Creative Scotland

Visual Arts Ecology Paper

2011-12-22T06:41:00.000-08:00

…there is a need for a public-facing, wide representative approach to the changes produced by and through Creative Scotland. Unfortunately, and in deliberate isolation, a handful of visual arts FXOs' seemingly pragmatic if cynical recital of Dixon's 'ecology', as if there was no challenge to the status quo, isn't going to cut it - if a hackneyed ecology is to be dredged up then cue umpteen 'Pedagogy of the Oppressed' quotes...

At some level Creative Scotland's art form reviews, at least in other art form areas as I understand them, are intended to intervene in any perceived entrenched privilege stifling 'diversity' - however problematically constructed as regards markets - or that unhealthy tendency towards 'oligopoly', if we're to use technical market-speak. But, as is being revealed, it is only doing so to instate a heightened, centralised 'commissioning'/ promotional structure - one already in operation before any reviews - cue Westminster reports on Nesta's cronyism, etc - "NESTA will have to be constantly alive to the risk of partiality in the selection of Fellows and projects. It must also be prepared for close scrutiny of its selection procedure and be able to demonstrate it is operating in a fair and open manner."

Also not sure if how 'ecology' is being presented back to Dixon is actually how he understands it anyway... or if his deployment of it is to be taken seriously at all... regardless of how thoroughly discredited 'ecology' already is in the mainstream as a management concept - even the BBC allowing it to be lambasted, eg Adam Curtis's 'The Use and Abuse of Vegetal Concepts' - as part of series 'All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace'.

Doesn't appear anyone's willing/ capable of theorising a concept of public funding outside the highly limited boundaries of personal self-interest and echoing this back to Dixon... What happens if/ when he dismisses 'ecology' as he leaps around his management/ development-speak dictionary, then what? This reactive approach to 'policy' compliance seems in danger of having their agenda-facing cynicism called out, by someone who may equally treat it as just a management tool, of which there are many interchangeable so as to include/ exclude - cue Peter Sloterdijk's 'Critique of Cynical Reason'.

And while change is happening all the time, and no, not all change is bad (hence the alter-globalisation movement!) - Dixon: "There will always be organisations who are concerned about change" - just that the deafening pragmatism of a few is what has helped lead us to this particular precipice.

So, how to account more inclusively for the way "power is exercised upon and through practices of mediated public communication" ('Culture and democracy: media, space and representation', Clive Barnett, Edinburgh University Press, p7.) so as to nurture diversity of opinion, expression, and communication... to situate and examine the politics and discourse of diversity in the context of cultural policies?

I seriously think we need a robust theoretical framework of freedom of communication, one then put into practice, to get us out of this largely self-inflicted cul-de-sac.

As regards getting more of a reflection of the diverse organisational/ art form make-up of Common Practice involved in Scotland in expanding the 'Size Matters' research to here, it should be noted Creative Scotland claims to have dispensed with art form specialisms. It may also be the case that there isn't the comparative scale or diversity of organisations in Scotland, but that doesn't absolve folk from trying, if that's the intention. Any such lack of support for comparative diversity of practice in Scotland raises many questions in and of itself - not least the very real tendency towards 'oligopoly' rather than any problematic concept of 'ecology' in Scotland. Though the ecological metaphor is increasingly mobilsed (in direct response to Dixon raising it as part of the Corporate Plan), masking the process of management that is controlling this, lending it an air of naturalness, organicity and self-realisation, whilst in fact serving as a means of devalorising much other activity.

Other questions - not fully formed or clustered here, but intended in the openness and confidence of discussing this between organisations and others affected - I would like to see approached are:

How is the complexity of 'deferred value' - as set out in the study introduction of 'Size Matters: Notes towards a Better Understanding of the Value, Operation and Potential of Small Visual Arts Organisations' - to be reflected through the selection of organisations to be studied in Scotland?

What difference does the Scottish Artists Union (SAU) make in Scotland, and at what levels? What degree of organisational/ artist exchanges/ communications actually take place, and between whom? Where and how are things discussed? How do artists access/ contribute to information regarding their working practices/ environments?

Are there the organisational equivalents for comparative research?

Is there an absence of practitioner-focused research from Scotland specifically as undertaken by practitioners? What gets recognised, given value, by whom?

How to explore the recurrent notion of 'fragility' routinely mobilised to censor difference in Scotland?

How to address 'information asymmetries' - who gets to constitute constituencies? How do we contest the exclusion of diverse speech positions?

Given differences of scale, how would an extension of the research to Scotland introduce and represent seemingly excluded perspectives/ tensions/ differences/ contestations/ forms of practice outwith FXO formulations (which are being cut back to just bidding for annual project funding in any case)?

With 'Culture' a fully devolved matter for the Scottish Government, what difference does the Centre for Cultural Policy Research (CCPR) make to policy development/ implementation/ adaptation in Scotland? [Philip Schlesinger's comment of "academic absenteeism" as regards the procedure of the Creative Scotland bill. That while there are cuts, some of those are repercussions from Westminster, others are down to internal restructuring within fully devolved policy areas.]

What of a politics of scale and institutional proximity, both for rapid information access (for some) and for increased exposure and concomitant disciplinary processes?

How to account for the political and economic differences between London and Scotland? As regards policy, are the same things institutionally 'valued' between ACE and CS, Westminster and Holyrood, in rhetoric and through what they support' in practice? Is there any policy formation in Scotland to address/ is listening?

Do Scottish government want to hear back a different narrative to Westminster? If so how do they differ? How is the nationalist independence project impacting cultural policy in Scotland? Is Creative Scotland, as focussed, in a position to deliver the necessary state re-production the independence project requires? (Dixon's regional development model and temporal aggregations of the festival format may be tourist-focussed but may not address the cultural needs of internal [re]production of a separate, independent country.)

Freedom of expression includes freedom of political diversity - as Art Monthly (Sept 2011, 349) point out, further financialisation would appear to exclude some practices in the study, for instance with Mute - how is this to be addressed in the research?

The study states: "With judicious investment, these hitherto unexploited assets – which organisations generate naturally as part of core activities – could be converted into earned income, offering small organisations a potential safeguard against economic uncertainty." This may or may not be true for London, but why should it be true for Scotland? All the disciplinary 'investment' mobilised within the visual arts by SAC towards marketisation has not produced an 'indigineous' market, even when times were said to be good, except for the monopolisation of studio property (exacerbated rentier systems) and the nexus of promotional forces at a Local Authority level - 'competitive cities', city marketing/ branding, 'artist-led property strategy'/ gentrification, etc.

One concern is that in pursuing what may be perceived as a pragmatic response for some organisations, heightened financialisation (which has not achieved its stated aims) on the back of waves of already failed financialisation, will see the end of support for a much larger body of cultural production excluded by such 'investment' criteria, which we are already seeing. Where is the resistance to waves of failed financialisation - at differing institutional levels?

How will the research identify and acknowledge resistance to financialisation? Will the research account for the antagonisms and tensions within competing views of cultural production in the mediated spaces of publicly funded culture?

How is the research to account for the consultant's own practice and ambitions reflected and represented within this research? Which goes for all of us, but especially Common Guild having seemingly adopted a gatekeeping function in extending this research. How will CG articulate its ambitions, as regards transparency? Is CG concerned with disentangling itself from its ambitions in its role here? If not, why not?

In Scotland within the arts and academia, I'm curious about an eagerness to be responsive to policy needs, but there not being the same degree in engaging or challenging policy formation directly. As it's reactive it's always on back-foot, being pushed to the right of existing contingent positions. The speed with which alleged social science academics turned to face central government 'Big Society' agendas was astonishing, yet we've heard little to nothing of 'Big Society' for the last 9 months... What effect is policy-led research (a distinct turn away from research-led policy) having on our expectations and how we engage ourselves and others as practitioners?

From one of our previous workshops addressing such issues: "Clearly, every problem we encounter does not necessarily have a solution that we can identify, or even imagine, in the moment; that identifying how existing systems have failed does not guarantee we have the capacity to devise new systems that will succeed. This is a realistic attitude, not a defeatist one. The lack of a guarantee of success does not mean the inevitability of failure, and it does not absolve us of our responsibility to struggle to understand what is happening and to act as [ethical] agents in a difficult world. In fact, I think such realism is required for serious attempts at fashioning a response to the crises. The eventual solutions, if there are to be solutions, may come in frameworks so different from our current understanding that we can’t yet see even their outlines, let alone the details..."

Service Delivery

2011-12-22T06:06:00.000-08:00

With Creative Scotland's continuing opacity, unfolding contradictions (no cuts/ cuts) and informational asymmetry (including drip-feeding rumour of uplifting a few FXOs to Foundation status, since dismissed), to date as practitioners we have mostly tended towards focusing on Creative Scotland's largely unfamiliar (to us) 'language' of Service Delivery while perhaps not yet naming it as such - in part because exploration has taken us to this point of recognising it.
In the absence of a cogent explanation from Creative Scotland of the fundamental changes it is effecting and why, our focus on Creative Scotland's unfamiliar language and its alienating effects has been understandable as one of the few (in)tangibles we have.
One concern emerging, though, is in appealing to Creative Scotland for it to moderate this language as being the same thing as a change to the new model of provision itself and the Scottish government objectives that underlie it.
Again, in part, this may be because we have regularly experienced changes to the lexicon of funding with incremental changes to provision models - e.g. 'Social inclusion' - but nothing as abrupt and all encompassing as what we now experience. (And for this reason comparisons with provision in England may be erroneous.)
It may now be time to get to the crux of where that language comes from, what system it is of and what is meant by it, which appears to lead us to analyse what was/is meant by "single purpose government" in Scotland and its assumptions surrounding economic growth at any cost.
What is becoming evident is that what we are being subject to is less of a 'national cultural strategy' and more of a 'national service agreements' 'service delivery model':

Strategic Objectives - Scottish Government
The Government has five objectives that underpin its core purpose - to create a more successful country, with opportunities for all of Scotland to flourish, through increasing sustainable economic growth.
http://scotland.gov.uk/About/Strategic-Objectives

NATIONAL PERFORMANCE FRAMEWORK
The preceding chapters set out the Scottish Government's ambitious agenda to make Scotland a more successful country. This chapter sets out the new national performance framework, fully integrated into the Spending Review, which will underpin delivery against the government's agenda.
This framework is designed to be clear, logical and easy to understand. It replaces a proliferation of competing priorities, set by the previous administration, providing a unified vision and quantifiable benchmarks against which future progress can be assessed. In developing the national performance framework we have drawn on the successful outcomes-based model of the Commonwealth of Virginia, USA. We believe it will allow us more clearly and openly to demonstrate our performance as a government and sharpen the focus of all those responsible for public services on the delivery of Scotland's priorities.
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2007/11/13092240/9

National Outcomes
Fifteen National Outcomes describe what the Government wants to achieve over the next ten years, articulating more fully this Government's Purpose . They help to sharpen the focus of government, enable our priorities to be clearly understood and provide a clear structure for delivery.
By achieving these outcomes together, we will make Scotland a better place to live and a more prosperous and successful country.
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/About/scotPerforms/outcomes

Local Matters: Delivering the Local Outcomes Approach
GLOSSARY & FOOTNOTES
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2011/03/10115335/5

Single Outcome Agreements
http://www.improvementservice.org.uk/single-outcome-agreements/

Community Planning
http://www.improvementservice.org.uk/community-planning/

guidance for collaborative options evaluation and appraisal of service delivery models
"joint service delivery as a means of achieving efficiency savings, improving service delivery and developing skills capability and capacity"
http://www.localpartnerships.org.uk/UserFiles/File/Publications/guidance%20for%20collaborative%20options%20(NEC)%20-%20Jan09%20(FINAL).pdf

CAPITA : Outsourcing/ Service delivery models
No two services are the same
So why be rigid about how they are delivered?
http://www.capita.co.uk/outsourcing/pages/service-delivery-models.aspx

oh, cuts after all

2011-12-22T05:05:00.000-08:00

Beyond being fed misleading and rapidly dating headlines - e.g. 'Creative Scotland offers a positive story' (to be fair, Bonnar hedged CS's figures as 'projections') - reality bites...:

Fears as £7m arts fund axed

Herald, Phil Miller, FRIDAY 9 DECEMBER 2011

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/fears-as-7m-arts-fund-axed.2011126297

...Mr Dixon said: “We are moving to a new approach where we value these organisations within an investment portfolio. There will be Foundation organisations, and those we invest in annually – who are key to their sector – but the majority will be project companies and they will be able to do things on their own terms. They will be able to bid into our lottery and investment programmes, and we also hope they will be able to deliver some of our Strategic Commissions,” he said.
“There are some sectors that are feeling challenged by this. There will always be organisations who are concerned about change, or perhaps are not being realistic about the fact that there is change in public sector finance, and Creative Scotland come in as an organisation and is determined to be strategic and get value out of its investment.”
One concerned source said: “The biggest problem has been the lack of clarity. We do not know whether we will have to shift to project funding or any other kind of fund.”

Troubled arts body used charity cash to plug deficit

Oct 5 2011 by Craig Robertson, Dumfries Standard Wednesday

http://www.dgstandard.co.uk/dumfries-news/local-news-dumfries/2011/10/05/troubled-arts-body-used-charity-cash-to-plug-deficit-51311-29537545/

... charity cash was used to plug a black hole in the finances of a collapsed arts group…Problems started last October when the Scottish Government funding body, Creative Scotland, told the organisation they would no longer be provided with £200,000 of annual core funding...

It's also worth remembering that of the 139 applications deemed eligible for FXO funding in 2011, 60 received it.

Traditional Arts - Culture and Commerce

2011-12-22T04:38:00.000-08:00

While the production framed by the political contrivance 'Traditional Arts' is still couched in terms of making "a significant contribution to Scotland's economy" (SAC), the intention here is not to set art forms competing against each other for resources but rather to show that MSPs have identified need for support of cultural production outwith creative industries 'entrepreneurialism'.

Traditional arts ‘need a national company’

Edd McCracken, Arts Correspondent - Herald, 31 Jan 2010

Scotland’s traditional arts – music, dance, songs and story-telling – should have its own national company on a par with the likes of the National Theatre of Scotland and Scottish Opera, according to a new report commissioned by the Scottish Government.

The recommendation is just one from the Traditional Arts Working Group report, published today at the Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow.

The document’s major theme is how the traditional arts can achieve the same parity of esteem with the likes of other publicly funded art forms such as theatre, ballet and classical music.

It claims that in the traditional arts, such as highland dancing and folk music, “their significance and value is still not recognised, promoted and celebrated enough”.

Other recommendations include: the creation of a Traditional Arts Apprentice scheme, matching young traditional musicians or dancers with an experienced mentor; the creation of a traditional arts centre; Creative Scotland to set up a specialist fund for the traditional arts; and a major study be undertaken into their economic impact.

The working group was established in February last year by the then culture minister Linda Fabiani. Its remit was to report to the Government how the traditional arts could be best supported and their future secured. The group was chaired by David Francis, musician and founder of the Traditional Music Forum. He said raising the profile and confidence of the traditional arts is the “fundamental idea that underpinned the whole thing”.

On the establishment of a traditional arts national company he said: “It is about getting the traditional arts put on the same level of esteem. Scottish Opera employs 200 people and every show is a spectacle. We’re not looking for parity in that sense. It is just so that the traditional arts are seen in the same light as these other art forms, which for historical and political reasons have always managed to grab a big share of whatever money for culture is going”.

He added that, despite being hampered by “haggis and heather” cliches, on the whole the traditional arts have be “getting there” in Scotland.

“The process of putting together the report for the minister has been really useful in giving us a snapshot of the traditional arts community’s key concerns at this stage in its development,” he said. “We found, by and large, a confident community in good heart.”

Culture Minister Fiona Hyslop said many of the ideas were “achievable”.

“The idea that key individuals might pass on their skills and expertise to a younger generation via some kind of mentoring scheme is particularly attractive. I have asked the Scottish Arts Council and Creative Scotland to look at how this might work in practice and to make recommendations. The report also recognises that traditional arts make a significant contribution to Scotland’s economy; I have already asked for an assessment of that contribution to be carried out.”

She added she would respond fully to all the recommendations in June.

...........

Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2009

To: Peattie C (Cathy), MSP

Subject: Re: Traditional Arts Working Group

thanks for your email and for forwarding the information about the Traditional Arts Working Group. Can you tell me if there is a definition of Traditional Arts and if so, who has come up with it? How will the support for the Traditional Arts be balanced with support for the non Traditional Arts, as well as other art forms, and are there extra funding streams in place to match any proposed support specifically aimed towards the Traditional Arts?

[ends]

From:

Date: 21 July 2009

Subject: RE: Traditional Arts Working Group

The use of the term traditional arts generally refers to traditional music, dance and storytelling.

There has been a particular problem with funding for traditional arts and Scots language - not least SAC criteria which effectively excluded organisations devoted to traditional forms by virtue of them not being innovative enough. Not that they weren't innovative, but intrinsically, their development is long term / evolutionary / participative / organic, which means they were never likely to fare well under such criteria.

This problem threatened the existence of several leading traditional arts organisations, at a time when we were about to have a special celebration our cultural heritage in the year of the homecoming. The sums involved were not huge in the overall scale of things - the groups' grants were tens of thousands rather than the millions that are consumed by some - but the cuts would, at very least, severely curtail their activities and affect a lot of people.

It was the recognition of this problem that prompted the setting up of the working group.

The CPG has a lot of people with an interest in the traditional arts, including I am sure, some whose primary reason for involvement lies elsewhere, so I forwarded the email to everyone. It may also be that others share some of the problems that face the traditional arts groups, and they would like to see action across the board to address these issues. There are, I know, also other criticisms regarding support for other groups. As you know, the CPG is available as a forum for discussion and circulation of material pertaining to any such matter.

[ends]

............

Culture, External Affairs and Tourism Directorate Culture Division

T: 0131-244 0305 F:0131-244 0353

E: Patrick.berry@scotland.gsLgov.uk

17 July 2009

Traditional Arts Working Group

I am writing on behalf of the Traditional Arts Working Group who, later this year, will report to to the Minister for Culture, External Affairs and the Constitution.

The Group has bean asked to make recommendations on establishing the optimum future guaranteed support arrangements for Scotland's Traditional Arts through the best use of available resources, both financial and non-financial: so that the Traditional Arts can fulfil their role in Scotland's culture, heritage, economy, education and community life.The group have asked me to extend an invitation to you, to provide them with a written submission, highlighting the topics which affect the areas of interest to you, in the traditional arts. Submissions received by the group will feed into their ongoing discussions.

Questions you may wish to consider if you would like to provide a submission

• What sort of support (financial and non-financial) do the areas of Traditional Arts, in which you are interested, currently receive, and how long term is it?

• What does this support enable?

• Are there areas where you see gaps in this support or scope for greater support?

• Can these areas be addressed by funding or other means?

• How can the traditional arts community - musicians, activists, enthusiasts, organisations - best advocate the case for financial and non-financial support?

• What is the best way for the traditional arts community to make the necessary links and alliances to strengthen their position?'

Submissions can be offered to the working group by email:

traditionalartsworkinggroup@scotland.gsi.gov.uk

or alternatively by post to me at:

The Traditional Arts Working Group

C/O Patrick Berry

Culture Division

The Scottish Government

Area 2-H North

Victoria Quay

Edinburgh I

E6 6QQ

Submissions will be accepted until 14 August 2009.

Further information on the group can be found at

http://www.scotiand.gov.uk/Topics/ArtsCultureSport/arts/traditionalarts/tradartsworkinggroup

...............

Variant's submission to the parliamentary Traditional Arts Working Group

Please find below Variant's submission to the Traditional Arts Working Group, which we have already submitted. I also wanted to send it to you directly, as one of the few Parties [Green] aligned against the growth paradigm of development:

It is the contradiction between UNESCO obligations to enable culture as an independent force in society and "single purpose" government's neoliberal pursuit of tethering cultural expression to a failed economic agenda that, in my opinion, makes the Creative Scotland proposals unworkable. The selective treatment of Traditional Arts is but one manifestation of those inherent contradictions, and we need to look at all these proposals holistically to understand why.

I am also of the opinion that Creative Scotland and its highly partial financier-focus on expression and artifact is being allowed to substitute for a coherent cultural policy based on safeguarding communicative acts within the public sphere. In this sense, Creative Scotland is primarily an economic policy that will not fulfill its public function of ensuring freedom of communication.

'Traditional Arts' and the need for a democratic decentering of the social processes through which culture is mediated.

The Scottish Government has recently aimed support specifically towards 'Traditional Arts' -- traditional music, dance, and storytelling -- and an invitation has been extended to make submissions to the parliamentary Traditional Arts Working Group (TAWG) for, I hope, meaningful deliberation. To be clear, my perspective here is not based on the intrinsic value or right for practitioners to pursue those forms in and of themselves.

"[T]he UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) adopted a Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions in October 2005. The treaty, which entered into force in March 2007, recognises that cultural goods and services cannot be treated as mere commodities. It explicitly allows parties to protect and promote the diversity of their cultural expressions through, for instance, adopting measures aimed at:

- providing opportunities for the creation, production, dissemination and enjoyment of domestic cultural activities, goods and services, including provisions relating to language;

- providing domestic independent cultural industries and activities in the informal sector effective access to the means of production, dissemination and distribution;

- providing public financial assistance; and

- enhancing diversity of the media, including through public service broadcasting.

Parties to the convention may also take ‘all appropriate measures’ to protect and preserve cultural expressions in situations where they have determined that these are at risk of extinction, under serious threat, or otherwise in need of urgent safeguarding." (ICTSD)

The International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) make clear that, globally, "cultural industries are progressively taking over traditional forms of creation and dissemination and bringing about changes in cultural practices." Language is stated by UNESCO as but one example vulnerable to neoliberal globalisation.

Through Creative Scotland, the nationalist Scottish Government is seeking to implement such a growth paradigm of development centred on Creative Industries -- reinforcing an entrepreneurial ideology of debt, risk and precarity. Cultural products are to be assimilated in support of the economy and nationalism coalesced as a definable export brand, whilst at-one-and-the-same-time using this very threat of globalised economisation of culture to uniquely privilege (by safeguarding from competition) specific cultural expressions that (directly or indirectly, but certainly accumulatively) aid signify the government's political project of Constitutional Change.

It should be stressed that focusing on the production of a national subject is not the 'tactic' of any one political party (be it 'British values' or 'Team Scotland') but that here it enables us to relate nationalism(s) to wider questions of ideology, political identity, and the exercising of power.

It is evident that with the forming of Creative Scotland (the collapsing of Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen) a widening distinction is being drawn between 'innovation' and 'tradition', where the so-called innovative is narrowly defined in entrepreneurial terms. A factor of Traditional Arts' inability to compete with other cultural forms for public funding under the criteria of 'innovation' is said to be the reason for Traditional Arts' special treatment. Closer to the truth I suspect is a conflict of government increasingly expecting supposed arms-length bodies to more closely and additionally support government-initiated projects (in this case SAC and Homecoming, according to TAWG) regardless of the existing government-led criteria that those bodies must operate within. This points to a creeping assault on what autonomy remains of public funding; both in what cultural expressions are politically desirable and therefore what is then being prioritised to receive support. It is apparent that Tradition is not being defined as the traditions of the peoples actually living in the country but as tradition of the Nation as 'Scottish' -- "public funding for Scottishness", as it has been dubbed. This additional construction of political support for a specific specialism (stripping the arms-length principle) contradicts Creative Scotland's own supposed objectives of cutting bureaucracy and cheerleading market competition. Moreover, this special treatment via direct political patronage smacks of ministerial hypocrisy when the continuation of art-form specialisms within Creative Scotland remains far from clear. What we appear to be getting is not a coherent Cultural Policy at all, but a construction of selective support for cultural artifact based primarily on ministerial taste and political expediency.

