Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Official Report 484KB pdf

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Creative Scotland

I open the 34th meeting in 2010 of the Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture Committee, and remind everyone present that mobile phones and BlackBerrys should be switched off for the duration of the meeting.

As yet, we have received no apologies from committee members. It appears that one or two of them might have forgotten that we were to start at half past 9, and for that I apologise.

The first item on our agenda is to hear evidence on Creative Scotland. I am pleased to welcome Andrew Dixon, who is the organisation’s chief executive. I invite him to make an opening statement.

Good morning. Thank you very much for the invitation. I was due to come on a previous occasion and it was postponed, but it is better that I am here today, as I can tell you about some real progress.

I started full time at Creative Scotland on 1 May. As you know, Creative Scotland came into being on 1 July, so we are just five and a half months old, but a huge amount of progress has been made. Our board met for the first time in August and has now met three times for more than 12 hours. We have completed the merger of Scottish Screen and the Scottish Arts Council, and have delivered four sets of audited accounts to March and to June. That tying up of the legacy business is not an insignificant piece of work. Perhaps most significant, we have reduced the organisation’s head count from 149 staff to below our target of 110, and we have nearly completed the internal recruitment process that puts people into posts and enables us to fill gaps.

Creative Scotland inherited two organisations and their commitments. We also inherited, it is fair to say, two organisations that had waited a long time for Creative Scotland to arrive and had probably not done many new things immediately prior to our arrival. When I arrived, I was slightly surprised to find that our entire film budget for the current year had been spent, and that the SAC had made commitments totalling £26 million to foundation organisations and regularly funded flexible organisations. The fact that a further £4 million had already been committed meant that, out of a £35 million budget, on 1 July the new organisation had less than £5 million to work with.

That said, we have made some very significant progress. I made it a priority to get out and meet a lot of people, from artists and cultural organisations to local authorities. I have spoken to more than 3,500 people at different events, to more than 100 cultural organisations and to many, many artists. Although there had been a massive amount of consultation on what Creative Scotland should do, which is embodied in the act that the Parliament passed to set up the organisation, I wanted to get a sense of what really mattered and what we could make a difference on.

I have talked about Creative Scotland being not just a funding body—which has been slightly misinterpreted at times—but a champion and an advocate for the arts. Creative Scotland is a strong brand, which we will promote, not to talk about ourselves as an institution, but to shine a spotlight on the cultural activity across Scotland. We talk about Creative Scotland being a rallying call—it is about getting every artist and cultural organisation, as well as anyone who is engaged with the arts, the media and others, to realise the quality and strength of what exists, and to work together to promote, collectively, a creative nation.

We have moved from being more of a cash machine in Edinburgh that hands out grants to being a cash machine in Edinburgh that hands out grants but then gets behind the projects to package and promote them, and to ensure that the whole of Scotland knows what is happening. You will see more of our work as an advocate in the new year.

I want to give you a few examples of that. As I went out around Scotland, I kept finding fantastic artist residencies in places such as the Isle of Skye, Orkney and Dumfries, through which artists were doing marvellous work locally, as a result of having quality time to work in interesting environments doing projects with communities, but no one saw that in the rest of Scotland. I came back to the office and asked how many artist residencies we had, but no one knew. I asked for that to be found out, and we discovered that 57 artist residencies were taking place in different places across Scotland. A few more came out of the woodwork, and it turned out that we had 68 of them.

One new thing that we have done—which is an example of how Creative Scotland will work and add value—is to put additional resources into supporting artist residencies and awards. In the new year, we will fully launch a programme called creative futures, which we think will be the biggest artist residencies programme in Europe. It will involve 200 artist residencies and awards, and will be devolved to a series of hosts, including universities, colleges, cultural organisations and communities. We will bring those artists together as a network, will promote what they do and will ensure that we tell the story of the fantastic work that is done across Scotland.

In addition, we have had a number of quite important pieces of policy to work on, perhaps the most important of which has been the Scottish creative industries partnership. I chair that group, which brings together the enterprise agencies, the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council, the Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. SCIP is due to report in the new year, when a number of work streams will come together. Significant progress has been made on skills, investment models and who does what in the creative industries sector.

We have been extremely active with Learning and Teaching Scotland on “Education and the Arts, Culture and Creativity: An Action Plan”, which requires Creative Scotland to take forward two out of four major recommendations, one of which is the delivery of a youth arts strategy for Scotland. The brief for that will be ready in March.

