Forgive me Creative Scotland, but I don’t think I will be able to make any of your open sessions on the organisation’s ‘future operational and policy direction’. I’m too snowed under at the moment as an arts freelancer trying to make a precarious living to attend another consultation day for free.
Indeed, over the past decade, I have contributed to various consultations and debates on the future of the arts in Scotland. Always, or at least usually, I have made the same point by asking the same question: “Why should we publicly fund the arts?” Perhaps I hope if we can crack that one, then the rest will follow in its slipstream.
In all the debate, chatter, indignation and implosion over the past year – the Year of Creative Scotland – this single principle has remained unanswered, unarticulated and unformed. In fact, it was for this that I believe Andrew Dixon, Creative Scotland’s first chief executive, went – not for the boobs and the gaffes, but ultimately because under his leadership the organisation actually destabilised and weakened the very sector it is there to support, and therefore it did not defend that sector.
The Single Overarching Purpose
The SNP, shortly after coming to government in 2008, created the Single Overarching Purpose – ‘to focus government and public services on creating a more successful country, with opportunities for all of Scotland to flourish, through increasing sustainable economic growth’. In doing so, all public services including the arts were to be brought together under this purpose. The underlying rationale was of course, that if all public spending could be directed to creating a more successful country, then the populace might be more willing to go for independence. The emphasis on ‘sustainable economic growth’ as the route to doing so has resultantly impacted on the public services – one of which is of course Creative Scotland.
In all the debate around Creative Scotland last year, the Scottish Government did its best to keep its head down. During the course of the Creative Scotland saga there were a number of occasions where Fiona Hyslop invoked the arm’s length principle to explain why she would not intervene directly in the management and running of the organisation.
As the Stramash Arts blog states: ‘It’s important that we acknowledge this shift because it marks a complete reversal of the arm’s length principle as it was originally understood. In effect, we now have a culture in which politicians are only too happy to issue directions as to what sort of work should be produced, but who rapidly invoke the arm’s length defence when it comes to addressing issues of policy or management competence.’ The last thing the SNP wanted was for their competency to be called into question, so the government decided it was best not to be associated with the stink. More ‘hands off’ than arm’s length.
There is a school of thought that Andrew Dixon was a fall guy, that in effect he was only doing the government’s bidding – namely, to use the arts to contribute to economic growth. Hence the talk of investments, the relentless ‘good news’ approach, the increasing festivalisation of our publically-funded culture which ultimately aims to produce work that promotes Scotland the brand and contributes to increasing tourism spend.
Making the arts additional
The fact is that the central government grant to the arts is going down. Post-Olympics, the money from the Lottery is going up. This wasn’t a problem according to Creative Scotland’s pragmatic, managerial position, as the total investment in the sector was after all going up overall. QED, the garden was rosy.
However, there has been much discussion about how Lottery funding cannot replace central funding and has to be ‘additional’. What Creative Scotland did was accept the sleight of hand necessary and sought the best way to pass this fix on to the sector.
In doing this, Creative Scotland made the central critical error. Effectively, rather than arguing for the necessity of core public funding in order to maintain a sustainable cultural infrastructure, it tacitly supported the position that arts organisations should get their core funding from the Lottery, that ergo the arts are additional, and that it doesn’t matter where the money is coming from. The desire to shift arts organisations to the Lottery critically undermines both the sector in the long term and indeed the whole rationale for why we should publically fund the arts in the first place.
Creative Scotland’s role is to research, support and advocate up on behalf of the sector – not research and advocate down to the sector. Creative Scotland need to be separate and talk back to government, and they need to position themselves to protect the sector. That’s how they will get the support of artists and the broader cultural sector.
So let’s ask again, why should we publicly fund the arts? Is it to be a sort of creative bank, investing in development with one eye to envisaging future return? Or, is the purpose to fund the very thing that the market cannot provide – work that is uncommercial, unexpected, unsponsorable? That’s not to argue for the avant-garde, but rather to seek to secure the space for a public culture and discourse that is democratic and free. Free from external interference, whether that patron is public or private. Creative Scotland could not (and did not) articulate this and therefore could not (and did not) defend this – that is why those bolshy artists rejected their programme out of hand. They trust their instincts.
Year of Independent Scotland
And so, in lieu of attending and in the spirit of new beginnings happening at Creative Scotland, I propose three exercises for their open sessions:
1. That we in the cultural sector discuss and articulate why we should publicly fund the arts.
2. That we move to designate next year ‘The Year of Independent Scotland’ – and artists and writers can write about/do what the hell they wish to, rather than proposing something that fits someone else’s agenda.
3. That we think under a new flag. One without baggage, that allows us to jettison dumb identity politics and partisan positions. One that allows a public space for the population, the artists and the writers to coalesce and contribute positively to the future of Scotland – no matter what the outcome of next year’s referendum.
This article is an edited version of an illustrated essay, The Canary in The Coal Mine, first published on Bella Caledonia.
