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I welcome three witnesses from the Scottish Arts Council: Jim Tough, deputy director; Caroline Docherty, head of planning and area development; and Maggie Maxwell, visual arts officer. I invite the witnesses to make opening remarks, after which I will open the meeting to questions.
Thank you. We are delighted to be here and we welcome the committee's interest in arts in the community, which is a valuable area of work that we have advocated for a long time. The Scottish Arts Council funds such work and all three of us have worked in the area at various points in the past. Arts in the community are not on the margins of our thinking or activity and in Scotland we have much to be proud of, because our activity in the area often has an international reputation.
Thank you. That was helpful, as was the written evidence that you submitted. Do Maggie Maxwell and Caroline Docherty want to say anything at this stage?
We are happy to take questions.
I am sure that you will have guessed that I would ask this question. I must remind members of my declaration of interests as a board member of Grey Coast Theatre Ltd.
As a national organisation, we are conscious of our responsibilities to the entire nation. In that sense, projects and work in all parts of the country and all communities are important to us. In Caithness and Sutherland, we have been working proactively with the local authority to try to establish a sustainable arts programme that serves the community. Grey Coast Theatre is one of the partners in that and I believe that there are also capital projects. That is something that is dear to our hearts. Caroline Docherty, as head of area development, has led that work over the years.
One of our contributions in many parts of Scotland is to try to build capacity at different levels. A few years ago, Highland Council identified a gap in Caithness and Sutherland: there was no arts officer, no strategic plan and no set of priorities for the area. Lots of good work was going on, but there were sustainability issues and there was little support for the voluntary and volunteer-led sector. We were able to help in a three-way partnership with the enterprise company and the local authority to seed-fund dedicated arts officer posts in both Caithness and Sutherland. Those posts are now in their second year and provide valuable support to the arts in those areas.
I should mention that in the past I was on the board of the Highland festival. What approach do you take? Do you support the hub-and-spokes idea of arts delivery—which could work, with, for example, outreach from Eden Court Theatre, although the jury is slightly out on the Highland festival—or should one have an area-based string of pearls around the Highlands? I do not know the answer to that question. I am interested to hear your philosophy on it.
My philosophy is that I am wary of formulaic responses. The country is extremely varied and we must acknowledge the cultural nuances and economic differences in its different parts. We are looking at how we can encourage adjacent local authorities to work together, along with the national cultural partners. We are moving towards the view that some form of regional planning for culture and the arts would be a useful approach. Within that, it might be that the hub-and-spokes idea works. I am always taken by the notion that Eden Court Theatre's Christmas show attracts an audience from the primary school in Lochmaddy, which makes an overnight trip. People will travel for high-quality arts experiences.
That is interesting. I hope that this is not an unfair question, but do you think that, in trying to get the 32 authorities to co-ordinate more, we might have to parallel what the Executive is doing in other areas, not least tourism, and do something through legislation or by tweaking to encourage that co-ordination? At the moment, co-ordination does not necessarily come about unless there is good will from adjacent authorities—one thinks of Highland Council and Moray Council as an example.
We have found that if we have the human resources to engage closely with folk, we can work with the local authorities and other partners in a developmental way and plan things. Sometimes, encouragement is what is required. Legislation might reinforce that and encourage standards but, if we took a minimum-provision approach, there would be a fear that what we would get is the minimum. We should aspire to the best.
I vividly recall that, when Scottish Arts Council cash allocations were announced each year, opprobrium would be directed at the council from all sides, which, I presume, meant that it was getting the balance more or less right and pleasing nobody. In a discussion on Radio 4 last night, I heard a quotation from some economist with venom dripping from his pen on the attempts down south by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to quantify the contribution to the economy of the arts in the broadest sense. His point was that, on that calculation, the arts make a greater input to the economy than manufacturing industry, but the calculation included advertising, which is where the venom really dripped.
I will try to say something on all those issues. On board development, we work with Arts & Business, which is an organisation that we revenue fund. It operates United Kingdom-wide, but we fund it, in part, to offer board development training. Organisations that lack marketing or finance skills can draw on the Arts & Business board bank to get board members to help them to achieve the full set of required skills. We examine closely the governance, financial probity and management skills of the core-funded organisations that we support and back that up by offering training in board development through Arts & Business. We want to continue to encourage the shift in culture through which the boards of arts organisations now have a responsibility for all that goes with governance.
Forgive me, but that answer relates to core-funded organisations, whereas community arts organisations tend to be non-core funded, although some get seed funding and so on. What work do you do with such organisations?
Two years ago, we had a capacity-building programme through which we offered money to community organisations, particularly those involved in arts and disability and promoting cultural diversity. We felt that such organisations were not getting a fair kick at the ball in receiving financial support because their capabilities were limited, so we offered them money to build their strengths. As we intended, some of those projects have gone from being community-project based into being core funded—Lung Ha's Theatre Company is an example of that. Caroline Docherty may want to talk about VOCAL, because she works directly with it.