This policy of intervention and exemption should be screened and assessed for inequitable countenance of Traditional Arts: how monocultural, geographically prescribed or ethno-centric a Traditional Arts construction may be, and how the privileging of specific expressions rests alongside other human rights obligations in the fields of expression and communication -- such as eliminating unlawful racial discrimination, promoting equal opportunities, and promoting good relations between people from different racial groups. Then it should be determined if an essentialist categorisation of an official cultural cannon, the Traditional Arts, is indeed, on the basis of UNESCO, "at risk of extinction, under serious threat, or otherwise in need of urgent safeguarding" from "single-purpose" government's own economic policy!

In doing so, we need to accept the impossibility -- indeed, the undesirability -- of imposing a static notion of 'Cultural Heritage' on what is in fact a contingent process. We need to be critically aware "of inherited understandings of the autonomy of cultural artifacts and of aesthetic judgment" (Clive Barnett), and of the supposedly 'authentic'; that defined cultural and ethnic boundaries are actually politically determined boundaries.

Culture is now conjoined in a parliamentary portfolio with Constitutional Change, part of which pivots on promoting an emergent national consciousness where key sites are enlisted to unify Scotland’s national narrative, intended to cohere to an ideological understanding of the Nation as a positive, uniform, competitive culture. Robin Baillie of the National Galleries has written : “Modernity imposes itself through its power to construct the history of a nation. History is formed in the collecting, classification and streamlining of objects, images and memories into a pedagogic form. ‘The origin of the nation’s visual presence is the effect of a narrative struggle’. [Bakhtin’s] statement asserts that any image in order to be seen will enter into a field constituted by this struggle. A reflexive reading of this struggle will allow the forces that hold the imagery in place as evidential documents to be recognised as constitutive of those same images.” (The Nation as Narrative)

[As Kristin Ross has stated, in 'The emergence of social space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune']: "The most sterile brand of such nationalism wishes to throw off imperialist rule in order to assert already established national identity, whose only flaw is to have been contaminated and repressed by the presence of the colonialists. In an expression / blockage model dear to most Romantic thought, the colonized know already who they are; it is just that the colonialist refuses to listen. A more promising paradigm of revolutionary nationalism appreciates that the anti-imperialist question turns on constructing the conditions in which it would in principle be possible for the colonized to find out what they might become..."

The problem remains with the consolidation of a national cultural identity in an official cultural cannon that “one person’s inclusionary republicanism is another person’s ethnocentric monoculturalism.” (Bryan Fanning) That if we are to address issues of cultural diversity and communication's vulnerability to neoliberalism then we must do so by connecting them to the idea of wider social democracy -- not simplistically to the subjective and partial artifacts of "the best that has been done and said", but to all that entails freedom of communication in the mediated spaces of public communication. For this we need a coherent cultural policy drawn-up not for rentier systems of commerce but a cultural policy that fundamentally supports communicative acts; one written by those who in the public interest can and do critically account for the way "power is exercised upon and through practices of mediated public communication". (Clive Barnett)

Leigh French

co-editor, Variant

(29/7/09)

...............

Traditional Arts Working Group

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/ArtsCultureSport/arts/traditionalarts/tradartsworkinggroup

The Traditional Arts Working Group is tasked with considering the future support arrangements for Scotland's traditional arts, and will make recommendations to the Scottish Government later this year.

The Traditional Arts Working Group's Report was published on 31 January 2010: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2010/01/28100441/0

"ESTEEM - Revisiting previous Scottish Arts Council reports on the traditional arts shows that considerable progress has been made in relation to their status and esteem. This is seen in the large number of successful projects, events and organisations now evident in the traditional arts field. However, there is a perception, as evidenced by the submissions to the Working Group and comments at public meetings, that recognition and respect for the traditional arts, and those working in them, is still patchy. Many still feel that their significance and value is still not recognised, promoted and celebrated enough. The argument is that, although the traditional arts hold meaning for many, the general level of esteem in which they are held in civil society and by professional practitioners remains low. …"

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2010/01/28100441/3

……

UNESCO Tackles Culture and Commerce

A new international treaty entered into force in March, encouraging parties to adopt measures to protect the diversity of cultural expressions that may be imperilled by the quickening pace of globalisation.

Since the early 1980s, international trade in cultural goods has grown six-fold, increasing from US$9.5 billion in 1980 to US$60 billion in 2002. According to the World Bank, cultural and creative industries account for more than 7 percent of world GNP, which represents a global commercial value of US$1.3 trillion. A handful of countries export the lion’s share of cultural goods, with Europe leading at 51.8 percent, followed by Asia (20.6 percent) and North America (16.9 percent). Likewise, rich countries account for more than 90 percent of all cultural imports, led by the US, the UK and Germany. In contrast, Latin America and Africa were estimated to represent 3 and 1 percent, respectively, of world trade in cultural goods in 2002.

Some statistics on the diversity of cultural expressions are startling. For example, while Hollywood accounts for 85 percent of box office revenue worldwide, in Africa just 2 percent of the population has seen African films. There thus appears to be both a decrease in the dissemination of cultural goods on a global scale, and a decline in the production of, and access to, a diversity of such goods and services.

In addition, cultural industries are progressively taking over traditional forms of creation and dissemination and bringing about changes in cultural practices. The diminishing diversity of languages offers a striking example: while there are more than 6000 living languages in the world, those used in commerce and new technologies are increasingly dominant. It is estimated that a language disappears every two weeks and there are predictions that 90 percent of them will be extinct within a hundred years.

Convention on Cultural Diversity

It is against this backdrop that the members of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) adopted a Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions1 in October 2005. The treaty, which entered into force in March 2007, recognises that cultural goods and services cannot be treated as mere commodities. It explicitly allows parties to protect and promote the diversity of their cultural expressions1 through, for instance, adopting measures aimed at:

# providing opportunities for the creation, production, dissemination and enjoyment of domestic cultural activities, goods and services, including provisions relating to language;

# providing domestic independent cultural industries and activities in the informal sector effective access to the means of production, dissemination and distribution;

# providing public financial assistance; and

# enhancing diversity of the media, including through public service broadcasting.

Relationship with WTO Rules

A major point of contention during the negotiations for the new treaty was how its provisions would relate to WTO disciplines. Opponents, such as the US, saw its main purpose as an attempt to give additional legitimacy for the maintenance and possible expansion of measures – maintained by countries such as Canada, China, France, South Korea and many others – that restrict market penetration of foreign films and music, as well as other cultural products or services (magazines, audiovisual broadcasts, etc.). Its proponents considered it as a necessity to safeguard the survival of their cultural identity, language and traditions.

The convention has been ratified by 67 individual countries, as well as the European Union as a whole. The US voted against its adoption, arguing that the instrument remained “too flawed, too open to misinterpretation and too prone to abuse for us to support.” The US also stressed that the convention “must not be read to prevail over or modify rights and obligations under other international agreements, including WTO agreements. Potential ambiguities in the convention must not be allowed to endanger what the global community has achieved, over many years, in the areas of free trade, the free flow of information, and freedom of choice in cultural expression and enjoyment.”

The language regarding the treaty’s relationship with other international agreements is indeed ambiguous: on the one hand it affirms that parties will not ‘subordinate’ the convention to any other treaty, and on the other it specifies that nothing in it “shall be interpreted as modifying rights and obligations of the parties under any other treaties.”

Thus, should a WTO dispute arise regarding measures taken to protect the diversity of cultural expressions, a defendant in the case could refer to the rights accorded by the convention, while a complainant could evoke the clause that it does not modify the defendant’s obligations under other treaties. Non-parties, such as the US, would of course not be bound by the convention’s provisions at all. Legal scholar Joost Pauwelyn, however, has argued that the WTO “presumably would not wish to isolate itself from the rest of the international lawmaking world by closing its eyes to any legislative initiative agreed on outside its own building, be it consented to by the disputing parties or not.”

http://ictsd.org/i/news/bridges/4101/

........

UNESCO Convention on cultural diversity

The European Community ratified the UNESCO Convention on cultural diversity, together with 12 Member States

On 18 December 2006, the Community ratified the Convention, alongside Finland, Austria, France, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Slovenia, Estonia, Slovakia, Luxembourg, Lithuania and Malta. Bulgaria also joined this ratification.

This joint ratification fulfils the initial objective to be amongst the 30 first ratifications, and will thus allow the entry into force of the Convention on 18 March 2007.

http://ec.europa.eu/culture/portal/action/diversity/unesco_en.htm

TEN KEYS to the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions

adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO at its 33rd session, 2005

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001495/149502e.pdf

UNESCO Decides on Draft Convention on Cultural, Artistic Diversity

The third session of the intergovernmental meeting of experts of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on 3 June decided to forward a draft Convention on the Protection of the Diversity of Cultural Contents and Artistic Expressions to an upcoming UNESCO General Conference in October 2005 for approval. The third session of the intergovernmental meeting of experts, gathering from 25 May to 3 June, reviewed a “clean” version of the draft produced by chair Kader Asmal in April based on negotiations of the second session of the group in February (see BRIDGES Trade BioRes, 4 March 2005). The agreed draft text, in new Article 20 (old Article 19) aims to resolve controversy at that meeting regarding the compatibility of the right of Parties to “adopt measures aimed at protecting and promoting the diversity of cultural expressions within its territory”, as set out in Article 6, which could potentially include subsidies to promote cultural activities, goods and services as defined in Article 4 of the draft Convention, with the WTO Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures. The compromise on Article 20 recognises that all international agreements, including the WTO, are complementary and mutually supportive and that, while the Convention should not be interpreted as modifying the rights and obligations of the Parties under other Conventions, Parties shall take into account the relevant provisions of this Convention when entering into other international obligations. While welcoming this compromise language, some countries said that they had yet to check with their capitals on the proposed wording. While countries such as the EU, Canada and some African countries have advocated for a strong Convention, other countries including the US, UK and Japan have raised concerns about its potential implications.

http://ictsd.org/i/news/biores/63206/

Convention for the Protection of Diversity of Cultural Contents and Artistic Expressions

http://www.cptech.org/unesco/

Preliminary Report of the Director-General Containing Two Preliminary Drafts of a Convention On the Protection of the Diversity of Cultural Contents and Artistic Expressions.

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001356/135647e.pdf

Recommendation concerning the Status of the Artist

The General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, meeting in Belgrade from 23 September to 28 October 1980 at its twenty-first session,

http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13138&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

UNESCO and the WTO: A Clash of Cultures?

TANIA VOON

http://www.worldtradelaw.net/articles/voonunesco.pdf

servicing or organising artists' union?

2011-12-22T04:27:00.000-08:00

Kunstitöötajad, ühinege! / Art Workers, Unite!

A seminar on the working conditions, social guarantees and organizing models of art workers.

MÄRZ, Tallinn, Estonia - 19-20th of November 2011

[Which included:]

Vladan Jeremic: During the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia structure of artists union was very developed and defined by the system of self-management and state bureaucracy. Each artists could have a status of co-called “independent free artists” with the possibility to get health care, studios, flats, insurance and pension, all given by the state. During the process of disintegration of Yugoslavia, the neoliberal reforms and the hard economical transition have transformed completely almost all official institutions into agencies or capitalist companies. Amazingly some of the artist unions have survived until today. Such an example is the huge Association of Visual Artists of Serbia (http://www.ulus-art.org/) with more than 2000 members that still kept almost all benefits from the former socialist system. One completely different example is a recently established platform of Belgrade independent cultural scene called The Other Scene (http://www.drugascena.org/node/2). The Other Scene gathers organizations, groups, and individuals involved in the improvement of legal and infrastructural status of the independent scene; redistribution of public spaces; increasing transparency of operational mechanisms and protocols of responsible institutions in arts and culture; as well as presence of the independent scene in media and public space. Strategies of the Other Scene in the field of cultural policies are: integration of the independent scene “bottom-up” (self-organization of actors), increasing of its visibility, dialogue/pressure on the responsible institutions and internal coordination of activities. In the presentation those two different models of organizations (ULUS and The Other Scene), will be critically presented and both models discussed with all their advantages and disadvantages and functions in local and in European context.

http://marzprojekt.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/kunstitootajad-uhinege-art-workers-unite/

http://marzprojekt.wordpress.com/2010/11/16/seminar-kunstitootajad-uhinege-seminar-all-art-workers-unite/

“Language is never neutral”

2011-12-22T04:15:00.000-08:00

Responses to Variant’s interview with Andrew Dixon, CEO of Creative Scotland (published, December 2011)  

"It is difficult to ignore the feeling that we are witnessing the formation of ‘legitimate’ subjects of art and culture and a re-imagining of what it means to use those very words."

 Feeling a heightened imperative following the interview with Andrew Dixon in the spring issue and subsequent developments, Variant has sought to proactively and collectively consider the potential impact of these changes for artistic practice, and, more broadly, for the meaning of art and culture in contemporary Scotland. As a contribution towards such dialogue, Variant has invited a series of responses which here take the form of interview exchanges and written rejoinders.

http://www.variant.org.uk/42texts/Languageis.html

The original interview with Andrew Dixon can be read here:

Investing, Advocating, Promoting... strategically

Daniel Jewesbury interviews Andrew Dixon, Chief Executive of Creative Scotland (2nd March 2011)

A revealing exchange outlining proposals in Creative Scotland's Corporate Plan:

"We are getting rid of all the art form silos… There will be no art form budgets…we will have generic budgets that are more strategic, much more planned and on a larger scale".

http://www.variant.org.uk/41texts/adixon41.html

2+2=5

2011-10-03T04:16:00.000-07:00

September 2011: After all those other upbeat-compared-to-England 'reports' on cuts which chose to ignore the pre-arranged year's delay between Salmond and Cameron, Creative Scotland's architect of choice, Anne Bonnar, comments on the still further cuts - Creative Scotland being a cut in the first instance - now likely to be to 'strategic commissioning' (existing FXOs):

http://annebonnar.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/whats-in-store-for-culture-in-scotland-after-the-budget-cuts/

For the keep-calm-and-carry-on version, see:

http://culturecounts.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/cuts-to-culture-budget/

March 2011: "...This fundamental shift means that more than 50% of the organisations funded by the Scottish Arts Council are in a pool which will vanish. Currently £18.2m is provided to 51 Foundation Organisations and £8m is provided to 60 Flexibly Funded Organisationsand this category will disappear to be replaced by strategic commissioning. This is bound to cause alarm..."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/culture-cuts-blog/2011/mar/17/arts-funding-arts-policy

November 2010: "There are many significant differences between both the budgets and the politics of Scotland and England as well as the cultural dimensions. The most important aspect regarding funding for culture in today's budget is that this is a one year holding budget from the SNP minority administration before next May's election. Another is that we have been spared the public flogging of the Arts Council of England because we have already taken the pain of abolishing the Scottish Arts Council in the course of establishing the more streamlined agency Creative Scotland. But the overall cut to the culture budget is 10% which is higher than the 6.9% John Swinney cited as the standard cut applied to non ring-fenced services. So its the next instalments which will shape the story." (annebonnar)

http://annebonnar.wordpress.com/2010/11/17/the-impact-of-scotlands-budget-for-culture-wont-be-felt-until-the-next-instalments/

July 2010: "...More than 50 of Scotland's best-known arts organisations ... face deep cuts in their grants from the new government arts agency, Creative Scotland."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/jul/23/scotland-arts-edinburgh-funding-cuts

commonality of political ethos inferred

2011-10-02T11:33:00.000-07:00

http://www.commonpractice.org.uk/mission-statement

Common Practice - Mission Statement
–
Common Practice, London is an advocacy group working for the recognition and fostering of the small-scale contemporary visual arts sector in London. The group aims to promote the value of the sector and its activities, act as a knowledge base and resource for members and affiliated organisations, and develop a dialogue with other visual art organisations on a local, national and international level. The group's founding members are Afterall, Chisenhale Gallery, Electra, Gasworks, LUX, Matt's Gallery, Mute Publishing, The Showroom and Studio Voltaire – together representing a diverse range of activities including commissioning, production, publishing, research, exhibitions, residencies and artists' studios.

Position paper
–
Announcing the publication of a new research paper on the economy and value of the small-scale visual arts sector in the UK
Size Matters: Notes towards a Better Understanding of the Value, Operation and Potential of Small Visual Arts Organisations is written by Sarah Thelwall, commissioned by Common Practice, London with support from Arts Council England.
It seeks to articulate the value of the small-scale visual arts sector within the wider arts ecology. The paper explores the significance potential small-scale organisations have in the present cultural landscape and economy, also detailing the operational and investment challenges they face in realising this. Finally, it advocates a reconsideration of present assessment and investment practices.
Size Matters was published in July 2011 and will be presented in a variety of forums to stimulate discussion around its core questions – whose urgency has increased in recent months.
For more information and queries regarding the paper please contact the Common Practice members via our email < info AT commonpractice.org.uk >

Download a copy of the position paper - Size Matters
http://www.commonpractice.org.uk/sites/www.commonpractice.org.uk/files/Common-Practice-London-Size-Matters_0.pdf

If we can ever put particular contexts aside, though perhaps of thought within Scotland is:

"The group aims to promote the value of the sector and its activities, act as a knowledge base and resource for members and affiliated organisations and develop a dialogue with other visual art organisations at a local, national and international level."

Which initially sets out a hopefully broad and inclusive definition of 'value' beyond perhaps that which is economically realisable - immediate, deferred, unutilised, or otherwise. A definition which itself holds a lot of potentiality. Whether the political scope of that potentiality is fully realised in the research outcomes of the paper is another matter. As Art Monthly tell-it-like-it-is:

"While there are many interesting strands explored in the paper, one issue is not made entirely clear, and that concerns an aspect affecting the uneven landscape of organisations in terms of commercial opportunity. While it is noted that small organisations often commission risky, less obviously commercial art forms - as compared with larger institutions or commercial galleries - it should also be noted that this commissioning springs from a political ethos inherent within the commissioning organisations, and that this ethos precludes particular funding; it would not be possible, for example, for Common Practice member Mute magazine to accept sponsorship from BP, at Tate Britain does, or private banker JP Morgan, as the Serpentine Gallery does. Hence the move towards philanthropic giving and sponsorship, which the coalition government is so keen on, is likely to disadvantage small organisations even further."

Small is Beautiful, Art Monthly, Sept 2011, 349

Setting the tone for 'Strategic Commissioning'

2011-10-02T10:38:00.000-07:00

"Before we move to the commissioning model, there will be a rolling programme of reviews, with the sectors involved playing a key role, to inform our needs for different sectors. The process for commissioning will be introduced in stages with selected delivery partners replacing FXOs as each franchise becomes operational. This would start in 2011 with reviews of performing arts, visual arts and crafts. It will be followed in 2012 with reviews of film, digital media and festivals. In 2013 we will review literature agencies, publishing and equalities."

Andrew Dixon, Chief Executive of Creative Scotland

http://www.variant.org.uk/41texts/adixon41.html

So where are we as of October 2011 - assuming there hasn't already been a significant shift to a 'commissioning model' in practice?

Economic Impact Study - Invitation to Tender
Creative Scotland is looking for organisations or consultants to undertake an economic impact study examining the contribution made to the Scottish economy by the arts and creative industries. We are seeking to appoint contractors with high-level skills in economic analysis and expertise in the area of economics and the arts and creative industries.
Closing Date: 12pm Friday 14 October 2011
http://www.creativescotland.com/about/our-tenders

Economic Impact Study Tender Brief
Project Specification
1. Introduction

1.1 Creative Scotland was formed in 2010 through the merger of the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen, with a remit to work across the arts, culture, film, TV and the creative industries. Our vision is for a nation where the arts and the creative industries (A&CI) are supported and celebrated and their economic contribution fully captured. Our Corporate Plan 2011-2014 was published in April 2011.

1.2 We seek to develop policies and activities that will enhance the economic contribution of the A&CI. In our plan we also identify a series of aspirations based on a ten year horizon to 2020. One of these aspirations is for the cultural economy in Scotland to exceed the UK average and contribute to sustainable economic growth. In this way our work contributes to National Outcome 2 of the National Performance Framework: ensuring Scotland realises its full economic potential, with more and better employment opportunities for our people.

1.3 To achieve these goals we work closely with arts organisations, skills agencies, funding councils, local authorities and business gateways. Importantly, we chair the coordinating group of the Scottish Creative Industries Partnership (SCIP), working closely with the Scottish Government, enterprise agencies and other key partners.

1.4 In order to support decision-making and planning, it is essential that Creative Scotland and our partners have access to robust information about the scale and nature of the contribution of the A&CI to the wider Scottish economy. We are now undertaking a programme of research to capture and develop, on an ongoing basis, a nation-wide understanding of the economic impact of the A&CI.

Download the full brief here:

http://www.creativescotland.com/sites/default/files/editor/Economic_Impact_Study_-_Tender_Brief.doc

Creative Scotland Research
Scoping Study into the Economic Impact of the Arts and Creative Industries in Scotland
September 2011
http://www.creativescotland.com/about/our-research

EKOS Economic Impact Scoping Study

Creative Scotland seeks to develop policies that will enhance the economic contribution of the Arts and Creative Industries. We commissioned a scoping study to review existing impact studies, scope the extent and quality of available data and recommend an approach for conducting a Scotland-wide economic impact study (EIS). This study was undertaken by EKOS Limited; they set out what is achievable through an EIS of Scotland’s arts and creative industries and how best to gather information that can be easily replicated by sector bodies.

EKOS Economic Impact Scoping Study (pdf)
http://www.creativescotland.com/sites/default/files/editor/EKOS_Economic_Impact_Scoping_Study.pdf

EKOS Economic Impact Scoping Study (doc)
http://www.creativescotland.com/sites/default/files/editor/EKOS_Economic_Impact_Scoping_Study.doc

ekos - Economic and Social Development

http://www.ekos-consultants.co.uk/

http://www.ekos-consultants.co.uk/our-expertise/creative-economy/

'Microcredit doesn't work - it's now official'

2011-10-02T10:06:00.000-07:00

Creative Financing: feasibility study into financial mechanisms for supporting small-scale creative activity in Scotland

Shetland Arts with support from Mission Models Money, Creative Scotland and Highlands and Islands Enterprise

Final Report, January 2011

"...There are plans to explore the implications of this new study alongside other related work that has been recently published or is in the final stages of research at a national event later in year."

http://www.shetlandarts.org/new-national-study-into-small-scale-creative-finance/

http://www.shetlandarts.org/images/2011/06/Creative-Financing-Feasibility-Study-2011.pdf

+++++++++++++++

Microcredit doesn't work - it's now official

Milford Bateman, September 20, 2011

"The inexorable expansion of microcredit and informal microenterprises ... inevitably absorbs the financial resources and policymaker attention that might otherwise have been directed towards supporting the crucial SME sector."

