seems surprising that those weren't, that wasn't obvious before the decision was made, the first time I've done it. Overall we do have a considerable amount of provision for children and young people across the network. What the board wanted to do was to add to that. The meeting on the 18th of January, so that was the one before the one on the second of February, the board had looked at the 116 recommendations and there was a particular, there was a very strong debate about the relative measures of networked organisations versus direct organisations, perhaps we can come back to that. There was also a lot of discussion about the touring fund and how that worked. Remember that RFO is only one mechanism that we fund going forward. We had taken into consideration the reports on touring and the difficulties in touring. There's a 55 page report that we did in conjunction with FST on looking at touring and how to make that better. In looking at that we were swayed by the fact that the new provisions for touring did mean that we thought better ways of funding those touring companies that weren't in the portfolio. That was a significant debate that we had. In the light of subsequent discussions we recognised that actually RFO as a status is important to organisations. We listened to that feedback and when we came back on the second we said how much more of the budget could we take that would actually add to the RFO. In dealing with head of audit we could take two million out of things that we wanted to do in more strategic ways. We weren't reducing any funding going forward, it was just an uplift in funding that we were taking from strategic things. There was an additional two million that we could put back into RFOs. The first debate was could we take, given the importance of the RFO statement that we were getting feedback on, any more and put it into RFOs? We were also saving a bit which took the total level up to 2.6 from reducing the transition funding because those organisations that came back in wouldn't then have to have transition funding because they were part of regularly funded organisations. Once we'd set that level of additional amount that went into RFO then we looked at all 42 organisations, took the feedback from the executives about which of those should be prioritised particularly in light of the discussions that we'd had on EDI and youth and came up with the additional five organisations that should be added to the list to take it to 121. A final point. Organisations have also described the application process as opaque and they don't understand why funding is being cut, they can't anticipate that funding is like to be reduced or how do you respond to those criticisms of the process? I really understand and sympathise totally with organisations because funding of this sort is really important and it's very hard to take the decisions knowing that you're trying to get what will work best for culture in Scotland going forward. We're trying to work with organisations not just with RFOs but with the other pots of funding that we have to help those art forms to develop in other ways. Each of the organisations that we couldn't fund through RFO have been talked to and discussed how they can access other forms of funding to take their business plans forward. Ross Greer. Just to drill down on the process around this emergency board meeting, Janet, you've outlined who was in the room. A number of the organisations who were being discussed over the subject of that emergency board meeting have indicated that they were not aware of that fact. Could you confirm to us where the organisations whose funding applications were being discussed again at that meeting informed in advance of the meeting that their previously unsuccessful application would be back on the agenda? No. We didn't do that because the meeting was called with very short notice in the context of a week where much happened and we didn't know whether or not the board at that point was going to be of a mind to extend the budget in order to be able to accommodate any more organisations and it felt inappropriate to raise hopes if they weren't going to be able to be met. A number of those organisations had raised concerns with you. Either towards the end of the process or immediately after receiving news that their application was unsuccessful, concerns that reports that have been compiled on their applications included factual inaccuracies by the time they had reached your board, a number of those organisations requested urgent meetings with you. Why did you not feel that it was important to meet with those organisations and receive clarification on whether or not there had indeed been factual inaccuracies rather than disagreements over judgment ahead of a meeting where you would be discussing whether or not to fund them? Surely errors in the process, factual inaccuracies, would have made a material difference to whether or not they were going to receive funding through the emergency meeting? We had already set up meetings with all of the organisations that we were in the process post the first set of announcements of 116 organisations to meet organisations, both who had been funded and who hadn't been funded. We're in the middle of that process now so we're, I would say, we're not even halfway through meeting all of the organisations that we need to in order to look at feeding back and look at options in relation to future options for funding. We've had some complaints in relation to the accuracy of the process and we'll obviously treat those in accordance with our policy and at this stage we've not concluded that process. Why an organisation might have lost all confidence in Creative Scotland if they believed there had been a factual inaccuracy in the report on their application, they had been unsuccessful in receiving funding, they then heard after the fact that their application had been considered again at an emergency board meeting, the issue of the factual errors they had raised had not been addressed and they had again been unsuccessful. I can and as I say we're in the middle of that process of looking at all of the organisations assessments with applicants and once we've completed that process I'll be in a position to give you a better sense of the extent to which that's an issue. Thank you. It's also worth saying that the board did not meet to look at factual inaccuracies, they met because of an understanding that people do attach real significance to RFO and we were able to increase the budget over the three years by about 1% of our total budget to reallocate to that, so the decision was actually in order to increase the envelope on RFO, could we get a little bit more to then award to those organisations that are already in the same process but actually extended by an extra in the N5 organisations? I don't think whether or not the board met to discuss factual inaccuracies is really what we're discussing here, the board met to discuss whether or not organisations had been unsuccessful and were going to receive funding. If there have been factual inaccuracies in the process, it is of course entirely possible that they were materially relevant to the decision that was eventually made, so the factual inaccuracies are absolutely relevant to the discussion that the board had, whether or not they were the reason that the board had it is not relevant. Were the board was unaware of any factual inaccuracies? A number of those organisations had raised those concerns so that seems to be an internal communication issue for your organisation, that those organisations raised concerns, a range of other concerns, but concerns about factual inaccuracies here. If the board were unaware that those concerns had been raised before you then made decisions about funding, that again is a serious material consideration, that the board was unaware that the reports that you'd received were potentially inaccurate. So who in Creative Scotland was aware that concerns had been raised over factual inaccuracies? If the board wasn't aware, where did the awareness stop? Because those organisations clearly wanted the board to be aware. We're meeting organisations through, we've got many applicants, and we're deploying all of our lead officers and directors into meetings with organisations. As I say, we're midway through that process at the moment, so I can't account for the full extent to which there may be factual inaccuracies. We haven't yet taken stock of the outcomes of those meetings. We've got a log which is being populated at the moment, and once that log has been completed, I'll be able to report to you. Just one more point on that. Janet Archer, why was the board not informed that if you had received concerns about factual inaccuracies, the board was then to make a decision based on the same information that they had previously? Why was the board not informed that there