Although our film funds were spent, through our savings we have been able to release some new money for film, and we are just about to pilot some new investments in film that try to develop the film economy in Scotland. In addition, we have prioritised doing work with broadcasters, so we have set up partnerships with the BBC, Channel 4, STV and MG Alba. That is quite important. Rather than seeing those just as bodies to lobby, as we might have done in the past, we see them as genuine partners to work with. We are interested in the opportunities that the Scottish digital network will provide for the film and TV sector in Scotland.

We have also developed our work with local government. For those who do not know, I have a background in local government, where I worked for five years. I have probably worked with more than 50 local authorities in my time. I am keen that we have some in-depth partnerships with local authorities. We have a good relationship with COSLA and the Government, but we have introduced some place partnerships, in which we will work in depth with a number of local authorities to address local issues and support their contribution to a creative Scotland.

Finally, I turn to the internal bits. We will be moving our office to Waverley Gate at the end of January, weather permitting. The first draft of our corporate plan went to our board last week and it will be ready in March. We produced the plan entirely internally, with no consultants involved; the new team pulled it together. The plan mentions investing in talent; investing in quality production; investing in audience access and participation; investing in the cultural economy; and investing in place. That is the simple language that we are trying to develop for how Creative Scotland will work.

I hope that that gives you an overview and a flavour of what we have been doing. I am very proud to have had so soon in Creative Scotland’s life such a body of support from the cultural sector for some of the new language and what we are doing. There is a real sense that some momentum is building. However, I also know that there is huge expectation on Creative Scotland and that everybody wants it to do everything tomorrow. We will not be able to do that. It will take two or three years to introduce new policies and change. Our commitments in some cases are for two years hence, so turning the ship will be a slower process than we might like. However, we are certainly pleased with the settlement from the Government, which gives us a sound platform and foundation to build on.

Thank you for that opening statement. I am sure that members will have a number of questions for you. I would appreciate an indication of members who would like to ask questions.

I will start by asking you about the head count. You said that you have been pretty successful in reducing the numbers. When Creative Scotland was established, concerns were expressed about the potential for job losses. In meeting your target, or exceeding it, are the people who are going those who have chosen to go? If you have exceeded the target, will you have to recruit extra people? Your people are obviously central to the organisation, but another factor is that the organisations that have been brought together operated in different locations. What has that meant for your property portfolio? What will happen to the buildings and what savings are likely to result from your no longer needing some of those properties?

I will start with the numbers. We had 149 staff. As you will be aware, there is a policy of no compulsory redundancies in non-departmental public bodies in Scotland. That is hard for an incoming chief executive who is looking to produce a sensible new structure. I inherited a situation where we can offer only voluntary severance, and most of the requests for that were made before I arrived, although we have had a few more since I have been in post. It is sometimes necessary to accept people’s requests to go in order to create the space and to get the numbers down so that we can then build back.

We are now in a healthy situation in that our permanent establishment numbers are well below our final head count number. We have to go through all the internal recruitments first, because we had post freezes for some time and we recruited several people on temporary contracts. Some of those people have been with us for almost three years now, on fixed-term or temporary contracts. We have a legal requirement at least to go through the processes of seeing whether we can find employment for anybody who has been with us for more than a year, and we are close to completing that. I have the numbers: our permanent establishment head count is down to 87 as of today, so we will need to recruit back in some key areas. We need to recruit back in the area of theatre and we have some film expertise to recruit back. I also need a personal assistant, and we need to fill one or two other key posts. We are in the good position of not having to try to squeeze the numbers down. If anything, we are now able to make efficiency savings for the next three years earlier than we might have expected.

09:45

I will say something on locations and buildings. I am delighted by the move to Waverley Gate. I had not been to the Scottish Arts Council’s offices, but I ran an organisation in Newcastle, the premises of which had exactly the same issues. The SAC building was not fit for purpose and we had access and health and safety issues. It was going to cost us a lot of money but, thanks to the support of the City of Edinburgh Council, which has agreed to take on the lease of the building, and thanks to the Government and the good negotiations with the developers of Waverley Gate, we have a business case for a move to premises that will take up less space; that, over a long period, will cost us less; and that are fit for purpose.

Waverley Gate will be more than just an office for Creative Scotland; it will be a base where cultural organisations can meet, saving them money. It is very well located and will have hot-desk facilities for organisations that are based outside Edinburgh to use when they are in Edinburgh. There is also a small showcase space within the building that will enable us to promote things from elsewhere in Scotland. We are very excited by the opportunities of Waverley Gate.

We rent premises in West George Street in Glasgow, which were the Scottish Screen offices. They are quite efficient premises and are open plan on two floors. However, apart from the main meeting rooms, we have contracted our use of the premises into one floor and we are subletting the floor below to creative businesses and cultural organisations. Three organisations are already based with us.

