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The Scottish Government has revealed plans to increase its spending on culture by £15.8m (€18m/$20m) as part of its 2024-25 budget.
This figure will include reinstating Creative Scotland’s funding, after it was cut by £6.6m during the current budget, forcing the public body to dip into its financial reserves.
During 2022-23, the budget for culture amounted to £194.5m, before being reduced to £180.8m for 2023-24. During 2024-25, the budget has currently been listed as £196.6m.
As reported by The Stage, Scotland’s Finance Secretary and Deputy First Minister Shona Robison said that the government also planned to increase funding for culture by a further £25m in 2025-26. Robison added that this was part of fulfilling First Minister Humza Yousaf’s promise to increase arts and culture spending in Scotland over the coming years.
“As the first instalment of delivering the First Minister’s commitment to double arts and culture funding, we’ll increase funding for culture in 2024-25 by £15.8m, restoring funding to Creative Scotland for utilising their reserves this year and more,” said Robison.
She added: “This is only the first step on the route to investing at least £100m more in the arts and culture by 2028-29, and our aim to increase arts and culture investment in 2025-26 by at least a further £25m.”
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