AN ONLINE petition launched in Edinburgh last week to have new arts funding organisation Creative Scotland based in the capital attracted fewer than 120 backers in its first five days.

Creative Scotland is being formed by merging the Scottish Arts Council (SAC), currently based in Edinburgh, and Scottish Screen, located in Glasgow.

On Monday, councillor Ewan Aitken, leader of the City of Edinburgh Council, launched the petition and an attendant campaign entitled Three Good Reasons, saying that to site Creative Scotland somewhere other than the capital would be "an act of cultural vandalism".

On Friday - the last day figures were available on the petition - the city council said "almost 120" had signed. Aitken claimed he was "happy" with the level of response so far.

"This is just the beginning and, as the brochures go out and more and more people hear of what we're asking them to sign up to, I am confident we will see support for basing Creative Scotland in Edinburgh rise steadily," he said. "The feedback I've had is that people understand the importance and urgency of this campaign to ensure Creative Scotland is based in Edinburgh."

The Scottish Executive is due to announce the site of the new body in the next few weeks, but there are fears among the arts community in Edinburgh that a decision has already been made to award it to Glasgow.

Joining Aitken at last week's launch to express their concerns were Catherine Lockerbie, director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, and Jonathan Mills, incoming director of the Edinburgh International Festival, which will account for Creative Scotland's biggest slice of funding.

Lockerbie said it would be "perverse" not to site Creative Scotland in the capital, especially given the lengths the city's arts organisations and institutions have gone to recently to organise themselves into a united front. She pointed to the creation of Festivals Edinburgh, under the leadership of former book festival director Faith Liddell, as one example of this.

Reader Poll Where should Creative Scotland be based? Edinburgh 42.4% Glasgow 57.6%

"Edinburgh is the city of the Enlightenment," said Lockerbie. "It's the place where thinkers came together not to look inwards but to look outwards. What has happened in Edinburgh has influenced the world and it should continue to do so. But it can only do that if there's a real nexus of creativity here and that includes the funding agency."

As the title of its campaign suggests, Edinburgh's case for hosting Creative Scotland rests on three arguments.

First, the cultural argument: Edinburgh's international reputation as a centre for artistic excellence would be diminished were Creative Scotland to be sited outside the capital, say supporters.

Secondly, the economic argument: Edinburgh's proposed home for Creative Scotland is in the waterfront development at Leith which already houses VisitScotland and EventScotland, potentially bringing about much-needed synergies and meshing with the Executive's stated desire to locate public service jobs in areas where they can have a beneficial effect.

Thirdly, the logical argument: Edinburgh is the capital and its strength as a magnet for inward investment benefits the whole of Scotland. This, too, would be diminished were Creative Scotland to be sited elsewhere, it is argued.

Others backing Edinburgh's campaign include Mark Cousins, a former director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival and now a producer in his own right; Professor Joan Stringer, the principal of Napier University; and Michael Shea, formerly the Queen's press secretary and now a trustee of the National Galleries.

Shea said: "To remove Creative Scotland from Edinburgh would send a very strange and negative message to all the major cultural tourists who come from all over the world to this great city for its many festivals."

A final decision from the Executive on where Creative Scotland will be headquartered is expected very soon. Late last year staff at both agencies were consulted on their preference, though many more locations than just Edinburgh and Glasgow were offered as options.

THE arts organisations which will be funded by Creative Scotland have also been consulted. Last week a consultation seminar in Edinburgh brought together representatives from all these groups to discuss the shape and direction of Creative Scotland.

Mitigating against a change in the status quo is the unpopularity of the Executive's policy on the relocation of public service jobs, which was aimed at spreading the benefits of devolution across the country but which has generated nothing but controversy. To date, some 2000 civil service and quango jobs have been lost from the capital and many, such as Scottish Natural Heritage's move from Edinburgh to Inverness in 2003, have proved deeply unpopular with staff.

Ultimately, however, this may all become academic: Creative Scotland may never even get off the drawing board. As an integral part of the Culture Bill it requires ratification by an act of parliament before it can come into being. There are Scottish parliamentary elections on May 3 and the Scottish National Party, who are still slightly ahead of Labour in the polls, share the arts community's dislike of both the Culture Bill and the proposed merger of the SAC and Scottish Screen.

"I'm not a great fan of the Creative Scotland idea," said Mike Russell, an SNP candidate in the May poll who was the party's shadow culture minister when he was previously an MSP.

"I think there are much important ideas at the moment than where it's sited, such as: is it going to work?

"Is the Culture Bill greater than the sum of its parts because it had better be - it's a deeply flawed and rather pathetic document. Also, what is Creative Scotland going to do if it ever does come into being?

"My own view - and it is only my own view - is that it is not something that needs to happen. The present structure arose out of the two bodies being joined: they were originally one body and they were separated in the 1970s. There had to be a reason for that and the reason was that they were tending to deal with different issues. I can't see how bringing them back together is going to solve that."

Russell also hinted that the SNP could rip it up and start again.

"I've not detected any enthusiasm among SNP party members for Creative Scotland and equally there is absolutely no enthusiasm for the sheets of meanderings that is the Culture Bill," he said.

"I think that in those circumstances it's also fair to say a change of administration would mean that the present failures of the Executive would cease and that there would be a new approach."

The former head of BBC Radio Scotland, James Boyle, led the Cultural Commission, whose recommendations were supposed to form the basis of the Draft Culture (Scotland) Bill. But since its publication he has poured nothing but scorn on it, seeing it as a desperate dilution of his original proposals.

On the question of where Creative Scotland should be sited, he echoed and amplified Mike Russell's doubts.

"My thought is that it shouldn't go ahead so that takes precedence for me," he told the Sunday Herald. "I don't want it to exist at all."

A new front has opened but the battle, it seems, is far from over.