To complete the picture, we are leaseholders of another building in Glasgow, the Centre for Contemporary Arts. In the long term, we will look to find a different owner for that building.

That is the position regarding our property portfolio.

You talked about Creative Scotland not just being the provider of grants, but getting involved in marketing and so on. Can you expand on how that will happen?

Once we have made the decision that something is worth supporting, we need to support it. We have used the word “invest”. Some people have queried the use of that word, as it can be thought of as just giving money back. However, the dictionary definition says that it is about something that is worth devoting time, energy and effort to. So, once we give something a grant, we want to find ways in which our communications team can promote it and help it. Some of what we do is support quite small festivals and organisations, but the quality of the work is so high that we want to ensure that they are known about.

I will give you an example. I worked for a festivals and events organisation, NewcastleGateshead, which is based an hour across the border, and I knew of about eight festivals in Scotland. I visited the VisitScotland website and it listed eight or nine festivals—understandably, the bigger ones. However, when I got to Scotland, I asked for a list of the festivals that we supported and discovered that there were 38. I now know that there are 181 festivals in Scotland, some of which are absolutely world class. They do very well, but in promoting the collective story of Scotland as a festival nation, it is possible to take something such as the Hebridean Celtic festival or the St Magnus festival and promote it as one of the gems of Scotland if we can find a way of pulling everything together. That involves our working in partnership with VisitScotland and other agencies, but we need do only some simple things. For example, we have developed a partnership with The List magazine, which publishes listings of what is on, and it is going to produce the first Scotland festivals guide, which will seek to build into a comprehensive festivals guide. That is the kind of thing that we can do.

We have this wonderful bird’s-eye overview of what is happening. It is about trying to join up things like the residencies and festivals, telling the story of our theatre production and telling the story of the international export from Scotland. I am absolutely amazed by really quite small theatre companies, such as Dogstar from Inverness, which is performing all over the world, for example in Belarus and Iran, and Catherine Wheels, which performed at the fringe with a beautiful children’s show called “White” and which is playing in Hong Kong and Australia. We need collectively to tell that story about the strength of Scotland’s cultural assets and how they are being valued across the world.

I want to press you a bit further on that. You will be aware that, in the early stages of the debate, there was some concern about the arm’s-length side of the story and whether support could come from communities and businesses. Are you confident that the new structure takes on board a lot of local opinion about how best to promote that?

There are two things to say about that. We are very committed to devolution, particularly where we can devolve decisions to external cultural partners who can do things for us. They are sometimes better placed than we are to make decisions about grants for local projects. The same goes for community-based projects.

The truth is that we do not have a huge amount of flexible budget to devolve, but we have mechanisms whereby we can work with local authorities and put partnerships together that really reflect what needs to be done locally. One example of that, through the Government’s innovation fund, has been the Highland strategic partnership, which is an agreed partnership between Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Highland Council and Creative Scotland. There is a whole series of projects, and we have not determined what they should be; they have been determined in the Highlands and we have worked out how we can support them.

Place partnerships are a route to doing that. We are having a conversation with Fife about the unique contributions that it makes to a creative Scotland. For example, what is the role of the Byre theatre; what is the context of other things that are happening in Fife, such as the Arts and Theatres Trust Fife, the visual arts agency and the fantastic niche festivals that happen in Pittenweem in the east neuk; and what can Creative Scotland help Fife to promote beyond Fife in our overall work? That is the approach that we will take. We will try to find the local gems that we should be polishing for people.

It is good to see you in post, Mr Dixon. I wish you well with your job with Creative Scotland, although clearly it is a difficult time to be taking up your post, given the settlement and so on.

I noted that in your introductory remarks you suggested that you were pleased with the settlement, but you have had a 12 per cent cut. What exactly are you pleased about?

We are pleased with the standstill on our core Treasury grant. Our funding for the innovation fund has been reduced, but the Government has maintained support for the youth music initiative of £10 million, the expo fund for the Edinburgh festivals and some of our other specific funds for arts and business. So, overall, I think that it is a fair settlement, given the current challenges that the Government faces. It is an important vote of confidence in the work that Creative Scotland is developing.

Ideally, I would have wanted to come into this job saying, “These are the opportunities. These are the gaps. This is the demand for culture in Scotland. I need another £10 million or £15 million.”

In relation to film, we have inherited a situation in which £2.5 million is spent on film production in Scotland. You might have seen press cuttings about Irvine Welsh choosing to do a film in Canada. He did not actually come to ask us for money, because there was not much point. We do not have the resources to compete with the likes of Canada.

