From Leigh French, continued
If Creative Scotland mirrors other European models, and given what the Culture Minister has said to date, the likelihood is that in Scotland, too, there will be significant financial pressure to replace grants with a system of credit or loans for both artists and organisations. Adopting an exploitative commercial model for 'creative' production would immediately place Creative Scotland at ideological odds with cultural organisations and services in Scotland established as not-for-profit. Furthermore, given the economic climate is predicted to worsen, such a move is sure to be ruinous for the organisations and infrastructure reliant on grant funding. There is evidence. A credit/loans system for arts organisation has only recently been tried and tested in Europe, before the height of the credit crunch. It failed. The Catalan Department of Creative Industries is currently under investigation for their calamity.
What of the 'creatives' that are to be the consumer base for any new financialised system of commercial 'creative' development? A study by Push.co.uk, the student guide, in August 2008 expects undergraduate students to be more than £21,500 in debt by the time most graduate in 2011. The normally Labour-loyal NUS has said: "It is clear that many students are sleepwalking into financial crisis. As the credit crunch kicks in, and with food and fuel costs set to rise even further, we can expect more and more students to get into serious financial difficulty, with many having to resort to taking out [additional] commercial loans…" The Council of Mortgage Lenders reported in October that 45,000 homes in the UK are expected to be repossessed by the end of this year.
It is widely accepted that a cause of the current financial crisis was the rampant free-market exploitation of debt/credit and the introduction of speculation and risk into an otherwise marginally more stable affair. With regard to Creative Scotland, we can detect no acknowledgement of this global tectonic shift and the deepening international financial crisis and how it will affect artists in Scotland.
Leigh French, Variant
