Dundee Contemporary Arts has issued a grim warning about its future as it attempts to fill a £300,000 funding blackhole.
DCA director Beth Bate told MSPs in Holyrood it may have to draw on the last of its reserves to fill the financial gap and keep its doors open.
She said the centre has been “wrung dry” as it attempts to save cash amid “previously unimaginable financial precarity”.
Beth Bate also hit out at the Scottish Government, criticising the “lack of clarity” around its budget making decisions as “startling”.
‘We don’t have enough money’
She told politicians the arts centre, which has a two-screen cinema, gallery, print studio and restaurant, simply “doesn’t have enough money”.
While it has around £450,000 in reserves, DCA would be left with only around £90,000 if these were used to meet the funding gap.
And Ms Bate said that in order cut costs and make up the budget blackhole through savings, DCA would have to halt it exhibitions programme and children’s film festival to save on staffing and delivery costs.
She added: “This would then take us so far from our charitable aims, and the function for which we are funded, we could not operate.”
The warning comes after arts agency Creative Scotland said one in three arts bodies are at risk of insolvency.
Ms Bate told MSPs: “We’re so prudent. We’ve made efficiencies everywhere, including restructuring teams, losing hours and posts, restricting hours, delivering work with external partners, investing in fundraising, and setting high and hard income-generating targets.
“But we’re now at the point where we’re stripped back enough. Any more cuts will fundamentally change the organisation and the impact we have in Dundee, Scotland and internationally.
“We simply don’t have enough money.”
She added: “It’s hard to describe the exhaustion and frustration these working conditions induce.
Dundee Contemporary Arts facing ‘a perfect storm’
“Staff retention, health and wellbeing, confidence and resilience are all affected, particularly as we start to see other organisations struggle and fold, and talented staff leave the sector.”
Ms Bate told The Courier that the DCA was facing a “perfect storm”, with reduced attendance post-Covid, rising costs and stagnant public funding.
She added: “While we are prudently run and at no immediate risk, we have reached a point where standstill funding will no longer be sufficient.
“Important decisions are being taken in the next couple of months regarding Scottish Government’s culture budgets for 2024/25 which are vital to avoid significant and irreparable damage to Scotland’s world leading culture sector.”
Conversation