There are areas where, in the longer term, we need to build the arguments for further investment, but in the current context it would be churlish of me not to say that the settlement is fair and gives us a strong foundation on which to build.

I want to put the funding in context. Your core grant remains static, and you have been told that certain areas are being protected, but your overall settlement has gone down by 11.8 per cent. That compares with an average budget cut across the Scottish Government of 6.7 per cent. Creative Scotland and the arts are losing 12 per cent, and on average the rest of Scotland is losing 6.7 per cent. I do not see why you are pleased with that or why it is fair.

I would want to do the calculations to check the percentages, and I do not have a calculator with me. The main part of our settlement has to be considered to be the core grant from Government, and you cannot ignore the fact that £10 million of protected support for youth music is good news. We are also in a context in which Arts Council England has taken a cut of more than 30 per cent in its budget, admittedly over a three-year period.

The comparison is not really with England; the comparison is across the Scottish Government. The budget decisions that this Government is making are averaging a cut of 6.7 per cent. Areas such as health are protected and there is some protection for local government with police numbers and the council tax freeze. Other areas have to pay the penalty for those choices and, according to the figures that we have been given, one of them is Creative Scotland, which gets an 11.8 per cent cut. Leaving aside the core areas, what areas will be affected by that cut? I agree that the youth music initiative is protected, but what will lose out? Where will you have to cut back?

The main area in which Creative Scotland has taken a cut is in the innovation fund. Technically, the Government provided two years-worth of funding for the innovation fund during the period of Creative Scotland 2009 Ltd, to enable that interim agency to start to develop a series of programmes in the creative industries. It was always envisaged that, in time, that work would be embedded and we would work so that other partners became the main investment agencies in creative industries.

Obviously, we are still waiting for the final Government sign-off of the budget and the fine detail, but in the settlement the innovation fund has been cut to £1.25 million. That is a 50 per cent cut to the fund, and it will affect the overall percentage. However, if we look at the situation more positively, which is my tendency, we see that that provides a further year for us to continue to embed creative industries into what we do. Yes, I would have dearly liked to have the full £2.5 million, but we can still do a lot with the creative industries moving forward.

There is another aspect that is important to report to you so that you have an overview. The other significant contribution to our budget is the national lottery. Creative Scotland inherits two funding streams: the proportion of the UK film budget and the arts lottery budget. We have had a reduction in lottery funding in recent years because of the Olympics, but our share of the national lottery funding is due to go up, in terms of both earned income from the lottery and the Olympic money coming back into the arts.

You will be aware that the UK Government has taken some decisions to reinstate the original proportions of lottery spend to the arts and heritage good causes. Over the next three years, we are projecting some areas in which our budget will grow. Admittedly, however, that is through lottery funding, which does not help us with permanent revenue funding of cultural organisations. That takes us to your question on the areas that will be hit.

We have taken the strategy of protecting our 52 foundation organisations. They have been on standstill funding for a number of years, and we think that it would be damaging to cut them. We will review them from 2012, which is the point at which the five-year commitment to them finishes, and we will take some decisions on whether we continue to support all of them, add new ones or subtract certain ones, and on whether some of them have been so successful that we ought to invest more in them. Looking ahead, if we had a further cut in our budget, we certainly would not be able to sustain all our foundation commitments beyond 2012.

10:00

Who exactly is losing out? There is clearly a major cut to be handled. Is the money predominantly to be passed on in the form of grants to arts organisations? If so, which arts organisations will lose out? Will it be the non-foundation companies that lose out? Is it short-term funding that will be reduced? Will you expand on which companies are involved? Dance? The arts? Which areas?

We have three levels of support. Our predecessors made a commitment to the 52 foundation organisations for five years—up to 2012. Our flexibly funded organisations get a commitment for two years—our predecessors made those commitments in June for the two years from April 2011 to 2013. Those are fairly heavy commitments, coming to £26 million in total out of our budget.

The next area is our project investment in events, festivals, artists, the residencies programme and other areas. At Creative Scotland, we are trying to build as much flexibility into that area as we can, using lottery funding where possible to add value. We cannot provide on-going revenue funding using lottery funding, nor can it replace cuts in Government funding, so we have to be quite careful about where we apply our resources.

At the moment, I would not say that any particular strand or organisations will lose out. However, lots of people have had commitments in the past, and we cannot sustain the full range of organisations in Scotland; we would rather invest in strength and in maintaining a good base.