"Muhammad Yunus famously announced that poverty would be eradicated in a generation, and the very notion of poverty itself would soon be 'consigned to a museum' to which our children would have to go on study tours to see what all the fuss was about. With such hugely seductive and supposedly successful forms of 'capitalism by and for the poor' on offer, the key international development institutions, and the US government and World Bank in particular, fell over themselves to finance the idea of microcredit. The global microcredit movement was up and running very fast indeed. Unfortunately, after nearly 30 years of global experience in the field, it is now quite clear that Dr Yunus has turned out to be spectacularly wrong. A growing number of independent analysts and institutions, and even long-standing supporters of microcredit, now accept that this is indeed the case."

http://opinion.bdnews24.com/2011/09/20/microcredit-doesn’t-work-–-it’s-now-official/

Also see:

LOANS & INTERNSHIPS WORKSHOP: CCA 5, Tue 9th Nov 2010

Sophie Hope & Leigh French examine Case Studies:

http://www.variant.org.uk/events/art+labour/Art+Labour.html#L2

Credit Markets - micro-finance : the individualistic focus of development intervention

download PDF : http://www.variant.org.uk/events/art+labour/rentiers.pdf

'The creative class is a lie'

2011-10-02T09:51:00.000-07:00

Anyone still labouring under the illusion:

The creative class is a lie. The dream of a laptop-powered "knowledge class" is dead. The media is melting. Blame the economy - and the Web

"…But for those who deal with ideas, culture and creativity at street level — the working- or middle-classes within the creative class — things are less cheery. Book editors, journalists, video store clerks, musicians, novelists without tenure — they’re among the many groups struggling through the dreary combination of economic slump and Internet reset. The creative class is melting, and the story is largely untold…"

http://entertainment.salon.com/2011/10/01/creative_class_is_a_lie/singleton/

"…But was this ever true? And who are the creative classes, anyway? The creative class is made up of a ‘creative core’, according to Florida’s classification, which is comprised of scientists, engineers, university professors, poets, novelists, artists, entertainers, actors, designers and architects, as well as the ‘thought leadership’ of our society, including non-fiction writers, editors, cultural figures, think-tank researchers, analysts and other opinion-makers. The creative-core group is supported by a phalanx of ‘creative professionals’ who work in a diverse range of ‘knowledge intensive’ industries such as high-tech, financial services, the legal and health care professions, and business management. While Marx understood class in terms of conflicting class interests dominated by uneven power relations, Florida, a keen supporter of growth-based free market economics, is keen to stress that the creative classes will work with rather than against the prevailing economic system: “The Creative Class has made certain symbols of non-conformity acceptable – even conformist. It is in this sense that they represent not an alternative group but a new and increasingly norm-setting mainstream of society”[53]. In this sense Florida argues capitalism has pulled off a major coup, ‘capturing’ people who would have been seen as “bizarre mavericks” operating on the fringes of bohemia, and “setting them at the very heart of the process of innovation and growth”[54].

Florida’s claim that the so-called creative class make up the ‘mainstream’ of society is deeply contentious. In Glasgow, for instance, around nine out of ten of the city’s jobs are in the service sector, which as the Glasgow City Council Plan (2008-2011) acknowledges, is characterised by a preponderance of lower paid and lower skilled services. Meanwhile, about a quarter of Glasgow’s working age population are on benefits and outside the workforce altogether. There is no point in arguing either that Glasgow’s benefit claimants and low-paid service sector workers can be rescued by “the leaders of twenty-first-century society”; for beneath Florida’s hyperbole a disturbing acknowledgement is made: “There is a strong correlation between inequality and creativity: the more creative a region is, the more inequality you will find there”[55]. As Florida admits, this inequality has “insidious dimensions”. The service economy ultimately operates as the “support infrastructure” of the creative age: “Members of the Creative Class, because they are well compensated and work long and unpredictable hours, require a growing pool of low end service workers to take care of them and do their chores”[56]. Florida himself suggests that the growth of this burgeoning, increasingly precarious service class must be understood alongside the rise of the creative class. Moreover, another troubling element arises in Florida’s thesis. In his tabulation of the classes (which includes ‘the agricultural class’, ‘the service class’, ‘the working class’, ‘the creative class’, and a subset, ‘the super-creative core’) traditional class actors – the middle and upper classes – are entirely absent. Could it be that their new homes are in the upper echelons of the ‘creative class’ and the ‘super-creative core’? …

Glasgow’s Merchant City: An Artist Led Property Strategy

Neil Gray

http://www.variant.org.uk/34texts/mechantcity34.html

From Funding To Franchise (Workshop)

2011-10-02T05:25:00.000-07:00

From Funding To Franchise (Workshop)

25 June 2011, Transmission Gallery http://www.transmissiongallery.org

What does the end of Flexible Funding mean for artist-run spaces in Scotland?

In 2013, Creative Scotland's Flexible Funding stream, which currently makes up a large proportion of Transmission's annual budget, will be scrapped and replaced with 'strategic commissioning'.

The spring 2011 issue of Variant contains an interview with Andrew Dixon, Chief Executive of Creative Scotland, where he expands on his recently unveiled Corporate Plan. Importantly, for Transmission as a ‘flexibly funded’ artist-run space, and with serious implications for all other self-organised groups sustained by public funding, he states:

"What we will do is take a more strategic look at the sort of whole cultural ecology. So we’ve had a programme called Flexible Funding, funding a lot of galleries and a lot of theatre companies… We’re going to get rid of that programme… We are very committed to what we are supporting but we are going to get rid of it in two years time. … Before we move to the commissioning model, there will be a rolling programme of reviews, with the sectors involved playing a key role, to inform our needs for different sectors."

This workshop facilitated by Variant / The Strickland Distribution will explore issues arising from the interview for collective self-institutional endeavours (artist-run, artist-led, self-organised) with their specific lexicon of practice. This workshop is an opportunity for Transmission members to learn more about the changes, enabling the organisation as a whole to more fully engage in the review process of Creative Scotland's proposals. 

Read the full interview with Andrew Dixon here: http://www.variant.org.uk/41texts/adixon41.html

Creative Scotland’s Corporate Plan is available here: http://www.creativescotland.com/about/our-plans/corporate-plan

.....................

Workshop Outline: http://www.variant.org.uk/events/FtF/outline.pdf

Slides: http://www.transmissiongallery.org/files/Event/Slides.pdf

Slides (alt.): http://www.variant.org.uk/events/FtF/FF.pdf

The workshop was broken down into 3 main themes identified as emerging from the interview with Creative Scotland’s Andrew Dixon which we believe to be of importance to FXOs (Flexibly Funded Organisations) and their members.

These broad themes are:

Ecology - presentation (notes): http://www.variant.org.uk/events/FtF/ECOLOGY.pdf

Rent ('place) - presentation (notes): http://www.variant.org.uk/events/FtF/RENT_place.pdf

Rent ('creative financing') - presentation (notes): http://www.variant.org.uk/events/FtF/RENT_creativefinancing.pdf

Reviews - presentation (notes): http://www.variant.org.uk/events/FtF/REVIEWS.pdf

Each section was introduced by a short sound clip from the Andrew Dixon interview. Followed by a short 15mins presentation outlining the theme, which was intended to inform the following small group facilitated discussions.

Compilation of all PDFs: http://www.variant.org.uk/events/FtF/FtoF.pdf

Andrew Dixon, Chief Executive of Creative Scotland, interviewed

2011-05-06T04:55:00.000-07:00

Investing, Advocating, Promoting... strategically
Daniel Jewesbury interviews Andrew Dixon, Chief Executive of Creative Scotland
A revealing exchange outlining proposals in Creative Scotland's Corporate Plan:
"We are getting rid of all the art form silos… There will be no art form budgets…we will have generic budgets that are more strategic, much more planned and on a larger scale".
text http://www.variant.org.uk/41texts/adixon41.html
pdf http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue41/adixon.pdf
Investing in Our Creative Future, Creative Scotland’s 'first' Corporate Plan:
http://www.creativescotland.com/about/our-plans/corporate-plan

compulsion of National intimacy

2011-01-16T11:18:00.000-08:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jan/14/scotland-artists-funds-highlands

Scottish artists offered funds to get away from it all in Highland retreats

• Residential plan hopes to uncover future talent

• £1m initiative contrasts with big cuts in England

• Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent

• guardian.co.uk, Friday 14 January 2011 20.35 GMT

Up to 1,000 artists, musicians and writers are to be offered government-funded residencies on remote Scottish islands, at art centres and Highland retreats in a new programme to fund new work.

The Guardian has learned that government arts agency Creative Scotland will this month unveil what it calls Europe's most ambitious artists' residencies initiative, one of several new funding plans supported by Edinburgh ministers.

The Creative Futures programme will support about 200 painters, dancers, poets, film-makers and visual artists each year over the next three to five years. They will be funded to work alone or as part of public arts projects in Scotland, elsewhere in the UK, or overseas. Arts executives hope the £1m-a-year initiative will find future winners of the Turner prize such as previous Scottish recipients Susan Philipsz and Douglas Gordon, and fund new writing and feature-length films.

Senior arts figures said the project highlighted a deep gap between the levels of funding and political support for the arts in England and Scotland.

Coalition ministers have caused consternation in the English arts world by cutting funding to Arts Council England by nearly 30% over the next four years, after the Department of Culture, Media and Sport's budget was cut by £300m.

Some cash-strapped English councils have slashed or entirely stopped their arts funding. By contrast, Creative Scotland – formed after last year's merger of the Scottish Arts Council and ScottishScreen – has the same budget in cash terms of £35.5m as last year, and also has a separate £10m music education programme.

Although the overall Scottish culture budget will fall next year by 6.7%, Fiona Hyslop, the arts minister, has kept £2m for promoting Scottish arts and theatre in the Edinburgh festivals for another year.

Andrew Dixon, Creative Scotland's chief executive, said there was cross-party support for the arts. He is able to fund more than 50 major arts events and companies, including the Edinburgh international festival, at the same level this year.

"Scotland is a small country, and there's a kind of pride in politicians, both at a local and national level, in what's being achieved here," he said. "They don't feel that in quite the same way in England. I think that's a real strength of the size of Scotland – a 30% cut doesn't half curtail your opportunities to plan long term."

Sandy Maberley, director of the Somerset-based theatre companyTheatre Melange, said artists in her area "will all be emigrating" to Scotland after the county council and two district councils entirely cut arts funding.

Maberley said it was important for arts organisations to avoid "playing the victim in this situation" but said the damage from the collapse in England's arts funding could take years to repair.

"Knocking something down is quick, and it's easy. The time to build it back up is incalculable," she said. "The arts are about a creative ecology and that includes economic wealth, social wealth and cultural benefits."

The Creative Futures initiative will be directed mainly at Scottish-based artists and creative workers but the residency programmes will also award places to artists based outside Scotland.Installation artist Gill Russell, whose latest work from a residency at the Sabhal Mor Ostaig Gaelic college on the island of Skye is now being exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh, said residencies were essential for artists.

She was given £9,000 by the Scottish Arts Council for a six-month residency at the college, which she extended to 18 months. "I realised there was a huge leap of faith in me and that's extremely rewarding," she said.

"You feel you're very much valued as an artist and that gives you a lot of confidence, instead of having to scramble around and clean loos to get by. Without that you don't have the energy, because it takes so much energy to produce good art."

She added: "The situation in England just makes me feel sad."

Ciara Barry, a Glasgow film producer, was given funding for a short film-makers' residency at the Rotterdam film festival and is now making her first feature film with the artist Henry Coombes, who was Scotland's representative at the Venice Biennale.

Her funding for the Rotterdam Lab event was crucial, she said. "I'm working towards my first feature film credit, so for me going to Rotterdam was the first time I was at an international networking event and meeting my peers. You can't make it all on your own, especially in this day and age."

Comments

annebonnar

15 January 2011 8:46AM

A great scheme demonstrating how Scottish politicians and Scotland value artists. The SNP had a manifesto commitment to support artists but Scotland does not have the fiscal autonomy to provide tax relief as the Irish government does and this scheme is particularly welcome.

But before anyone up sticks from Somerset, its worth remembering:

1. that the Scottish budget is for one year only, its a pre-election budget before the May elections for the Scottish partliament

http://annebonnar.wordpress.com/2010/11/17/the-impact-of-scotlands-budget-for-culture-wont-be-felt-until-the-next-instalments/

2. local authorities in Scotland are facing the same challenges as in England with large cuts to absorb and neither a staturory responsibility for the arts nor an agreement to support culture. Hence the Somerset scenario could play out in Moray and other councils. Its only in Wales that local authorities have any agreement to support cultural outcomes.

http://annebonnar.wordpress.com/2010/12/21/how-statistics-about-arts-cuts-are-used-creatively-to-make-political-points/

Variant

15 January 2011 10:19PM

As one of the architects of Creative Scotland, Anne Bonnar has already corrected such unreflective churnalism:

There are many significant differences between both the budgets and the politics of Scotland and England as well as the cultural dimensions. The most important aspect regarding funding for culture in today's budget is that this is a one year holding budget from the SNP minority administration before next May's election. Another is that we have been spared the public flogging of the Arts Council of England because we have already taken the pain of abolishing the Scottish Arts Council in the course of establishing the more streamlined agency Creative Scotland.

But the overall cut to the culture budget is 10% which is higher than the 6.9% John Swinney cited as the standard cut applied to non ring-fenced services.

So its the next instalments which will shape the story.

annebonnar, 17 November 2010 9:47PM

The verdict on Scotland's arts budget: comparatively protected. (Or – 18/10/10 – is it?)

Charlotte Higgins

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/charlottehigginsblog/2010/nov/17/arts-funding-scotland

So what are the effects of compound cuts and stand still budgets in real terms in Scotland, now and beyond the forthcoming election?

More worrying is the degree of political instrumentalism and centralisation demonstrated here, that goes totally uncommented, as the Creative Scotland cuckoo transforms into a commissioning body in the pursuit of the construction of a National culture; an official Scottishness.

"Scotland is a small country", and it's feeling smaller by the day…

Philip Schlesinger @ AHM State of Play

2011-01-16T11:16:00.000-08:00

http://community.thisiscentralstation.com/_Philip-Schlesinger-Presentation-at-AHM-State-of-Play-Symposium/VIDEO/1453590/126249.html

"The presentation made by Philip Schlesinger at the AHM State of Play: Art and Culture in Scotland Today symposium at Gilmorehill, Glasgow in October 2010.
Philip discusses the broad context of policy-making – the role of the state and agencies.
His presentation covers topics such as lobbying, the new coalition government, cuts to funding, Scotland's independence and philanthropy. Philip provides an introduction to, and brief history of the launch of Creative Scotland and some of the problems with, and issues facing the organisation."

COSTS, SAVINGS & CUTS

2011-01-16T11:13:00.000-08:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/charlottehigginsblog/2010/nov/17/arts-funding-scotland?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments

The verdict on Scotland's arts budget: comparatively protected

Funding for the arts and culture has been, relatively speaking, protected in Scotland

So, there is another way. An early read of the Scottish budget brings us news that the Scottish arts and culture budget will be a great deal more protected than that in England. Whereas Arts Council England's budget is to be cut by 30%, Creative Scotland's budget is frozen for 2011-12. National companies and collections will take a 4% cut (cf 15% for national museums in England). Here's a bit more detail:

- The Creative Scotland budget (ie the body cast from the old Scottish Arts Council and Screen Scotland) is frozen for 2011-12. "We have maintained its core budget of £35.5 million for this purpose, in the knowledge that significant efficiencies have already been made through moving to a single arts and culture body. We have also maintained ring-fenced funding for Arts and Business (£0.3 million) to help maximise private sector investment in the arts."

- A £20.5m capital pot will continue to exist to support major projects – V&A Dundee, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall refurb, Glasgow Theatre Royal refurb. Figure on Dundee V&A to be announced in due course.

- National companies (eg National Theatre of Scotland, Scottish Opera and Scottish Ballet) and national collections (National Galleries of Scotland, etc) are to have a 4% cut. Government keen to preserve free entry to museums.

- Historic Scotland cut by 7%. Body expected to make efficiencies.

- Expo fund for the Edinburgh festivals to be retained.

The tweets of the most excellent Phil Miller, arts correspondent of the Herald, can usefully be followed on this story: @PhilipJEMiller

Comments

annebonnar

17 November 2010 9:47PM

There are many significant differences between both the budgets and the politics of Scotland and England as well as the cultural dimensions. The most important aspect regarding funding for culture in today's budget is that this is a one year holding budget from the SNP minority administration before next May's election.Another is that we have been spared the public flogging of the Arts Council of England because we have already taken the pain of abolishing the Scottish Arts Council in the course of establishing the more streamlined agency Creative Scotland.
But the overall cut to the culture budget is 10% which is higher than the 6.9% John Swinney cited as the standard cut applied to non ring-fenced services.
So its the next instalments which will shape the story.

more..

http://annebonnar.wordpress.com/2010/11/17/the-impact-of-scotlands-budget-for-culture-wont-be-felt-until-the-next-instalments/

Variant

18 November 2010 11:53AM

That would be 'our' pain in Anne Bonnar's and a host of other consultants' pockets!

But Anne's right to stress it's an SNP minority administration holding budget before next May's Holyrood elections.

So, Anne:
What were SAC/ SS combined core grants?
What are the full costs of changing over to Creative Scotland?
What are Creative Scotland's expected prior 'savings' on SAC/ SS?
What happens after 2011-12, after the Holyrood elections?

On prior 'savings', we can see a glimpse here : part 3 – creative scotland Overall level of costs and savings for Creative Scotland
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/s3/committees/finance/reports-09/fir09-08-vol1.htm

And just where is the mainstream journalism in Scotland willing to do a 5 year comparison, similar to:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/charlottehigginsblog/2010/oct/21/spending-review-arts-funding

COSTS, SAVINGS & CUTS

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/s3/committees/finance/reports-09/fir09-08-vol1.htm

8th Report, 2009 (Session 3)

Stage 1 Report on the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Bill

CONTENTS

VOLUME 1: FINANCE COMMITTEE REPORT

part 3 – creative scotland

Overall level of costs and savings for Creative Scotland

196. As indicated above, the FM sets out a range of costs and savings, and a “best estimate”. In terms of Creative Scotland, if the higher estimate of costs is used, transition costs would total £4.44 million and savings at the end of 2013 would total £3.66 million.136 In response to concerns that the new organisation would not be making net savings by 2013, officials explained that, in their view, the upper estimate of costs would be “quite unlikely to happen”, due to the uncertainties around many of the transition costs (most notably the costs of the voluntary early severance/retirement scheme – see paragraphs 197 – 198).137 In addition, the bill team explained that while some savings could be quantified at this point—

“[…] we [also] expect savings to arise from streamlining of processes, but we cannot quantify them at the moment, so they have not been included in the estimated savings. However, we will expect those figures to increase.”138

Staff costs

197. A significant potential area of cost, with a wide margin of uncertainty, is provision for a voluntary early severance/retirement (“VES/ER”) scheme. The FM explains that there will be no compulsory redundancies as a result of the restructuring (in line with commitments made by the Scottish Government on the simplification programme), and that “savings will be achieved through natural wastage, redeployment and re-skilling where appropriate.”139 However, the FM goes on to state that should it be necessary, “a cost effective voluntary early severance/retirement scheme will be made available.”140

198. On the basis of the “most favourable” Scottish Arts Council terms, the FM estimates that the cost of the VES/ER will be between £500,000 and £1.5m, with a best estimate of £1.1m.141 These estimates are based on a headcount reduction of 30 full time equivalent (“FTE”) posts, as outlined in the FM. However, the Creative Scotland Business Model, published in October 2009, sets out plans for a headcount reduction of 35 FTE posts.142 The Committee appreciates the points made in correspondence from the bill team that there are a range of factors which contribute to the uncertainties around these figures, and that the VES/ER scheme will only be used when other methods have been exhausted. The Committee also notes that the Minister for Culture, External Affairs and the Constitution has already met with relevant trades unions and expects to continue discussions on this issue.143

Non-staff costs

199. The major element of non-staff costs in setting up the new body is for harmonising business systems and IT. The FM again gives a wide range of possible costs (£300,000 - £600,000) and a best estimate of £400,000. The bill team explained that there is a range of factors behind the difference in upper and lower estimates and that different levels of integration between the two bodies are possible.144 The Committee also understands that Creative Scotland 2009 Ltd is tasked with providing recommendations on this area and it is not therefore possible for the Scottish Government to provide more clarity at this stage.

lies, damn lies, and policy-led research

2010-10-23T04:13:00.000-07:00

"…part of the role of finance — once you see it in terms of capitalism — is to discipline and restructure the so-called real economy. It's been fundamental to that, imposing discipline on every factory to be more competitive or finance will go somewhere else, to reallocate capital across several sectors, venture capital, but much more generally. So finance has been fundamental to that.
...you've seen a powerful commodification of things that used to be seen as part the Commons. Part of what government provides has been privatized as sources of accumulation.
The real problem we have is that all this restructuring has gone on and workers have basically been pretty passive victims. They've accepted this. They haven't in any way been acting as a barrier in terms of putting other social goals or social values on the agenda. And that's allowed capitalism to restructure at will." [LINK]

Mission Models Money with Shetland Arts, Creative Scotland and Hi- Arts

Feasibility study into mechanisms for supporting small-scale creative activity in Scotland

BOP Consulting October 2010

"... the evidence of demand [sic] suggests a need to introduce other new forms of financing the arts."

BOP_Creative Financing_Appendix A_Survey Results.pdf

http://www.filefactory.com/file/b3h3d0g/n/BOP_Creative_Financing_Appendix_A_Survey_Results.pdf

BOP_Creative Financing_Final Report.pdf

http://www.filefactory.com/file/b3h3d17/n/BOP_Creative_Financing_Final_Report.pdf

Variant wrote to Gwilym Gibbons (Director, Shetland Arts Development Agency / Creative Scotland, Board member) in August: asking "...that this survey is closed down because it is gathering evidence in line with a well rehearsed political agenda. It is not investigating the broader issues in keeping with the arms length principle and the public interest which that principle is meant to protect." Read the full exchange here:

http://creativescotland.blogspot.com/2010/08/artists-loan-questionnaire.html

liquidity issues - meeting financial obligations

2010-10-05T17:20:00.000-07:00

Scotland’s arts community requires a creative solution

Published on 13 Sep 2010

Creative Scotland’s launch at the beginning of July was accompanied by a warning from its director, Andrew Dixon, that funding choices would have to be made.

http://www.heraldscotland.com:80/comment/herald-view/scotland-s-arts-community-requires-a-creative-solution-1.1054544

Warning of chaos for the arts amid confusion about funding

Phil Miller, Arts Correspondent, 13 Sep 2010

The arts in Scotland are in danger of sliding into “inexcusable chaos” because of confusion over the role and responsibilities of the new national funding body Creative Scotland, it has been claimed.

http://www.heraldscotland.com:80/news/home-news/warning-of-chaos-for-the-arts-amid-confusion-about-funding-1.1054637

consuming the corpse

2010-10-05T17:11:00.000-07:00

The final curtain?