I described earlier the work that we have done with local authorities to build capacity. We also have a local authority partnership scheme, which at present supports 11 local authorities in whose areas investment in the arts was low, both from the Scottish Arts Council and, in most cases, from the local authorities. The programme was designed for local authorities, on behalf of their communities, to identify what might change and what could be done better. The important aspect was that the scheme was designed from the local authority end. We provide up to £120,000 per project over three years, but one of the requirements is that the local authority must find partnership or match funding of 50 per cent to try to ensure sustainability. The scheme aims to ensure a longer-term commitment to the arts.
On the creative industries, we work in partnership because those are not the exclusive territory of the Scottish Arts Council. In partnership with Scottish Screen and the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, our new approach will allow us to support individual artists who hope to translate their creative idea into an enterprise or business idea. The new approach is provisionally called "Ideasmart" and it will be out soon at a venue near you.
Reading the Scottish Arts Council's enjoyable submission and listening to the evidence today have reinforced my view that our inquiry is very much an exercise in asking the "How?" question rather than the "What?" question. In other words, given the broad spectrum of agreement on what does and does not work, the big question is how we ensure that community arts are encouraged, supported, developed and funded as effectively as possible. For that reason, I want to ask a series of "How?" questions to get views and practical suggestions on some of these issues.
I am happy to answer all those questions, if you have the time.
I will give two good examples of greater joined-up thinking by agencies. One is a partnership with the national programme for improving mental health and well-being. This week, we are advertising the post of arts and mental health development officer, which will be located in the Scottish Arts Council. That post will have a national remit. The officer will undertake a major research programme into the benefits of the arts to mental health and to recovery.
I was interested that your submission highlighted three aspects of community art activity: increasing access, improving the quality of life and recreational and voluntary activity. You made the point that is perhaps self-evident but is nonetheless worth making that many arts projects serve one or more—if not all—of those purposes.
Both aspects are important. Making Music involves the voluntary and community sector. Fèisean nan Gàidheal is an exemplary organisation. It is involved in youth music, tuition and other Gaelic arts traditions. We return to the evaluation theme. We have just funded Fèisean nan Gàidheal to examine tracking some of the youngest people who were involved in its first classes about 20 years ago when the organisation started on Barra to where they are now. That would include those who have become professionals and who perform in venues here and abroad. We would like to track the trajectory of success as part of the evaluation answer. That is vital.
You talk about professional status. I see that the submission mentions the tune up scheme, which I had not realised existed. A month ago, I attended a concert in Dunfermline's Carnegie Hall at which Eddi Reader performed. She paid her dues to the Scottish Arts Council and made an announcement about the scheme.
Brilliant. We will pay her now.
That scheme involves halls in places that are off the beaten track, which benefits some very small places. Incidentally, Eddi Reader also said that she was tuning up for her performance in the Parliament on Saturday.
I agree. When putting together our submission, I was struck by the thought that it was time for another such conference. However, we have held similar themed events since then. For example, we had the hidden voices conference in Dundee earlier this year, which was based around the theme of cultural diversity, and we had a major international conference in Edinburgh around the theme of arts and disability. Those communities of interest have followed on well from the more general interests that the arts for all conference started with in the Gorbals two and a half years ago.
My final point has a couple of strands to do with local authorities. As you may know, we had a session last week at which a local authority and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities were represented. We have received written submissions from only six local authorities, which I find disappointing. Nonetheless, you referred in your submission to the local authority partnerships. We have had evidence about the vast differences in local authorities' arts activity, or in their support for such activity. We are not simply talking about the islands versus the central belt. There are vast differences between Ayrshire and Lanarkshire authorities and between Aberdeen and Dundee.
Caroline Docherty led on that important programme.
The programme is still under way. We took three local authorities at a time because the relationship is not just about money, but about working with them. We will shortly commission the next evaluation, which is due later this year. We hope to have more results on more recent partnerships.
A local authority partnership came along to a council meeting last month and told us about the Lossie posse, which was a group of youngsters in Lossiemouth who had been causing a lot of vandalism at the local school. The partnership used mobile telephones to promote the fact that a dance artist and a video artist were going in to work with the youngsters. Since then, the partnership has apparently saved £16,000 in glazing works at the school.
We heard evidence on that two weeks ago that made quite an impression on us.
Yes, I think that we have. Our education department's work has been strong and has built on the relationships that it has formed with education authorities over the years. There are still a few links officer posts to complete, but it is just a question of rolling out the funds. I think that the problem for local authorities is that although we are offering funds up front, we are asking them to recognise the importance of the creative links officers in the long term by securing mainstream funding for the posts for three or four years down the line. For many local authorities, the issue is whether they are able to do that, but the spirit is certainly there in most local authorities.
I have three distinct questions, but if it is all right with you, I will put them together and you can decide how much weight to give each answer.