Creative Scotland tries to take an holistic look at the cultural ecology. We want to consider the career ladders of artists moving up and through different organisations. How many theatre companies do we need? Where are the gaps? Do we have a theatre company that deals with Scots and Gaelic? Do we have enough theatre companies that work with children and young people? We will take a series of reviews, looking at particular sectors, and they will inform how we make our decisions in the future.

You might not have these figures to hand, but can you tell us how much the predecessor bodies and the transition body gave out by way of grants over the past three years? How much do you intend to give out in grants over the next year or two?

I will have to come back to you with details in relation to the past but, looking to the future, we are developing a corporate plan that will be delivered in March 2011. It will identify exactly how much we put into our different strands and whether we can have a lottery capital programme. That, in turn, will have an effect on the numbers.

At the moment, I cannot predict what the number of grants will be. I can say that since Creative Scotland came into being on 1 July we have agreed 400 grants and we have passed out about £26 million. We have continued to pick up the commitments of our predecessors and nothing has been stopped—we have continued to deliver the work.

If there is a 12 per cent cut coming, people want to know who it will affect and exactly when it will affect them. From what you are saying, it will affect the grant-making ability of Creative Scotland and it will directly affect individual companies that have previously relied on grants. Is that what I should take from what you have said?

I disagree with that. You must bear it in mind that we have already saved £720,000 a year on our operating costs.

Your cut is £7 million, as far as I can see.

No, we have not had £7 million-worth of cuts.

How much is your cut exactly, then?

The key area of reduction in our budget is the innovation fund. Previously we received £2.5 million for that, whereas we now receive £1.25 million.

The “Creative Scotland and Other Arts” line in the budget table shows £59 million, which is going down to either £53 million or £52 million, depending on whether we use real terms. How much of that is your money?

I assume that you are talking only about 2011-12.

Yes.

According to the letter that we received from the minister, our core grant is being maintained next year.

It has already been said that your core grant is being maintained, but is there not a big cut in the other money that goes through Creative Scotland? Do you disagree? I am not trying to give you a hard time; I am simply trying to establish clarity. According to our budget figures, there is a 12 per cent cut. Perhaps not all of that will go through Creative Scotland, but it is clear that it will have an effect on the creative arts in Scotland. Who is responsible and what will the impact be? I am sure that everybody involved, particularly those who receive and rely on grants from central Government, will be extremely anxious about the amount of money that they will lose. If the cut is 12 per cent, will it be spread evenly across the board or will certain areas be protected? You suggested that the foundation companies will be protected and that others will lose out.

I did not say that others will lose out. Perhaps I could see the figures that you have and respond later, once I have reflected on them. You may be describing a broader overall cut. Creative Scotland’s money is only 30 per cent of the Government’s investment in culture. There is funding for the national companies, the National Galleries of Scotland, National Museums Scotland and the Museums Association. Creative Scotland is a small but significant part of the picture.

The key area in our budget that has been affected is the innovation fund, through which investment has been made in the creative industries, business start-ups and cultural enterprise offices. However, I maintain that that is an extra year of resource that the Government has given us which enables us to transition into a new budget for Creative Scotland.

It would be helpful to receive from you the information that you mentioned, Mr Dixon. Thank you for offering to write to the committee.

Will you give us a wee bit of detail about the Scottish creative industries partnership and the work that you are doing in that, especially on skills development and how that will have an impact on economic recovery?

SCIP was set up well over a year ago. It brings together Creative Scotland, the Government, COSLA, Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council and the skills agencies. It was based on a piece of work that identified those agencies’ roles. Creative Scotland’s role is to co-ordinate the leadership of the group, and it takes a co-ordinating role in considering the needs of the creative industries in Scotland. It is not our role to be a major financial investor in the creative industries, although we are, obviously, investing in aspects of theatre, music and film.

SCIP has had a series of reference groups that have considered the needs of particular sectors. There has been a film reference group and there has been a television and broadcasting report. There is a performing arts reference group and a design reference group. Each group reports to SCIP meetings, which I chair and the minister attends. We aim to conclude the work of those reference groups by early in the new year. At that point, we will have a series of recommendations that Creative Scotland, the funding council, Scottish Enterprise and others can look at. They can consider where they can intervene in the sector.

Useful specific pieces of work have been carried out. There is a draft learning and skills action plan, which the skills agency is currently considering, and we have identified particular partnerships to do with film and TV. An extra piece of work is being done in which the possibility of a TV production incentive fund is being considered. Scottish Enterprise has done work in which the feasibility of a film studio space has been considered. There is a big gap in Scotland in that respect if we want to attract people to film here. The lack of major studio space makes us less competitive. A piece of work has therefore been done in which four or five studio space options have been considered.

