First the facts: Creative Scotland announced the outcome of its new Multi-Year Funding Programme on 30th January 2025. Over the next three years, more than £200 million will be provided to 251 organisations, with an additional 13 organisations receiving £3.2 million in development funding. Organisations currently receiving regular funding will receive an average funding uplift of 34% in 2025/26, increasing to 54% from 2026/27. By comparison the current Regular Funding Portfolio (which Multi-Year Funding replaces) comprises 119 organisations with a budget of £33.4m per year.
‘More than double’ is the headline shorthand.
In 2019, Creative Scotland began a review of how, what, and why, it funds. It chose to do this directly through a very open process, using a simple toolkit and meeting people face-to-face asking two basic questions: “What can Creative Scotland do for you”; and ‘‘How should Creative Scotland prioritise and deliver its funding?’. This process was repeated in 19 public events from a small room in the shadow of St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall, Orkney to the recently refurbished town hall in summery Saltcoats on the Ayrshire coast.
The questions formed the ‘Discover’ and ‘Define’ elements of the Double Diamond design approach pioneered by the UK Design Council. We were taking the first steps in designing a new funding system, and so it seemed appropriate to see this as a design challenge, working directly with our ‘clients’. Using a process of ‘affinity mapping’, participants were invited to propose responses to the questions and then to critique these and vote on which responses they agreed with most strongly.
This process produced over 3,000 responses which were subsequently clustered and used as the basis for a further set of ten design workshops with Creative Scotland staff which comprised the next ‘Develop’ stage of the Double Diamond.
Now, if you’re still with me, you may be thinking this is all a bit process-heavy, that surely we all know how this system works and what people need from it.
Well, maybe – but the point of all this work was to open up people’s assumptions about how a funding system for supporting creativity and culture should work. To test these and challenge them. It was an exploration of possible outcomes, but also a way of exposing and addressing some competing perspectives, deeply held and contested in ways that required some fairly deep reserves of rationality to unpack.
All this work was followed up by a detailed analysis of what we had funded in the previous five years plus a literature review. The trail of Post-it notes was extensive and covered the walls of the Waverley Gate offices for months in the latter part of that year. But the sometimes difficult conversations that resonated within those luminous walls were the foundations for what happened next.
A final report with ten recommendations was approved by the Creative Scotland Board in February 2020, and the most pertinent for the next stage of this story are two of these:
Firstly, ‘In order to achieve the Creative Scotland mission, vision and strategy, we should acknowledge that a larger number of creative organisations require funding on a regular basis than the current roster of 121 Regularly Funded Organisations. This also responds to the feedback that we have received that most individuals and organisations working in this sector simply want stable, regular funding to do what they do’;
and secondly, ‘Establish clear priorities for support and outcomes, including priorities based on our strategy and our legal duties around Equality and Climate Change, against which all funding will be considered.’
Then the pandemic hit.
By early 2022, the pandemic was beginning to subside and, using the experience of the rapid digital delivery of Covid-19 funds, our digital team began the build of the new Multi-Year Funding Programme. It would have an online application process that would be multi-stage (consultees said they wanted this) and would be set against a set of Funding Criteria that would, over time, be applied to all our funding routes.
These Funding Criteria were published separately and covered:
- Quality & Ambition
- Engagement
- Equalities, Diversity and Inclusion
- Environmental Sustainability
- Fair Work
- International
The Stage 1 Fund Guidance was published in July 2023 and potential applicants were invited to submit an ‘Intention to Apply’ by mid-August 2023. The Stage 1 application process opened on 6th September and remained open until 25th October 2023. We received 361 applications with a total ask of £96m per year, compared to 509 organisations who originally registered their Intention to Apply, with an indicative ask of £114m per year.
At this point it’s worth explaining how the application process worked. Our aim was to use a language that was clear and unambiguous, with a lexicon that was consistent and transparent. The process would be based on how well applicants addressed the funding criteria we had established. The process would be everything.
For Stage 1, we asked applicants to set out their intentions. For each criterion we asked three questions and responses were scored using a text prompt (e.g. ‘Good demonstration that the criterion has been met’). These scores were totalled to produce a draft portfolio. This portfolio was then reviewed to ensure that things that would only be visible at portfolio level were not compromised.
Following this, 281 organisations were invited to apply to Stage 2. The Stage 2 process effectively repeated the questions from Stage 1, except the focus now shifted from the articulation of ‘intentions’ to the provision of ‘evidence’ that the intentions could be delivered. All applicants submitted a Business Plan and directed the assessment team to where in this the appropriate evidence could be found. The Stage 2 application process opened on 6th March and closed on 24th April 2024.
At the same time that this was happening, a parallel narrative began to emerge from the Scottish Government. On 17th October 2023, just prior to the closing date of the Stage 1 process, the then First Minister, Humza Yousaf, made a speech to the SNP party conference saying “I can announce today that over the next five years we will more than double our investment in Scotland’s arts and culture. This means that by the end of the five years, our investment will be £100m higher than it is today.”
Although this commitment encompassed a broader range of support than the Creative Scotland Multi-Year Funding Programme (some activity is funded directly by the Scottish Government), it was clear that the process established for the Multi-Year Programme and its alignment to shared principles and priorities had resonated with the Scottish Government, enabling this level of commitment to be made.
The Stage 2 assessment process concluded in October 2024 and final decisions were confirmed by the Creative Scotland Board following formal confirmation of the Scottish Government grant-in-aid budgets in December 2024.
So, overall, a pretty successful process with a happy ending for most. The Scottish Government have made in-principle funding commitments until 2028 and a more diverse set of creative and cultural organisations can look forward to a more confident and ambitious future.
Clive Gillman, Director of Creative Industries at Creative Scotland
Clive led the Funding Review and the design process for the Multi-Year Programme.
This is a guest blog for the Creative PEC website. Any views expressed are those of the author.