Kenneth Roy

What is this organisation about?

Incensed by the rejection of his application for financial support for a new project, a well-known figure in the Scottish arts and media wrote to the chief executive of Creative Scotland, the successor to the Scottish Arts Council, and said that he intended to apply again – on a 'near-weekly basis' if necessary. He received the following email in reply:

'I am sorry that you didn't find my answer convincing but perhaps you misunderstand that we will not be a funding body in the old sense of the Arts Council but a strategic body. There will no no point in making multiple applications to us as we will be working more strategically with others agencies.'

http://www.scottishreview.net/KRoy18.shtml

A rump of numpties

Two views of Creative Scotland

Alison Prince

http://www.scottishreview.net/AlisonPrince8.shtml

Last of the big spenders

Kenneth Roy

After last Thursday's piece about the new quango which intends to introduce the laws of the market to the funding of the arts and literature, Scotland on Sunday called to share some startling news about Creative Scotland's logo, described here as 'wretched'.

http://www.scottishreview.net/KRoy7.shtml

"...These days, she warns, nobody should assume they will get a grant just because they had a grant before. 'Any arts body should have a board guiding it to think about contingencies. The severity of cuts might mean the demise of some organisations and that would be very sad. There again, others might be in a better position to trim their programmes and still keep going, even expand creatively'.”

“I’m not one of the bad ones, so why should I deny that I’m a banker?”

Susan Rice is an enthusiastic patron of the arts.

FACE TO FACE: Susan Rice interviewed by Anne Simpson, 15 Aug 2010

http://www.heraldscotland.com/life-style/real-lives/i-m-not-one-of-the-bad-ones-so-why-should-i-deny-that-i-m-a-banker-1.1048403

Should Creative Scotland be in the business of creating profit from culture?

September 21, 2010 by Pat Kane

"However much Creative Scotland wants to develop its role as a rights-sharing venture capitalist – and there may be some small scope for exploration there, either actively or as a broker – they must still recognise their ultimate function: as the organisation that allows creative imaginations to lift free from the usual pressure of consumer or investor expectations."

http://patkane.caledonianmercury.com/2010/09/21/should-creative-scotland-be-in-the-business-of-creating-profit-from-culture/006 2

a familial disorder

2010-10-05T17:04:00.000-07:00

Now why would anyone want to copy this organisational model...?

Private Eye No. 1270, 3 sept-16 Sept 2010

QUANGOS

Nesta eggs for a rainy day

ARTS group wondering how to cope with drastic cuts will be gazing enviously at one quango that prospers largely because nobody understands what it does.

The National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (Nesta), a "non-departmental government body" on business secretary Vince Cable's patch, was set up in 1998 with a £250m lottery endowment and now receives a further £15m a year. It invests in various groovy ventures and runs its own "innovation" programmes with catchy names such as "starter for 6", "reboot Britain", "the human factor" and "creative credits".

A striking amount of the money, however, ends up with organisations closely connected with Nesta's well-paid staff and trustees. The quango's accounts, recently published, show that last year it promised £210,000 to the University of Wales for "innovation scholarships". The university's vice-chancellor and head of its "institute of innovation" happens to be Nesta trustee Marc Clement.

Luckiest of all was Adrian Beecroft, a director and investor in a small IT company called Gnodal, which received £1m from Nesta to go with the £250,000 it gave him last year (see Eye 1243). That of all Britain's IT firms his should be chosen for Nesta's biggest grant is of course unrelated to his position on the Nesta advisory committee, and unconnected to the fact that he was chief investment officer for Sir Ronald Cohen's Apax Partners venture capital outfit while Nesta's chief executive, Jonathan Kestenbaum, was Cohen's chief of staff. Cohen's social enterprise private equity firm, Bridges Ventures, has also benefited from Nesta money.

Nesta does receive some of its cash straight from taxpayers, generally for "innovation" projects undertaken for government departments. The Department of Health paid Nesta £745,000, of which £568,000 was passed to the Young Foundation for its work on a "regional innovation fund advisory service" (What that? Ed.), shortly before Kestenbaum's niece Adiva took up a job at the foundation. Nesta insists he was not involved in her appointment.

Life's not too bad at the top of Nesta. While public sector fat cats elsewhere thought better of trousering big bonuses, Kestenbaum took £25,000 on top of his £171,000 salary and £20,000 pension contribution. The organisation's questionable efficiency is not bolstered by the revelation that it employs 16 "publications, events and communications" staff for the limited output of its other 68 staff.

Nesta's best hope of surviving the big quango cull is its connections. Since earlier this year it has been generously hosting, rent-free, staff from Philip "Red Tory" Blond's think-tank Res Publica, launched last November in the company of David Cameron. This might be a questionable political use of a government body, but Nesta needs to suck up to all the Tories it can.

Carrot Workers Collective

2010-10-05T16:55:00.000-07:00

"...Our sense is that there is a growing constituency of cultural workers, artists and educators who are angry but also uncertain about where to go from here, and who want to produce collective actions rather than more detached analysis and exhibitions that fuel a cultural economy with which we profoundly disagree."

The Carrot Workers Collective.

http://carrotworkers.wordpress.com/

A cathedral to Mammon

2010-10-05T16:32:00.000-07:00

Scottish Screen chief departs as Creative Scotland posts filled

Exclusive: Phil Miller, 10 Jun 2010

http://www.heraldscotland.com:80/news/home-news/scottish-screen-chief-departs-as-creative-scotland-posts-filled-1.1034009

http://www.shetlandarts.org/shetland-arts-director-gwilym-gibbons-appointed-to-board-of-creative-scotland/

http://www.gcu.ac.uk/cbs/departments/culturalbusiness/meetthestaff/drgaylemcpherson/

We will not please everyone, warns new arts chair

Phil Miller, Arts Correspondent, 12 Jun 2010

"Sir Sandy Crombie, an independent director of the Royal Bank of Scotland and former chief executive of Standard Life, is to be chairman."

http://www.heraldscotland.com:80/news/home-news/we-will-not-please-everyone-warns-new-arts-chair-1.1034346

Interview: Sir Sandy Crombie - Chairman of Creative Scotland

Published Date: 13 June 2010, By Tim Cornwell

http://news.scotsman.com/arts/Interview--Sir-Sandy-Crombie.6357724.jp

Arts body launches at last ... as funding cuts loom

Phil Miller, Arts Correspondent, 2 Jul 2010

http://www.heraldscotland.com:80/news/home-news/arts-body-launches-at-last-as-funding-cuts-loom-1.1038716

Creative Scotland early squeeze warning

Published Date: 21 June 2010, By CLAIRE GARDNER

http://news.scotsman.com/arts/Creative-Scotland-early-squeeze-warning.6373624.jp

Stage set for severe cutbacks to the arts

EXCLUSIVE: Phil Miller, Arts Correspondent, 23 Jul 2010

Scotland’s leading performing arts organisations have been asked to prepare for severe cuts to their funding.

http://www.heraldscotland.com:80/news/home-news/stage-set-for-severe-cutbacks-to-the-arts-1.1043162

Don't look on us simply as a grants body, warn Creative Scotland chiefs

Published Date: 23 July 2010, By BRIAN FERGUSON

Creative Scotland's figureheads warned they are set to pursue radical new funding policies as part of a drive to boost the cultural sector in the face of fierce public spending cuts.

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotland/Dont-look-on-us-simply.6435812.jp

Galleries may be forced to start charging as cuts loom

EXCLUSIVE: Phil Miller, Arts Correspondent, 24 Jul 2010

http://www.heraldscotland.com:80/news/home-news/galleries-may-be-forced-to-start-charging-as-cuts-loom-1.1043355

Exporting arts is key, says chief of Creative Scotland

Exclusive: Phil Miller, Arts Correspondent, 14 May 2010

Creative Scotland will concentrate on places rather than sectors and forge alliances with countries such as America and India, its new chief executive has revealed.

He said he has now banned the word funding at Creative Scotland and is instead using the word invest, which will be used in four conceptual areas: Ideas, Talent, Place and Scotland.

http://www.heraldscotland.com:80/news/home-news/exporting-arts-is-key-says-chief-of-creative-scotland-1.1027594

The new philistines

Thursday, 12 August 2010

http://newsnetscotland.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=469:the-new-philistines&catid=4:speakers&Itemid=3

isolated appeals for a state of exception ?

2010-10-05T16:15:00.000-07:00

"Over a hundred leading artists including David Hockney, Anthony Caro, Damien Hirst, Howard Hodgkin, Anish Kapoor, Richard Hamilton, Antony Gormley and Tracey Emin have joined the campaign to fight against the proposed 25% cuts in [Westminster] government funding of the arts.

The campaign is being launched today Friday 10 September 2010 with the release of a new video animation by artist David Shrigley highlighting the effect of the funding cuts. Each week the work of a different artist, created in response to the campaign, will be released. Jeremy Deller and Mark Wallinger will follow David Shrigley."

http://savethearts-uk.blogspot.com/

The UK coalition government agreed to postpone Holyrood's portion of £6bn cuts to public spending until after the 2011 Scottish election. Below is Arts Council England's gambit to "minimise" and "manage" 25-30% cuts. Scotland-based arts organisations have eight months forewarning... In Scotland, we could do with reconciling campaigns against public sector cuts overall, including an attempt to hold Creative Scotland to account, not least as Creative Scotland is readying a cut in provision as evidenced by Andrew Dixon's thinly veiled threat to foundation grant institutions: "It is sensible to carry out a review of the foundation grants given to all 52 major arts companies and bodies which come under the Creative Scotland umbrella and the increased partnership".

Arts Council England newsletter

August 2010

Making the case

It's clear to everyone that we are living in challenging times and that the arts are no exception - we all have a difficult journey ahead. The Arts Council has received a letter from Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for the Department of Culture Media and Sport, asking us to model reductions of 25-30% over four years to our funding programme. We are arguing to minimise these cuts, and we will argue that any cut needs to be managed intelligently, and in a way that protects the achievements of the past 15 years.

Many of you have talked to us about your enthusiasm for speaking with one voice, using the same key messages and themes to make sure we are heard. To help you with this we have prepared a toolkit http://listmail.artsfb.org.uk/t/529048/165801/19128/0/>, to enable you to make the case as strongly as possible.

The Arts Council is developing Achieving great art for everyone, our long-term policy which will set out clearly what we want to achieve over the next 10 years. It's important that in this time of short-term cuts we keep our eye on the bigger picture, so whatever cuts we have to make, art can still thrive over the next 10 years.

Peter Knott, Director

> Make your case using our advocacy toolkit

http://listmail.artsfb.org.uk/t/529048/165801/19042/0/

..........................................

Have your say

The House of Commons Culture, Media & Sport Select Committee has announced an inquiry into The Funding of Arts and Heritage. The committee intend to investigate a number of areas including:

The impact of recent, and future, spending cuts from central and local government

How arts organisations can work more closely together to reduce duplication of effort and make economies of scale

What level of public subsidy for the arts and heritage is necessary and sustainable

Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport will appear in front of the Select Committee on 14 September. It is also anticipated that Alan Davey, Chief Executive, Arts Council England will be asked to give evidence, along with other representatives from the arts sector. It is thought that the Select Committee's final report will be published in November.

The Select Committee are interested in responses from those within the sector, which must be received by Thursday 2 September.

> Click here to contribute

http://listmail.artsfb.org.uk/t/529048/165801/19144/0/

every crisis a consultant's opportunity

2010-10-05T15:36:00.000-07:00

"Leading Scottish arts consultant Anne Bonnar called upon Scottish bodies to get more involved. 'Where is the backing of the industry bodies?' she asked. 'That is the problem. We don’t have a collective cultural forum or leadership'.”

Perhaps an opportune moment to remind the prime consultant in the formation of Creative Scotland, 'ideas have consequences':

"I’m here to discuss what happens in the messy real world when Milton Friedman’s ideas are put into practice, what happens to freedom, what happens to democracy, what happens to the size of government, what happens to the social structure, what happens to the relationship between politicians and big corporate players, because I think we do see patterns." http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/6/naomi_klein

And on the alleged panacea of Cultural Leadership - the charismatic leader of management theory - see 'Artist as Executive, Executive as Artist' by Kirsten Forkert, Variant 35, Summer 2009:
"These initiatives formalise connections between management discourses and the arts, through a variety of professional development programmes set up to train arts management, and in some cases artists, in leadership skills. It is notable that all these initiatives propose professionalisation and skills training as a response to a perceived organisational crisis." http://www.variant.org.uk/35texts/CultLeader.html
UK campaign to protect the arts saddened by poor Scottish response
Edd McCracken, Arts Correspondent, 3 Oct 2010, Sunday Herald
The head of the main UK campaign to protect the arts from the worst of the upcoming spending cuts has described as “sad” the fact that Scottish organisations have declined to take part.
One leading arts consultant described the apparent Scottish ambivalence over the I Value The Arts campaign as “a problem that reveals a lack of cultural leadership” north of the border.
When it was launched last month, I Value The Arts became the main lobbying body for arts organisations, backed by UK-wide bodies such as the Association of British Orchestras, Equity, Theatres Trust, and the Musicians Union.
Scottish individuals have signed up in their thousands. Edinburgh has the highest sign-up out of any local authority, while overall Scotland has contributed the third most signatures.
Scottish artists have also got involved, including Glasgow’s David Shrigley, who produced an animated film about the value of culture for Save The Arts, an artist-led campaign running in tandem with I Value The Arts. More than 100 leading artists have pledged their support, including Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst.
But according to the National Campaign for the Arts, which co-ordinates I Value The Arts, Scottish arts bodies have been much less forthcoming.
“In terms of initial partners we didn’t have any Scottish organisations, which was rather sad for us,” said John Munro, campaign manager. “On the ground in Scotland the message is getting across better than it is in the rest of the UK, but what tends to happen in Scotland is there is a ‘can-do’ attitude amongst individual arts organisations. That’s great but it tends to hurt the general principle of doing things joined up.
“We are trying to convince everyone we can act together. That is why we would like more organisations in Scotland to get on board.”
Leading Scottish arts consultant Anne Bonnar called upon Scottish bodies to get more involved.
“Where is the backing of the industry bodies?” she asked. “That is the problem. We don’t have a collective cultural forum or leadership.”
The I Value The Arts campaign was established ahead of this month’s comprehensive spending review at Westminster, which is expected to implement cuts of 25% or more in funding to cultural bodies.
Culture, however, is a devolved matter for Scotland. The Scottish Government has said it will defer cuts for a year, until after next year’s Holyrood elections.
But I Value The Arts remained a “call to action” for Scotland, according to Bonnar. She added: “There is no reason why we can’t have common cause with the campaigns happening at the moment. We should support them.”
When approached for the reasons why they have not joined the I Value The Arts campaign, many Scottish organisations said they were organising themselves for a Scotland-specific campaign.
Jon Morgan, director of the Federation of Scottish Theatre, said: “We don’t want to put lots of time and resources into this particular campaign because we need to have a more articulate campaign that is relevant in Scotland. It’s not that we’re unsupportive, we just want to direct our attentions to the specific situation in Scotland.”
The Scottish Artists Union said the only reason it was not involved was one of timing. The SAU has been in the process of electing new leadership in the past weeks.
Craft Scotland, which represents 1700 artists, said it was supporting I Value The Arts. Chief executive Emma Walker said: “It is obviously very important. We’ve been signing up to every petition going, but understand we need to do more than that.”

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/uk-campaign-to-protect-the-arts-saddened-by-poor-scottish-response-1.1058877

Artists' Loan Questionnaire

2010-08-11T00:18:00.000-07:00

From: Variant Magazine variantmag@btinternet.com>

Date: 6 August 2010 13:04:53 GMT+01:00

To: Gwilym Gibbons gwilym.gibbons@shetlandarts.org>

Cc: contact@missionmodelsmoney.org.uk, stewart.wallis@neweconomics.org, info@sau.org.uk, Helen.Bennett@creativescotland.com, clive.gillman@dca.org.uk, jon.morgan@scottishtheatre.org, robert@hi-arts.co.uk, davidcook@waspsstudios.org.uk, ben@vaga.co.uk, Wendy.Wilkinson@scotland.gsi.gov.uk, Dave.Smith@scottish.parliament.uk [cut]

Subject: Re: Artists' Loan Questionnaire

Dear Gwilym

Thank you for your prompt reply and thanks too for the additional information about your research exercise on loans to artists. However, our concerns at Variant still stand. The key issues we see are the gathering of policy-based evidence and therefore, the questionable quality of your research project and the compromise of the arm’s length principle.

Clearly there are tremendous pressures to find ways to support artistic and cultural activities as we face government cut backs in public sector finance. Sadly, officials often assume that the public interest is synonymous with the mores of the government and bureaucratic agendas which, in this instance, seem to be all about more money lending. However, the public interest is not served by gathering 'policy-based evidence' in line with political thinking – something which has become notorious in policy studies in the UK. Such studies have shown the same construction process going on in everything from justifying military invasions to magnifying the socio-economic benefits of the arts.

We at Variant do not see any justification for singling out artists for special loan arrangements. More significantly, your commissioning partners, Mission Models Money (MMM), appear to have a diversity of in-house expertise yet the researchers you appointed have failed to explore alternatives such as investment in credit unions or how complimentary currencies are used by businesses elsewhere in the world. The researchers appear to have unquestioningly adopted the narrow national comparisons offered in your tender pack which, it must be said, appears unduly biased towards what is done in the United States. Consequently there are major oversights which suggest either a lack of seriousness in the research, a lack of resources for it, or both.

There is also no basis for suggesting that loans will not be a wedge into existing grant funding. A more pessimistic view is justified. The use of Lottery funds points to the real possibility that targeted credit systems would operate as the thin end of a wedge into grants. So this "suspicion" mentioned on the last page of your tender pack is not unsubstantiated.

As far as we can see, the research you have commissioned about financing artists in Scotland is not striving for objectivity and therefore it is not being conducted in the public interest. Needless to say this is a serious issue in public research financed by tax payers.

Shetland Arts' criteria for shortlisting potential research groups rightly included the following point: "[2] The robustness of the methodology - Has the individual/team added to/developed/challenged the brief in a way that demonstrates an appropriate degree of rigour?" We see no evidence that BOP has met this criterion in a survey which they describe as "the main body of the research".

Let us be clear about our own motives for challenging this research exercise. Variant voiced opposition to the formation of Creative Scotland on the grounds that its terms of reference, and particularly its adoption of an entrepreneurial ethos, was an erosion of the arm’s length principle. Creative Scotland has been formed under what many of our writers and readers believe is a faulty economic rationale coming from government and being imposed on the cultural sector. Nevertheless, this does not mean that the arm’s length principle is up for grabs as well.

Successive ministers have pledged support for the arm’s length principle and to the best of our knowledge no elected politician has openly refuted it. If Creative Scotland is to be informed by entrepreneurial imperatives so be it, these will now have to be dealt with transparently if the new organisation is to serve the broad public interest. In terms of conducting rigorous research about alternative funding for artists this would entail a detailed assessment of the deferral and adoption of risk though additional micro-credit systems.

Indeed we see from your tender pack that risk was discussed at length in a meeting with your partners from MMM. But there is no sign of this problem being addressed in any depth by your researchers. Evidence from other countries already suggests that micro-credit systems are not always benign, they can be highly exploitative, and they may well become more so. Although you say the sums of money involved in complimentary financing are small -- despite the survey propounding loans of £20,000+ -- accumulated they would be a significant addition to the already heavy burden of individual debt.

The alternatives to furthering a culture and economy based in usury are simply not examined in the research you commissioned from BOP. Yet they say that responses to their surveymonkey questionnaire will be "the main body of the research" and "will help form a strong body of evidence concerning the finance and support needs of Scottish artists and creative practitioners."

We do not know what methodology supports this sampling exercise but the research questionnaire itself seems poorly thought out and hastily put together. It appears to be little more than research into a new market for credit. This does not address many of the key issues that have been touched on by you and others involved in commissioning the research. It is therefore far from transparent. Nor do we understand why Shetland Arts - as a funded body - is playing a lead role in commissioning national research for which one would expect the SAC/Creative Scotland to take direct responsibility.

We therefore ask that this survey is closed down because it is gathering evidence in line with a well rehearsed political agenda. It is not investigating the broader issues in keeping with the arms length principle and the public interest which that principle is meant to protect.

Sincerely,

Leigh French, Owen Logan

Variant

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Begin forwarded message:

From: Gwilym Gibbons gwilym.gibbons@shetlandarts.org>

Date: 2 August 2010 16:28:10 GMT+01:00

To: Variant Magazine variantmag@btinternet.com>

Subject: Re: Artists' Loan Questionnaire

Dear Leigh

Thank you for your email and bringing to my attention your concerns and views. There is, in my view, nothing that intriguing behind my involvement in commissioning a study on small loan finance for artist/ and or makers. The origins of Shetland Arts exploring this idea was in response to a expressed need by several artists who just wanted a small amount of money to fund enhancement of their work. Framing of work was one example in which an artist wanted control of their final piece and to add value to the sale price of that work. Much of the discussion at that stage has been around finance of around £500 to add value to work that could be repaid after that work had been sold at an enhanced price.

I have attached the Tender Pack for the study which includes the initiating document I wrote in May 2009 that informed the development of this piece of work and the attraction of funds to pay for the research. I would like to stress that this piece of work was initiated by Shetland Arts and is in part supported by the Scottish Arts Council but pre dates Creative Scotland or my interests as a Board Member of this new organisation. It was simply a response to an expressed local need. I felt that the need may have relevance further afield which triggered the further exploration of the idea.

I understand that the 21st Century Financing Project was delayed but is now in delivery stage. The Steering Group for Creative Financing is working closely with the team working on 21st Century Financing Project and indeed the team working on Capital Mattershttp://www.missionmodelsmoney.org.uk/programme/capital-matters/ .

The Creative Financing Study has been collecting pros and cons from a variety of stakeholders in the sector and your views will be added to those of others who have attended consultations and responses to the questionnaire. I recognise some of the concerns you raise and indeed have discussed them at length internally at the early stages of initiating this project. At no point has this piece of work proposed that loans should be offered in place of grants.

The Board of Creative Scotland meets for the first time in mid August I can not therefore comment on the position of the Board on the issues you raise. However, your comments are noted and with others will be fed into the report which will be made available to all those interested including Creative Scotland when it is complete.

I trust this allays some of your fears and thank you again for your comments.

Regards

Gwilym

Gwilym Gibbons

Director

Shetland Arts Development Agency

Toll Clock Centre, Lerwick, Shetland. ZE1 0DE

www.shetlandarts.org

Direct telephone: 01595 743731

Mobile: 07824 335502

Reception: 01595 743843

http://twitter.com/shetlandarts

http://flickr.com/shetlandarts

PDF : Creative Financing Tender Pack - April 2010

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From: Variant Magazine variantmag@btinternet.com>

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:27:16 +0100

To: Gwilym Gwilym gwilym.gibbons@shetlandarts.org>

Subject: Fwd: Artists' Loan Questionnaire

Dear Gwilym

I am intrigued that you as Director of Shetland Arts and also a Board Member of Creative Scotland should commission a Scotland-wide survey "looking at the feasibility and potential benefits of providing loan style financing to artists, creative practitioners and small creative organisations".