A number of programmes of work will conclude early in the new year. We will then all take stock of the progress that has been made and the future programmes that we will put into place.

Last year, Skillset Scotland put together some qualifications in its academy model. You said that there is a draft learning and skills action plan. Have the lessons and positives from the academy model been used in the learning and skills draft plan, or are there new, innovative ways of doing things?

All the previous models have been taken into account. We have a successful film academy at Edinburgh Napier University and consideration has been given to the roles that different agencies can play. Universities are important to the development of the creative industries in Scotland. The success of the spin-off companies that are coming out of the universities in Dundee shows that there is something that needs to be captured, nurtured and moved forward.

Part of our work in the creative industries is to understand the dynamics of how businesses are set up and the support structures that they need. SCIP is looking at that. Earlier I spoke about career ladders. In Scotland, we are good at supporting incubation and the first stage, and our enterprise agencies are good at investing in high-growth companies. However, the territory in the middle—turning small operators into slightly bigger businesses, but not businesses that will be world exporters—needs support and thought. That is one of the areas that Creative Scotland will want to look at.

A couple of years ago, I had the privilege of going to Film City in Glasgow, where I saw what was being done in the old Govan town hall and the small units that were being put together at Pacific Quay to build up businesses. What progress has been made in that area in the couple of years since I saw it? What has your involvement been? We want to attract the film industry to Scotland and keep it here, because it creates jobs and boosts the economy.

One of the other aspects of Creative Scotland’s work is that we have inherited the Scottish Screen locations agency from Scottish Screen. Scottish Screen locations helps to attract films, adverts and TV to film in Scotland. However, the trick is not just filming in Scotland but the post-production work that film makers do. That is why we need studio facilities, which Govan town hall provides. I, too, have been on the tour.

In Govan town hall, there are a couple of companies that provide post-production facilities. One of Creative Scotland’s early moves was to add a bit of money to our locations service, to incentivise post-production work. When we attract to Scotland films such as “The Decoy Bride”, the latest David Tennant film, the initial push is to attract people to Scotland to film in a beautiful location—in this case, in Dumfries. However, some of the economic value comes out of the film makers spending money on technicians and other people who do work after the film has been shot. Much of that work is lost to London and other places, but we have the makings of an industry in Govan town hall and at the hub in Glasgow. We have put a small amount of resource into looking at how we can incentivise people to do post-production work here. I hope that that will support agencies such as those in Govan town hall.

There are a lot of jobs in post-production work. I know that many colleges, especially in Lanarkshire—the committee visited Cumbernauld College, which has a great production training unit—are involved in that area. What kind of work are you doing with colleges to build up the skills base in young people?

I hope that there will be an overview of the issue as part of the work of the education and the arts action plan. In the past, the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen have not prioritised work with colleges, other than on projects such as the Edinburgh Napier University screen academy. I see universities and colleges as really important partners for Creative Scotland. We must find how we can work with them, build incubation spaces, get the right training for the industries that are required and take people out of universities and colleges and get them on to the culture career ladders in Scotland.

10:15

Prior to coming up here, I was on the board of a college and quite heavily involved with the two universities in Newcastle, so I understand the sector quite well. Returning to Elizabeth Smith’s point, I think that we need to ask who collectively is promoting the cultural strengths of Scottish colleges and universities. Creative Scotland can play a role by, for example, telling the story of the real cultural strengths that we have in the Glasgow School of Art, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and the University of Abertay Dundee. Indeed, I noted for a lecture that I was giving the other week that in China something like 400 art schools are being built for 10,000 pupils. We have only four, but we can tell the world about the success that they have had and the quality that they produce.

Our engagement with colleges and universities must be about not only telling the story but positioning them in the cultural ecology. We have taken a very small step in that respect by announcing as part of our residencies programme support for a Gaelic drama residency with Sabhal Mòr Ostaig and RSAMD. At the moment, there is not much professional Gaelic drama in Scotland and that kind of small step might well support career ladders in future.

My question follows on from Ken Macintosh’s line of questioning. With regard to Fife, which you mentioned earlier, you will be aware that the Byre Theatre of St Andrews, which was previously supported by the Scottish Arts Council, has been refused continued support from Creative Scotland. I do not want to focus specifically on Fife, but what are the reasons for the decision on the Byre and what might be the consequences? Is that decision an indicator of the pressures that other institutions or organisations are likely to face over the next few years?

