A general article, but Scottish Ballet gets a mention:<P><B>Scottish arts suffer as big business pulls plug on cash</B><BR>Theatre companies are forced to close as businesses cut sponsorship for Scots arts ... and it's getting worse. By Juliette Garside in The Sunday Herald:<P><BR>According to Arts & Business the Bank of Scotland remains the biggest supporter of Scottish arts companies. BoS spokesman Alastair Ross says it has spent over £4m a year on arts, sport and the environment for the last two years, and will do so again in 2002. It is still ploughing money into Scottish Ballet, Scottish Opera, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Edinburgh International Festival, the Edinburgh Fringe, and dozens of other smaller events and projects.<P><A HREF="http://www.sundayherald.com/24003" TARGET=_blank><B>click for more</B></A>

A general article about the Arts in Scotland post-Festival. Lebrecht does his usual Cassandra thing. The problem is that because he does it all the time, there is a tendency to ignore him even when he might be right.

He refers briefly to Scottish Ballet.


Dispelling the Scotch myth
by Norman Lebrecht for The Evening Standard

It never takes more than a couple of days to clear up after the world's biggest arts festival, even in a record year. By this morning, Edinburgh will be back to normal, the Royal Mile will have been reopened to traffic and there will not be a busker or billboard to be seen touting for two hours of amateur Sondheim in a half-damp-proofed pub cellar.

The Festival ended on Saturday. Setting aside the usual discomforts, it has been a vintage summer.....

But art in Edinburgh is a flimsy frock, shucked off on the first of September for sensible tweeds. There will be no more frippery for the next 11 months. When the festival started in 1947, it was hoped that its light would spread around the year and across the nation - a dream that, for half a century, edged rosily towards realisation. Scottish Opera was formed in 1962 as a festival by-product, as was Scottish Ballet, which found its feet in 1969.

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Investment needed in all of the arts in Scotland
Letter in The Herald


Aonghas MacNeacail has got straight to the heart of the matter (Letters, January 29). This is not the time for those passionately interested in all or any of the arts in Scotland to be bickering over the size of the slices of a loaf of bread that is far too small to go round.

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Arts should not be judged by Labour's mantra
By Magnus Linklater for Scotland on Sunday

SOMETIMES it’s the silence of government rather than the noisiness that unnerves you. Big announcements are made, expectations are raised, and then comes - nothing at all. Result, everyone is left feeling anxious, nervy and vaguely irritated. That is the growing feeling I get following Jack McConnell’s stirring speech on St Andrew’s Day last November when he pronounced that culture lay at the heart of government, and promised "to have the courage and faith to back human imagination, our innate creativity, as the most potent force for individual change and social vision".

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<small>[ 08 February 2004, 05:24 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>