were potentially factual inaccuracies in the paperwork that they were going to make a decision based on? Of the second set of decisions, I was unaware of the fact that there were factual inaccuracies in any of the assessments. I still don't fully understand the extent to which there may be factual inaccuracies. Mary Scotland was aware that there's an internal communication breakdown here. Those concerns were raised with the organisation ahead of the emergency board meeting, but the board was not informed of that. That's a serious internal communication breakdown. I'm just trying to make sense of this, and you'll understand that we're in the middle of a process at the moment, which is not completed. We had an extensive amount of correspondence following the announcement of the first set of decisions, and that correspondence constituted a range of campaigning for individual companies, as well as thoughtful contributions in relation to whether or not regular funding is the right way to deploy funding, as well as individual concerns raised by individual organisations. All of that needs to be collated with the process that we're going through now, to sit down and discuss with individual applicants what their concerns are, and to check whether, indeed, there are factual inaccuracies or not. When that process is concluded, I will be in a position to be able to give you a more fulsome answer to your question. I'm here now because I know that he's got some issues, I believe, relating to those factual inaccuracies. Indeed, I have, convener, and thank you very much for allowing me to attend your committee this morning. I can also thank Jan Archer for appearing before the committee today, and also for her apology, and I also pay tribute to Richard Finlay for his lifelong contribution to the arts in Scotland. I can also pay tribute, while I'm at it, to almost 300 volunteers at the gate in Aire and Jeremy Wyatt and Ian Welsh, who now run the gate, as well as South Ayrshire Council, and also the Scottish Government through Alec Neill, all of whom have combined to refurbish and resurrect the gate in recent years. I'm also saying this to let Janet Archer know how much effort has gone into this iconic community venture. I went into borderline in the past, as Janet and I discussed a week or so ago, and previously destroyed by the previous arts council when its funding was withdrawn because it was then regarded as being too successful. I would also like to invite her to note that RFO funding is vital to the future of the gate. I would firstly like to ask if, even at this late stage in the process, what funding can still be directed towards the gate, given that the gate application was misunderstood by Creative Scotland, as I understand it, in terms of funding available to it. I'm happy to go into more detail in that regard, but I'll be interested in your initial response, please. Obviously, the Air Gearity Theatre is one of the RFOs that hasn't been funded. We funded the organisation for a long time, including through capital. We are in discussion, and I think we've had an initial meeting, and we'll have continued to have meetings both with the theatre and with the local authority to look at options in relation to alternative reach to funding in the future. As you know, because we've had a conversation directly, I'm very aware that South Archer is, I think, about 7% of the population. It's lean on provision overall. It's really important that we work with the local authority, with South Archer Council, and with others to stimulate stronger applications in the future, and we're very committed to doing that. We do fund a number of things in Archer, so we do have a place partnership with South Archer, where we've invested £200,000, which is matched. By local investment, we fund Scottish Youth Dance. We gave them £700 to work with young people in North Archer, and we have funded other smaller initiatives in Pennyburn and the Zone initiative in the area. So, there are a number of things under way. We are considering very seriously how to extend out beyond the 21 local authorities that we're investing in, just so that you're aware of the 12 remaining local authorities. Eight didn't actually put any applications in, so obviously we're not able to fund through RFO when people don't apply to us, but we know it's clear that there's an anchor point, which is historic in Edinburgh and Glasgow. As you say, we faced the same issues last time round. I think that we have to have an open, honest conversation with our sectors and with the public in relation to whether that's the right thing for Scotland and we're completely open to having that discussion as part of the process of reviewing how we distribute funding in the future. In terms of accuracy, my memory serves me correctly in a competition I had. I believe that a figure that Creative Scotland thought was available to the air gate was understood from their application to be £1.7 million. That figure was in fact misread, as I understand it, by Creative Scotland, when in fact the funding available to them was only £1.1 million. I'm not certain of the source, but that is a difference of some £600,000, which was misunderstood, as I understand it, by Creative Scotland in assessing the air gate's application. £600,000 is a huge amount of money if I've got the figures correct and I stand to be challenged on that, but that's certainly my recollection of the conversation. That is the first point. The second point is that, do you realise that the decision made to withdraw funding from rural Scotland, essentially anywhere south of Glasgow and Edinburgh, and concentrate the funding as it appears around Glasgow and Edinburgh, notwithstanding the small amounts of funding that is available in the airship that you've talked about? However, to concentrate the funding in the central belt appears elitist and dismissive, to be frank, of Ayrshire and the Scottish Borders. I wonder how you're going to address that in the future, and indeed not necessarily in the future in the immediate, because this is an immediate and real effect on our iconic community asset in Ayrshire. Obviously, the decisions that we've made have been based on the strengths of applications and I wouldn't want to comment on individual applications in any respect. We are in discussion with South Ayrshire Council and have a meeting set to have a discussion with the council and with the theatre. We've already met the theatre to discuss initial options in terms of future funding. The report I've had is that that initial meeting was positive in terms of looking at options for alternative routes to funding for the venue in the future. We need to take this step by step, but I think you're right. It's really important that we service the people of Scotland. Clearly, there's a challenge in terms of historic commitments to funding organisations which have emerged from the central belt. I think that we need to have an open discussion in relation to how we tackle that, involving everybody who benefits from funding for everywhere. I wonder if I can go back to Ross Greer's question about the two board meetings. Please correct me if I get the dates wrong. Your board met on 18 January to make decisions about the regular fund model, correct? When did the board meet in February? Second of February. Between 18 and 2, what happened to make you change? The board changed its view on five organisations. There were 116 recommended organisations on the 18th and we, as I said, had a robust discussion about, in particular, we looked at all the art forms and the strategies within them, how they fitted. We looked at geographical, EDI, youth, network versus direct. We also had a very robust discussion about touring. I think that if there's any point that we got wrong on this, and I hold my hand up in that having not been long in the job, I would have probably been better served had I understood this more, is that we are under the apprehension that the touring programme, the sector, was more behind the strategy of doing touring through a different mechanism. So we had set up a funding mechanism to allow touring to be done. The feedback from the sector, as evidenced by the report I mentioned earlier, which had been in conjunction with the FST, showed that there were real concerns about touring not being done particularly well in Scotland. We wanted to address that and whether RFO was the right mechanism to do that. Not all of the five touring companies, but four out of the five are. Well, a touring fund has been announced and the amount for… It doesn't, but the allocation for the touring fund has been made for the next year, yes. For which financial year? For 2000, and from April next… April 19, so we're in 18. And the commitment to the companies that are impacted by that is 12 months in order to create a bridge between now and that point. Okay, but that's not what