It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our friend and former colleague Carl Watt.

Carl was our Head of Programmes for over 8 years before standing down from his position due to personal circumstances at the end of last year.

Over those eight years, Carl made an immeasurable contribution to realising Arts & Business Scotland’s aims and objectives and directly enabled significant support and development of professionals and organisations from across the arts, heritage, culture, business, and public sectors.

Carl was key to the development, launch and delivery of the Culture & Business Fund Scotland in April 2017 as an incentive tool to encourage and support innovative cross sector partnerships. His management of this initiative saw over £2.5 million invested in 149 cultural projects across all thirty-two local authority areas across Scotland.

He was also pivotal in the development and delivery of our Resourcing Scotland’s Heritage 4-year capacity building programme for the heritage sector, which was instrumental in ensuring understanding of the relevance of our work to that sector, which has subsequently increased reach across all aspects of the culture sector throughout Scotland.

Carl’s engagement with our partners and stakeholders from the business sector, also ensured that we bring relevant business acumen to the culture sector, and at the same time provide professional, social, and economic benefits for the businesses involved.

For many who took part in our networking events or training programmes, Carl will be remembered for his entertaining, witty, insightful, and informative contributions as a trainer or event MC or host – drawing on his formative skills as a performing actor.

Carl will also be fondly remembered as a funny, supportive and engaging colleague and friend to all who he worked with at A&BS. Always good and affable company, his often self-deprecating humour and the sharing of his commitment to, and passion and energy for culture very much appreciated by us all. We’ll also remember his love of food and travel, and of course his dapper dress sense.

Carl will be very much missed by all connected with Arts & Business Scotland – from the staff and board to our members and partners.

We offer our condolences and best wishes to his family and friends at this very sad and difficult time.

From the staff and Board at A&BS