Arts in the Community Inquiry
We move on to item 3. I would usually have a break at this point, but a couple of members have to leave the meeting early.
We have already agreed to take this item in public. Although taking these discussions in public has great advantages, one disadvantage is that we are not allowed to embrace the clerks in conversation per se. However, I know that Judith Evans has spoken to quite a few members who, when we previously discussed the matter, expressed interest in making some input into the report's structure. I propose to open the meeting up to general comment and then we can discuss any specific amendments that members want to make. [Interruption.] Mike, I take it from that noise that you want to say something.
No, I was nodding to one of our visitors as he was leaving. That said, I want to make one or two comments on the draft report. In general, I am very happy with it; I might add one or two elements to the overall argument, but nothing very detailed. Do you intend to go through the report paragraph by paragraph?
Well, I was thinking that we should look at it in detail, perhaps page by page.
The report should stress the need for three-year funding, as far as that is possible. I suppose that that would apply to local authorities, because any funding that the Executive gives is largely for three years. The other, perhaps more problematic issue in that respect is lottery funding. As I have said, I am happy with the report's thrust, but I will raise one or two issues when we go through it line by line.
We all agree that there should be more emphasis on three-year funding. After all, that seemed to be the committee's view when we last discussed the matter.
I urge a note of caution. There should be longer-term funding; indeed, any funding should certainly last longer than a year. However, I would hesitate to say that three-year funding should be the norm.
It could be longer.
It could be longer, but it might, of necessity, be shorter, given the way in which some of the projects are structured.
The term "longer-term" funding might be helpful.
Yes.
Broadly, I think that this is a good first draft, especially as it deals with a subject that is difficult to get one's head around. Even if we cannot embrace the clerk publicly, we should at least express our appreciation of the work that she has done in wrestling with this particular jellyfish.
I think that she would prefer a whisky mac, actually.
I want to flag up one or two chunky issues of omission and to note some phraseology that could usefully be strengthened. It is particularly important that this committee makes the connection between the arts and the development of creativity and an entrepreneurial spirit. I do not think that I need to justify that statement too much. Arts in the community is not only related to the social justice agenda but links closely into how we can build the social or human capital—that is a phrase that I think that the report should use—that we need if we are to create a confident, creative and economically smart, successful Scotland.
When Lord Dennis Stevenson, the chairman of HBOS, addressed the cross-party group on the Scottish economy, one of the points that he made was that people wanted to come to Edinburgh because of quality-of-life issues such as access to a national opera company, a national ballet company and so on. More and more research shows the importance of the arts as a promoter of inward investment and economic development as well as a promoter of the aims of social justice. It all wraps in.
It would be helpful if we could build into the report a section on that.
On phraseology, I am not sure that we have quite captured what we want to say about the health and well-being of communities and the extent to which that community well-being can be improved. I am slightly concerned about the fact that we still approach some of those issues in terms of the negatives, such as problems and so on. A more positive construct needs to be stated in that regard, which relates directly to what the convener has just said about quality-of-life issues and to health and well-being issues.
The final chunky issue that I want to raise is that I do not think that we have made enough out of the importance of children and young people. I think that members of the committee agree that involvement in the arts can play a vital part in a child's development from an early stage. There are some specific points that we should weave into the report, not least to do with schools infrastructure. We make a general infrastructure point but, as we said during the inquiry, we should say something specifically about schools infrastructure and artistic and creative programmes in schools.
I will have to leave the committee fairly soon, so I would like to state my thoughts now.
The clerks can keep me right on this, but members might remember how pashed I was on the subject of trying to get art to some of the poorest sections of society, such as homeless people—I therefore applaud what Susan Deacon was saying about schools. In that regard, however, I note that one of the recommendations in the draft report says:
"We recommend that the Executive explore the potential to expand opportunities to link volunteers from corporate Scotland to voluntary arts organisations."
What I had in mind, however, was that a system of rules and carrots—as opposed to sticks—should be devised not just to encourage volunteers from the corporate sector, but to induce the corporate sector to get involved not only with high art, such as opera, but with arts in the community by, for example, sponsoring an exhibition for homeless people in Edinburgh. I take the view that art is for absolutely everyone.