I'm asking. I'm asking, why did you make a decision on your second emergency board meeting, a matter of days, off to the previous board meeting to reinstate those five organisations? Because the feedback that we got, and it's important to listen… Who was the feedback from? Well, from organisation. At that stage, all the… had gone out. We had feedback from organisations, bodies, such as FST, who were saying particularly our organisations do not see the strategic fund as being an alternative. They see RFO as being a very important status, and we would like as much as we possibly can to go through RFO. And in the light of that, the board said, can we do any more? First question was, can we do… We met in the light of the feedback and there was a fairly large amount of… If there's more feedback, would you have another meeting? It does call into… It's clear because question… Do you not get the point that it calls into question your whole procedures? If people kick up as they inevitably will when they don't get funding, it's quite understandable where you said that yourselves. You then have an emergency board meeting, you reinstate five. So the logic of that is that people should kick up even more. You'll have another emergency board meeting and put more back in. And the board discussed that and said, look, we could have just been intransigent and said, we're sticking at 116, so we're not listening to anyone. And then the criticism would have been, people don't listen to feedback when it's coming to them. So actually it's a debate and we had the option on the table, which was discussed on the 2nd, of let's do nothing and just leave it at 116 and trust in the strategy going forward. And that was absolutely a valid option to take. And these things come down to judgment and balance. It was felt that particularly in the light of… We thought there was greater support by the sector for touring. And some of the EDI, in the overall portfolio, EDI and youth was strong, but some of the decisions on touring, there is quite a bit of EDI and youth in that. Because of that feedback, the board said, can we stretch the budget anymore without reducing core funding in other areas, taking some of the increases that we want to do and put it back into our effort? I mean, I entirely get all that, Mr Thompson, and I appreciate you're no longer a chairman in that sense. But don't you see that you seem to me to have set a precedent whereby if organisations are not funded make enough noise and, presumably, they get onto the Cabinet Secretary, they get onto their MSP, they get onto John Scott, et cetera, et cetera? A huge rouse created, you then have an emergency board meeting a few weeks later and change your minds. Look, I'm sorry if we… I mean, we had a balance to make. I'm sorry if we got the balance wrong because I quite understand that the squeaky wheel getting the greases, I think, someone described it to me as sets a precedent. On the other hand, I don't think any organisation or body, whether that's government or otherwise, shouldn't listen to feedback coming back and assess that and take a balanced judgment, and that's what a board is supposed to do. So does that mean more of the 40 organisations that didn't get regular funding are still in the game? They still have a chance of getting… No, because we stretch the budget to the point at which, you know, it's a small stretch. Over the three years, you know, we're talking about 250 million. So you're stretching the budget by an extra 2 million, which is sort of 1%. Could we stretch the budget a little bit more to add some organisations, review the organisations that have been put through and who would be the next organisations that we would choose taking on board the discussions that we had had on the 18th of January? Okay, so I forget who asked the earlier question about the scoring, but I think Janet Archer said that there was a scoring mechanism which was presented to the board in terms of the 40 that didn't make it first time round. Can I assume that the five who then were reinstated were top of that list in the scoring criteria or points system or whatever it is? More than one scoring system, because the scoring system is done on the basis of absolute scores. There is also a judgment factor, but the board had also asked to look at EDI and youth considerations as well in the additional one, which had been subject to a large discussion. Three of those five had come out at the top of the overall scoring system, and the other two had come out highly in the EDI and youth sections. That was where they came to the end of a discussion on the five extra organisations. Okay, thank you. How many of the successful organisations scored as highly as the five whose decisions were reversed? Three of them, no one scored as highly. There's a difference between those organisations that apply that are potentially fundable and those that are not. There are many more organisations that are fundable that we can't meet, and I think, as Janet said earlier, that we would like to do more. We just have limited funds, so at the end you have to take a degree of judgment and say that those are the ones that we think are going to be the most effective about delivering art and culture in Scotland. Okay, Stuart McMillan. I just want to go back to the issue of the geographic spread of the funds. With the first round between 2015 and 2018, there were 21 local authorities, and the current round is 21 local authorities. Janet Archer, a few moments ago, mentioned that eight of the 11 didn't put in the applications. Bearing in mind, after the first round, that the boner keenly side had indicated some concerns about the issue of the geographic spread. What actions had Creative Scotland undertaken to ensure, or to try to ensure, that there was going to be a wider geographic spread between the first round and also this second round? As I reported to the committee previously, we have appointed a new head of place, Gary Cameron, who is working very closely with local authorities. He is, at the moment, looking at developing a really clear approach to how we might reach out in a better way. We're obviously keen to get into local areas at a community planning level. We don't have the staff resource to be able to do that across 32 local authorities, so we're looking at clusters of local authorities and working with networks who represent different geographic parts of Scotland. That process has begun. As we see here, we think that we've got about nine parts of Scotland where we're really not featuring as strongly as we should. We can't tackle that all immediately, so what I think we'll do, and not yet defined, wholly is to focus on three a year over the next period. Obviously, the ashes will be one of our first priorities, so that's the approach that we'll be taking, because we need to work closely with people on the ground to look at what might be able to be brought through, initially perhaps in terms of project funding, and then into RFO or whatever form of funding we have available to people in the future. We are the board made a commitment alongside touring to equalities and diversity and inclusion, and also to business services, which is another area that we want to make sure that we cover so that we can support organisations to become more resilient, to look at new models, to be able to access more funding beyond Creative Scotland's funding, which is only about a quarter of the overall turnover of the organisations that we support. So, we'll be doing that work on the ground, allocating staff resource to be able to have those important conversations with people and encourage more applications to come through from people who at the moment feel that Creative Scotland is a barrier that they can't get through and don't see themselves in the different funding streams that we offer. So, our director of strategy has produced a think piece, which we're looking at internally in terms of how we can open the door more widely to people from different parts of Scotland. At the end of the day, we're challenged by the fact that the budget is finite, and we distribute a lot of money, but at the end of the day, we always have to make choices, and on a daily basis, we're making choices with peers. Our panels are involving sector peers and Creative Scotland staff, and we're only able to fund one in three of the applications that we receive, and that's the nature of the organisation that we are. You mentioned there regarding the nine areas that you do some further work in. Have you already had a discussion at board level to look at your strategy going forward, because you just mentioned there as well that I'll probably do three and then three and three. So, what would the scoring be to actually pick the first three and then the second three and then the third three? We haven't had that discussion at board level, although we have reported on our