SCOTLAND’S arts world was thrown into further turmoil yesterday after a key cultural adviser resigned with a stinging condemnation of the Executive’s rescue plan for Scottish Opera..
The award-winning composer Craig Armstrong said that he was leaving the Cultural Commission, set up to review the culture of Scotland over the next 12 months, because it had too few working artists on board.
He also criticised the Executive’s plan to restructure Scottish Opera by cutting 90 jobs and halting major productions for the coming year.
Armstrong, who won a Golden Globe for the soundtrack to the film Moulin Rouge, wrote in his resignation letter: “I condemn the current attempts to scale down the opera. It is indeed hard to find any member of the arts community who does not share this view.”
His outspoken attack comes after Sam Galbraith, a former Scottish Arts Minister, condemned the Government’s approach to cultural matters as “an attack on excellence”.
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Frank McAveety, Scotland’s Culture Minister, defended the commission and its chairman, James Boyle. “I am reassured James is putting in place structures that will allow our artists a clear and direct route into the commission,” he said. “We have put in place . . . a plan that will ensure a sustainable future for opera in Scotland.”
The appointments to the eight-person commission attracted criticism when they were announced last week. Armstrong was the only commissioner with an artistic background. The remainder were administrators, lawyers, academics and business people.
Armstrong wrote: “Contrary to what I had hoped, the commission does not in my opinion contain practising artists in sufficient proportion from varied artistic and cultural backgrounds.
“With respect to the other commissioners, I believe this lack of representation could undermine the commission at a difficult time for the arts in Scotland. However I have agreed to help the commission by contributing to the working groups.
He added: “The opera is one of the benchmarks in the cultural life of our country and if the opera is scaled down it would lose the skills developed over decades of hard work and would, I fear, be impossible to replace.”
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Mr Boyle said he was sorry that Armstrong had decided to leave the commission. “But I welcome the fact that he still wishes to contribute actively to our work,” he said.