Can I ask when you, as a part of the public sector, will also be commissioning a balance to this market positivism by examining the potential damage of "loan style financing"?

Moreover, can I ask where the assessment is to prove the viability of "loan style financing", which would include a comprehensive risk and impact assessment that one would expect prior to any attempts at justifying demand? I would hope that you would agree that post-2008 we should all be aware that fostering a culture of carelessness with regard to markets is a failure of responsible regulation and oversight we can ill afford again.

The SAC / government collaboration dropped its tender for '21st Century financing for the arts and creative industries in Scotland Study'. I am not aware of any other publicly-commissioned academic research in Scotland into Creative Industries loans or IPR exploitation or independent research on financing that takes into account the depth and effect of the economic crisis in Scotland. If this absence of a crucial evidence base is the case, which it appears to be, then Creative Scotland / Scottish government have no new or existing contextual, evidence-based research to facilitate the introduction of loans, but appear, circuitously, to be seeking to do so regardless of the risks to the sector(s) which they to date have failed to properly investigate.

If Creative Scotland / Scottish government do not even have such fundamental information on which to base the decisions it has already taken -- see Public Services Reform (Scotland) Bill: 29 Grants and loans (4) "Creative Scotland may make grants and loans to such persons as it considers appropriate for the purpose of, in connection with, or where it appears conducive to, the exercise of its functions", which the abandoned proposed study would lead us to believe is the case -- is it not negligent to continue to propose such impositions as loans?

It is again worth drawing attention to what recently happened in Catalonia, where the imposition of loans in place of public grants for arts organisations failed dramatically even in pre-crash conditions. The hard evidence of the failure of such neoliberal economic instrumentalisation of culture already exists internationally, and the Scottish Government (and the sector) would do well to examine it. A Creative Scotland profit-orientated approach to culture / information management belongs to a pre-financial crisis set of cultural / developmental policies. We all need to contextualise Creative Scotland with regard to the deeper policy issues such as the paradoxical responses to the financial crisis; a crisis which has discredited the 'Anglo-American' model of finance-led capitalism, yet the Scottish Government continue to pursue the main planks of that neoliberal agenda, including labour market 'reforms' and financialisation as is exemplified in what we know to be one focus of Creative Scotland.

To be clear: loans and IPR exploitation do not constitute a positive spending injection into the real economy, they contribute to finance restructuring leading to a concentration of wealth and centralisation of banking power -- this should come as no surprise to anyone when Creative Scotland was / is controversially being structured by bankers and financiers. Loans serve to increase public debt overnight (see the disaster following the introduction of artists' loans in Catalonia for details) and are part of a spiralling debt crisis, part of an approach that is at the core of the global economic crisis. And for those of us who believe in defending a public sector, fundamentally, the introduction of loans is to extract user fees for public services.

To reconfirm our objections to Creative Scotland proposals from 18 months ago:

- The proposed exploitation of Intellectual Property Rights and the introduction of loans coupled with an effective cut in 'arms length' grant aid, will all act to reinforce artists' poverty. The case of Catalonia shows that increasing artists' debts has been disastrous for all concerned.

- We feel strongly that this bureaucratic process has not concerned itself with representing artists' needs, nor does it address UNESCO declarations on culture and freedom.

- We have no confidence in the process of the formation of Creative Scotland, or the confused and inappropriate proposals that have arisen. We are simply not convinced that the proposals will promote the development of and entitlement to culture in Scotland.

I look forward to your response.

Yours sincerely,

Leigh French

co-editor, Variant

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Subject: Fwd: Artists' Loan Questionnaire

We are currently supporting a comprehensive study looking at the feasibility and potential benefits of providing loan style financing to artists, creative practitioners and small creative organisations across Scotland. The study was commissioned by Shetland Arts and Mission Models Money who are interested in how loan financing might complement existing means of financing the creative industries such as grants and burseries.

As one of our valued members, we would be very grateful if you could follow the below link and complete an on-line survey, the responses to which will form the main body of the research:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/loans_for_artists_survey

The survey should only take no more than 15 minutes to complete and doing so will help form a strong body of evidence concerning the finance and support needs of Scottish artists and creative practitioners.

By way of thanks, BOP Consulting (the consultancy contracted to deliver the research) are offering respondents the chance to win one of two £20 Amazon vouchers.

Please note that all responses to the survey will be stored securely and kept completely anonymous.

TOM ROGERS

Consultant

BOP Consulting

20 Margaret Street

London, W1W 8RS

DL: 020 7307 3099

M: 07973 412 047

www.bop.co.uk

The problem with exceptionalism

2010-07-05T02:59:00.000-07:00

A strong proclamation of fact in this email from SAU, but it stumbles at the point of "…any organisation claiming to support artists…" : it has been clear that Creative Scotland would jettison "designated officers or departments for discrete art forms" in favour of an advocacy model, so it's hard to see how Creative Scotland could be burdened by any such claim. (Also when the definitive term 'artist' had, previously, been snubbed; and when 'support' [sic] is as likely to be loans, investments or other recoupment mechanisms). This is the problem with exceptionalism, as it argues along lines of modality and not principle. Whereas, the SAU's 'After Creative Scotland : A statement on the future of Scottish culture', that their email below introduces, contradicts the fact that the "opportunity to shape" SAU covets never existed; if anything the opposite being true, as SAU's 'opening day' statement lays bare. The question for SAU, and artists, remains: 'manage' or 'organise'?

On 30 Jun 2010, at 00:42, Scottish Artists Union wrote:

A statement from the Scottish Artists Union Executive Committee on the opening day of Creative Scotland, 01/07/10

Through two governments, three bills, four ministers for culture and three transition bodies the Scottish Artists Union has grown increasingly concerned over the evolution of Creative Scotland (CS). With a remit exceeding that of the Scottish Arts Council & Scottish Screen we fear the new agency will have to scale back its direct support for artists. The emerging emphasis on creative industry over individual practitioners is indicative of a shift toward inappropriate market-driven models. The proposed lack of specialism in the new agency with no designated officers or departments for discrete art forms is a further source of disquiet.

Many others in our sector shared these objections from a very early stage. They reached a crescendo over the course of 2008 and in the subsequent year various efforts were made to reach out to artists. The Perspectives forum, an intended national online conversation built around statements from four “provocateurs”, became little more than an exercise in intellectual point-scoring among an embarrassingly small sample of sector figures, an exercise from which CS management figures were wholly absent. Like so much work by successive Scottish administrations in this field it merely paid lip service to the concept of consultation, a box ticked for Creative Scotland 2009 Ltd’s final report.

There were also the various dialogue events around the country (taking place at roughly quarterly intervals over the last twelve months) that seemed more constructive, at least to begin with. Opportunities were taken by many to raise issues and bring forward proposals but little heed appears to have been taken. During the last event at Glasgow’s new cultural hub at The Briggait very little “dialogue” was in evidence. Attendees could not ask their own questions of the Culture Minister and her colleagues. Instead a selected few were given leave to read aloud their table’s consensus on one of a short list of leading statements.

This event was the formal debut of Chief Executive Designate Andrew Dixon, a man who seemingly has taken every opportunity, in print interviews as well as on television and in public addresses, to foreshadow Creative Scotland’s shift away from existing funding mechanisms to market models and even, in a thoroughly retrograde step, philanthropy. In Mr Dixon’s very first interview on the job with The Herald on 21st of March he confirmed the primary concern of the SAU, that the new agency would not sustain current levels of support to artists.

Mr Dixon also exhibited a worrying capacity for tone-deaf statements when in May he came down in favour of Sir Ian Wood’s plan for Aberdeen’s Union Terrace Gardens. The original proposal, centred on Peacock Arts, had already secured a substantial portion of funding (in part from the Scottish Arts Council) and popular support; its rejection could do untold damage to visual art in the North East. It’s incredible that CS’s Chief Executive should so heartily endorse such an outcome. It’s equally incredible in the current climate of required public sector cuts to offset the banking bail out that a career financier should be appointed Chair of CS’s board. Yet that is what happened in June. Sir Sandy Crombie already sits on a number of cultural bodies but it is his business acumen that has been emphasised as he takes his place at CS, apparently oblivious to the message this sends to a sector already concerned it will amount to an enterprise development agency in everything but name.

In conclusion, the Culture Minister’s office, the joint Scottish Arts Council/Scottish Screen Board and Creative Scotland 2009 Ltd have not allayed the fears of the visual arts sector. Our fears have been flagged consistently throughout the new organisation’s inception and despite the CS spin about a further year of transition there remains a marked lack of confidence in our sector and many others. The Scottish Artists Union accepts that CS may remain mutable over this time and so issue a manifesto and a challenge. Ours is a straightforward “to do” list for any organisation claiming to support artists and most especially a government-funded cultural agency like CS. If the new Chief Executive and his staff as well as the Chairman and Board fail to address any one of these points, then CS will have failed the artists of Scotland.

“AFTER CREATIVE SCOTLAND: A STATEMENT ON THE FUTURE OF SCOTTISH CULTURE“ IS AVAILABLE VIA THE SCOTTISH ARTISTS UNION WEBSITE: http://www.sau.org.uk/document/politicalstatements.php

Creative Scotland - Dialogue Event on 25 May 2010 at The Briggait in Glasgow

2010-06-28T06:50:00.000-07:00

di·a·logue
1. A conversation between two or more people.
2. a. Conversation between characters in a drama or narrative.
b. The lines or passages in a script that are intended to be spoken.
Usage Note: In recent years the verb sense of dialogue meaning "to engage in an informal exchange of views" has been revived, particularly with reference to communication between parties in institutional or political contexts.

There was no such modern revival, no room for questions only seemingly cherry-picked responses to their pre-ordained questions - one respondent to each of the three questions CS had devised in advance; most worrying was that, by hand-picking respondents, they left absolutely no room for dissent and the people they chose to speak gave such preposterously neoliberal/on-message answers that they seem to have been body snatched... From the most basic practical stand point of minimising debt, what producer would advocate "greater use of soft loans, investments or other recoupment mechanisms" over grants?

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/ArtsCultureSport/arts/CulturalPolicy/creative-scotland/table-discussions
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/ArtsCultureSport/arts/CulturalPolicy/creative-scotland

Not-So-Creative Scotland - 26 May 2010

2010-06-01T08:30:00.000-07:00

On the north bank of the river Clyde, there nestles a nineteenth century fish market, commandeered several years ago as artists’ studios and a well-equipped sculpture workshop. In July, after a period of metamorphosis, it will be reopened as ‘workspaces for visual artists and cultural organisations’ and ‘shop-front units for let to creative industries’ by developers who claim that the building was ‘predominantly empty’ when they found it. Yesterday morning, beneath its glass roof, the city’s cultural powerbrokers perched on gold-rimmed seats around draped tables, as if for an awards dinner, to listen to speeches by the cultural elite.
First up was the new Minister of Culture (an ill-fated post that has seen seven incumbents since a degree of governmental control was devolved to Scotland in 1999). Fiona Hyslop seems like a nice woman – plump and mumsie, almost confessional at times and lacking in the suspicious poise we have come to associate with career politicians. Within moments of her ascent to the podium, it was clear that her speech writers were out of touch with current discourse. As an opening gambit, evoking Voltaire’s notion of Scotland as the place where rules of taste were formulated showed no awareness that the aristocratic connotations of aesthetics have been identified as a lever with which the privileged exert their dominance.(1) After a brief nod to another flawed concept – that of individual genius – she went on to invoke the instrumental value of culture – its benefits to health, education and the economy. In a modern, progressive, ambitious country like Scotland, she reminded us, creativity (innovation) would be the key to success. Whatever evidence exists to the contrary, it would seem that culture has become the Obi-wan Kenobi of capitalism – our only hope.
The purpose of this gathering was to conclude discussion around Creative Scotland, a hybrid creature born of two funding organisations – the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen. Creative Scotland has not had an easy entry into the world – the Bill that was first introduced into the Scottish Parliament to ensure its creation was rejected on financial grounds, which saw the legislation being smuggled into a much broader Public Services Reform Bill. This latter Bill cites Creative Scotland as a body corporate, autonomous from the Crown, which will consist of between eight and fourteen (non-parliamentary) members appointed by the Scottish Ministers. It may ‘do anything which appears to be necessary or expedient’ to carrying out its functions; it may ‘engage in any business or undertaking’; it may ‘form, promote or acquire (whether alone or with others) companies; it may form partnerships, accept money and other property, borrow money, acquire and dispose of land. In other words, it may behave like a corporation, which is no surprise as Creative Scotland 2009 Ltd. was registered at Companies House in December 2008.
Although Creative Scotland was officially launched in August 2009, Fiona Hyslop was only yesterday able to announce that the Bill inscribing its creation had been passed and that royal assent had been received, but nowhere in the legislation is a clue given as to the core functions of Creative Scotland. For this, we had to turn to Andrew Dixon, the newly-appointed Chief Executive, who claims thirty years’ ‘experience working in the arts media and creative industries’, latterly at the NewcastleGateshead Initiative. Sporting a Tommy Sheridan tan and a pearlescent pink, lilac and blue-striped shirt, the stuff of a football casual’s wildest dreams, Dixon graced the platform with a quick quantitative evaluation of the culture he had absorbed since his arrival in the country some weeks ago. He then spoke of the need to invent a new language that moves away from ‘funding’ and ‘subsidy’ and towards ‘investment’ in talent, ideas, people and places. The problem with this approach, as we have all recently discovered to our cost, is that people expect a return on their investment. This return, it seems, would make itself felt in measurable targets (social as well as cultural) and in contributing to ‘quality of life’. A clue to the beneficiaries of such an investment is to be found in the priority areas for the first year of Creative Scotland’s operation – the traditional arts, the creative industries and cultural tourism.
This gathering marked the last of four quarterly ‘dialogue events’ around the country, charm offensives previously chaired by the banker and acting chair of Creative Scotland, Ewan Brown. These events aimed to appease the critics of the creative industries model underlying the new body, some of whom feared that artists would be forgotten by Creative Scotland. At pains to reassure his audience that this would not be the case, Dixon brandished a David Brent-style prop – a postcard of an artwork inspired by a car park at B&Q – the perfect synergy of art and commerce.
Any dissent that may have been in evidence during earlier sessions had all but dissipated by the time the Creative Scotland roadshow reached Glasgow. The assembled audience was asked for its input into three strategic questions around new models of support, engaging the people of Scotland to champion its culture and conveying these successes internationally. After some time to ponder each of these areas in turn, limited dialogue did, indeed, take place between Hyslop and Dixon and hand-picked members of the audience. Reliant on Creative Scotland for their livelihood, this inspired bunch went further than most civil servants would dare in harking back to Victorian models of philanthropy, in encouraging private sector intervention into the arts and in prostituting Scotland’s culture as a calling card to pave the way for the international expansion of its business interests.
In this regard, the timing of George Osborne’s announcement about swingeing pubic sector cuts could not have been better. No-one asks any more why budget reductions are necessary or why we need new, more entrepreneurial models of cultural provision; at the same time, questions about the budget deficit – where and how it was incurred and why our public services have to suffer as a result – are strictly off limits. Just like Creative Scotland, this has become part of our accepted reality; but, while the last locally-caught merchandise left the market some decades ago, something still smells fishy.

Notes

1. ‘Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier. Social subjects, classified by their classifications, distinguish themselves by the distinctions they make, between the beautiful and the ugly, the distinguished and the vulgar, in which their position in the objective classifications is expressed or betrayed’. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Routledge, London, 1984, p.6.

Originally published in Metamute

Money Talks - published 18 August 2009

2010-06-01T08:26:00.000-07:00

This evening, in Edinburgh, the new landmark organisation for promoting culture in Scotland will be revealed, but the chances are that you won't have been invited to the launch, especially if you are a creative practitioner. Creative Scotland, as this new organisation will be known, is a hybrid creature – a replacement of Scottish Screen (the main film funding body) and the Scottish Arts Council (hitherto responsible for funding all other artforms falling outside the scope of the national bodies). Pragmatically, this might seem like a good way of saving on the overheads and administrative costs of running two separate cultural funding bodies – indeed this is how it was sold – but much more than fiscal prudence underlies this decision.
Early in the history of devolved government, it became clear that culture was one of the policy areas over which Westminster did not retain reserved powers. In his 2003 St Andrew's Day speech, Scotland's then First Minister, Jack McConnell, announced his intention to make 'the development of our creative drive, our imagination, the next major enterprise for our society'. Shortly afterwards, culture minister Frank McAveety launched the Cultural Commission as part of 'a generational opportunity – to look seriously and maturely at our culture and decide the framework for its support in the future'.
There are precedents for this kind of cultural rethinking after a rupture with the old regime – in Cuba after the 1959 revolution, for example, culture was made a priority, with new museums, galleries and casas de cultura being built across the island and the arts being made integral to education at all levels, which necessitated the training of 20,000 new instructors.
In Scotland, a team of hand-picked commissioners undertook a year-long stakeholder consultation, at a cost to the public purse of £487,000, to make a series of recommendations aimed at reforming, rather than revolutionising, cultural provision. The Scottish Government decided to take forward the merger model they called Creative Scotland, which is hardly surprising given that, in January 2003 – more than a year before the costly Cultural Commission was embarked upon – a group set up to implement the 1999 national cultural strategy was being asked to consider the creation of a new agency, Creative Scotland, which would combine responsibilities then residing with a number of different agencies.
As legislation was drawn up around the new organisation, two worrying facts became clear – the first is that Creative Scotland effectively erodes the arms-length principle inscribed into arts councils north and south of the border since the end of World War II. It is this proviso, protected by Royal Charter, which seeks to ensure that artists have relative autonomy in the face of political sea changes and while this may have been dwindling in practice as the amount of unencumbered funding diminishes, the idea of supporting freedom of expression remains an important principle to uphold.
This leads us to the second major flaw in the model for Creative Scotland; when looking at the direction in which Scottish ministers intend to instrumentalise artists, one phrase rings out like a mantra: creative industries. This largely discredited approach, which explains the appointment of businessmen and bankers onto the board of Creative Scotland, is based on the tenuous idea that creative thinking will stimulate the failing post-industrial economies of the Western world. And, while a certain amount of creativity is inherent in the work of James Dyson or the birth of Lara Croft, this kind of entrepreneurialism is a world apart from conceptions of culture as a process of continual, critical re-evaluation, which should be integral to any free and fair society.
Belatedly realising that certain artforms would be discriminated against by their rhetoric around innovation, Scottish politicians have set up the traditional arts working group to perpetuate handicrafts and linguistic forms particular to Scotland. But it is between these two artificial poles of innovation and tradition that culture lies, and the formation of Creative Scotland shows a massive failure of Scottish politicians and cultural bureaucrats to grasp this.
In post-revolutionary Cuba, the first minister of culture was incredibly articulate about the humanity underlying creative processes which could form a counterpart to beneficial Enlightenment-driven developments in science to act against cultural regressiveness and dogma. However, just as the heralded benefits of Creative Scotland have been economic ones, the only objections being raised in mainstream Scotland have been financial. The initial dedicated Creative Scotland Bill fell in parliament on a budgeting irregularity, leaving the legislation to be smuggled into the Public Services Reform Bill, while the cost of converting two organisations into one has been the major concern of those tenured culture brokers expressing their views publicly. Having been batted between a series of culture ministers and from Labour to the nationalists, responsibility for giving life to Creative Scotland has fallen to Mike Russell as minister for culture, external affairs and the constitution, who launched a series of highly selective meetings aimed at assuaging the concerns of those who matter – the great and the good of Scottish cultural life.
But, beneath the spin, hundreds of artists in Scotland have put their names to an open letter to Russell, highlighting the clear distinction made by UNESCO between culture and commerce. It is these artists, largely unrepresented in the mainstream media, whose views have been routinely ignored by parliamentarians. It is these artists on whom the burden of Creative Scotland will fall and on whom the nation's hopes of economic recovery rest. It is these artists who have not received a card inviting them to the grand unveiling, the words 'Creative Scotland' magically revealed on its surface when it comes into contact with daylight.
As the hybrid creature that is Creative Scotland is unleashed onto an unsuspecting public, it is time to ask ourselves what would happen to Robert Burns or Charles Rennie Mackintosh if they attempted to develop their art in contemporary Scotland; what fate would await James Joyce or Samuel Beckett, Frida Kahlo or Pablo Picasso, if they were to arrive on these shores, seeking support for their talents. Unable to situate themselves on the tradition-innovation continuum as it is currently defined, they would face three equally unpalatable choices: penury, obscurity or exile.

Originally published in the Scottish Review

No taxation without representation

2010-03-11T16:07:00.000-08:00

Creative Scotland / Alba Chruthachail : "encouraging and supporting artistic and other creative endeavours which contribute to an understanding of Scotland’s national culture in its broad sense as a way of life"

Public Services Reform (Scotland) Bill (Ex)
Stage 3 (debate, meeting of the Parliament) Thursday 25 March 2010
Amendments should be lodged by 4.30 pm on Friday 19 March with the clerks to the Finance Committee

Write to your MSP before Friday 19 March:
You can find out who your MSP is and contact them here:
http://www.writetothem.com

You can also find contact details for your MSP at the Scottish Parliament website:
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/msp/membersPages/MSPAddressPostcodeFinder.htm

I am emailing you as a constituent. As my MSP, I am asking you to vote against proposals to establish Creative Scotland, and for the universal pursuit of cultural rights in Scotland.

Reforms of cultural provision may be long overdue, but Creative Scotland has wider-reaching implications than the supercession of Scottish Screen and The Scottish Arts Council.

Creative Scotland solicits a fundamental change of a key aspect of democratic society. It would escalate risk and debt and restrict public discourse along narrow ideological lines. This change has significant implications for the many ways in which knowledge is currently produced and communicated in Scotland.

The unintended consequences of this shift towards an entrepreneurial ideology in the public provision of culture have not been properly investigated. Such fundamental research was not undertaken. Yet marketplace “truths” require far greater scrutiny, as has been amply demonstrated by the financial crisis.

I ask you vote against the establishment of Creative Scotland, and for fulfilling UNESCO treaty commitments towards a diversity of cultural expression in Scotland.

Stage 2 completion

2010-03-11T16:03:00.000-08:00

Public Services Reform (Scotland) Bill (SP Bill 26)

The deadline for completion of Stage 2 was 12 March 2010.

Bill (as amended at Stage 2) (587KB pdf first posted 03.03.2010)
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/s3/bills/26-PubSerRef/b26as3-stage2-amend.pdf

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/s3/bills/26-PubSerRef/index.htm

no regulatory oversight

2010-03-11T15:56:00.000-08:00

Creative Scotland appointments : no regulatory oversight

"As Commissioner for Public Appointments in Scotland, I do not currently regulate appointments to the board of Creative Scotland. The Public Services Reform (Scotland) Bill is making its way through parliament. It has, I understand, reached stage 2. If the Bill succeeds in its current format, appointments to the board will fall under my regulatory remit. ... Given that the Bill has not yet passed, I can state categorically that I will have no regulatory oversight of this appointments process."

http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/herald-letters/letters-saturday-20-february-2010-1.1007921
http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/ruth-wishart/we-need-a-culture-of-original-thinking-1.1007050

http://www.appointed-for-scotland.org/Current-positions/Member-and-Chair---Creative-Scotland/

Papas Habemus

2010-03-11T15:48:00.000-08:00

CREATIVE SCOTLAND ANNOUNCES ITS CHIEF EXECUTIVE: Andrew Dixon, Chief Executive of the NewcastleGateshead Initiative for the last five years.