place partnerships, which are currently in place in relation to different parts of Scotland, as I've mentioned in South Ayrshire, being one of them. We will bring that discussion into play at the 29th of March board meeting, which is the board meeting that will set the target funding for the strategic work that we're going to be doing over the next period. We elected not to take the whole budget to the board in January, because it felt as if we had enough to do at that point. Ordinarily, we would set our final budget once we get confirmation for the final budget from the Scottish Government, and that's what we're doing again this year. So, the board meeting again on the 29th of March, it will look at its allocation of budgets across everything else that we do outwith RFO and make the decisions at that stage in terms of how we move forward. I just could come in with a quick supplementary there. You're suggesting there, Ms Archer, that it's just something that you're now addressing. As Mr MacMillan said, the Bonner Keenley side report was 2014, and you've been aware of this geographical distribution problem for the entire time that you've been in office. Indeed, it was a huge row before you came into office, so it will sound to people in areas of Scotland that aren't being funded that you know like this is far too little too late. You should have been doing this a long time ago. Forgive me if I've not been clear. We do work geographically in many different ways. So, this is a new initiative to accelerate how we work in terms of places, but we have place partnerships which are accounted for on our website with a large number of local authorities where we co-invest against match funding from local authorities, so making our resource go further, and that's a bottom-up approach. We work with communities to help develop their aspirations in terms of what they want to do in the arts. We've got a number of delegated funds which are also listed on our website. So, for example, for the visual arts which have been distributed recently, again, much more work than RFO is led by the organisation in different parts of Scotland. Open project funding is also distributed across Scotland, and we make announcements about that on a weekly basis. Sorry, we distribute money on a weekly basis, and we make announcements on a regular basis. Sorry, had you finished? Okay, just one more. Certainly not by standing what you've just said, Ms Altshire. I've just jotted down just some of the local authorities that haven't been successful, and I would find it difficult to understand why Creative Scotland wouldn't have attempted to actually do some work in some of these local authority areas, because I'm quite sure that there will have been, with maybe a bit of assistance or a bit of encouragement, that bids would have came in from these areas, whether it's North Ayrshire or West Dunbartonshire. Inverclyde, my own area, there's only been one successful application which I am delighted about, but I know of others organisations locally that certainly could have, and possibly did put in applications, because there is a wealth of creative talent within Inverclyde area. Obviously, our regularly funded programme is only one of the roots to funding, but all of our funding programmes are application-based, so we can only fund against the applications that we receive. We are accelerating the way that we work in local areas, and we will do our very best to reach out to as many people as possible. One of the other things that we're thinking about is can we make it easier for people to apply for open project funding, which requires a form, not a business plan, but still so. It's not straightforward for everyone, so are there easier ways that we could open up for folk to make an application to us? We're looking at that very hard at the moment. Withstanding your apology to the sector today, Janet, but I think there's still going to be a lot of frustration and anger out there, and it just shows by the level of correspondence that the committee have received. Do you think that there is a clear strategy that people actually, within the industry, know what you are looking for? It seems as though confidence has been shaken. People are not clear of why you have made decisions. You made decisions after the sector had gone through all five stages of the funding application process, and then there was this U-turn that appeared to have been a knee-jerk reaction, which has clearly shaken the confidence of people in the sector. I just wondered if you talked about that you're going to learn from this moment. There was also mentioned there about external review panels and outside consultants. Who are they? Do you think that your assessment criteria at board level is robust? What is it that you're going to do to restore the confidence of this sector? I'll be talking to a number of people, both individuals and organisations, also representative organisations of the different sectors that we support. My personal instinct is to get out and talk to people as proactively as possible, to understand concerns, to work with sectors, to co-design the way that we fund in the future and share some of the difficult challenges that we have as an organisation in distributing funding. It's not an easy straightforward process when we know that we've got more applications that we could fund than we're able to. That's not unusual for organisations like us. I completely accept that we need to be clearer and maybe more focused in relation to how we deploy strategy. We did begin a process of doing that with the board in October. We all agreed that we need to be more focused in the future in terms of how we work, then led that process. The board made a decision to wait until the new chair is in place. He started last week and we're now in the process of looking at how we do things. We said last year before we made decisions on RFA that we would go through a process of strategy review, funding review and that had to happen in the middle part of our 10-year plan. We always knew that that was going to with the case. We've had this period of stasis where, following Richard's passing way, the board made a decision to wait until a permanent chair was in place before we moved on with that, but we're absolutely committed to doing that now. I would say that we, in terms of strategies to the organisation, when I joined the organisation had carried out some really clear work in terms of art form needs. There were individual sector reviews for each of the sectors including touring. The touring review was produced written by Christine Hamilton. In that, it says that touring is the single most important issue for the theatre sector. We picked up on that when we produced the art strategy. It's referenced that we'll do a piece. We produced our art strategy in 2016. It's really clear that we wanted to support excellence but we also wanted to support access. We wanted to support organisations to build resilience because we knew that there might be challenges ahead in terms of public funding. We said in that that we'd do a piece of work around theatre touring. We commissioned that piece of work around theatre touring which took place through much conversation with the sector. It was running in parallel with the point at which we opened up for applications for regular funding. We have been working hand-in-hand with many people to be able to respond to clear issues that actually exist in terms of the arts. The touring issue is a significant one. The number of dates that touring companies have reported has been able to access now has dropped from, I think, something like 23 to 13. That creates huge pressures on companies if they're not able to generate the income that they once were able to. We need to do something focused and concerted around that to help companies work with venues to build audiences in order to continue to sustain access to the highest quality art for folk across Scotland. That has been an ongoing piece of work for a very long time. I think it's right that we focus and continue to work on that with the theatres and performing arts sectors. When I came in as chairman in August, I recognised that the system was very complicated and that we needed to empower more the people who are actually speaking to the organisations and to the sectors to be able to do things different with a clearer set of priorities and items. They were working on six columns, 15 pillars, four interlocking themes, and it became quite complicated as to actually how you prioritise that and move to a much simpler base where the ultimate justifications were around the benefits that each decision made on cultural, social and economic grounds, and that would be across the organisation. We had a whole day discussing it in October with backing up papers. The board decided that given that we're in the middle of the RFA process and that