(Tuesday 13 January 2009)
MALCOLM BURNS reports on the growing concern over the Scottish government's plans for a cultural development agency.
An urge to destroy Creative Scotland
It's not often that the nation's cultural workers speak with one voice.The cack-handed attempts by government over the last few years to establish a new "cultural development agency" called Creative Scotland appear to have pretty much united them.The stalled plan to form Creative Scotland out of the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen - the rebranded Scottish Film Council - is opposed by the Scottish Artists Union, the largest body representing visual artists.
SAU lobbied MSPs at Holyrood before Christmas on the issue. At the same time, over 100 chairmen and chief executives of Scottish arts organisations, from galleries to theatres and festivals, sent a private letter of concern over Creative Scotland to First Minister Alex Salmond.
Following the SAU initiatives, 440 individual artists, writers and producers including well-known names like Val McDermid, Louise Welsh and Alison Peebles published an open letter last week calling on MSPs to vote against Creative Scotland when the proposal finally struggles back into the Scottish Parliament.
"We have no confidence in the process of the formation of Creative Scotland or the confused and inappropriate proposals that have arisen,"the artists declare.
They criticise the lack of consultation with the arts community and claim that the proposed expanded remit to support the creative industries will be "at the expense of the public funding of artistic independence."
In the absence of government figures, the cost of setting up Creative Scotland has been variously estimated unofficially at between £2 million and £7 million. Scottish arts workers argue that this expense coupled with "overstretched resources" will lead to cuts in grants.
They also believe that the rumoured introduction of loans instead of grants, hinted at by Culture Minister Linda Fabiani, and proposed changes to intellectual property rights will "reinforce artistspoverty."
It is a pretty devastating critique by a large swathe of the community of clients which the new body should be serving. So, is the Creative Scotland idea dead?
The government claims it will be delivered "without delay." A limited company called Creative Scotland has been set up and a transition team is in place. This is now led by Ewan Brown, former chairman of Lloyds TSB in Scotland.
However, the Bill to properly establish the new body foundered last year in the Scottish Parliament, when its financial memorandum was voted down in chaotic circumstances. Creative Scotland is still formally supported by the major parties and the government has now tagged the legislation onto the forthcoming Public Services Reform Bill.
But the reason why it failed before - problems over the financial arrangements in relation to Scottish Enterprise and the "creative industries" - and its current inclusion in a Bill for public service reform are both instructive. Creative Scotland is really not designed to support our creative arts and culture.
The Creative Scotland proposal was originally announced three years ago in January 2006 by Labour's then culture minister Patricia Ferguson, following former first minister Jack McConnell's vague intentions of creating "cultural rights and entitlements."
However, it was hard to identify a specific rationale other than to generate efficiency savings in combining back-office functions and to cut the number of quangos. A generous view could be to regard Creative Scotland as an example of the "must do something" mentality which afflicted the previous executive and seems not to have been shaken by the current government.
Many artists and cultural organisations suspect a deeper hidden agenda to change the basis of funding culture into a business model ofthe kind long proposed by Tories north and south of the border.
The introduction of the commercial model would mirror economic development agency support for business through Scottish Enterprise.
Since there will be no extra cash or even less, the suspicion is that business would be encouraged to fund the arts and that whatever state funding and assistance was provided would flow towards creative businesses which could show a profit.
There have already been shifts away from specialised support, such as provided to the film industry by Scottish Screen, towards a generic"creative industries" model applied to everything. The Scottish Arts Council has been reformed so that it no longer has directorates for specific art forms.
Meanwhile, in the wider world, the some what Blairite idea of the"creative industries" is losing whatever currency it had and the global economic crisis will mean that business is even less willing to fund the arts.
And the only people who seem to still support Creative Scotland are sitting in the Scottish Parliament.
The Creative Scotland proposal is due back in the Parliament in a few weeks time in the Public Sector Reform Bill. Watch that space.
Visit www.sau.org.uk to read more on the SAU critique of Creative Scotland.
The hunt is still on for National Theatre's home
PLANS to transfer the headquarters of the itinerant National Theatre of Scotland from its original base in Easterhouse to a former shipyard shed on the banks of the Clyde have been postponed.NTS was created as a national theatre without the encumbrance of abuilding. However, there was always something merely symbolic about locating its administrative headquarters in a Glasgow housing scheme.
The accommodation it still occupies at The Bridge complex inEasterhouse has never been sufficient for the NTS core staff, who have been spread across various locations in the city. NTS currently gives its head office location as being in Port Dundas.
A plan to provide rehearsal and storage space as well as offices in the engine shed of the former Harland and Wolff shipyard in Govan was announced a year ago.
Older cultural buffs among you might remember The Shed as the venue for The Ship, the highly successful large-scale theatrical production by Bill Bryden during Glasgow's year as European City of Culture in1990.
Some of you may even have worked there when it was producing actual ships.
Now, the Scottish government has announced that The Shed "does not offer a viable solution to the NTS's short-term accommodation needs" and, though "the theatre will continue to look at this option in the longer term," other ideas are also "being actively considered."
Despite or, perhaps, because of its lack of a theatrical home, NTS has been one of the biggest cultural successes in Scotland since devolution.
Under English director Vicky Featherstone, NTS has had rave reviewsfor controversial and challenging but popular theatre productions. Most notably, the Iraq war play Black Watch, which premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in 2006, has toured all over the world and has evenbeen released on DVD.
Just wrap yourself in tartan
WHEN in doubt, wrap yourself in tartan.That seems to be the advice which Scottish public figures through the ages have clung to in the absence of having a clue what to do.
All attempts to extend and develop Scotland's tourism seem to quickly end up with a garnish of tartan, shortbread, mountains and pipers.
VisitScotland, the rebranded Scottish Tourist Board, suffered in thisway. Former first minister Jack McConnell's idea to promote Scotland inthe US quickly became Tartan Day. The Year of Homecoming 2009, which was also a plan from the previous administration picked up by the SNP government, appears to be going down the same road.
Now, the Scottish Parliament has launched a competition for a new in-house tartan to celebrate its 10th birthday this year. Haud me back.
No platform for politics
IF THE Scottish nation was expecting firebrand left-wing politics from ex-MSP Tommy Sheridan on Celebrity Big Brother (Channel 4 all day and all night, tabloid pages 1-94) then we will have been disappointed.We should have known, of course. George Galloway was censored when he talked sense and broadcast on an endless loop in all media when he performed nonsense.
Now, we have the surreal experience of watching Sheridan empathise with LaToyah Jackson about her issues with the local Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall and dancing on ice with her while dressed as a pepperpot.
I think we can conclude that reality TV is not much of a platform for political ideas.
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