Festival chief heads north to take Creative Scotland reins
“...He said he knew that the early debate around Creative Scotland was ‘antagonistic’ but now feels people in the arts community are more interested in the ‘art of the possible’. ... Mr Dixon says his favourite artist is Andy Goldsworthy and once said the things that made him miserable were ‘bureaucracy, form filling, jobsworths and people who are terminally negative’...”
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/festival-chief-heads-north-to-take-creative-scotland-reins-1.1006211

What's sauce for the goose...

2010-03-11T15:29:00.000-08:00

Are MSPs unaware of Creative Scotland's raison d'être - no artform specialisms?

Traditional arts ‘need a national company’
"Scotland’s traditional arts – music, dance, songs and story-telling – should have its own national company on a par with the likes of the National Theatre of Scotland and Scottish Opera, according to a new report commissioned by the Scottish Government. ... The document’s major theme is how the traditional arts can achieve the same parity of esteem with the likes of other publicly funded art forms such as theatre, ballet and classical music. It claims that in the traditional arts, such as highland dancing and folk music, “their significance and value is still not recognised, promoted and celebrated enough”. Other recommendations include: the creation of a Traditional Arts Apprentice scheme, matching young traditional musicians or dancers with an experienced mentor; the creation of a traditional arts centre; Creative Scotland to set up a specialist fund for the traditional arts; and a major study be undertaken into their economic impact."
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/traditional-arts-need-a-national-company-1.1002678

charismatic ideology

2010-03-11T15:23:00.000-08:00

"So the imperial cult grew. Its 'good news' was that Caesar, the son of God, was now the lord of the whole world, claiming allegiance from everybody in return for bringing salvation and justice to the world. Resistance was met with crucifixion. The system was based on sheer power."

Veteran BBC man Tusa will help pick Scots arts chief
"One of the UK’s most respected arts figures, Sir John Tusa, is to play a key role in choosing the figurehead for Scotland’s new cultural funding body. ... One of the most respected people in the UK arts scene, Sir John was managing director of the BBC World Service from 1986 to 1993, having had a distinguished career as a broadcaster, and subsequently spent more than 10 years managing London’s Barbican arts centre. He has also been chair of the Wigmore Hall in London and is chair of the influential Clore Leadership Programme for cultural activities."
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/veteran-bbc-man-tusa-will-help-pick-scots-arts-chief-1.999057

Stage 1 Report

2010-01-02T21:07:00.000-08:00

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/s3/committees/finance/reports-09/fir09-08-vol1.htm

8th Report, 2009 (Session 3)
Stage 1 Report on the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Bill
CONTENTS
VOLUME 1: FINANCE COMMITTEE REPORT

part 3 – creative scotland

Introduction

89. Part 3 of the Bill creates a single national public body for arts and culture, embracing the creative industries, Creative Scotland. The Creative Scotland Bill fell on 18 June 2008 due to the Parliament not agreeing to the Financial Resolution, and much of the content of the original bill has now been transferred to the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Bill.

90. The policy behind this Part of the Bill was considered exclusively by the ELLC Committee. The ELLC Committee’s report can be found as Annexe B to this report.

Functions created by Part 3

Creative industries

91. The Bill establishes six general functions for Creative Scotland, as opposed to the four functions outlined in the original Creative Scotland Bill; the significant addition to these functions is for Creative Scotland to have responsibility for the creative industries and other commercial activity. The ELLC Committee concludes that a coordination and partnership approach should be the key to Creative Scotland’s success with regard to the creative industries and recommends that all necessary steps be taken to ensure that this joint working has the necessary foundations for success, perhaps through guidance issued by the Minister. The ELLC Committee calls on the Scottish Government to provide, before Stage 2, further details of how it will ensure this.

Structure

92. At the time of the ELLC Committee’s scrutiny, issues around the proposed structure for Creative Scotland were still under consideration by Creative Scotland 2009 Ltd (the limited company set up to manage the establishment of the new body). The Minister for Culture, External Affairs and the Constitution wrote to the Finance Committee on 21 October 2009, attaching a copy of the Creative Scotland Business Model,78 which contains detailed plans for the structure of Creative Scotland. The Committee comments on the financial implications of Creative Scotland in the sections of this report on the Financial Memorandum at paragraphs 194 – 201 below.

Definitions

93. The ELLC Committee notes in its report that there are differences of opinion within the creative sector in trying to define specific terms such as “art”, “culture” and “creativity” and agrees with the Scottish Government that including such definitions on the face of the Bill would be undesirable due to their likely restrictive nature. However, the Committee also notes comments from the Scottish Artists Union, who suggest that the word “artist” could be used in the Bill, or in guidance, without the need for a specific definition, as with other related terms in the Bill.

National Culture

94. Another additional function in the Bill which was not in the original Creative Scotland Bill is for Creative Scotland to provide support for “creative endeavours which contribute to an understanding of Scotland’s national culture”. Although there was some concern expressed in evidence, the ELLC Committee believes it to be appropriate as a broad and all-encompassing term. The ELLC Committee also states that it is pleased that a definition of “national culture” is included in the Policy Memorandum.

Wider policy environment

95. The ELLC Committee received a range of written evidence expressing concern about a lack of clarity around how Creative Scotland would relate to the wider policy environment.

Enterprise agencies

96. The ELLC Committee acknowledges that the Bill provides far greater clarity than the Creative Scotland Bill on the relationship between the new organisation and the enterprise agencies and the possible transfer of funds. However, the ELLC Committee goes on to note that the practicalities of this relationship, particularly with regard to responsibility for the distribution of funds, will need to evolve over time and that all the relevant partners should give such practicalities particular attention.

Local authorities

97. In its report, the ELLC Committee notes points raised in evidence regarding a potential tension between local authorities’ lead role in delivering public services and the work of Creative Scotland in relation to participation in, and access to, the arts and culture. The ELLC Committee concludes that the practicalities of this relationship would benefit from further clarification and therefore welcomes the Minister’s intention to continue to engage with local authorities on this matter. The Committee recommends that the Scottish Government and COSLA make every effort to ensure the relationship between Creative Scotland and local authorities is as clearly set out as possible, through dialogue with all relevant parties and, if necessary, guidance, with particular attention being given to the issue of responsibility for funding.

Ministerial direction/relationship with Scottish Ministers

98. The “arms-length principle” (i.e. how independent from government the new agency would be and what influence Scottish Ministers would have over issues such as artistic direction) had been particularly significant during the ELLC Committee’s consideration of the previous bill. However, the ELLC Committee welcomes provisions in the Bill to clearly establish an “arms-length principle.”

Governance

99. Some submissions to the ELLC Committee commented on the proposed make-up of the board of Creative Scotland, and suggested that places should be reserved for certain organisations. The ELLC Committee is firmly of the view that this would be counter-productive and supports the Scottish Government’s approach that the board should be recruited through fair and open competition, as outlined in the Bill and accompanying documents.

100. The ELLC Committee also considered the issue of Royal Charter status, and noted the concerns raised by the Royal Society of Edinburgh about the potential implications of this, and the Scottish Government’s response.

ELLC Committee’s overall conclusions

101. In conclusion, the ELLC Committee acknowledges that the Scottish Government has moved to address many of the concerns raised during the passage of the Creative Scotland Bill, and that it has provided greater clarity on a number of important issues. However, the ELLC Committee also notes that Creative Scotland has had a very long incubation period and the Committee is agreed that any further delay and uncertainty regarding its establishment would damage the sector. The Committee therefore believes it is important that Creative Scotland becomes fully established as soon as possible.

102. The Committee notes the conclusions and recommendations on Creative Scotland from the ELLC Committee and asks the Cabinet Secretary to respond.

[...]

Creative Scotland

Funding

194. In its report, the ELLC Committee notes that the funding of Creative Scotland was a significant concern during the passage of the Creative Scotland Bill and in evidence to the Committee on this Bill. Following completion of the ELLC Committee’s report, correspondence was received from the Minister for Culture, External Affairs and the Constitution, which notes that “whilst work on much of what you requested is currently in progress, I am not in a position to provide complete answers at present.”132 In its report, the ELLC Committee concludes that it remained concerned that the level of funding available to Creative Scotland may not be sufficiently high to enable it to achieve its broad and ambitious objectives and recommends that the Scottish Government gives further thought to how this potential shortfall might be met.

Loss of charitable status

195. The FM explains that the Scottish Arts Council will retain charitable status until the organisation is dissolved and estimates that there could be a loss of £546,000 to Creative Scotland if the new organisation does not receive charitable status itself.133 In evidence to the ELLC Committee, the Minister for Culture, External Affairs and the Constitution explained that it would be unlikely that Creative Scotland’s application to the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator for charitable status would be successful. However, in correspondence to the Finance Committee, the bill team explained that the costs set out in the FM were a “worst case scenario” and “take no account of a range of potential options Creative Scotland may wish to pursue to absorb or mitigate any loss.”134 The bill team give a range of options that could be pursued and stated that “there will be no direct impact on grants to artists.”135

Overall level of costs and savings for Creative Scotland

196. As indicated above, the FM sets out a range of costs and savings, and a “best estimate”. In terms of Creative Scotland, if the higher estimate of costs is used, transition costs would total £4.44 million and savings at the end of 2013 would total £3.66 million.136 In response to concerns that the new organisation would not be making net savings by 2013, officials explained that, in their view, the upper estimate of costs would be “quite unlikely to happen”, due to the uncertainties around many of the transition costs (most notably the costs of the voluntary early severance/retirement scheme – see paragraphs 197 – 198).137 In addition, the bill team explained that while some savings could be quantified at this point—

“[…] we [also] expect savings to arise from streamlining of processes, but we cannot quantify them at the moment, so they have not been included in the estimated savings. However, we will expect those figures to increase.”138

Staff costs

197. A significant potential area of cost, with a wide margin of uncertainty, is provision for a voluntary early severance/retirement (“VES/ER”) scheme. The FM explains that there will be no compulsory redundancies as a result of the restructuring (in line with commitments made by the Scottish Government on the simplification programme), and that “savings will be achieved through natural wastage, redeployment and re-skilling where appropriate.”139 However, the FM goes on to state that should it be necessary, “a cost effective voluntary early severance/retirement scheme will be made available.”140

198. On the basis of the “most favourable” Scottish Arts Council terms, the FM estimates that the cost of the VES/ER will be between £500,000 and £1.5m, with a best estimate of £1.1m.141 These estimates are based on a headcount reduction of 30 full time equivalent (“FTE”) posts, as outlined in the FM. However, the Creative Scotland Business Model, published in October 2009, sets out plans for a headcount reduction of 35 FTE posts.142 The Committee appreciates the points made in correspondence from the bill team that there are a range of factors which contribute to the uncertainties around these figures, and that the VES/ER scheme will only be used when other methods have been exhausted. The Committee also notes that the Minister for Culture, External Affairs and the Constitution has already met with relevant trades unions and expects to continue discussions on this issue.143

Non-staff costs

199. The major element of non-staff costs in setting up the new body is for harmonising business systems and IT. The FM again gives a wide range of possible costs (£300,000 - £600,000) and a best estimate of £400,000. The bill team explained that there is a range of factors behind the difference in upper and lower estimates and that different levels of integration between the two bodies are possible.144 The Committee also understands that Creative Scotland 2009 Ltd is tasked with providing recommendations on this area and it is not therefore possible for the Scottish Government to provide more clarity at this stage.

Conclusions on the financial implications of Creative Scotland

200. With the publication of the Creative Scotland Business Model there is now more clarity on the future shape of the new organisation than there was when the FM was being drawn up. The Committee therefore asks the Scottish Government to consider whether it wishes to revise the cost estimates in the FM before Stage 2, especially given the proposed headcount reduction of 35.

201. Overall, although appreciating the uncertainties involved, the Committee is concerned about the wide range of figures provided for some elements of the costs of Creative Scotland and asks that the Scottish Government monitors and reports to the Parliament on the establishment of the new body at regular intervals.

[...]

Conclusions on the Financial Memorandum

211. In general, the Committee has found the FM to be a detailed and useful document, notwithstanding its specific comments above on certain aspects of the cost implications. However, the Committee notes that the largest element of the savings involved in the Bill appear to come from the reduction in staff at Creative Scotland, and restructuring/streamlining in SCSWIS. As the intention is for staff to be redeployed within the Scottish Government in the first instance (although VES/ER schemes will be available), the Committee questions whether this does in fact constitute a saving to the public purse, and asks the Cabinet Secretary to respond.

[...]

Creative Scotland

With the publication of the Creative Scotland Business Model there is now more clarity on the future shape of the new organisation than there was when the FM was being drawn up. The Committee therefore asks the Scottish Government to consider whether it wishes to revise the cost estimates in the FM before Stage 2, especially given the proposed headcount reduction of 35.

Overall, although appreciating the uncertainties involved, the Committee is concerned about the wide range of figures provided for some elements of the costs of Creative Scotland and asks that the Scottish Government monitors and reports to the Parliament on the establishment of the new body at regular intervals (paragraphs 200 – 201).

10th minister for culture in 10 years

2010-01-02T20:54:00.000-08:00

On 1st December 2009 it was announced Fiona Hyslop MSP for The Lothians replaces Mike Russell as Minister for Culture and External Affairs. "The responsibilities of the Minister for Culture & External Affairs include: Europe, external affairs, culture and the arts, architecture, built heritage, Historic Scotland, major events strategy, and Gaelic."

Insight: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/dec/01/scotland
-alex-salmond-demotes-under-fire-minister

PSRB condemned amid legal concerns

2009-10-01T13:59:00.000-07:00

Czar wars: MSPs warned watchdog reforms threaten basic rights
Tom Gordon, Published on 20 Sep 2009
Sweeping new powers which would let Scottish ministers scrap dozens of independent watchdogs risk damaging child protection and undermining the public’s basic rights, MSPs will be warned this week.
The Public Service Reform Bill has been condemned by several of Scotland’s “czars”, including those responsible for young people, human rights, and freedom of information. In a highly unusual step, the Scottish Parliament’s presiding officer has also raised concerns about the bill.
The legislation is meant to “simplify and improve” the country’s many public bodies, as well as create the arts quango Creative Scotland.
However, in addition it would give ministers the power to change, merge or abolish more than 100 specified public bodies, including all health boards, children’s panels and national parks.
Also listed are several independent watchdogs, including Audit Scotland, the Mental Welfare Commission, and the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission.
Although many of the bodies were established by a full act of parliament, under the proposals they could be scrapped via a simple ministerial order. Some – like the Scottish Information Commissioner – were designed to be wholly independent of ministers and are funded by the Scottish parliament, yet could be axed by the government.
In written evidence to this week’s finance committee meeting, the watchdogs will demand that they be removed from the scope of the bill.
Tam Baillie, Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People, said the powers were of “great concern”, and could result in “weakened rights protection for Scotland’s children”.
Kevin Dunion, the Scottish Information Commissioner, whose decisions on freedom of information (FoI) often embarrass ministers, said the powers were “inappropriate” and “anomalous”.
Despite government assurances that any changes would be merely “administrative”, he said they would “also have the effect of fundamentally changing Scotland’s FoI regime”.
Writing on behalf of the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body, presiding officer Alex Fergusson said he was “surprised” to see bodies funded by the parliament included in the bill, all of which are independent of government.
“We consider it is important to avoid actions which could limit or compromise that independence,” he said.
The newly established Scottish Human Rights Commission also said giving ministers sway over its operations was “not appropriate” and would undermine its independence.
The Commission for Public Appointments said the bill would give ministers “an incredibly wide and unfettered power”, which the Law Society of Scotland said was “constitutionally significant”.
A government spokesman said: “We are making public services simpler, sharper and better co-ordinated. The Public Services Reform Bill provides necessary changes to legislation to dissolve and merge more bodies and puts a new framework in place to manage future change … Any proposals would be subject to prior consultation and parliamentary approval.”
In a speech to the Liberal Democrat conference in Bournemouth today, Scottish leader Tavish Scott is due to attack the SNP for the “creeping centralisation” of government services.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/politics/czar-wars-msps-warned-watchdog-reforms-threaten-basic-rights-1.920990

Chief judge joins attack on public reform bill
Tom Gordon, Published on 27 Sep 2009
Scotland’s most senior judge has joined the attack on a new government bill that would give ministers unprecedented powers to abolish scores of public bodies.
Lord Hamilton, the Lord President, has told MSPs the Public Services Reform Bill is “incompatible with the constitutional position” of the Scottish Court Service and causes him “concern”.
Dr Jim Dyer, the former Scottish parliament standards watchdog, has also accused the government of “political machismo” on the issue, the Sunday Herald can reveal.
The criticisms are the latest blow to the bill, fast becoming one of the most controversial of the current parliament. As the Sunday Herald reported last week, the proposed legislation would allow ministers to change, merge or abolish more than 100 public bodies.
Many agencies covered by the bill are currently independent of government, and were never meant to be under ministerial control. These include the commissioners for young people and children, freedom of information, and human rights.
Last week, in evidence to Holyrood’s finance committee, the bill was criticised as heavy-handed by the Law Society of Scotland, as well as by the independent commissioners.
In further written evidence to the committee, Lord Hamilton says the bill could see ministers use a parliamentary order to axe, without its consent, the entire Scottish Court Service (SCS), which underpins the judiciary “as a third arm of government”. Given the SCS was created by a full act of parliament, “it should ... not be capable of being abolished by the power which is sought to be created by this bill”. He goes on: “I would regard it as incompatible with the constitutional position of the SCS that any modification or transfer [of powers] could occur without the consent of the SCS.”
Dr Dyer said ministers seemed hell-bent on culling public bodies. “There are dangers in an approach which is too doctrinaire and which involves some degree of political machismo, eg deciding … that the number of public bodies and the number of scrutiny bodies should be reduced by an arbitrary figure of 25%, then working out the rationale for abolishing and merging bodies afterwards.”
A Scottish government spokesman said: “There are no plans to make changes to the Scottish Court Service. We are making public services simpler, sharper and better co-ordinated.”
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/politics/chief-judge-joins-attack-on-public-reform-bill-1.922316

Public Services Reform (Scotland) Bill written evidence

2009-10-01T13:58:00.000-07:00

Public Services Reform (Scotland) Bill written evidence received by the Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture Committee:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/s3/committees/ellc/PSR%20Bill/PSRBillWrittenEvidence.htm

A creative Scotland?

2009-08-14T06:25:00.000-07:00

A creative Scotland? II REBECCA GORDON NESBITT argues that a discredited concept is driving change in the arts
Money talks
This evening, in Edinburgh, the new landmark organisation for promoting culture in Scotland will be revealed, but the chances are that you won't have been invited to the launch, especially if you are a creative practitioner. Creative Scotland, as this new organisation will be known, is a hybrid creature – a replacement of Scottish Screen (the main film funding body) and the Scottish Arts Council (hitherto responsible for funding all other artforms falling outside the scope of the national bodies). Pragmatically, this might seem like a good way of saving on the overheads and administrative costs of running two separate cultural funding bodies – indeed this is how it was sold – but much more than fiscal prudence underlies this decision.
Early in the history of devolved government, it became clear that culture was one of the policy areas over which Westminster did not retain reserved powers. In his 2003 St Andrew's Day speech, Scotland's then First Minister, Jack McConnell, announced his intention to make 'the development of our creative drive, our imagination, the next major enterprise for our society'. Shortly afterwards, culture minister Frank McAveety launched the Cultural Commission as part of 'a generational opportunity – to look seriously and maturely at our culture and decide the framework for its support in the future'.
There are precedents for this kind of cultural rethinking after a rupture with the old regime – in Cuba after the 1959 revolution, for example, culture was made a priority, with new museums, galleries and casas de cultura being built across the island and the arts being made integral to education at all levels, which necessitated the training of 20,000 new instructors.
In Scotland, a team of hand-picked commissioners undertook a year-long stakeholder consultation, at a cost to the public purse of £487,000, to make a series of recommendations aimed at reforming, rather than revolutionising, cultural provision. The Scottish Government decided to take forward the merger model they called Creative Scotland, which is hardly surprising given that, in January 2003 – more than a year before the costly Cultural Commission was embarked upon – a group set up to implement the 1999 national cultural strategy was being asked to consider the creation of a new agency, Creative Scotland, which would combine responsibilities then residing with a number of different agencies.
As legislation was drawn up around the new organisation, two worrying facts became clear – the first is that Creative Scotland effectively erodes the arms-length principle inscribed into arts councils north and south of the border since the end of World War II. It is this proviso, protected by Royal Charter, which seeks to ensure that artists have relative autonomy in the face of political sea changes and while this may have been dwindling in practice as the amount of unencumbered funding diminishes, the idea of supporting freedom of expression remains an important principle to uphold.
This leads us to the second major flaw in the model for Creative Scotland; when looking at the direction in which Scottish ministers intend to instrumentalise artists, one phrase rings out like a mantra: creative industries. This largely discredited approach, which explains the appointment of businessmen and bankers onto the board of Creative Scotland, is based on the tenuous idea that creative thinking will stimulate the failing post-industrial economies of the Western world. And, while a certain amount of creativity is inherent in the work of James Dyson or the birth of Lara Croft, this kind of entrepreneurialism is a world apart from conceptions of culture as a process of continual, critical re-evaluation, which should be integral to any free and fair society.
Belatedly realising that certain artforms would be discriminated against by their rhetoric around innovation, Scottish politicians have set up the traditional arts working group to perpetuate handicrafts and linguistic forms particular to Scotland. But it is between these two artificial poles of innovation and tradition that culture lies, and the formation of Creative Scotland shows a massive failure of Scottish politicians and cultural bureaucrats to grasp this.
In post-revolutionary Cuba, the first minister of culture was incredibly articulate about the humanity underlying creative processes which could form a counterpart to beneficial Enlightenment-driven developments in science to act against cultural regressiveness and dogma. However, just as the heralded benefits of Creative Scotland have been economic ones, the only objections being raised in mainstream Scotland have been financial. The initial dedicated Creative Scotland Bill fell in parliament on a budgeting irregularity, leaving the legislation to be smuggled into the Public Services Reform Bill, while the cost of converting two organisations into one has been the major concern of those tenured culture brokers expressing their views publicly. Having been batted between a series of culture ministers and from Labour to the nationalists, responsibility for giving life to Creative Scotland has fallen to Mike Russell as minister for culture, external affairs and the constitution, who launched a series of highly selective meetings aimed at assuaging the concerns of those who matter – the great and the good of Scottish cultural life.
But, beneath the spin, hundreds of artists in Scotland have put their names to an open letter to Russell, highlighting the clear distinction made by UNESCO between culture and commerce. It is these artists, largely unrepresented in the mainstream media, whose views have been routinely ignored by parliamentarians. It is these artists on whom the burden of Creative Scotland will fall and on whom the nation's hopes of economic recovery rest. It is these artists who have not received a card inviting them to the grand unveiling, the words 'Creative Scotland' magically revealed on its surface when it comes into contact with daylight.
As the hybrid creature that is Creative Scotland is unleashed onto an unsuspecting public, it is time to ask ourselves what would happen to Robert Burns or Charles Rennie Mackintosh if they attempted to develop their art in contemporary Scotland; whLinkat fate would await James Joyce or Samuel Beckett, Frida Kahlo or Pablo Picasso, if they were to arrive on these shores, seeking support for their talents. Unable to situate themselves on the tradition-innovation continuum as it is currently defined, they would face three equally unpalatable choices: penury, obscurity or exile.
http://scottishreview.net/RGNesbitt125.html