the strategy had already been set for RFA, and given that I was only the interim chair, they decided that they would move that until 2018, when a permanent chair was in place, and that the RFA process had been completed. I would say, though, in defence of the ambitions and priorities that sit in the 10-year plan were worked through in consultation with many people. When we published the plan, we went out on the road, we had workshops in different parts of Scotland and talked to over 1,000 people. We had a sector reference group of 28 people, I think, from different parts of the arts sectors who contributed to that journey. With all of that involvement, we thought we did quite well to get it down to five ambitions and 15 priorities, but I think all of us realised that that doesn't need to focus in the future. I mean, that doesn't reflect in the correspondence that we have been getting, because people refer to your new approach. I think that the sector believed that they were reaching the strategic requirements to qualify for the funding, but that just hasn't been communicated through. You might have had a thousand engagements with people in the sector, but maybe those were the people who were applying for the funding but just didn't get what you were trying to communicate. I think that that is where the breakdown has been here, and it is not just the timeframe that has been the issue. It has been the actual communication from Creative Scotland, where the sector has believed that they are meeting the strategic objectives that they have applied for the funding. They have got through the five processes within the application, and they have thought that they are going to have sustainable funding and that it has not happened. In those six organisations, there has been a knee-jerk reaction to that. There can be excuses in terms of the timings, but that is a fundamental fault within Creative Scotland in terms of the whole process within the assessment criteria at board level, perhaps, and who are your outside consultants. You need to commit to making clear how your decisions are made. In particular, using that as an example, the Gayety Theatre, they thought that they were meeting the strategic decisions because there was an absence of the published theatre strategy. How can they actually meet those strategic decisions when there is an absence of a theatre strategy? To answer a specific question, our external accesses and panel members are on our website. You can see the sorts of people that we bring in to give advice. On theatre, there are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven that we use, but in each of the different art forms, we bring in outside people to give us additional colour and depth into the decisions that are being made by the executives. That is for the open project funding, but for the RL4, you do not have any external assessors, do you? No. This time, we elected not to do that on the basis of— That has been a big criticism of this process? We did an initial scan to see whether that might be possible, but because so many people are involved in the RFA process, it became quite hard to find people who could contribute. Mary Gugion. It was really just to come directly on the back of Rachel Hamilton's question. She covered a lot of the points that I was looking at today because, again, I was going to touch on the correspondence and the sheer level of correspondence that we received, which did have a lot of common thread running right through them about the lack of consistency in decision making, lack of transparency, lack of communication. You have had two-year board members' design and, as Tavish Scott and Claire Baker have already said, it just seems that those who shout the loudest can get their funding decisions reversed. As has already been touched on, there are clearly fundamental problems right through the process. Obviously, there has to be a review of the situation and to look up where you go from here because the process of getting here clearly has not worked. It was just really about that review process because I think that there has to be an independent element to that looking at what happened and what went wrong and really where we go with that. I would also like to know what engagement you have had since those decisions were taken with unsuccessful applicants and how you support those organisations who have been unsuccessful from here on in. Do you work with them to try to help them to identify other sources of funding and how does that relationship go and has that work already started? On the second point, we are meeting with organisations daily at the moment. Some of those meetings are lasting up to five hours. We are talking through the decision that we made where looking at options in relation to alternative sources of funding. Those meetings are underway. We have made a commitment to have more than one meeting in the instance where that is the right thing to do. Some people prefer to have a shorter meeting and then meet again. In terms of reviewing, we absolutely need to review this process. When we review things, we are used to doing them in three ways. Internally reviewing, and all of our staff are very keen to be part of that. We have begun the process of considering how that might be framed and we will undertake that as an internal exercise. We need to also engage with peers and with sector. We have begun the process of talking to sector organisations and we will work out how we manage that process. We need to also bring in some independent thinking to give us advice, which is a process that we do in other instances in order to be able to frame how we move forward. Overall, we are always going to have to make difficult decisions because there is never going to be, unless something changes, there is never going to be enough money to fund everybody through regular funding. We also know that 50% of the applications that we got ask for more than 50% of the total turnover from this process. We need to think hard in terms of what the right thing to do is, in terms of what level of contribution regular funding might make to an organisation and how that is married up in terms of other income streams. Different organisations have different levels of experience or challenges in relation to accessing other forms of funding. I think all of that needs to become part of the conversation in thinking about how we frame funding and deliver it in the future. But there will always be the need to make decisions. I think we need to get to a clearer, more focused set of policy, agreed policy so that everybody agrees what we are endeavouring to achieve through all of our routes to funding so that we do not get into the situation again. In terms of working with people through the application process, is that something that you actively do when people are preparing applications to put forward? Do you actively work with them to help them through that process? We provide advice through our inquiry service and through officers. We do not have the staff resource to be able to provide one-to-one support for everybody making an application, simply because we get a higher volume of applications than we have staff. You may have noticed that other funding agencies are starting to pull back even from inquiry services. We do what we can, but it would be wrong of me to suggest that we can offer every applicant detailed advice with the results that we have got available at the moment. I am presuming that all of this would be included as part of the review that you are doing, and just to clarify as well, there will be an independent element to that review. I think that there are things that we could do better in terms of how we provide advice, so we could do something online, for example, where we give a more human account of the steps that one needs to take in terms of making an application with guidance that is not just the written word, but maybe through other means of media as well. I think that all of those things can be thought about. I would like to ask you to clarify if there would be an independent element in the review. Can you just say yes or no if there will be? We have not made a commitment to how we are going to frame the review yet, because we are having internal discussions with that. We will discuss that with our board. We are discussing that with sector organisations. We are well used to working with independent consultants on different aspects of work. We just need to consider that in the context of what everybody wants us to do before we make a final decision, and obviously there would be a cost element to that, and we need to take that into consideration. I would have thought that in a situation like this, the expectation would be that there would be an independent review. Can I just add what I'm going to put in the clarification there as well, because when you talk about independent