CREATIVE Skillset, the UK’s sector skills council for the creative industries, has closed its Scottish base in Glasgow and is closing its offices in Belfast and Cardiff as a result of cuts in its funding by the Westminster Government.
The closure of the Glasgow office and redundancy of two workers, including Creative Skillset’s leading official in Scotland, Alasdair Smith, was carried out without consultation with leading figures in Scotland’s creative industries and the Scottish Government.
Creative Skillset was seen as a vital cog in training Scotland’s future film and television makers, fashion designers and video games industry staff. It is responsible for training across the UK and in Scotland it worked closely with Skills Development Scotland (SDS). It is understood SDS was not consulted on the closure.
The organisation, which is both a registered charity and a company, admits that the closure of its Scottish office was as a result of a change in policy “away from public funding for skills”.
However it refused to answer The National’s question as to why, as a UK sector skills council, it is withdrawing its offices in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and moving to new premises in London.
Creative Skillset has also been unable to say what arrangements have been made for the funding and training it organises in Scotland, and one source in the Scottish film industry commented: “That probably means they will chop the lot eventually.”
Two of Scotland’s leading figures in the creative industries, John Archer of Hopscotch Films and Karen Smyth of La Belle Allee Productions, hit out at the closure yesterday, Smyth describing the cutbacks as “disastrous” for the Scottish film industry in particular.
The National can reveal that the closure of the Glasgow office was first mooted at a meeting of the Scottish Government’s Television Working Group in late January.
Alasdair Smith told the group that “devolution has had a knock-on effect re access to resources”. He added there was “more limited funding” and that restructuring was taking place.
He told the group that Creative Skillset “will continue to be a UK body” but added he was “unsure as to how exactly this will work”. That view was echoed by Archer, who is a member of the Television Working Group.
He said: “It just happened – Alasdair Smith has already left. We don’t know what has happened to Creative Skillset, but clearly they are not getting the funding they used to get.
“They do have funding for Scotland but we don’t know what they are going to do with that.
“The Scottish Government has said it will put £1 million into screen sector training and because of that it’s not feeling as if it’s a big disaster, but we don’t know how it is going to work in future.”
Karen Smyth is a member of the Scottish advisory board of Creative Skillset who were presented with a fait accompli after the closure had been decided in London. She said: “The Glasgow office has already closed as the funding wasn’t forthcoming from the UK Government and they have had to restructure everything at Creative Skillset.”
Industry sources are pinning their hopes on Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Government stepping in, but there was no news on that front last night.
A Creative Skillset spokesperson said: “As the creative industries’ key skills partner, Creative Skillset managed several Government-funded projects which delivered a range of initiatives to develop workforce skills across the UK.
“As projects near completion and with a shift in policy away from public subsidy for skills, difficult decisions on resources have to be made which has led to the closure of our office in Scotland.
“We continue to operate flexibly to support skills development by collaborating with stakeholders such as Skills Development Scotland to secure future training developments for Scotland’s creative workforce.”
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