Interview

He wants to make sure, though, that Scottish artists get a ‘fair crack of the whip’ through, for example, the Edinburgh Festival Expo Fund. This year the Scottish government raised £6 million for the scheme, administered by the Arts Council, which supports Scottish work at the 12 festivals that take place in Edinburgh every August.

When the Expo was launched, commentators muttered about narrow-minded nationalism. But what emerged, much to their surprise, were innovative, high-quality productions without a kilt or a highland fling in sight. Plays included Barflies about the American writer and alcoholic Charles Bukowski, which somewhat flew in the face of the SNP government’s current crackdown on alcohol consumption.

Russell admits he was initially against the Creative Scotland idea but decided to press ahead because of the recession and the need to ‘shepherd and husband our resources as carefully as possible, and to focus on the frontline’. The aim, he tells me, is greater efficiency, and to concentrate on artists, access and participation.

Even so, isn’t there too much of a focus on the creative industries, which will mean more computer games rather than more painting? An inaccurate caricature, he protests. ‘It works both ways. If you talk to people from the creative industries, they’ll say that all cultural spending has been on fine art. And if you talk to people who are painters, they will say the intention is to stop giving them money and instead give it to people who make computer games. Neither is true.’

Then what about the charge that Creative Scotland will erode the ‘arm’s length’ principle that keeps government separate from the arts? Not true either, he claims. He thinks there was a misunderstanding over what an arm’s-length policy meant. It’s never been the intention to have non-departmental bodies created totally independent of government. ‘What government does is set the policy context within which these bodies operate,’ he says. ‘Then they [Creative Scotland and others] do the work and fill in the blanks, and deliver the policy in the broadest of senses.’ I am not convinced by this. But Russell is impatient to get things moving. ‘After years of debating structures, we should stop. You know, let’s get it done.

‘No structure is perfect,’ he concedes, but getting on with it ‘allows us to concentrate, on things that, dare I say it, are a little more important’.