I had occasion to visit Porterfield prison in Inverness yesterday, where violent efforts are being made on a number of fronts, but I have to ask myself what is happening in that institution in the way of art or performance. Those things might just provide a spark of humanity in those people's lives and it could help to reform and improve them. I might be out on a limb here, because that is my personal view. Of course, that might be in the draft report's recommendations and I have missed it; I do not know. I would like to persuade my colleagues to think about including it. Judith Evans can correct me if I have missed it.
We could build it in if members agree.
I do not want to drag the committee with me but there is an opportunity here to make a difference to some of the most hard-up people in terrible situations.
Perhaps we should use the term "business" rather than "corporate", which always suggests big business to me. Many smaller businesses contribute at a local level, because they have a commitment to their local communities.
Scottish ministers might be able to devise not desperately expensive carrots that would encourage businesses to go down that route. I will rest my case there; I have probably said too much on this during the past months.
Do you want to give Judith Evans a note of the kind of thing that you would like to be built into the report?
That is a kind offer, but I will take it up only if it is okay with the rest of the committee.
I think that everyone is quite happy with that.
Jamie Stone raises an interesting point, but it is one on which we did not take any evidence—although, to be fair, he also raised the issue during the inquiry.
I will start with the chunky issues and come back to Susan Deacon's point about linking to the health and well-being of the community and the economy. We did not take evidence on this, but if we are linking the report to FEDS and "A Smart, Successful Scotland", we should point out that creative industries are one of Scottish Enterprise's key strands. Community arts can do a huge amount to generate interest in creative processes, which people can then apply to business.
On Jamie Stone's point, the Scottish Arts Council funds an arts in prisons programme. We have evidence of that in some of the information that the Scottish Arts Council sent in. Jamie Stone's point is that business might want to get involved with that as part of their corporate social responsibility programmes. That is a reasonable question to pose, even if we did not take evidence on it. I am just conscious that we do not have evidence to back up anything we might say about it, but we could make the point that, even though we did not take evidence, we have had the thought.
I do not know about the rest of the committee, but as a general rule I do not think that we have to stick absolutely to not saying something because there is no evidence about it. If we feel that there is something to be said, we should say it. That is my view.
Fair enough. I have no problem with what Jamie Stone is saying.
Thank you. I will e-mail the clerk.
I have three points. First, I agree with something Susan Deacon said. The report requires to give greater emphasis to the word "confidence". People who participate in the arts generally grow in self-confidence and they can use that confidence in other areas of their lives, not least in economic activity. That needs to be drawn out a little more clearly.
Secondly, to respond to Jamie Stone's point about prisons, I do not disagree with what he said, but we have to be a bit careful—I do not think that we will get much public sympathy for pressing the issue of arts in prison, unless we are talking about it in the context of promoting arts in other environments as well. We should be careful about that.
My third point is almost erring on the side of specifics, but it is also a general point about resources. Paragraph 14 of the draft report says:
"We recommend that the Executive make funding available to support local arts networks, including voluntary, public and private arts groups, agencies and companies."
That is such a woolly and imprecise sentence that I am not sure that it is of any value.
Do you have an alternative or do you want to delete the sentence?
We must consider the issue in the context of what we are saying about resources. I am not sure that that sentence properly encapsulates what we are trying to say.
We will have a go at it when we get to discussing the specifics.
Paragraph 5 is on targets and monitoring. I am not quite sure what we are saying here. It reads:
"The current targets … have the potential to skew activity in unintended ways."
From the evidence that I heard, I am not sure what that means. We know that the situation around monitoring is being reviewed by the Executive. However, I am not sure about including quite such a harsh judgment on monitoring as has been suggested. Perhaps the clerks or someone else could explain what is meant.
The next paragraph goes on to talk about "lighter-touch monitoring". That is fine. However, the question is what the "qualitative measures" are and how we arrive at measures that are seen as being appropriate. Measures will not always be appropriate in all cases. There is not a one-size-fits-all situation when it comes to monitoring. In some cases, the issue might simply be participation. That is the key; that is the first step. I am a little uneasy about that part of the report—I am not clear about it in my own mind. I think that I attended all, or almost all, the evidence-taking sessions from which those paragraphs were derived.