consultants advising on the review, that's different to people independently doing a review, so which of the two is it, and will you be looking at an independent review independently being carried out? We haven't made a final decision yet. I can honestly say that this discussion has not yet been had with our new chair. I will of course be discussing that with him, and as I say, I'm very used to working with independent reviewers for pieces of work that an organisation does. I just wouldn't commit to that at this stage until I've had that conversation with our new chair. I completely agree with the convener that we need to have an honest written branch look at how this process has worked in order to create a platform for future thinking in terms of where we move to, so I'm not afraid of that. Many people will be surprised that you haven't put that in place already, since you've already announced the review, but I'll move on to Richard Lochhead. Respond to that. We are still in the middle of the process of meeting with organisations, so as I've already given testimony to, we don't yet know the full extent of concerns from organisations that we're talking to, so we want to complete that process and then make a decision in relation to where we go next. Richard Lochhead. First of all, thank you for the award for Body Surf Scotland and Murray, so it does so that there's some progress in addressing geographical spread along last, so thank you for that. That would be most welcome. In terms of the decision-making process, I very much recognise severe difficulties with funding rounds on how painful they are, because once a group asks for three-year funding and they get it, they want another three years after that, and another three years after that, and it squeezes out room for innovation and new applicants and I absolutely get that. So that's why it's really important that the decision-making process is transparent and credible. What I really want to get to heart of is why did you not anticipate the backlash from the arts community, especially in relation to the rejection of the applications from the groups working with performers with disabilities and other groups working with children and some of those groups were getting a lot of praise over the years and appeared to be very effective. You must have anticipated that backlash. Now, on the one hand, you may say that, oh, they didn't score high enough in the assessment process, but then you have, of course, we visited some of those decisions since, so you do seem to agree that they are effective organisations and should get support. So why did you not anticipate that backlash? Did you report risks to the board at the meeting that took place in January? Obviously, there will always be risks when you've got more applications that you can fund than you're able to fund because of a budget, so whether it was these risks or whether it was other risks, we would always have some disappointed applicants. And if you remember, in 1518, we also, too, had disappointed applicants at that point. How did you take decisions to reject applications in the first place? On the basis of the proposition that there was an opportunity to fund touring companies in a better way in the future than through regular funding. Do you agree that your decision making processes has its credibility severely damaged? Yes. You do agree? And as I say, I'm profoundly sorry about that and completely committed to reviewing and understanding the detail of how that's come to be and making decisions quickly and with the sector in collaboration with people in moving forwards. One impression I've got from the evidence of the committees received is that the applications, if I remember correctly, went in around nine months before the actual decision on average and then an email arrived notifying the applicants after nine months that they were unsuccessful. Is that the case or was there constant communication between over the nine months giving updates, explaining how to improve their applications or giving feedback on the likelihood of what the outcome might be and so on and so forth? We made regular communication and statements in relation to how we were considering budget outcomes. So they came through Ian Monroe who led the funding process and we communicated to organisations consistently. To be honest, we were anticipating much worse, a much harder situation in relation to budget cuts. So we were not only having to scenario plan against potential Scottish Government budget cuts, we were also scenario planning against the huge reduction last year in times of minus 15% for national lottery funding. So we had two serious issues pointing at us from two directions. So we were very careful about communicating that on a consistent basis to organisations over the course of that period. Despite that, the applications that we received, I think I'm right in saying that the applications that we received from existing organisations were about 24% more than current levels of funding. So I think that's indicative of funding needs individual perceived needs in terms of organisations We've had feedback. We know that organisations have been operating on stands still for a good decade or more and consequently will always apply for additional funding in order to generate opportunities for artists to work and for audiences and participants to be able to access the arts. There's a lot of ambition in Scotland and that's to be credited. Finally, one of the big themes is the perceived disconnect between Creative Scotland and the arts community. That's shown through much of the evidence that we've received and the commentary and the media and so on and so forth. And when Ben Thomson outlined the decision making criteria, I have to say that I don't know and understand that it sounds very complicated. So how on earth applicants are supposed to interpret that for when they're putting together their applications escapes me. What's your response to the view amongst many people that there is a disconnect between Creative Scotland that's very bureaucratic? Front page of the Herald today is talking about £150,000 on 38 consultants and so on. What's your view on that perceived disconnect? Page of the Herald is talking about the cost of employing peer sector experts to contribute to our decision making. And obviously we do pay people if we ask them to help us with making decisions. What's your response to the perceived disconnect between Creative Scotland and the arts community? I have always personally and my teams have always had much debate and discussion on all of the pieces of the work that we've done around sector reviews, strategies and funding. I think what happened if I'm really honest is that when and I attended a meeting of NFST meeting just before Christmas over that period when we were looking at those very very difficult scenarios we didn't engage as closely with organisations to tell them that that's what we were doing. I think that was quite a challenging prospect for staff because had we communicated last October, November, that we were potentially facing cutting the regularly funded network by half that would have created another set of anxieties. So my focus and Ben's focus at the time was on making the case. So we produced a case for investment, Creative Culture and Creativity Matters. We published data on our website. We met many MSPs and ministers and we proactively made the case for arts funding and worked very closely with Cabinet Secretary who was successful in generating an extra 6.6 million into the arts. It felt absolutely vital that that's the work that we should be doing at that time as opposed to putting a message out that we were in a position where we were potentially going to have to reduce the network by half. Can I just ask one more question? Very quickly because we're going to have to... A little bit from an outside perspective having coming into the organisation. It is very difficult being a funding organisation particularly to the arts because there is an element if you've had funding for the last three years of entitlement to funding going forward because you've come to rely on it. So the decisions that you make to try and balance bringing in the 19 new organisations compared to the 15 that went out is always going to cause a level of disquart and difficulty. And because that's done an RFO once every three years, it does create attention once every three years where this is a really big event for people and therefore there is quite a lot of debate, anxiety and stress. Certainly wasn't helped by the chair dying at the start halfway through this process and that caused a considerable amount of stress in the organisation. Interesting to know that none of the other board directors were either willing or capable to stand up to the position of being chair probably because they recognised that this is a very