A creative Scotland? III DICK MUNGIN says we are promoting the wrong sort of Scottish culture at home and overseas
Where's the vision?
http://scottishreview.net/DMungin124.html
Creative Scotland to embrace science and technology
The Herald, PHIL MILLER, Arts Correspondent
http://theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.2525264.0.Creative_Scotland_to_embrace_science_and_technology.php
Salmond’s cod nationalism only obscures the bigger picture
Sunday Herald, Wednesday, 5 August 2009, Paul Hutcheon
http://www.heraldscotland.com:80/comment/herald-view/salmond-s-cod-nationalism-only-obscures-the-bigger-picture-1.821484
"...Will these "high Bohemians" - as the urban studies theorist Richard Florida calls them - be the 21st-century tobacco lords? In any case, the sector needs to be serviced by lawyers protecting their IP rights, developing licensing arrangements and generally assisting the creatives to ensure that their intellectual capital is protected and nurtured..." Philip Rodney, chairman of Burness LLP
Scotland’s lawyers can thrive as our creators and innovators drive the country’s recovery
Sunday Herald, 12/7/09, COMMENT: Philip Rodney
http://www.sundayherald.com/mostpopular.var.2519421.0.scotlands_lawyers_can_thrive_as_our_creators_and_innovators_drive_the_countrys_reLinkcovery.php
"Team Scotland - with all agencies, government, and industry pulling in the same direction - has to be reality, not aspiration. One focus on growing tourism, one focus on marketing Scotland andLink one desire to make Scotland the number one destination above the competition."
Tourism can be an essential part of our economic elite, so long as Team Scotland pulls together
Sunday Herald, 26/7/09, COMMENT: Peter Lederer
http://www.sundayherald.com/business/businessnews/display.var.2522084.0.tourism_can_be_an_essential_part_of_our_economic_elite_so_long_as_team_scotland_pulls_together.php
Tourist numbers fall by a million
The number of tourists visiting Scotland dropped by 8% last year with a big fall in business tourism and spending also falling.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/scotland/8165878.stm

Public Services Reform (Scotland) Bill - call for evidence

2009-07-12T13:50:00.000-07:00

Public Services Reform (Scotland) Bill - call for evidence - Written evidence should be submitted no later than 12 noon on Thursday 13 August 2009. The ELLC Committee launched its consultation on the PSR Bill on 23 June 2009. Here is the Committee's call for evidence: http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/s3/committees/ellc/inquiries/PSR%20Bill/PSRBillCallForEvidence.htm
Creative Scotland : Public submission to parliamentary committee discussions of Creative Scotland and the Public Service Reform Bill, from Variant magazine
The Public Service Reform Bill states its “overarching purpose ... is to help simplify and improve the landscape of Scottish public bodies, to deliver more effective, co-ordinated government that can better achieve its core functions for the benefit of the people of Scotland.” Our submission argues that this is certainly not the case in the proposals concerning the formation of Creative Scotland. The bill’s proposals for Creative Scotland instead represent an historic revision and backward trend in cultural policy. We argue that the organisation of Creative Scotland, as it is presently proposed, erodes certain key values, such as the arms length principle and the universal distinction between culture and commerce.
These first principles were established under popular governments in the UK from 1945 onwards and in the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions which came into force in 2007. Variant is an arts organisation that depends on these national principles and international standards being upheld if we are to survive in Scotland. We are already seeing the erosion of our rights to freedom of expression in official interference with the distribution of our publication thanks to contemporary policy increasingly geared towards the synergy of a promotional culture in Scotland.[1] The pressures now put upon us reflect the underlying logic of “single purpose government” rather than reflecting normative democratic values in cultural policy. We therefore object to the current proposals for Creative Scotland on the basis of our human rights.
Michael Russell MSP, Minister for Culture, External Affairs and the Constitution, has stated Creative Scotland is to be “an entrepreneurial organisation”. Indeed, the design of the organisation owes more to a mixture of bureaucrats and business people than it does to cultural practitioners or to those with independent critical expertise in cultural policy. The discursive isolation of Creative Scotland from broader-based debates about cultural policy has impoverished the discussion of its functions. The recent Hollyrood governments that proposed its creation have sought to reconcile economic instrumentalism and pure artistic freedoms (or “arts for arts sake”). However, this dichotomy, which Creative Scotland is said to transcend, is part of a complex history that has still not been fairly debated and assessed, as it should be, before making fundamental reforms to the ethos of cultural provision.
In his work on the post-1945 period, the historian Alan Sinfield summarises the view that democratic culture in the UK became relentlessly “squeezed between art and commerce.”[2] Only by ignoring such studies can an entrepreneurially orientated organisation be projected as a solution to a classic issue of cultural policy. Most scholars of cultural history would call into question the idea that freedom of artistic self-expression is synonymous with the defence of broader cultural rights, yet this is what has been implied time and again by politicians voicing support for Creative Scotland.
Creative Scotland offers a fundamental reform to a key aspect of democratic society, yet it is being pushed through as part of much wider bill aiming for a whole range of technocratic efficiencies which dissolve the arms length organisations – overwhelmingly these are scrutiny bodies at a time when failure of public accountability is salient.
Although reforms of cultural provision may be long overdue, without a more fully informed parliamentary enquiry to deepen MSPs discussion about cultural policy, the proposals for the organisation remain premature. The lack of parliamentary discussion about how to best pursue UNESCO treaty commitments to diversity of cultural expression (which include the diversity of political expression) has shown how far removed Scotland’s civic discourse on culture remains from a country like Sweden which pays greater attention to UNESCO standards. Sweden recognises the need to counteract “the negative effects of commercialism”[3] and how markets may distort and reify culture as a series of global commodities. However, the branding and commodification of culture in Scotland is one of the key motivations for the new organisation. Indeed throughout the promotion of Creative Scotland the idea of branding has been used in an entirely uncritical sense. On the other hand, scant regard has been paid to popular cultural institutions such as libraries and how popular cultural institutions and leisure may be strengthened and developed.
There is little or no evidence that an avowedly entrepreneurial organisation, more directly geared to economic policy, is needed or will improve existing relationships of sponsorship and/or synergies between the arts, culture and business. In this sense, the development of Creative Scotland’s mission, or ‘core script’, appears to be more about ideological engineering than economic necessity, improved service levels, or the public good. Moreover, the unintended consequences of the shift towards an entrepreneurial ideology in the public provision of culture have not been tested in free and fair public debate. Marketplace “truths” require far greater scrutiny, as has been amply demonstrated in recent months.
The risks of direct political influence over the arts was a preoccupation of the Arts Councils in the UK for many years, as Nicolas Pearson has charted, from the Arts Council of Great Britain’s Eighth annual report (1953): “Every organisation [the Council] assists, large or small, has its own governing body and it self-determined policy”, the importance of this being that, “Certain local authorities have shown an excess of zeal by providing concerts and plays under their own management, an endeavour which could be seen to be – even if not designed as such – a movement towards L’Art Officiel, and on that ground as dangerous as similar provision by a central quasi-governmental body such as the Arts Council”.[4]
However one judges the record of Arts Councils’ autonomy, and there are many scholars like Raymond Williams who thought that the arms length principle was in fact only a “wrist length” from the ruling establishment [5], the danger of Creative Scotland is more far-reaching than that of L’Art Officiel. Creative Scotland opens the door to a corporate-friendly Culture Officiel under the guise of cultural nationalism. This comes just at the moment when corporate power and the rule of markets are increasingly questioned by ordinary citizens. It would be naïve to assume that an agency set to abandon an already weak arms length principle in favour of a commercially orientated cultural policy could uphold the very criticality concerning culture and commerce that is already under threat.
Notes
1. Following a complaint from Culture & Sport Glasgow (CSG), Variant were informed that the magazine had been removed from Glasgow venues managed by CSG following the publication of ‘The New Bohemia’, an article by Rebecca Gordon Nesbitt that critically mapped the political network of CSG. The interference with the distribution of Variant would appear to contravene the author’s rights to free political expression as determined by the European Court of Human Rights in cases such as Lingens v. Austria (1986), Oberschlick v. Austria (1991). See, ‘Freedom of Expression on Trial: Caselaw under European Convention on Human Rights’, by Sally Burnheim, http://www.derechos.org/koaga/i/burnheim.html (Accessed May 2009.) See also, ‘Comment’ in Variant, issue 33. An extract from CSG’s complaint to Variant, 23/7/08, states: “The images you chose to illustrate the piece are in no way representative of Culture and Sport Glasgow and the work that it does. They would appear to have been chosen to illustrate the city of Glasgow in a negative way and thus associate Culture and Sport Glasgow with negative imagery.”
2. Alan Sinfield, 'The Government, the People and the Festival', in Jim Fyrth (ed.), 'Labour's Promised Land?: Culture and Society in Labour Britain 1945-51', (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1995).
3. “The objectives of national cultural policy include safeguarding freedom of expression and creating genuine opportunities for everyone to make use of that freedom; taking action to enable everyone to participate in cultural life, to experience culture and to engage in creative activities of their own; promoting cultural diversity, artistic renewal and quality, thus counteracting the negative effects of commercialism; enabling culture to act as a dynamic, challenging and independent force in society; preserving and making use of our cultural heritage; promoting the thirst for learning, and promoting international cultural exchange and meetings between different cultures in the country.” ‘Sweden’s objectives of national cultural policy’, www.sweden.gov.se/sb/d/3009/a/72002
4. ‘The Quango and the Gentlemanly Tradition: British State intervention in the visual arts’, Nicholas Pearson, The Oxford Art Journal – 5:1 1982.
5. Williams, R. (1989 [1979]): The Arts Council. In: Williams, R.: ‘Resources of Hope. Culture, Democracy and Socialism’, (Verso).

Question to Mike Russell

2009-07-11T08:54:00.000-07:00

Question to Mike Russell MSP, Minister for Culture, External Affairs and the Constitution:

Creative Scotland is a confusing and self-contradictory set of proposals which smack of Orwellian newspeak.
So we want to ask you about your language, and the real meaning of your cultural policy.
We’re told government takes UNESCO legal instruments seriously, yet you also say Creative Scotland is to be “an entrepreneurial organisation” – ignoring the spirit of the UNESCO convention that culture should not be treated like commerce.
You say that you want dialogue, but that the time for talking is over.
You say that artists should be at the centre of Creative Scotland, but the bill overwhelmingly makes artists instruments of government policy – in the words of the bill, artists are to “support the government’s overarching purpose.”
You say you want Creative Scotland to support sustainable economic growth, but the organisation is being nursed into being by bankers and businessmen who have set back the cause of genuinely sustainable growth.
You say you care about producers, but you want to introduce loans to indebt us even more – a mechanism which has failed elsewhere.
You have even brought into play the old-fashioned and inadequate idea of “art for art’s sake” as a fudged safeguard against your own “overarching” policy.
Our key question is: what is to happen to individuals and organisations who do not want to support the corporate-friendly culture you are trying to engineer under the guise of Cultural Nationalism?

Creative Scotland : In Big Fuzzy Focus

2009-07-11T08:44:00.000-07:00

"The first in a series of quarterly events to provide an update on progress to establish Creative Scotland was held at the Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh on June 23, 2009. Culture Minister Michael Russell, Ewan Brown, Chair of Creative Scotland and Richard Holloway, Chair of the Joint Board of the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen spoke at the event which was chaired by Ruth Wishart. A question and answer session with the audience followed the speeches."

This documentation differs starkly from the original invitation and artists' expectations, where this was to be the "first in a series of quarterly events to discuss Creative Scotland" as well as "update the community on ongoing progress". It was said to "offer an opportunity for you to contribute towards Creative Scotland’s development and share your thoughts on the issues which are important to you", and it was hoped "you will be able to join the dialogue at this important time in the development of Creative Scotland." Alas, this was not part of the script.

The spectacle can be accessed here:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/ArtsCultureSport

Creative Industries Partnership Report

2009-07-11T08:28:00.000-07:00

Scotland’s Creative Industries Partnership Report:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/ArtsCultureSport/arts/CulturalPolicy/creative-scotland

"Scottish public bodies have signed an agreement on how they will support the creative industries sector of the Scottish economy. Scotland's Creative Industries Partnership brings together the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, Creative Scotland, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, and Scottish Enterprise in an agreement..."

press release in full:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2009/06/18132606

Creative Scotland : Public Services Reform (Scotland) Bill

2009-07-11T08:27:00.000-07:00

The Scottish government documents that relate to the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Bill (SP Bill 26) as introduced in the Scottish Parliament on 28 May 2009 by John Swinney MSP, can be downloaded at:
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/s3/bills/26-PubSerRef/index.htm

An aid to Understanding the Legislative Process is available here: http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/business/bills/understanding.htm

Iain Smith resigns from Scottish Screen-Creative Scotland board

2009-07-11T08:25:00.000-07:00

"I have resigned from frustration, and a sense that the board of which I was a member is just marking time, is no longer looking to the future, and is not in control of its own actions," Smith has said. "The urgency to get Creative Scotland together as quickly as possible, and the concern for a need for speed, will come at the cost of proper outcomes."

Smith had served on the Scottish Screen board since 2003.

http://www.screendaily.com/iain-smith-resigns-from-scottish-screen-creative-scotland-board/4043656.article

Competitive Edges Symposium : Culture, Nationalism & Migration

2009-03-16T16:19:00.000-07:00

Please check for updates

Competitive Edges Symposium : Culture, Nationalism & Migration

10.30am - 5.30pm Saturday 28th March 2009

CCA (Centre for Contemporary Arts)
350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, G2 3JD
Event free but ticketed
Box office: +44 (0)141 352 4900

At the 2008 Lothian Lecture given in Edinburgh Professor Tom Nairn and Scotland's nationalist First Minister, Alex Salmond envisioned Scotland as a nimble nation "light on its feet" and "possibly out-smarting heavyweights". In many ways this idea draws upon Ireland's boom time image of the Celtic tiger. Given that nation states are not in fact mobile entities within the international juridical system of sovereignty, we aim to involve internationally acknowledged researchers, academics, writers and artists, who are engaged with the issues of globalisation, to explore what such ideas mean for culture and the arts, particularly in relation to identity and migration, and ultimately for the policies that shape culture.

This will be a vital opportunity for a wide range of people to historically locate contemporary cultural trends and to situate the politics and discourse of diversity in a comparative international context. We think it is particularly important to examine cultural policies in the context of uneven development and the phenomenal rise of the speculative international economy.

Historically, Scotland has experienced mass emigration particularly as a result of enforced rural 'improvements' in the 19th century. This has influenced the way the country imagines itself today. In 2004 the Scottish Arts Council held a major conference in Dundee, 'New Voices Hidden Histories', which created a debate about how mass immigration had also influenced the cultural landscape of Scotland and whether artists and arts organisations effectively represented contemporary Scottish society. One of the things that emerged from the conference was that the philosophical foundations of multiculturalism are vague and its politics potentially divisive or sectarian. As has similarly been described of contemporary multi-ethnic Ireland, 'multiculturalism' is a common linguistic currency which disavows everyday, institutional and state racist undertones in the name of racelessness. Far from promoting tolerance of cultural difference, orthodox multicultural policies have presented a number of paradoxes which work to harden territorialism and racism. Increasingly, the ideology of nations as lively corporate entities, such as 'UK PLC', appears to have no answer to the everyday experience of life in immobile unlimited states that do not enjoy an option for bankruptcy under international law.

Five years on, the issues raised in Dundee have been recast by the troubled progress of the Scottish parliamentary Creative Scotland Bill which, despite a confusing series of political twists and turns, still seems set to position culture closer to political and economic policies, possibly eroding the material basis of "the arms length principle" which informed cultural management after 1945. What is extremely unclear from orthodox multicultural ideas is how the complex values of multiculturalism will continue to function in practice: can there be a substantial critical relationship with the promotional model of culture that now informs cultural policy in many countries, and if so how successful would this be in relation to defending democratic rights and freedoms in culture? It is therefore especially timely to have the above symposium in Glasgow to comparatively explore how cultural freedoms and human rights might be upheld or eroded in the era of competitive nationalism.

Some of the key areas to be addressed are:

• the economic structuring of migration and national responses
• the policies that define 'diversity'
• the place of non-white academia
• development, sovereignty and citizenship
• cultural autonomy - communication or self-expression?

Speakers:

Femi Folorunso - works as arts development officer at the Scottish Arts Council. Prior to joining the Arts Council, he lectured in drama and cultural studies at universities in Nigeria and the UK. Femi continues to retain strong academic interest in drama and cultural theory as well as in cultural policy development. He is currently researching the disenfranchisement of immigrants under the neoliberal reconstruction of citizenship. His contribution will focus on the interconnections between race, migration and international development.

Ronit Lentin - director of the MPhil in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Department of Sociology, Trinity College Dublin.
['From racial state to racist state: Ireland on the eve of the citizenship referendum', Variant, issue 20, Summer 2004]

Sarah Glynn - Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Edinburgh and a Public Interest Research Fellow at the University of Strathclyde.

Robbie McVeigh - Derry-based human rights activist and researcher on racism and sectarianism, equality and human rights.

Stephen Mullen - co-ordinator/researcher with GARA (Glasgow Anti-Racist Alliance) - will argue that there is romantic view of the ubiquitous Scot abroad, which is symbolic of the selective perception of Scottish history. In spite of sustained Scottish emigration to the Caribbean slave plantations from c.1650 onwards, this period is sometimes viewed through a deliberately obscured lens. Stephen will explore factors contributing to this national amnesia and illustrate implications for the national identity. The omission of the less glorious aspects of our history means there is an unacknowledged legacy of Scots emigrants. There are many tangible examples of this legacy in the Caribbean, although this is not reflected in the narrow scope and focus of the Homecoming programme in 2009. The Homecoming encourages the Scots Diaspora to return home to participate in festivities, celebrate the birth of Robert Burns and to revel in the achievements of notable emigrants. However, this legacy extends to more than pioneering inventions, whisky and golf. Indeed, the kilt has many colours.

Introduction:

Owen Logan - photographer and Research Fellow, University of Aberdeen. Owen works with the 'Lives in the Oil Industry' oral history project in the Department of History at the university, and is currently working between Scotland and Nigeria.

Chairs:

Daniel Jewesbury - artist & co-editor of Variant magazine
['The End of Tolerance: Racism in 21st Century Britain', Daniel Jewesbury, Variant, issue 32, Summer 2008]
Alex Law - Lecturer in Sociology at University of Abertay Dundee whose research interests include Nation and Society, and Urbanism.
['Social Capital and Neo-Liberal Voluntarism', Alex Law & Gerry Mooney, Variant, issue 26, Summer 2006]

For further information, please contact Variant:
t. +44 (0)141 333 9522
e. variantmag@btinternet.com

Or check the website for updates: http://www.variant.org.uk/events.html

This event is kindly supported by CCA.
http://cca-glasgow.com

UNESCO Tackles Culture and Commerce

2009-03-16T16:14:00.000-07:00

http://ictsd.net/i/news/bridges/4101/
UNESCO Tackles Culture and Commerce

A new international treaty entered into force in March, encouraging parties to adopt measures to protect the diversity of cultural expressions that may be imperilled by the quickening pace of globalisation.
Since the early 1980s, international trade in cultural goods has grown six-fold, increasing from US$9.5 billion in 1980 to US$60 billion in 2002. According to the World Bank, cultural and creative industries account for more than 7 percent of world GNP, which represents a global commercial value of US$1.3 trillion. A handful of countries export the lion’s share of cultural goods, with Europe leading at 51.8 percent, followed by Asia (20.6 percent) and North America (16.9 percent). Likewise, rich countries account for more than 90 percent of all cultural imports, led by the US, the UK and Germany. In contrast, Latin America and Africa were estimated to represent 3 and 1 percent, respectively, of world trade in cultural goods in 2002.
Some statistics on the diversity of cultural expressions are startling. For example, while Hollywood accounts for 85 percent of box office revenue worldwide, in Africa just 2 percent of the population has seen African films. There thus appears to be both a decrease in the dissemination of cultural goods on a global scale, and a decline in the production of, and access to, a diversity of such goods and services.
In addition, cultural industries are progressively taking over traditional forms of creation and dissemination and bringing about changes in cultural practices. The diminishing diversity of languages offers a striking example: while there are more than 6000 living languages in the world, those used in commerce and new technologies are increasingly dominant. It is estimated that a language disappears every two weeks and there are predictions that 90 percent of them will be extinct within a hundred years.

Convention on Cultural Diversity
It is against this backdrop that the members of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) adopted a Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions1 in October 2005. The treaty, which entered into force in March 2007, recognises that cultural goods and services cannot be treated as mere commodities. It explicitly allows parties to protect and promote the diversity of their cultural expressions [1] through, for instance, adopting measures aimed at:
providing opportunities for the creation, production, dissemination and enjoyment of domestic cultural activities, goods and services, including provisions relating to language;
providing domestic independent cultural industries and activities in the informal sector effective access to the means of production, dissemination and distribution;
providing public financial assistance; and enhancing diversity of the media, including through public service broadcasting.
Parties to the convention may also take ‘all appropriate measures’ to protect and preserve cultural expressions in situations where they have determined that these are at risk of extinction, under serious threat, or otherwise in need of urgent safeguarding.