First I should say that just over two weeks ago I met the Byre’s chair and chief executive in Dunfermline to look at one of the most exciting projects that I have seen in Scotland, the eco-city project, in which young people in six primary schools redesigned the town, set out their ideas and vision for its future and produced a fully worked-up model of Dunfermline that is the size of this room. I very much hope that the model will be exhibited in the Scottish Parliament but, if not, we would certainly like to exhibit it in our new offices. It shows that the Byre is doing some very interesting and innovative community work outside the theatre.

If I can explain the Byre’s funding situation, it might help to explain a lot more. The theatre applied to the Scottish Arts Council for flexible funding, £160,000 of which it had received in the previous two years. Its application for £280,000 for each of the next two years, or almost double what it had previously asked for, was primarily to carry out theatre production in what is a quite small theatre with a small catchment and difficulties with regard to the scale of its audience base. Although the Byre has done some very good work, it was one of 130 organisations that applied for funding. The Scottish Arts Council was able to support only 51 organisations, so a total of 79 organisations were turned down. When you see that the Byre was turned down, you should bear in mind the 78 other organisations that we could have put money into if we had had another £10 million, £12 million or £14 million. We just did not have that sort of resource and the Byre’s application was not successful.

We are in conversation with the Byre about its future role. It needs to design a sustainable business model and build on its strengths and we are having discussions with it directly, and indirectly through Fife Council, with which we are having what we call a place partnership. That partnership is about the role that not just the Byre itself but the region’s festivals, Arts and Theatre Trust Fife and so on can play and how we can establish a sustainable and coherent set of organisations in Fife. I am very optimistic. The Byre will have to change its model and the way it operates, but that is for its board and trustees to decide. I would like to capture the Byre’s strengths; some things, like that Dunfermline project, could be done on a much broader geography than Fife. It was absolutely terrific.

You said that you received 130 applications for flexible funding and supported about 50 of them. Are there figures for the number of applications for flexible funding made in previous years? Is there a reduction in the number of companies that can be supported by that funding?

I will have to come back to you with the figure. There were more applications than we had had previously, which probably builds on the strengths of the programme and the fact that organisations were growing in different parts of Scotland.

I defend the flexible funding robustly. I was not involved in the decisions, but I sat in on one of the meetings. It was a robust process with special advisers and teams of people who were looking at all the applications fairly. Lynsey McLeod will correct me if I am wrong, but I think that we have had three or four appeals against our decisions. They were discussed by independent appeal panels that were nothing to do with us and the decisions on the Byre and others were upheld.

There was a large number of applicants, and we had to compare things like theatre companies, community art centres, visual arts agencies, festivals and so on. In future, Creative Scotland will take a different approach.

I wish you well in your new role.

You talked about working with universities and colleges. I must declare an interest that is already known to my colleagues. I have two sons who have graduated from university in the past year, one in media and one in graphic design. They are both looking for jobs, so if anyone is interested, they can just get in touch with me.

My take on what happens echoes what you have said. Some absolutely fantastic work is going on in our art schools, universities and colleges, but when young people in the creative industries and arts graduate, there does not seem to be a sense of structure. We spend a lot of our time debating the issues around probationer teachers, for example, and there is a sense there of the next step out of university. Although those next steps are clear in some professions, my impression is that they are not particularly clear in the creative industries in Scotland. That impression might be right or wrong, but it seems to be mirrored by what you said about working more with universities and colleges and enterprise organisations.

How would you describe what happens at the moment? If you accept, as you seem to, that the situation needs to be improved, what ideas do you have for that?

I will explain by means of another anecdote. I went to see a really good piece of work at the Fringe by plan B theatre company from the Highlands. In the programme, instead of having the actors’ CVs and saying, “He has worked six times on ‘Taggart’” or “He has been on the BBC”, there was a London underground-style map, showing the stations on the careers of the musician, Michael Marra, the choreographer Frank McConnell, and the designer and director. It showed them coming out of college, moving into a first job in a small theatre company, then perhaps working at the Traverse theatre, going to Dundee Rep, coming back and working at RSAMD, and it was absolutely fascinating. We are going to put it into our corporate plan because it sums up the job that we have to do. We have to get people out of university and on to the first train, and we have to keep them in Scotland when they are at the peak of their careers. We do not want them disappearing off the map. We need to keep their strengths and skills in Scotland.

When we talk about the cultural ecology, we recognise that colleges and universities are important to that—not just at the start, when people get their training, but as places to return to, to be alumni of and to stay committed to. RSAMD does really well at keeping in touch with its alumni and gets them back to do things for it. J K Rowling got a grant from the Arts Council many years ago, but there was no clause asking her to come back in the future and help the next generation. We need to find a way of buying a commitment, which is why things such as the residencies programme are important in making people feel part of something. This year, there will be 200 artists residencies, but there will be 400 next year and 1,000 in five years’ time. We build an understanding of where artists are going around that underground-style map.

