£1 Million Announced For Scottish Youth Arts

Scottish Youth TheatreScottish youth arts have benefitted from £1 million from the Scottish government. The Scottish Government has helped secure the future of Scottish Youth Theatre with the announcement of the money, to be used over three years for the youth arts in Scotland. Following so many funding blows for the arts in recent years, the announcement that the Scottish government is to give such a substantial sum is extremely good news.

The funding, £250,000 of which comes from the private sector, will be used to support Scottish Youth Theatre, the National Youth Choir of Scotland, National Youth Orchestra of Scotland and YDance, the Scottish youth dance organisation. Scottish Youth Theatre was one of the unsuccessful applicants for funding in Creative Scotland’s recent creation of a tier of Regularly Funded Organisations, after previously being a “foundation organisation”, receiving £220,000 a year. However, the other three national youth companies were on similar amounts and successfully applied for RFO status.

The positive announcement for Scottish Youth Theatre comes after a period of time in which there has been increasing public condemnation of the monetary decision by Creative Scotland, criticised by Scottish Youth Theatre alumni. However, the two organisations continue to be in negotiations about alternative routes of support, which is positive news for Scottish theatre too.

Creative Scotland has made it clear that the new funding package had evolved quickly as a government initiative, and has maintained that Scottish Youth Theatre is an important organisation that would be able to apply for project funding. Despite this, there is no indication of how the £1 million package will be split between the four organisations.