Relationship with WTO Rules
A major point of contention during the negotiations for the new treaty was how its provisions would relate to WTO disciplines. Opponents, such as the US, saw its main purpose as an attempt to give additional legitimacy for the maintenance and possible expansion of measures – maintained by countries such as Canada, China, France, South Korea and many others – that restrict market penetration of foreign films and music, as well as other cultural products or services (magazines, audiovisual broadcasts, etc.). Its proponents considered it as a necessity to safeguard the survival of their cultural identity, language and traditions.
The convention has been ratified by 67 individual countries, as well as the European Union as a whole. The US voted against its adoption, arguing that the instrument remained “too flawed, too open to misinterpretation and too prone to abuse for us to support.” The US also stressed that the convention “must not be read to prevail over or modify rights and obligations under other international agreements, including WTO agreements. Potential ambiguities in the convention must not be allowed to endanger what the global community has achieved, over many years, in the areas of free trade, the free flow of information, and freedom of choice in cultural expression and enjoyment.”
The language regarding the treaty’s relationship with other international agreements is indeed ambiguous: on the one hand it affirms that parties will not ‘subordinate’ the convention to any other treaty, and on the other it specifies that nothing in it “shall be interpreted as modifying rights and obligations of the parties under any other treaties.”
Thus, should a WTO dispute arise regarding measures taken to protect the diversity of cultural expressions, a defendant in the case could refer to the rights accorded by the convention, while a complainant could evoke the clause that it does not modify the defendant’s obligations under other treaties. Non-parties, such as the US, would of course not be bound by the convention’s provisions at all. Legal scholar Joost Pauwelyn, however, has argued that the WTO “presumably would not wish to isolate itself from the rest of the international lawmaking world by closing its eyes to any legislative initiative agreed on outside its own building, be it consented to by the disputing parties or not.”[2]

See also:
UNESCO Overwhelmingly Approves Cultural Diversity Treaty
http://ictsd.net/i/news/bridgesweekly/6211/

Open Letter to Mike Russell MSP, Minister for Culture, External Affairs and the Constitution

2009-03-16T16:04:00.000-07:00

What follows is an open letter to Mike Russell MSP, Minister for Culture, External Affairs and the Constitution, concerning Creative Scotland (the proposed merger of the public bodies, the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen) that will shortly be sent to him. The letter was formed through open group discussion and concentrated exchanges between artists and members of Variant’s affinity group. If you concur with the letter and wish to sign it, either in a personal or ‘official’ capacity, then please email Variant at: variantmag@btinternet.com
For ongoing analysis of the Creative Scotland debacle, please visit: creativescotland.blogspot.com

Open Letter to Mike Russell MSP, Minister for Culture, External Affairs and the Constitution

Dear Mike Russell,
Re. Promotional Culture versus Democratic Culture: The Case of Creative Scotland
After a long series of confusing twists and turns over cultural policy in Scotland it is clear that there is considerable controversy surrounding the proposed cultural body Creative Scotland. We believe Creative Scotland is already impoverishing culture by promoting and envisaging it in overwhelmingly industrial terms. This misguided approach ultimately fixates on anything or anyone that can be bought, sold or put into debt[1], and stands against the spirit and letter of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions which came into force in March 2007.[2]
So far, the formation of Creative Scotland has been a largely opportunistic political and bureaucratic exercise in a country which suffers from significant democratic deficits despite our devolved parliament. It is therefore vital that this organisation, if it is to truly represent the interests of culture, builds moral and democratic authority. We take your recent ministerial appointment as evidence of the seriousness of this problem at the heart of Creative Scotland.
It is disappointing that your first public meeting, at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh (18th February 2009) about the new cultural agenda was with a selected gathering. Many people who wanted to attend, such as the President of University Colleges Union in Scotland, were excluded. It should go without saying that there are intertwined problems of protecting criticality and freedom in education as in culture. However, the ‘Team Scotland’ ethos already expressed for Creative Scotland[3] demonstrates far narrower promotional and business-led objectives that neglect these and other treaty obligations in cultural policy.
Other countries which have also ratified the UNESCO declaration, such as Sweden, recognise prosperity as an important consideration in cultural aims[4]. Yet, in contrast to successive pronouncements in our country, Sweden’s policy explicitly states the need to counteract “the negative effects of commercialism”. Evidently Scotland and Sweden’s leaders in the cultural policy area are not singing from the same song sheet. However, given that both nations are signed up to the same universal rights and obligations, we, as citizens, are entitled to ask why there has been absolutely no sense in Scotland’s political discourse of all the ways that culture and commerce are not compatible?
Is it that Scotland is conforming to an old slur against its people and is now ruled by the same short-sighted money-minded people, the best of whom have presided over financial disaster, or is it that we have not been represented in accountable and truly democratic terms? In either case we see the dominant ethos of Creative Scotland as deeply flawed. It is highly inappropriate that Creative Scotland is being forged by bankers and businessmen who are evidently insensitive to, or ignorant of, the broad implications of cultural policy. Their patronage or support for certain cultural activities is no qualification and does not enable them to address culture as whole. We therefore urge the resignation of Ewan Brown, Peter Cabrelli and Chris Masters from the board of Creative Scotland on the grounds of their inability to fully discuss this key issue of democratic society with politicians, civil servants and wider communities.
In accordance with our international obligations under the UNESCO convention from March 2007, it is also essential the following points are recognised in, and made central to, Creative Scotland’s ‘core script’:
• Culture must be protected from commerce, particularly from the economic processes of globalisation.
• The very idea of ‘Team Scotland’ is a symptom of these competitive processes and should be removed. It is not a means to defend diversity of expression, nor does it promote international co-operation. These two obligations should be clearly addressed.
• The poverty, and consequent lack of autonomy, of artists and cultural workers must be acknowledged as a key issue that should be addressed by any cultural organisation seeking to articulate the public interest and the common good.

Signed:
John Porter & Helen McGregor
Owen Logan (Honorary Research Fellow, University of Aberdeen)
Leigh French & Daniel Jewesbury (editors, Variant magazine)
Tim Nunn
Euan Sutherland (visual artist)
Giles Bailey
Bridget Fowler, (Professor Emerita of Sociology, University of. Glasgow)
George Tarbuck, Lighting Designer
Doug Aubrey (Artist/Filmmaker)
Gair Dunlop
Roxane Permar (artist)
Ellie Harrison (artist)
Lesley Punton (Lecturer, The Glasgow School of Art)
Jim Colquhoun (artist)
David Harding (artist & educator)
Larry Butler (Convenor of Lapidus Scotland)
Leigh Ferguson
Monika Vykoukal (Curator, Peacock Visual Arts)
Marlene Sim
Catherine Czerkawska
Matthew Zajac (Joint Artistic Director, Dogstar Theatre Company)
Gordon Asher (adult educator)
Angie Dight
Neil Davidson
Rachel Jury (Writer)
Neil Mulholland (ECA)
Andrew Ross (Professor and Chair, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University)
Mandy McIntosh (artist)
Lucy Johnstone (artist)
Kathryn Elkin
Louise Shelley
Sophia Lycouris (Edinburgh College of Art)
Pernille Spence (The University of Dundee)
Philippa Hall (Uclan & Open University Scotland)
David Kerr
William Wilson (Lyth Arts Centre)
Lynn Wray
Dr Alex Law (Division of Sociology, University of Abertay Dundee)
Terry Brotherstone (University of Aberdeen / President UCU Scotland in a personal capacity)
Ann Vance (artist/film maker)
Daniel Simpkins (Director, Critical Network)
Stephen Hurrel
Ken Davidson (Shortlisted artist, Creative Scotland 2005)
Dr Olga Taxidou (English Literature, University of Edinburgh, Academic and Playwright)
David Stamp (artist)
Joanne Tatham & Tom O’Sullivan (artists)
Simon Gowing (artist)
Mick Peter (artist)
Johnny Gailey (arts education officer)
Kate Orson
Paula Larkin (Development Worker, Document - International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival)
Tim Birtwistle
Karla Black
Doug Russell (Actor)
Xana Maclean (Freelance Performance Maker, Formerly head of the Royal Lyceum Youth Theatre)
Ross Birrell
Neil McIntee (BAhons, P.Grad MFA)
Alex Hetherington
Janie Nicoll (artist)
Anthony Schrag (artist)
Bob Hamilton
Des O’Sullivan
Lila de Magalhaes
Dr. Sarah Glynn (architect & academic)
Iain MacInnes
Dr. Mo Hume
Colin Darke (artist)
Miller Caldwell (Society of Authors and a member of the cross party committee)
Penny Whitehead & Daniel Simpkins (artists)
Jo Timmins (Theatre Practitioner)
Myrto Stampoulou
Clare Yarrington
Rob Kennedy

Notes
1. “The Government wants Scotland to be recognised as one of the world’s most creative nations - one that attracts, develops and retains talent, where the arts and the creative industries are supported and celebrated and their economic contribution fully captured.” [our emphasis] Published - 5 February 2009, Support For Creative Industries: Roles And Responsibilities - Core Script
The previous minister Linda Fabiani stated: “If formed, Creative Scotland will add to the range of funding sources available to artists and creative practitioners. As well as grants, it will develop a wider portfolio of funding methods including loans and investments.” This was reinforced further in a Sunday Herald article, where it was reported, “A spokeswoman from the Creative Scotland transition team stated: ‘Creative Scotland will be looking at a range of alternative investment models, with the aim of finding and increasing sources of funding.’ Tax incentives, venture capital, loans and corporate investment are all potential models previously mentioned by the transition team.”
2. Culture is itself broadly defined in the convention as a complex phenomenon; “...consequently cultural goods and services convey identity, values and meaning and cannot be treated as mere commodities or consumer goods like any others...” p4 ‘UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions’.
3. 5 February 2009, Support For Creative Industries: Roles And Responsibilities - Core Script
4. “The objectives of national cultural policy include safeguarding freedom of expression and creating genuine opportunities for everyone to make use of that freedom; taking action to enable everyone to participate in cultural life, to experience culture and to engage in creative activities of their own; promoting cultural diversity, artistic renewal and quality, thus counteracting the negative effects of commercialism; enabling culture to act as a dynamic, challenging and independent force in society; preserving and making use of our cultural heritage; promoting the thirst for learning, and promoting international cultural exchange and meetings between different cultures in the country.” ‘Sweden’s objectives of national cultural policy’
www.sweden.gov.se/sb/d/3009/a/72002

Creative Scotland : Parliamentary motion

2009-01-19T04:05:00.000-08:00

As a direct outcome of the signed letter to MSPs, there has been a Parliamentary motion on The Future of the Arts in Scotland:

*S3M-3166 Cathy Peattie: The Future of the Arts in Scotland — That the Parliament notes the letter circulated on 5 January 2008, with 440 signatories, expressing apprehension about the formation of Creative Scotland and the effects on artists' welfare and practice, including the view that the situation regarding Creative Scotland has now reached crisis point; notes that the letter highlights a perceived lack of concern for artists' needs and UNESCO declarations on culture and freedom, a lack of meaningful consultation with the arts communities during the transition process, an inadequacy of funding and an impact on artistic independence of proposals that include an exploitation of intellectual property rights and an introduction of loans coupled with a cut in grant aid; recognises that this is the latest in a series of criticisms of the Creative Scotland proposals and believes that this lack of confidence in the formation of Creative Scotland is shared by many others; considers that the proposals for Creative Scotland have failed to convince many people that they offer any significant improvement on the current provision of support for artists and the development of, and entitlement to, culture in Scotland and moreover that many consider that they will have a negative impact on our arts and culture, and believes that the Scottish Government should take on board these criticisms and not proceed further without reviewing its plans, consulting widely and seeking consensus on a positive and constructive way forward for the funding and development of arts and culture in Scotland.
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/business/businessBulletin/bb-09/bb-01-06f.htm

Robin Harper MSP has confirmed in writing he has signed Cathy Peattie's motion. (We will collate and make public all MSP's responses to the letter asap.)

The Scottish Artists Union has been trying to meet with the Culture minister, Linda Fabiani for 18 months, and has been consistently ignored. The letter to MSPs & the press, alongside other SAU members' individual letters, prompted the following question to be asked in parliament with Fabiani publicly conceding to meet with the SAU:

Scottish Parliament, Thursday 8 January 2009

Scottish Artists Union (Meetings)

7. Ken Macintosh : To ask the Scottish Executive whether the Minister for Europe, External Affairs and Culture plans to meet the Scottish Artists Union to discuss the establishment of creative Scotland. (S3O-5419)

The Minister for Europe, External Affairs and Culture (Linda Fabiani): I am currently arranging meetings with various groups to discuss the establishment of creative Scotland. The Scottish Artists Union is, of course, welcome to participate.

Ken Macintosh: I think that I am pleased to hear that response, although I would certainly be pleased if the minister responded to the clear expressions of concern from Scotland's artistic community about the establishment of creative Scotland. Before or following her meetings, will she clarify exactly what reduction in support Scottish artists can expect to receive from an organisation with a standstill or smaller budget but greater responsibilities?

Linda Fabiani: I remind Ken Macintosh that, last year, I announced to the Parliament £5 million for new and innovative funding for the arts and creativity under creative Scotland.

On the extent to which the Scottish Parliament will be allowed to scrutinise the proposals for Creative Scotland, see:

Question Time — Scottish Executive — Europe, External Affairs and Culture : Creative Scotland Bill

Rhona Brankin : To ask the Scottish Executive what plans it has to bring a creative Scotland bill back to the Parliament. (S3O-5398)
I am sorry, Presiding Officer—I meant to say "back to Parliament".

Linda Fabiani : It is always best to be exact, Presiding Officer.
As announced in Parliament on 3 September 2008, we plan to legislate for creative Scotland's principles and functions in the proposed public services reform bill.

Rhona Brankin : I would be grateful for an exact response to my supplementary. Will the minister indicate the costs of establishing creative Scotland? Are reports that they have soared to £7 million accurate? Does she share my concern that those rising administration costs will result in money being diverted away from front-line arts spending? Indeed, is it not the case that the Scottish National Party has squandered the support for creative Scotland that had been built up by the previous Administration and has completely lost the artistic community's confidence?

Linda Fabiani : We are finalising the transition costs, which will be presented to Parliament at the appropriate time. That is as it should be.

Ted Brocklebank : Given the difficulties that the minister experienced during the passage of the Creative Scotland Bill in explaining to the Parliament which agency would be responsible for disbursing funding to the arts in Scotland, can she now tell us whether Scottish Enterprise or creative Scotland will be the lead agency in funding arts bodies?

Linda Fabiani : What is important to the Government and recipients of funding is having a transparent system for disbursing such funds. We are working with partners to create the best possible system for giving funding to creators in our country.

Iain Smith : The uncertainty and confusion over creative Scotland's future is entirely the result of the Government's incompetence. Will the minister explain why the Government is determined to go behind Parliament's back by establishing creative Scotland without returning to the Parliament to address our funding concerns? When will she come back to Parliament to answer the serious concerns that were raised when the Creative Scotland Bill's financial resolution was rejected last summer? Why is she unwilling to proceed on a cross-party basis? Why did she refuse my request for a cross-party meeting to consider the best way forward for creative Scotland?

Linda Fabiani : We will agree to differ on the difficulties of presenting plans for creative Scotland to Parliament last year. I contend that the Opposition lacked understanding, which forced the bill's failure.
It is perfectly right to bring our plans for creative Scotland back to Parliament in the public services reform bill. As Opposition members have said, we do not need to go down the legislative route, but legislation is important, not least to establish the arm's-length principle for the arts, which had never been mooted until our Administration produced the Creative Scotland Bill. Parliamentary scrutiny will take place when the public services reform bill is introduced.

And, given the disingenuous government statement in response to the letter...

"The Creative Scotland limited company will take forward the practicalities of merging the existing organisations.
"The Scottish Parliament voted unanimously in favour of the establishment of Creative Scotland as a statutory body, and we will proceed with the democratic legislative route, not least to enshrine the important arms length principle in arts funding.
"The culture minister has agreed to meet with a number of representatives from across the sector to hear and address their concerns about the transition process and remit of Creative Scotland."

[In fact on June 18th 2008 the Scottish Parliament DID NOT vote unanimously for the establishment of Creative Scotland. To be precise, they voted in favour of the proposed Creative Scotland Bill passing Stage 1 of its course into law. There would have followed a further second stage of scrutiny during which, crucially, the bill could have been amended before a final vote. Later in the same session members disagreed over the passage of the bill's Financial Memorandum and split 49/68 for and against.
At which point the culture minister, Ms Fabiani, had not agreed to meet, and has never met with, the Scottish Artists Union; the only politically and fiscally independent representative organisation for visual and applied artists in the country -- and they still await any specific invitation. Nor has the minister responded to the letter, to meet with artists, or otherwise.]

...you might be interested in the news that "The Scottish Parliament's presiding officer has ordered an inquiry amid continued claims that ministers have been misleading parliament." Probe into Holyrood comments row: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7830814.stm

Freedom of Information Requests

2009-01-19T04:01:00.000-08:00

Freedom of Information Requests in response to Aileen Campbell MSP

(1) I would like to know who the Culture Minister has met with to date regarding the establishment of Creative Scotland, who these interested parties are and what interests they represent?

(2) Could the Culture Minister please provide a full schedule of who she is to meet and when regarding the establishment of Creative Scotland?

(3) You say that the "Government has increased the budget for culture by 14% in cash terms over three years", can you please back this up: what do you mean by 'culture' here (just what does it include); how was this funding distributed (if indeed it was all public funding), by whom and what was the conditionality; and how has this figure been calculated?

(4) Are the set up costs for Creative Scotland to come from its grant in aid budget? If so, what are these costs and what impact assessment has been done on the immediate loss of available funding for cultural provision in Scotland that will result?

(5) Will the additional running costs for Scottish Cultural Enterprise and other agencies' work not currently undertaken by Scottish Screen or the Scottish Arts Council come out of Creative Scotland's proposed grant in aid budget? If so, what are the costs involved, what is this additional work, how will it be done, who will do it, what will it cost? Is it proposed or envisaged that Creative Scotland take on any further additional 'enterprise' work in the future?

(6) What will be the level of grant in aid funding to Creative Scotland once the 'additional' Creative Scotland Innovation Fund stops after two years?

(7) Has there been any assessment of the impact of a fall in grant in aid for Creative Scotland on artists in Scotland, and the ability for the Scottish Government to sustain cultural provision in a prolonged recession?

(8) What other means is it proposed that Creative Scotland generate income, other than being in receipt of grant in aid? Has there been any assessment of how sustainable these mechanisms would be, and how Creative Scotland will generate income and sustain cultural provision in a prolonged recession?

(9) With regard to the Scottish Government launching debt onto artists: exactly what is the government proposing when the Culture Minister announced: “If formed, Creative Scotland will add to the range of funding sources available to artists and creative practitioners. As well as grants, it will develop a wider portfolio of funding methods including loans and investments."? I ask exactly what is this "wider portfolio of funding methods"; what are they, how will they be administered, who will administer them; what will be the eligibility criteria, who will adjudicate this and under what processes/conditions; what are the costings for these, and what is the impact assessment on artists and arts organisations?

(10) Are the Scottish Government aware of the current levels of visual arts graduate / post-graduate debt and have these factored into any discussions on the formation of Creative Scotland and "the range of funding sources [to be] available to artists and creative practitioners"?

(11) What work has been done to assess the viability of a "portfolio of funding methods" with regard to maintaining current levels of support for artistic production in Scotland?

(12) Will the introduction of loans or other funding mechanisms result in the depletion or phasing out of the number and amount available of the equivalent of today's non-repayable SAC grants to artists and arts organisations?

(13) What work has been done to assess the envisaged long term cultural, economic and social effects of the introduction of a "range of funding sources available to artists and creative practitioners"?

(14) What provision will be made to cope with artists' / arts organisations' debt as a result of loans and what provision will be made to cope with non repayment of any loans?

(15) Has there been an assessment of the impact the financial crisis will have on Creative Scotland and the envisaged "portfolio of funding methods", how it will impact existing SAC clients and what their additional needs are likely to be and how they will be met, and how it will impact other cultural organisations reliant on sponsorship / advertising for support?

(16) Can the Scottish Government guarantee that Creative Scotland will not be competing with arts organisations, or other cultural bodies if it is proposed Creative Scotland generate additional income to supplement its grant in aid?

(17) Has there been an assessment of how exposed Creative Scotland will be to the financial crisis and recession, and what measures will there be in place to ensure the security of provision for contemporary culture in Scotland during this difficult time?

(18) How is it envisaged the effects of the financial crisis and recession on artists and cultural organisations be mitigated by Creative Scotland, rather than further exposed via unnecessary marketisation at this highly unstable time?

(19) We are led to believe that with Creative Scotland art-form specialisms will no longer exist. Precisely what will this mean for the guaranteeing of specialist art-form funding? What art-form specialisms knowledge will there be in Creative Scotland, how will specialisms be represented, and how will artists be represented?

(20) What has been the total expenditure on the Transition Team and the transition process to date, including salaries, additional consultants, all and any other associated costs? Please indicate how these figures have been calculated.

Requests for information on IPR in response to Pete Wishart MP

It would be a great help if you [Pete Wishart MP] and / or the Culture Minister could provide the details of the Transition Team's examination (or any other Creative Scotland / Scottish Arts Council / Scottish Screen discussions or consultancy work) of IPR and exactly what Creative Scotland's position will be on IPR? Not least how this relates to the models of IPR exploitation as proposed and exemplified by NESTA?

NESTA was the outcome of an exploration of copyright- and profit-orientated approaches to ‘investment’ -- “set up with Lottery funding to help people turn bright ideas into products, services or techniques with social and commercial benefit”. NESTA advocates its retention of patent rights for intellectual property resulting from publicly funded work and the wider state exploitation of IPR. The Scottish Arts Council has just put out a consultancy tender for "The 21st Century financing for the arts and creative industries in Scotland Study", does the exploitation of IPR feature in this consultancy?

Given the Transition Team appear to have lifted wholesale NESTA's definition of 'Creative Industries', it would also be of benefit to know who associated, directly or indirectly, with NESTA the Transition Team consulted / met with, how frequently and what was discussed, and how influential NESTA have been on the thinking underpinning Creative Scotland?

Confusion on the matter of Creative Scotland continues...

2009-01-07T10:42:00.000-08:00

In an article in The Herald on January 6th, a Scottish Government spokesperson is quoted as saying:

"The culture minister has agreed to meet with a number of representatives from across the sector to hear and address their concerns about the transition process and remit of Creative Scotland."

Ms Fabiani has not agreed to meet, and has never met with, the SAU, the only politically and fiscally independent representative organisation for visual and applied artists in the country. The spokesperson also said:

"The Scottish Parliament voted unanimously in favour of the establishment of Creative Scotland as a statutory body, and we will proceed with the democratic legislative route, not least to enshrine the important arms length principle in arts funding."

This is disingenuous. On June 18th 2008 the Scottish Parliament DID NOT vote unanimously for the establishment of Creative Scotland. To be precise, they voted in favour of the proposed Creative Scotland Bill passing Stage 1 of its course into law. There would have followed a further second stage of scrutiny during which, crucially, the bill could have been amended before a final vote. Later in the same session members disagreed over the passage of the bill's Financial Memorandum and split 49/68 for and against. A full account of business in the chamber on that day can be found at:
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/business/officialReports/meetingsParliament/or-08/sor0618-02.htm#Col9842

Anyone who reads this report can be in no doubt that the will of parliament was not four-square behind Creative Scotland in the summer of last year, and in the opening weeks of the new year our findings are that opinion among MSPs remains divided.

Later this month the Scottish Government will represent Creative Scotland within the Public Services Reform Bill and in terms that will deal only with its financing. In doing so are taking as read full parliamentary agreement to every article of the Creative Scotland Bill. They seek a short cut past the second stage of scrutiny and possibility of amendment that would have been brought to bear on the Creative Scotland Bill as a matter of course, had they not embarrassed themselves with their lack of clarity in the Financial Memorandum. Therefore their dedication to the "democratic legislative route" must be called into question.

The Scottish Artists Union maintains that in the interests of clarity and transparency as well as the continuing consultation that the entire arts sector is crying out for, Creative Scotland should not be included in the Public Services Reform Bill.

http://www.sau.org.uk/