Support of the arts through state-funded grants could become a thing of the past when Scotland's new culture body, Creative Scotland, comes into being next year.
Yesterday, on the first day of a three-day cultural summit in Edinburgh, the "change director" in charge of the establishment of Creative Scotland, which merges the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen, said that the future of arts funding will be very different in the future.
Although stressing that no decisions had been made and many different options are on the table, Anne Bonnar made it clear the days of grants being the only method of supporting artists and art companies are over.
Those involved in the establishment of Creative Scotland have told The Herald that loans are also being discussed as a form of support for arts companies, although there is ample room for a variety of "imaginative" financial support models which fall between 100% grants and business-style loans, including low-to-no interest loans, and finance from not-for-profit organisations.
Ms Bonnar said that Creative Scotland would be a "big brain" organisation which will lead the entire creative industries sector, including the arts, and would have considerable influence in Scottish society, as well as in politics, where she said it would have a "seat at the big table".
Ms Bonnar said "There are new models of investment and we are talking about them. Delegating grant-giving to others is one of the ideas, for example," she said.
"If, say, the budget for Creative Scotland is £60m a year, and we keep applying the same models of funding, in a traditional way with grants, we are not going to make many exponential moves in the directions that we wish.
"So we are talking about those new models - they include private funding, the use of venture capital, private trusts, and grants, too."
Ms Bonnar said that another route would be "light touch" funding, which would involve granting funding to a series of core artistic companies and institutions for a given period of time, and giving them the freedom to do what they want in that time with the minimum of interference.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article