difficult process to get through. But I don't think any of that should underestimate that the successes that Creative Scotland has had over the last three years since the last part of regular funding, I think no-one will disagree that culture and arts in Scotland has actually been doing well and that's down to the organisations themselves but it actually is also down to the organisations that support like Creative Scotland art and culture in Scotland. And in this period with the help of, well, with Scottish Government really helping the support in terms of the case we've addressed the difficulty of lottery funding for the time being which is a major achievement for the sector as a whole. So I think I totally understand why people are upset, frustrated, angry and I'm sorry for that. This process does create that effect once every three years but I think it shouldn't take away from the fact that this is actually a very credible organisation and that art and culture in Scotland is actually doing very well. We've supported 121 organisations more than ever before going forward and I can see that art and culture in Scotland will continue to flourish going forward over the next three years. So I don't think we should, you know, the noise that has happened over the last month particularly in the press about words like fiasco and disconnect and all the rest. I totally understand and appreciate but actually looking long term I think there's a huge amount of added value that this organisation has created for the sector and the sector is doing very well which is a credit to everyone who's involved with it. I'll just leave it there. Thank you very much. We have gone over time but I think we owe it to the sector given the amount of correspondence that we've had from the sector was quite unprecedented and the number of concerns that have been raised. I think it's right that we've gone over time and we get the chance to explore these issues. I've just got some members who want to ask supplementary questions so if we can just go on for another 10 minutes if that's okay. Claire Baker. Thank you, convener. Creative Scotland was established as an independent decision making body and we've went into detail about how decisions were made. What impact did the cabinet secretary tweet on the subject have and did you have a discussion with the cabinet secretary prior to the meeting on 2 February? No impact and no. We didn't discuss that with the cabinet secretary. Right, no discussion at all. I mean it's recognised that there was increased pressure on the organisation and there's two weeks coming from politicians as well as from the organisations. And it's got regular funding with the cabinet secretary. So I attended an event with the cabinet secretary as part of our Gaelic showcase at Gaelic Connections and we didn't discuss regular funding. Another question was around we do recognise that there's a limited budget that Creative Scotland has to spend. There has been comments made about the proportion increase that has gone to second tier support organisations. Can you see why there is questions around that and how do you justify that and what do you think the benefits to providing more support to these organisations are? I take responsibility. I think we didn't communicate that well. Previously we had supported some of those organisations, not all of them. Some of them changed. Previously we had a separate budget alongside regular funding which supported sector development. And this time round we brought them into play with regular funding to simplify things. Overall some organisations came out and some organisations came in. The new one is Dundee, Greater Edinburgh, Scottish Music Industry Association. All provide for organisations and companies and individuals who exist beyond regular funding. So regular funding can only support 121 organisations. Their Scotland's creative sectors are much much bigger and we wanted to provide support for those organisations in terms of looking at innovation, new models, sustainability as well as providing advice and guidance and insights into how to work in individual sectors. It feels really important to do that. At the moment when pressures on public budgets are getting tougher we need to find ways of working to generate sustainable models as this committee is named in a really appropriate way in the future and I think there are things that we can offer through working with sector development organisations that can help with that and indeed some of those organisations arts and business for example do some tremendous work in stimulating private investment into the arts. A couple of points of clarification on the Turing Theatre Fund when was the decision made to create that fund? The Turing Theatre Fund was proposed as part of the Turing Theatre and Dance Review which was published in April 16 I'll check that. April 17 April 17 So that's when the Turing Fund was first published as a proposition and the definition around the budget of how much money would be needed for it was based on counting up how much investment we spend through in a more ad hoc way through open project funding which is about 1.7 million a year and the strong advice that we've had through the consultation that we've been undergoing is that it would be much better to have a focused Turing Fund than When was that agreed though? I get proposed in April 17 when was it agreed that that fund would be It's not been agreed by the board yet so Right So as a budget proposal So organisations have been moved out of who submitted applications for regular funding and met the criteria at the time they submitted then became ineligible for regular funding because they would become eligible for a fund that has not been created doesn't have any detail behind it The final guidance I'm talking about the detail of the guidance which we committed to co-designing with the theatre sector has not been finally signed off yet The provision for the budget and the provision for the strategic spend has been discussed by the board Right My original question still hasn't been answered It was proposed in April 17 the final details have not been agreed When was it agreed that this fund would be created that's a separate decision to it being proposed and to the final details of it being worked out We were predicting a very difficult budget scenario in planning for budgets We found out about our draft budget on 14 December along with other public bodies It was only at that point that we knew we'd be in a position to be able to respond to the recommendations that were coming out of the touring review and begin to plan to budget for such a fund So we weren't in a position until we got our draft budget from the Scottish Government to be able to consider whether that was an option or not because prior to that we were modelling very difficult scenarios against potentially minus 15 or minus 30 per cent funding overall The review that you mentioned that this proposal has come out of was very clear that touring theatre required longer term funding So would it be correct to assume that this fund being an annual fund is an option that's been ruled out because that would run counter to the recommendation that this proposal is based on Sorry, I don't understand your question The, if this fund so regular funding is three-yearly the proposed touring fund there is some concern within the sector that it would be annual funding So we haven't defined that yet it could be a longer term fund It hasn't been a report which was very very clear in its recommendation that the reason that we needed to do something different with touring theatre was that it needed longer term funding Yes So surely that's that's the discussion that's taking place now So it's possible and it will be very much dependent on what the sector wants us to do that that could effectively account for the remainder of the two-year period for RFO so we're entering into a three-year period the remaining three touring companies that we haven't funded in RFO or at least current touring companies there are many many more besides are funded for 12 months it's possible that the touring fund will then play out over the following two years if that's what the sector wants us to do and the the I would imagine that's highly likely because it's a strategic programme and it will need to be designed and delivered over a period of time for it to really work because it will be entirely dependent on with us for far longer just one final point of clarification what is the timescale on which the details of this fund will be agreed by which point will we as a committee will the sector know exactly how this fund will function my original commitment was that we would publish the guidance for that fund on June the first I've had some feedback from from the sector that that might be a bit premature so I think we need to work with the sector we've