Book industry winners in Creative Scotland funding round

Glasgow Women’s Library and the Wigtown Book Festival are among the organisations receiving funding for the first time from Creative Scotland.

The two groups join a number of other literature and publishing organisations awarded regular funding for the period covering April 2015 to March 2018.

The total list of 119 groups includes a range of creative industries.

Glasgow Women’s Library, which houses a lending library, archive collections and contemporary and historical artefacts relating to women’s lives, histories and achievements, gets funding of £300,451 over the three year period. Wigtown Book Festival, which is held annually, receives £208,500.

Other publishing and literature related groups getting funding are the Edinburgh International Book Festival, which will receive £836,000; Edinburgh City of World Literature Trust, which gets £285,000; and the Scottish Poetry Library, which is awarded £950,000.

Publishing Scotland, the trade body for the publishing industry in Scotland, will get £840,000 across three years, while the Scottish Book Trust gets £2,579,792 and the Gaelic Book Council will receive £620,000.

The sums represent an increase in funding for most of the organisations. Most notably, Scottish Book Trust received £489,097 in 2014/15, from the last round of its three-year funding. In the next three years its one-year average will be £859,931, an increase of 75.8% on its 2014/15 award. Edinburgh International Book Festival sees a 10% rise with an average of £278,667 per year in the next three years, compared to £252,000 in 2014/15. Scottish Poetry Library will get an average of £316,667 a year, an increase of 13% on the £280,230 for 2014/15. Publishing Scotland’s funding increases 12% from £250,000 in 2014/15, to an average of £280,000 a year in the next three years.

Janet Archer, chief executive of Creative Scotland, said: “I am delighted to announce such a creatively rich and diverse portfolio of regularly funded organisations. It represents some of Scotland’s most important, innovative and exciting cultural organisations, producing and presenting great work across craft, dance, film, literature, music, theatre and visual art.

“Importantly, these organisations will also provide significant support for thousands of individual artists and the broader workforce across Scotland’s creative sector.”

Creative Scotland is the public body supporting  the arts, screen and creative industries across Scotland. It distributes funding from the Scottish Government and the National Lottery.