Creative Scotland implements new controls after row over explicit show funding

Bosses at Creative Scotland said new controls have been “baked into” its funding processes after a row erupted when it awarded cash for an explicit arts show.

Conservative MSP Stephen Kerr challenged senior figures from the arts organisation in the wake of the decision to give almost £85,000 to the Rein project, despite the funding application saying it would involve “genital contact” and a “sex party”.

The controversy last year led Creative Scotland to withdraw the cash it had awarded the project, which had been recruiting actors to participate in “non-simulated” sex scenes.

Mr Kerr challenged Creative Scotland bosses on the “shambles of the pornography movie you commissioned”.

With board chairman Robert Wilson appearing before MSPs on Holyrood’s Culture Committee, the Tory said: “I’m interested in how Creative Scotland uses all the taxpayer money it gets and I am anxious to find out what they learned from the shambles that brought this issue to a head.

“What lessons were learned from last year about how you operate as Creative Scotland in terms of the use of taxpayers’ money?

“I am really interested to know what was learned in terms of internal controls with the expenditure of Scottish taxpayers’ money.”

Mr Wilson said there has been a “huge amount of time and effort put in by Creative Scotland to try and resolve and learn from this experience”.

Anne Langley, executive director of operations at Creative Scotland, stressed the decision to award funds to Rein – as well as the later decision to withdraw it and recoup the money – had been made “in line with due process and policies and the application of the legal terms in our contracts”.

Through our review we identified a number of additional controls and measures that we could put in place to help avoid that sort of thing happening again

She told the committee: “It is worth nothing that Creative Scotland assesses many thousands of applications each year and makes thousands of awards a year, this was one award where it was made in line with process.

“The terms of that award were breached and we took immediate and effective action to recoup the funds.”

Ms Langley went on to tell MSPs that changes have been “baked into our processes now”.

She added: “Obviously whenever an issue arises we take every opportunity to learn lessons from that, there are always improvements that can be made to any process.

“Through our review we identified a number of additional controls and measures that we could put in place to help avoid that sort of thing happening again.”

As part of this, she said Creative Scotland has reduced the maximum award level that can be made to individuals, it has “put in place an additional risk review and control and reporting mechanism”, along with additional levels of approval for applications to its open fund.