In a general sense, that is fine. On the specifics, my concern is that we need to establish a real sense of ownership early on. A lot of what you said is about people coming back later in their career, when they link back to their university, college or whatever. To what extent is there currently a drift away from the creative industries by those who are at the beginning of their careers compared to other career paths in which people are more likely to say, “That’s what I’m trained in; that’s what I’m going to continue with”? Has there been any evidence over the past few years that people studying creative subjects at universities and colleges in Scotland are drifting away from what they have studied and going into other careers as a result of a lack of opportunities or because of financial problems in the sector?

I am not aware of any statistics on that. I would need to go away and check whether any research has been done by the universities.

It is not just down to the universities and colleges; our cultural organisations can play an important role in that, too. This is another anecdote, but it is interesting. There is a woman called Fiona Dalgety in the Highlands who was a young musician in the fèis movement. She became a workshop leader, then an apprentice and then a full-time worker. She is now the chief executive of one of our foundation organisations. I do not know how old she is, but she is probably under 30. Our foundation organisations are clearly providing a career path to enable people to move from school, through their first job, to being the chief executive of a cultural organisation. We need to find out what is good about that and make sure that it happens everywhere. The cultural organisations are key to bringing people through. The Traverse theatre does a lot of good work in supporting young and new companies, as does the Tron theatre in Glasgow. We need to capture that and find ways of accelerating it.

Let us shift slightly, picking up on something that the minister mentioned when we took evidence from her recently on the budget. There is a sense that, despite the difficulties out there at the moment, there is still an appetite among people to attend cultural events. Audiences seem to be holding up fairly well in quite difficult situations. You have been out and about, talking to lots of organisations and creative artists in Scotland over the past year. Is that the general feeling in the sector across Scotland, or is that more obvious in relation to the larger companies?

There is still a buoyancy in the cultural sector. The Edinburgh festivals had their best year yet, with one exception. There has been terrific growth in visitor numbers and many of the other festivals have done extremely well this year. The recent weather will, however, have had an impact on the year as a whole—there is no doubt that it has affected music, theatre and film audiences for the past two weeks.

At an important time of the year for a lot of theatres.

Earlier this week, however, I was reading that, despite what you might have read in the press, there have been buoyant figures for the hogmanay bookings in Edinburgh, and we are also seeing good box office figures for some of our theatres’ Christmas shows.

10:30

A key issue was raised about the independence of your post and of Creative Scotland. In your submission on the budget process, you say that you are concerned about the cuts to the local government budget and you also comment on the overall cuts to the culture budget, which run at 11.6 per cent, in comparison to cuts of 6.5 per cent across Scotland.

It is a worrying time, is it not? There are budgetary constraints, and we must all cut our cloth accordingly. However, I am particularly worried about the fact that cultural organisations tend to get more than their fair share of cuts, which adds to the misery and the gloom. I think that it is part of the Scottish psyche to see such things as fripperies even though, actually, they are core to who we are and, at a time of difficulty, should be protected.

Are you disappointed by the level of cuts to the creative industries and to cultural Scotland in general?

The Scottish Arts Council successfully built a programme called resilience. For the past two years, it has been working with a lot of cultural organisations to help them to become more sustainable, operate on stand-still funding, bring in new sources of earned income, compensate for challenges to local authority funding and consider mergers and collaborations, which a number of cultural organisations are doing at the moment. We are committed to continuing that work. At times of recession, cultural organisations and artists become even more creative.

That said, I stand by what we said in that submission. One of the biggest concerns is that we do not know what the level of cuts will be for local authorities and, therefore, the degree to which they will be able to maintain their support for the arts and culture. They are far bigger spenders than Creative Scotland is. They support a lot of our galleries, museums and receiving theatres. Some of the larger-scale local authorities are major providers.

We work with COSLA and with the larger authorities in which we have clients. For example, we are conducting coherent conversations with Glasgow, Edinburgh, Highland Council and Highlands and Islands Enterprise about the range of organisations that are supported collectively. We want to ensure that we bring organisations through this period in a way that ensures that they are stronger, rather than weaker.

Undoubtedly, there are challenges ahead. You will have read in the press about Moray Council possibly cutting its relatively small arts budget. You cannot envisage a whole area not having any arts and culture. That is what defines a place and makes it different from other places. It is critical to community development and economic development. We have to make convincing arguments in that regard.

That concludes our questions. Thank you for your attendance and for your willingness to answer our questions.

10:34 Meeting suspended.

10:37 On resuming—