Creative Scotland is to be warmly congratulated in finally creating a Scots language policy, which was officially launched in Edinburgh on 3 June by Fiona Hyslop who is cabinet secretary for culture, Europe and external affairs. She declared that in adopting this policy, Creative Scotland was recognising the rich contribution made to Scottish culture by the 1.5 million speakers of the language. This policy finally begins to address the anomalous lack of recognition which the Scots community has suffered in relation to other languages supported by Creative Scotland and its earlier incarnation the Scottish Arts Council.

The policy seeks to ensure that from now on Scots will be promoted through websites and press releases as well as accepting funding applications through the language. A proportion of Creative Scotland funding will now be earmarked specifically for funding Scots language work as it already does for Scottish Gaelic. A centre piece to this new policy is the creation of an official Screivar in the Scots Leid to be based at the National Library of Scotland. The post is funded by Creative Scotland at 15,000 per annum and will last for two years. As well as praise for this new initiative, the Scots Language Centre advised a note of caution. It can be all too easy to produce Scots texts that are, in reality, re-lexified English, lacking the actual grammar, idiom and vocabulary of the Scots language, of which examples in leaflet form, though well meant, have recently appeared. We would advise caution in this respect but are ever hopeful that Creative Scotlands new and inspiring policy will, in time, help to iron out the creases.