Chamber and committees

The process of change from the current funding model for regularly funded organisations to the new model of funding on a multiannual basis involves many more cultural organisations than are currently funded. From memory, I think that there are currently 115 or so regularly funded organisations. As Creative Scotland has already confirmed to the committee, it is dealing with applications for funding from more than 250 cultural organisations.

If we are able to provide the funding and Creative Scotland is able to disburse it, having gone through a process to ensure that due diligence is carried out, many more organisations will receive funding. Will everybody who wants to be funded be successful? I cannot speak for Creative Scotland or the process, but I imagine that, as with most funding rounds, not everybody will get everything that they want. However, that is not the end of the story.

On your point, convener, this is about different funding streams. As the committee will be aware, there is the likes of the open fund, from which a lot of individuals or smaller projects seek funding support. That is one of the funding streams that will continue, but there are other ways in which funds are disbursed through Creative Scotland. That will no doubt be looked at as part of the review.

Committee members will understand that such a significant change programme will lead to a recalibration of funding as it is disbursed through Creative Scotland. Instead of that happening annually, a significant part of it will be decided and will run for a number of years. That all needs to be looked at and considered. Is the best way in which it should work the way that it has worked until now, irrespective of the fact that there will be a major change to a multiyear programme?

There is an additional dimension to all this. I am not sure that I have all the answers, but I am certain that members of the committee might share my observation. As the Government sees it, the cultural sector in Scotland includes our national galleries and museums, the National Library of Scotland and our national performing companies. It includes work that is funded through Creative Scotland and a number of other areas of cultural and artistic life that are not part of that approach. I have always had a question in my mind about whether there are gaps in that approach.

It is apparent to me that there is a clear gap in one of those areas and it relates to festivals. As we all know, festivals are profoundly important, whether it is a small festival in rural Scotland or one of the biggest festivals that we have in Edinburgh, Glasgow and elsewhere. We need to make sure that we have the right infrastructure in place so that they are properly funded and supported, and that the Government and its agencies are as supportive as they can be. That is why having a review of what Creative Scotland does and how it does it, while at the same time thinking about the different ways in which Government supports culture and the arts, will ensure that we take a view right across culture and the arts to make sure that we are supporting them as well as we can, and that we have the right institutions in place so that they are properly supported.

We should not lose sight of the fact that it is not just about organisations and venues. It is also about workers who work in the culture and arts sector, many of whom are freelance and many of whom have been living a very precarious existence.

I have said this to the Scottish Trades Union Congress, individual unions and the culture fair work task force: we have to make sure that we are as supportive as we possibly can be for everybody who is working in the sector.

On the multiyear funding process, if our organisations and venues are more sustainably funded, they will be in a much better place to ensure that they are employing people—many of them freelancers—as part of their projects and their work programmes. I am trying to take an approach that ensures that we are looking at the culture and arts sector and everybody who works in it as a whole—venues, organisations and the workers in the sector.

First, I tried to draw a picture of a changed, improved landscape for the culture and arts sector in Scotland, which, by its very nature, will and must have an arms-length funding body that is able to deliver. Previously in the committee I have paid tribute to what Creative Scotland did during Covid and I will do so again. We have a responsibility for ensuring that taxpayers’ resources are well managed. During Covid, Creative Scotland dispersed millions of pounds of absolutely essential support to keep the creative sector from going under and it did it well. It deserves our respect for that.

It is also true to say, however, that the organisation has not been reviewed since its establishment and it is going through a massive change programme. Once we have delivered on that and once Creative Scotland has concluded the process, with the Government having allocated the funds and, I hope, with colleagues having approved the funding allocation in the Parliament, I think that there is a question to be asked about how the organisation works and how the rest of the cultural landscape fits in. I made a point about considering whether everything is being thought about in a holistic way.

I am sure that you do not wish me to prejudge any review, and it would be wrong for me to do so, because this needs to be looked at. There will not be a Government review in the sense that I am not going to sit at the head of this and drive a review; others will look very closely at how things operate, and we need to have a look at international best practice.

I underline the point that Creative Scotland is introducing a process as the first in the United Kingdom to do so, which I think is a really good thing. I know that it is a good thing because people elsewhere in the UK are very interested in it. For example, when I met Lisa Nandy, my opposite number in the UK Government, she was very interested to learn about where this process is because we are doing it first—Creative Scotland is doing it first. I am very keen to support it in concluding the process and for us to then think about how everything is fitting together and working. However, I do not want to prejudge that.

Again, I could not agree more. As I observed in a previous answer, the scale of the funding step change that is necessary for the culture sector to thrive has been worked through and has been estimated as an additional £100 million. The Government agrees. That is why we are working towards—

I agree that the culture sector is emerging from crisis. By any objective criteria it is doing so, given the challenges for a number of organisations and venues. Obviously, not every organisation has been going through a crisis. However, the pressures have been such that there has been a collective one, from which we are in the process of emerging. I spend a lot of my time, as do my officials, ensuring that we support organisations and venues that have been confronting existential challenges, because we want them to survive. As we are able to find, allocate and disburse increased funding, we will move from the sustaining phase—which some people have described as “crisis”, and I acknowledge that for many it has been so—and emerge from it. I think that that is where we are now.