We acknowledge that training for artists needs attention. The two sets of skills that are acquired in the training to be an artist and the training to apply artistic skill in a community setting are different, and there are good examples in which the sector has taken on that training role itself out of necessity. The most obvious example is Artlink Edinburgh, which works with a lot of visual artists in health settings and first offers them training to allow them to be able to do the work effectively. Project Ability in Glasgow is another example, and on the youth justice theme, there is an interesting organisation in England called Unit for the Arts and Offenders. Before its artists work with young folk—or anybody—in prison, they have to undergo some fairly in-depth training on prison culture and some of the issues with which they might be confronted.
Can I push you a wee bit further on that? What would that look like in terms of practical evaluation? I keep using the words evaluation and monitoring, but I do not know whether I am using the right words. Especially for funding decisions, in practical terms how could we move in the direction that you have just outlined? Personally, I would fully support that.
Again, I am trying to envisage how, when we sit around and make funding decisions, we ask, "Does this bring a smile to the face or does it change somebody's life?" The officers in the Arts Council start from the proposition that if they are comfortable that the organisation that is offering the project up is well organised and capable and that the artists who are involved are good artists, that will be one of the outcomes.
The example that comes to mind is Hearts&Minds working on the elderflowers project with people with dementia. They record things. There is a marvellous video—a lot of evaluation is done through video—of people with profound disabilities and the impacts of working with the arts. In a recent project in Stirling, which involved Artlink Central, the reactions of the people to opera was a blink of the eye because they had such profound disabilities. That was moving enough. The artists who were involved were top-quality artists and it was a beautifully organised project. We funded the project because we had trust in the organisation.
I would like to take this back slightly further. In your initial remarks, you spoke about building commitment at a strategic level. I am curious to know how prescriptive you would want the Executive or the Parliament to be. Are you saying that, for example, the arts—in their broadest sense—should be built into all community planning partners' strategic plans, which might include a percentage for the arts, the recognition of art therapy in health, and work on antisocial behaviour and vandalism? Would you want that to be said explicitly? Picking up on Chris Ballance's question, would you want to see funding for activities that do not necessarily produce quality work but that produce very good therapeutic work? Should that come out of the arts budget or the health budget? Does it matter? Tell us how prescriptive you would like us to be.
I will ask Caroline Docherty to say a wee bit about that in the community planning context. It probably does not matter which budget the money comes from if we are getting the right impact in the right places for the right people. In some ways, we would like to encourage health boards, youth justice departments and social work departments to see the arts as something that contributes to those areas. The Arts Council can help them to find the right approaches, the right artists, if necessary, and the good practice.
We see community planning as an opportunity to be joined up at a strategic level. We have been running sessions with some of the other cultural bodies to see how it might work and how we might respond both individually and collectively.
My question is about community planning partnerships. You said in your submission that your arts and social inclusion work ended when most of the social inclusion partnerships came to an end last year and you put the money into something else. Community planning partnerships are supposed to follow on from social inclusion partnerships. Do you have plans to link up again once community planning partnerships are fully up and running? A lot of work that would have been started under your arts and social inclusion work could be usefully carried on if the funding was there.
Part of what we are doing is advocacy work for the role that we want arts and culture to play in community planning partnerships. We have reinvested funding for the social inclusion partnerships into residencies. The idea is that we will prioritise areas of particular need and have artists come and work in those communities in a range of settings, whether educational, rural or whatever. The social inclusion partnership areas and the community planning partnerships that have priority designation would be a particular focus for that.
I want to pursue that. In the same section of your submission you mention an increase of 5 per cent in participation rates. By whom is that participation? Why is it 5 per cent and what time period are we talking about?
That is the Scottish Executive's target for us as a body. That is our homework.
What is the baseline? From where do you start?
At the moment we are working on establishing a baseline through a research programme on access and participation.
How can you establish the need to increase participation by 5 per cent if you do not know the baseline?
The first survey that has come in has shown an increase of 5 per cent. Is that right?
No. We have two things going on. One is a 5 per cent increase by under-represented groups. The only way that we can establish that is by surveying the general public and the levels of participation among different under-represented groups. The other thing is the number of projects in social inclusion partnership areas and the number of partners involved.
Those kinds of things are easier to measure. What do you mean by participation?
It includes audiences. It is not exclusively about people coming and doing; it is about coming and seeing.
So if someone turns up to one event, they have participated.
Yes.
Chris, please make this the last question, because I am conscious of time.
My question follows on neatly from that. You talk about the 78 per cent of people who participate in arts events. What information do you have about the 22 per cent who never participate and why they do not participate?
One of the things that we have under way is called the audiences Scotland research initiative, a bit of which will involve considering the things that inhibit people from becoming involved. A lot of that work happens already but tends to be specific to an art form, a place or a venue. Research is done on what stops people from going along. Is it because it is not the kind of work that they want to see? It is not just about why they do not go but about whether they are being offered things that they want to go to. We are looking at how we can increase participation, including audiences. To answer that, we need to know what is stopping them from participating at the moment.
Your written and oral evidence has been extremely helpful. I thank the three of you for coming in today.
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