got two working groups which are chaired by members of FST we've met with them we need to work with them and determine a practical timeline in relation to when that fund will be open but we are absolutely committed to ensuring that the first grants are in place so delivery can happen from April 1st 2019 we just need to work out the practicalities of making sure that the co-design of that fund gives enough space for people to be able to have voice and be involved thank you John Scott you you want to come back in yes please convener thank you so if you can help me as things stand if I've understood this correctly you took a system that was working for assessing beds for RFO it was complicated 15 billers six columns or maybe it was all the way around but nonetheless it was understood by the internal evaluators you started again and changed it completely and didn't communicate this and it wasn't defined and you now apologise the chaos so Irgate is collateral damage in my view in all of that and further according to Mr Thompson it appears that you introduced a further new criteria which was clamour and noise and if made a sufficient amount of noise and clamour then your bed would have been reassessed I'm left with the feeling that I have somehow failed my community and airship because I and others didn't make enough noise and therefore you didn't reconsider the air gaiety bid so I would ask you if I may in terms of the viability of air gaiety and others how are you going to retrieve that situation where organisations as Burns would have said from no good or ill they've done it for them have now been found into a position where their viabilities threatened by your actions that were organisations that were previously viable air gaiety has funded until September we've already met with the theatre in relation to advice on other options in relation to funding we're meeting with the theatre and the local authority very soon next week I think but I'll check that in order to progress that conversation and we will continue to work to advise over coming months we fully understand how challenging and hard it is for organisations who've applied for funding and not received it but all of our applications are based on the quality of the application that we received and obviously that had to be taken into account in respect to the 184 applications that we got across the whole of Scotland and we didn't have the budget to be able to fund all of them so in terms of the question on strategy the strategy review was that an understanding that the strategy could be a lot simpler and clearer and that to introduce a strategy not for the process of RFO as it was happening now but for the RFO going forward because the RFO is under a current process which had already been set out so people had to meet the requirements under it but it was a recognition that actually going forward the RFO is complicated for people does put people off in terms of the process and what they have to meet and therefore going forward we should have a strategy that changes that and we should start work on that as soon as possible I mean I should say that we have had positive communication from some folk in relation even in the instance where we've made a difficult decision and not funded to the level that applicants have applied for I have had some communication from people that they understand how we've made the decisions that we've made and even just this week we've had a communication from one venue affected which has reviewed its application and its assessment and said we absolutely understand the process and it makes sense and we're not going to challenge your decisions so that's why I want to get through the totality of the meetings that we're having to really understand the scale of the issue that we're dealing with here in order to be able to properly report to the committee once we've done that we clearly understand that there's an issue in South Aesha and there are some other issues too in relation to applications that have been made where they haven't been funded but I do want to understand the full extent of that before properly commenting in relation to what we're dealing with Can I just ask you to go back to the how you're going to the reversal of some of your decisions you've still you've explained how you're going to to fund it up to a point but you've also said that some of the money's going to come from targeted funds can you give us a reassurance that the place partnership will not be among those targeted funds? Yeah So we will continue to work in relation to place and as I accounted to to Stuart McMillan we have a plan in place in terms of how we might extend the work we do geographically but I also think we have to have an honest conversation around how overall we look at the totality of what we do across Scotland and make difficult decisions in the future Come out the place partnership we can give us a reassurance on that can you? No shortfall out of it In order to fund the decisions you've reversed you had said earlier that targeted funds which include the place partnership would be used and you ruled out some things like your music music initiative is quite rightly protected Targeted funding for 18, 19 remains at the same level for 17, 18 so we have the same budget available for targeted funding And also Claire Baker raised the issue that you're spending 4.7 million on organisations which are not artists led you answered that many people will still find it inexplicable but there it apparently you have a your review for funding for individual artists that was supposed to be concluded in September 2017 can you tell us what the what that review recommended The so that review was reported to our leadership team early this year what we're what we've got two options I think in terms of what we do one is to make the application process more straightforward and to simplify the questions that we ask organisations we have an option of making it a two-stage process in order to people not to needs to fill in the whole form before gauging whether or not the project that they're putting forward fits within guidance I think we also have the option of looking at our open project funding budget which at the moment is split between organisations and individual artists and creative people the majority of open project funding at the moment is spent on organisations so I haven't got the exact number in my head but it's something like a 75 78 22 split percent in terms of how the budget sits we can change that dial and allow for more funding within open project funding for artists and individuals and that's something that we're looking at very seriously what that will do and I can hear the organisations that benefit from open project funding wins as I say that is that means we would have less funding in open project funding for organisations so there's a difficult decision to be made there but we do have you know I would say we've got 121 regularly funded organisations we've got a similar number if not more of hidden regularly funded organisations that come through open project funding and that's a very brutal challenge that we face as a funder but those are the mechanisms that we currently use to support Scotland's cultural sector there's always a balance of decisions to be made in terms of how we focus that funding but clearly it's important to provide for artists and artists and organisations so it's in our strategy the organisation that people rely on to do that more than any other and I think that's why so many people are upset that such a large part of the government's 4.6 million uplift has gone to organisations that I know they spend a lot of time lobbying people like me for example they offer workshops and mentoring which is all very well but they don't support artists they don't provide artists with a living wage that allows them to make art and that's what people will be really concerned about I think the other thing that you've raised today which people will be very concerned about is the change in the goalposts in terms of the application process for these touring theatre companies you changed the goalposts without telling them and we've heard today that this touring fund hasn't even been signed off by your board I think that will be of real concern to people given it was such a key part of your strategy for withdrawing the funding from these organisations there are many more areas that we wish to explore as a committee and a number of members have said that we have had a great deal of engagement from the sector so after our evidence session today I think we'll have a discussion about how best we can take some of those concerns forward based on what you've told us today but I'd like to thank you both for coming to give you your evidence and for going over time today it's appreciated thank you very much we'll now suspend and move into private session