AI ProfileAndrew Dixon, chief executive, Creative Scotland

Scotland have rethought their national arts funding system, and after many political hiccups it finally comes into being on May 1.

And for the replacement of the Scottish Arts Council as it combines with Scottish Screen, the Scots have gone not just for an Englishman but for an old Arts Council England hand in Andrew Dixon as the first chief executive of Creative Scotland.

There will be a healthy element of diplomacy in the task – for a start, his office is split between Glasgow and Edinburgh to bridge that ancient rivalry – and as he prepares to take his job he has to be part of the alchemy, along with Scottish government ministers, of creating the board that combines sound governance with support and accountability. Many arts organisations across the UK will be watching carefully to see if he and his political masters get that right.

But it is, as he says, “a new start, an opportunity” to “maximise the creative sector in Scotland”. There’s a lot of cultural activity of which the nation is justly proud, he says, and which will have an important export role.

His job is going to be pulling together the various elements in a country – in including film, of course - whose artists have been historically proud of their independence. “It’s a great tradition, isn’t it?”

Andrew Dixon is 51 and started his career running Major Road, Graham Devlin’s issue-sensitive touring theatre company then based in Manchester. After four years he moved to Humberside as the county arts officer, and in 1989 shifted to the regional arts council as assistant director of Northern Arts, the start of 21 years on Tyneside. He was deputy chief executive between 1992 and 1997 taking over as CEO when Peter Hewitt went to London to run ACE, and oversaw the transformation from Northern Arts to Arts Council North East.

In 2005 he left to head up the NewcastleGateshead Initiative, the destination marketing and cultural agency that was about to launch Culture 10.

This was the programme devised after Newcastle/Gateshead failed to get the nomination to be the UK’s European Cultural Capital for 2008, “the best thing that didn’t happen for us”.

So Culture 10 picked up the pieces of the Capital of Culture bid to devise a unique curated programme of cultural events and festivals across the region, up to this year – how that programme is to progress post-Culture 10 is outlined by Ailsa Anderson and James Waters on page –. “It is a huge region, taking in Cumbria as well as Northumbria, but the potential is enormous” he said then. “Without compromising it has developed an audience for the culture here, and what we are doing now is beginning to attract cultural tourists – already they’re coming from Germany, Norway, Italy and Spain. But there’s more world to conquer still.”