Paragraph 7 states:
"We have heard evidence of an overall lack of funding."
I see what is meant by that, but "lack of funding" tends to mean no funding. Perhaps we should put "funding shortfalls" or something like that. The same paragraph continues:
"local government reorganisation resulted in a significant decline in funding".
It did, but the local authorities did not necessarily get less money. I remember speaking about Strathclyde in particular. In a number of areas, when Strathclyde Regional Council ceased to exist, the resources did not get spread evenly throughout the 13 local authorities that were left in the footprint of Strathclyde. That did not just apply to arts and culture funding. To some extent, the problems arose because local authorities made some difficult decisions; it was not necessarily to do with funding being withdrawn or with there being less of it.
Local authorities felt as if they had become free to make their own decisions. They might no longer have viewed something that had been a priority for Strathclyde Regional Council as a priority for themselves. I stress that that did not just apply to the arts and culture. There should be some reflection of that in paragraph 7, if possible. It looks like funding was cut. In fact, funding was diverted elsewhere, largely by local authorities' own decisions. That impacts on the comments that we make elsewhere in the report on the fact that we observed vast differences in what different local authorities do. I would like that to be made a bit more—
Precise?
Yes, precise. It is funny that you suggest that word. I am not sure if we are getting into textual changes yet, but—
Not yet, no.
Okay, I will come back to that. One suggestion was to replace "clear" with "precise".
Paragraph 13 is about planning and mentions community planning partnerships. It contains no recognition of the fact that social inclusion partnerships, which have existed for five years, have always been required to make a contribution in arts and culture. That happens in Glasgow and I think that the same rules apply to SIPs throughout Scotland. Perhaps the rules for the thematic SIPs might be slightly different, but the area SIPs have always been required to do that.
I know from experience that, in various areas across the country, the work that has been done using SIP funding has a good record. We suggest "encouraging Community Planning Partnerships" in the report as if that is a new idea. Community planning partnerships follow on from social inclusion partnerships. It is inconceivable that the demands that are made on SIPs would not also be made on community planning partnerships. The point is valid, but we should reflect the fact that we know what has been done by SIPs over the past five years, rather than suggesting that such engagement by partnerships is something new.
I mentioned the point about three-year funding earlier. Other than one or two small textual amendments, that is the extent of my comments.
I am very happy with the report, which looks very good. My main points were about anti-departmentalism and engaging with volunteering in the corporate sector. Christine May has already made a point about longer-term funding. Essentially, all my points have been covered.
The only other issue that I would like the report to cover will be considered by the Cultural Commission. Some of the outreach work in communities comes from national companies. Furthermore, some of our successful artists first succeeded through their endeavours in their local communities. There might be ways of encouraging them to go back and share some of their experiences to encourage success and more artistic endeavours in the communities from which they came.
I remind members that we are looking at the first draft of a report. Perhaps we should not go into the spelling mistakes and so forth in detail. As we go through the report, we should concentrate on substantive issues and not on those that are purely textual.
The Cultural Commission is mentioned in the report. Can we get some clarification on how our inquiry will interface with its work and on how, or if, we will meet the commission?
When the committee agreed to do this inquiry, I was not a member of it. From looking back through the minutes, however, I know that the committee agreed to submit the inquiry evidence to the commission. We can do that in what is now its phase 2 consultation.
As Susan Deacon knows, we received an invitation to meet the Cultural Commission as part of a crowd. I consulted the committee and the general view was that we should have our own meeting with James Boyle. I think that the view that the committee expressed in the past was that a formal meeting should not be held, but that we should seek an informal meeting between the committee and the commission chairman. The clerks are in touch with James Boyle's office to fix up a date. It is now inevitable that the meeting will be held in the new year. I take it that the view of the committee is still that it would be inappropriate to have a formal meeting. There is not that much in the commission's phase 1 report for us to talk about anyway at the moment—frankly, it is all very airy-fairy.