Let me be absolutely clear about the budgetary process, for anybody watching who is not aware of this. Scotland’s budget is dependent on budgetary decisions that are made by the UK Government. We do not have clarity from the UK Government about our budgetary situation, and we do not have multi-annual funding for the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government—Mr Bibby knows this to be so.

I want to see more diverse income sources. That is not the yes or no answer that Mr Harvie would like on a ticket levy.

I have met representatives of the Music Venue Trust and I would like to meet them again. I said to the member’s predecessor, and I say to him now, if there are workable models that we can deliver, or which we can work with others to deliver, please talk to us about them. If there are workable models that provide venues or other organisations with sustainable additional funding, we should look at them. That is why I will not rule anything out. I will rule things in when I see workable and deliverable proposals.

I totally refute—

I totally agree. It has to be our understanding as a Government and as a Parliament, and among the political parties in the Parliament, that, if the scale of the challenge is as it has been and we are agreed that we want people to succeed right across the creative sector, we have to deliver the means for them to be able to do so. I am confident that we are emerging from the crisis that large parts of the culture sector have been operating under in Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom. However, unlike the rest of the United Kingdom, where culture budgets are being cut by the Labour Government for England and by the Labour Government in Wales, in Scotland, funding is going up.

I know that some observers find it difficult to acknowledge that funding is actually going up in Scotland, but it is, and I am glad that it is—I want it to go up by more, and that is exactly what we aim to do.

First, as I am sure Ms Gallacher is aware, not everything that the Government does is done by the cabinet secretary or in correspondence; a lot of the work takes place between officials. The main challenge with the open fund was the issue of timescales and due diligence in relation to the disbursal of public funds.

As I have said, a review of Creative Scotland will be very useful for everybody in trying to ensure that there is maximum alignment between the budget processes of the Government and the Parliament and the budget processes of Creative Scotland and the culture sector. If any of that is out of alignment, we run the risk of people who have responsibility in one area being unable to do what they want to do because they are waiting on others to do due diligence, or for the Government or the Parliament to agree, or for the funds to be disbursed. Having the least discontinuity on those three levels is absolutely key.

Creative Scotland knew the scale of the funding that we intended, because funding does not just go out at the start of the year, it goes out at different stages of the year; I am sure committee members know that. Creative Scotland knew the scale of the funding that we had committed to disburse, because we made a commitment to an allocation of £15.8 million in last year’s budget and that is exactly what we did. The funding is in place and the open fund is open.

I would observe that Creative Scotland has had significantly more applications for funding to the open fund, which speaks to the characterisation of a number of members of the committee who have said that the scale of the demand for financial support in the sector is significant. I acknowledge that and there is no doubt that the size of the fund will be looked at in future years. The other area for the review to look at is whether, once multiyear funding has come in, it has an impact on the different funding streams, whether that is the open fund or others for Creative Scotland.

To go back to Ms Gallacher’s initial question about the way in which the Government operates, I do not do everything personally. It is officials who work on a day-to-day basis between the culture directorate and Creative Scotland and there are constant discussions about funding issues. I met representatives of Creative Scotland last week to talk about its plans for multiyear funding and our challenges around the budgetary timescale. We agreed that we want to make sure that multiyear funding can progress, that the Government can secure the funding and give Creative Scotland the certainty to be able to launch multiyear funding, and that we make sure, as part of a review, that we have the best possible alignment around our different budget processes. I am sure that the committee gets that some organisations’ budgets run from January to December, and others have different financial years.

There are a number of areas around budget, apart from the quantum of the funding that we want to have allocated. It is about the different budgetary challenges that we have as organisations, whether as a funding body, as a Government or as a Parliament. I do not think that anybody is seriously suggesting that there is a shortcut around the budget process for the Government and the Parliament. I do not think I have heard anybody say that we should do that. At the same time, we have to be cognisant that other organisations operate at different timescales.

How do we make sure that we do that in a way that is not detrimental to people in the creative and cultural communities? I am very seized of that.

On the general point about multiyear funding, there is a huge interest in the third sector as a whole in multiyear funding working. That is why, quite apart from the self-evident advantages that it would bring to the cultural sector, proving that moving from an annual funding model to a multiyear funding model is workable will be a huge prize for the third sector as a whole, and what is true in the arts sector is definitely true in the heritage sector and in the charitable sector.

The Government is definitely thinking about that. Historic Environment Scotland is in a very interesting place, because it has wanted greater freedom to determine its own budgetary circumstances, and I have agreed with that. At Historic Environment Scotland’s last board meeting, it agreed on its plan in relation to that. That is hugely interesting, and no doubt the committee may take a view on whether it wants to better understand how that operates.

Historic Environment Scotland has been very successful in dealing with the challenges that have been alluded to in relation to what has happened on an environmental basis to a lot of our historic infrastructure and in the work that it is doing to maintain and protect that. Historic Environment Scotland, from a budgetary point of view, has been given the freedom to get more income through its own efforts, and I welcome that. I am very supportive of that.

Shona Riach, do you want to add anything on that point?