Glasgow's troubled Centre for Contemporary Arts to permanently close

Glasgow's Centre for Contemporary Arts is to permanently close after serious concerns were raised over its finances.

All staff at the arts venue have been made redundant as a result. The announcement comes just a year after it secured three years of funding, worth £3.4m, from arts body Creative Scotland.

The Sauchiehall Street venue - which opened in 1992 - has been embroiled in a number of rows in recent years, most recently with pro-Palestine artists who want the centre to officially boycott Israel.

A social media account claiming to be run by a whistle-blower at the CCA said staff were told of issues with payments, unexplained expenses and financial irregularities.

BBC Scotland News understands staff were informed of job losses via a video call meeting earlier, with all upcoming events at the venue now cancelled.

Creative Scotland said it was unable to make further payments as the CAA "is unable to demonstrate its ongoing viability and therefore cannot deliver the activity set out in its multi-year funding agreement".

It also said it would explore future options "with the aim of reopening the centre as a cultural resource as soon as realistically possible".

Last year several directors at the CCA resigned, before a new chairwoman, Muse Greenwood, was appointed in December. She stepped down only a month later.

Earlier this week Louise Norris - a solicitor who previously served on the board until last year - was reappointed as a director. She joined the two remaining directors left from the previous year, Kirsty Ogg and Paola Pasino.

In a statement the board said it had been "unable to achieve a sustainable financial position" and was entering liquidation.

A statement by the CCA earlier this month had said it was exploring new ways to strengthen ethical policy and fundraising, after a spate of protests criticised the venue's board for not taking a stronger stance against Israel.

The CCA building was originally home to the Third Eye Centre, which was established by the Scottish Art Council in the 1970s.

With performers including Billy Connolly, Whoopi Goldberg and American poet Allen Ginsberg, a key figure in the Beat movement, the venue was an outlet for Glasgow's counter culture.

It closed in 1991 with the CCA taking its place as a hub for the city's art scene.

The venue has endured a turbulent several years, having been first forced to close in 2018 after a fire destroyed the nearby Glasgow School of Art.

Several of the businesses which rented out space inside the building never returned after it reopened.

The centre's popular cafe bar - the Saramago - closed permanently in 2023 after a lengthy and bitter dispute over staffing issues led the venue to discontinue its relationship with the bar - a decision that resulted in a financial hit.

The CCA itself temporarily closed in December 2024, stating this was in a bid to secure its long-term future amid significant financial concerns.

The following month it announced it had secured a "significant uplift in funding" from Creative Scotland, to be spread over a three-year period.

At the time the CCA board said the cash influx would let them look ahead with a renewed energy.

However within months, further protests took place regarding the CCA board refusing to support the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).

The group Art Workers for Palestine Scotland launched a takeover of the site in June last year, resulting in the police being called and a 63-year-old woman being both arrested and taken to hospital.

The CCA announced it was closing for a temporary period during the dispute, before later apologising for having called the police during the protest. It said it sincerely regretted the decision to involve police.

During the closure some businesses based at the CCA had to leave the venue.

Another takeover of the site by Art Workers for Palestine Scotland was held in January and passed peacefully, with the CCA itself saying it did not want police to attend the protest - which saw a "liberated zone" set up in the building's courtyard.

The group had previously said that the CCA must be "a beacon for our city's solidarity with Palestine, for anticolonialism, and for art to stand on the side of liberation".

Glasgow's Third Eye Centre was a fresh and invigorating addition to the Scottish arts scene. It wasn't just locals like Billy Connolly or John Byrne, but international voices like Whoopi Goldberg and Allen Ginsberg.

So it wasn't a lack of art which closed it down in 1991, but a lack of money and it's a balancing act the CCA has failed to successfully manage.

The Centre for Contemporary Arts had no trouble attracting artists to its Sauchiehall Street offering - and for a time it seemed to measure up to the legendary Third Eye Centre in terms of gathering talent together.

But looking outward to a wider audience in a city whose options were vastly increased since the 1970s, was a harder task.

In the past eight years, the CCA has had to close four times. The centre had barely come back from the first closure - a six-month stretch after the fire at Glasgow School of Art in 2018 when the global pandemic closed everything down again and their footfall has never really recovered.

It's easy to blame the protestors for preventing the CCA from staying afloat but its management have also failed to find a way round the significant challenges they've faced.

Last year, they promised a restructuring, for which they received additional funding and support. At the start of this year, they said they were exploring new ways to strengthen ethical policy and fundraising.

But it didn't come fast enough.

And who would want to run an organisation, whose own operation appears to be at war with each other?

Rumours of closure had been swirling for the last week before management admitted they "had been unable to achieve a sustainable financial position."