Creative Scotland defends hardcore sex film project Rein as 'experimental performance art'

Creative Scotland has insisted Leonie Rae Gasson’s proposed multi-screen film installation went through all of its proper channels and processes before her grant was signed off.The arts agency later pulled the plug on the project after an intervention from the Scottish Government and protests from opposition parties at Holyrood, a decision that has been condemned by Ms Gasson’s team, which has denied that it was planning to make “pornography” with public funding.

Creative Scotland said 90 per cent of its £84,555 funding award for the project had now been either withdrawn or clawed back.

It said the applicant had incurred "contractually legitimate costs of £8,359, mainly to sub contracted freelancers" which would not be recovered.

The project was handed a separate award of £23,210 in August 2022 as part of its research and development phase. Creative Scotland said it had "no reason to seek to reclaim this award as the work was completed as set out in the approved application".

Responding to a Holyrood probe into the funding award, Creative Scotland’s chief executive Iain Munro praised Ms Gasson’s proposal as “a challenging, creatively ambitious piece of experimental performance art”.

The quango insists that it did not give approval to the filming of “real sex” scenes for her project, describing the prospect as “unacceptable territory.”

Creative Scotland is refusing to publish Ms Gasson’s full application, citing legal advice and concerns about “the safety and wellbeing of those involved.”

However a statement issued on behalf of the project denied that Creative Scotland had been “misled” about the nature of Rein.

It said: “Everyone involved in the project is deeply saddened that the funding body did not seek clarification with the artists, or suggest working together to elucidate to third parties that the project is an artistic moving image film and not what has been widely reported or claimed.

"No opportunity was given to the artists to work towards a joint resolution or alternative outcome prior to the funding body’s decision to defund the work.”

Ms Gasson had launched online appeals for performers with "experience of sex work, particularly in porn contexts” to work on Rein when controversy flared over the explicit nature of the project, which she described as “an exploration of dyke sexuality” and "a magical, erotic journey through the Scottish countryside”.

Creative Scotland pulled the plug days after culture secretary Angus Robertson said there was “no way” that it should have funded Rein after it emerged Ms Gasson was planning to film “non-simulated” sex scenes.

Creative Scotland was asked to explain its decision to fund Rein by Holyrood’s culture committee.

The arts funding body had initially helped promote Ms Gasson’s search for performers for what she descried as a “pro sex and pro sex work project”, saying some of the roles would involve “hardcore” acts. She was offering to pay successful applicants £270 a day.

In his response to the committee, Mr Munro states: “Creative Scotland seeks to fund a broad range of cultural and creative work, across a wide spectrum of creative practice and for a diverse range of audiences, from that which can be seen as mainstream, to work which is far more challenging, provocative, and may risk controversy.

"Themes of sex and sexuality have been seen in art throughout history and continue to be visible in contemporary life. It is not Creative Scotland’s role to censor work, nor be the arbiters of cultural taste. However, Creative Scotland does have important responsibilities to the public for the appropriate use of public funding, responsibilities we take extremely seriously.”

Mr Munro said Scotland had a long history and solid reputation as a producer and presenter of “radical and experimental performance”.

He said: “Rein was originally supported in the knowledge it would be a challenging, creatively ambitious piece of experimental performance art, with a clear storytelling narrative, strong sexual themes and simulated sexual performance, and would speak to a particular audience rather than the mainstream.

"The track record of the lead applicant, and the production team, was (and is) a strong one, having worked with a broad range of established and respected cultural organisations both in Scotland and elsewhere.

"The explicit representation of certain aspects of queer culture and sexuality in Rein had been carefully considered in the approved application and the team was understood to be sensitively addressing the nature of the content.

“However, as became clear in March 2024 when the project team developed new content for their website and publicised that as part of a call-out for participants, one new and significant difference emerged which took the project into unacceptable territory. That was the intention to include real sex, as opposed to performance depicting simulated sex, in the work.

“This represented a significant change to the approved project, moving it from ‘performance’ into actuality, and into a space that was, in Creative Scotland’s view, inappropriate for public funding.”