An informal meeting is fine.
If our report is to go to the Cultural Commission, that clarifies the point about whether we should mention outreach work. Perhaps we should include a mention of the importance of community arts and of encouraging some of the stars to go back and do things in communities. I am talking only about a broad reference, but it would be worth including for the reason that I have given.
That poses the question whether we should also submit our report to the COSLA review that Bridget McConnell is carrying out.
I do not have a problem with that.
I do not have a problem with that, either.
We can have a two-way flow of information.
It might even be a three-way flow. Is that okay, Susan? You are looking a bit puzzled. Do you need further clarification?
No.
I am just going on what the committee agreed previously.
Shall we continue to go through the report? I ask members to make substantive points on issues other than those we have covered so far. Although the report is fairly short, we are not missing anything as a result—indeed, it might mean that people will read it.
I am happy to hand my scribbles on the detailed points that I want to raise to Judith Evans. I am sure that colleagues will be relieved to hear that. However, while we are sitting around the table, I have some issues on which I would like to hear colleagues' views. It seems appropriate for us to include in the report our agreed definition of community arts. I know that it is included in the inquiry remit, but, as it is a broad and inclusive definition of arts in the community and one that we applied to our thinking, it should be in the report.
In paragraph 3, we talk about the need for the Government to "support the cultural change". The sentence should be tidied up. The important point that I want to raise is that, when we talk about supporting cultural change, we should use words such as "facilitate" and "enable". I will give the clerk my detailed comments, but I am also concerned about what we are saying about resources and funding. What we say should fit with the idea not so much of public sector money being given to a group to make something happen, as of the simple and practical arts that can enable and facilitate activities on the ground. I am thinking of things that we have discussed, including the need to have a place to meet, a basic piece of advice or support on the production of a programme or something that relates to capacity building.
I guess that I have two points to make: the first is that, with members' agreement, words such as "facilitate" and "enable" should be up front in the report, as well as the word "support". The second is that, when the time comes, we should make it clear that, in talking about the form that support takes, we are also talking about—
Soft support.
Yes. We are talking about the decisions that are made on practical issues such as lets and so forth and not just those that are reached so that someone can say, "Here's your grant cheque."
Perhaps we should talk not only about cultural change, but about development, too. If we use just the word "change", we might be seen to be talking about change for change's sake, whereas development is the key to the way in which the arts move forward.
I am sorry. I did not realise that the convener was waiting for agreement.
I am glad that we have consensus on that one.
Do members want to go through the report page by page or should we give our comments to Judith Evans, who will do her usual good job of assembling them?
As this is a first draft, I suggest that members who have small changes to make, or who want to point out spelling or textual changes, should communicate them by e-mail to the clerks. We can go through the second draft line by line.
Is that agreed?
If I may, I will make one point on paragraph 14, which is on resources, as I have a real difficulty with our recommendation. I am happy to suggest something to Judith Evans, but for us to recommend that
"the Executive makes funding available to support local networks"
is to run the risk of a minister turning round and saying, "What do you want me to cut out of the budget so that I can do that?" It is too simplistic a recommendation and it makes me feel uncomfortable.
I agree.
It is not just that. I agree with Christine May, but our recommendation also suggests a different funding structure. At the moment, money goes through the Scottish Arts Council. The Executive gives it to the SAC and it makes the decisions. The SAC is not unhappy about making those decisions—that was certainly the impression that I got from what Jim Tough said when he appeared before the committee. In any case, unless additional funding were made available, the issue would arise of where the money would have to be taken from. We need something more specific than that. The wording should not imply that the Executive must get into the minutiae of funding.
I suggest that, under paragraph 10, we do not want to "wonder".
Or, indeed, to wander.
Indeed. I will make a suggestion to the clerks that might tighten up the wording a bit.
Absolutely. Are members agreed to the comments that have been made?
Members indicated agreement.
As I said, we will finalise the report early in the new year. We are not due to launch it until the end of January, which gives everyone time to submit their ideas.
Meeting continued in private until 16:18.