Its a National Thing - isn't it?

Creative Scotland announced the first recipients of their Artist Bursary scheme today - this is a great scheme to fund artists directly towards developing their own practice in the way they themselves see as important.
At Commonty Central we didn't recognise too many of the names on the list and started to look to see who they were - a pattern started to emerge....of the Visual Artists on the list: 78% are based in Glasgow and the other 22% are based in Edinburgh.

Location of Visual Arts recipients of Creative Scotland Artist Bursaries

NB the Artist Bursary scheme was open to all artforms - there may well be a fairer distribution of grants around the country in other artforms - but after starting on the theatre folk we were losing the will to live and beginning to feel like stalkers.

This is not just a question of 'correctness' - when they themselves are seeking support from Central Government, Creative Scotland will make the point about how investment in the arts and artists can help the whole economy of an area. By starving the rest of the country of artists with time and support to develop - a valuable resource is being denied to areas and communities. It is brilliant that we have a strong art scene in Glasgow and Edinburgh and a source of national pride - but as Melvin Bragg said the purpose of a Cultural Capital should be 'to irrigate not to drain (resources from everywhere else)'.

Creative Scotland reports that a total of 282 artists applied to the scheme and 42 grants were awarded. Visual Artists made up 21% of the grants awarded - if we apply this proportion over the total applications this would mean approx 60 visual artists applied. It would be interesting to know what the geographic spread of those applications was?

Full details of the awards are here