Chamber and committees

Before she took up her responsibilities for transport, Jenny Gilruth was in dialogue with local authorities about this very area. As we might imagine, her successor Neil Gray is now very focused on supporting the refugees from Ukraine—and we wish him well in that work—but this dialogue definitely needs to continue to ensure that we better understand where things are with local authority partners. We can do more on this in partnership with local authority colleagues, and I am very keen that we do so.

My first reflection is that this is very much work in progress. The deputy convener’s illustration about different preferences for how one might seek synergies or different funding arrangements is a good example of the fact that people have very different views on the matter. Finding the appropriate way into Government, and through different parts of it, is part of the challenge that we are trying to pick our way through.

We are being very well advised. I made reference in my opening statement to a number of ways in which we are being advised to think about how we can mainstream, in my area, culture and the arts in other parts of the Government. Obviously, there is a particular focus today on the broader health area.

The challenge for the Government is to work out how we can remain flexible and adapt to the various potential ways in which culture and the arts can deliver in partnership with health. The health secretary and I have already met to discuss the matter, and we are both extremely open minded about how we do that.

There are already some really good examples of things working. I take heart from the fact that we are not trying to reinvent the wheel. We are trying to work out, on the basis of a lot of advice in recent years, particularly on health, mental health and wellbeing, how we can deliver across the piece. That is the challenge for us all.

We are not at an end point, but we are definitely at a stage at which we are keen to hear people’s priorities—I know that our civil service colleagues who are attending this meeting are also extremely keen to learn from different stakeholders—to make sure that we remain flexible and think about different ways in which we can deliver. We are doing much of that already, but if there is evidence that we should be thinking about things in new ways, we will consider that. We are not set in old ways. We are keen to adopt best practice if we can.

I keep saying this to the committee, but it is a genuinely held view: I am keen to hear the committee’s advice on the issue. We are in a sweet spot at the moment, as we are thinking about all this and trying to find the mechanisms to make it work, and we very much look forward to the examples that you might give through your questions or in your report.

Indeed. This is not just a social prescribing issue. For example, mental health outcomes, as worthy as they are, and as important as they are in the Government’s priorities, also present a huge opportunity to address other priorities, such as dealing with social deprivation. I think that, as you outlined, much more can be done to ensure greater accessibility in relation to our natural environment and built heritage. I have been talking with colleagues in culture about what we can do to bridge that gap. There are a number of imaginative ways in which we can do that, and there are some encouraging ways in which we can scale that up quite quickly.

You are asking the right question. We are still at the stage of working out how we can bridge that gap. However, this all needs to be seen within the context of the spending constraints that we are operating under. The Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy sits virtually in my mind, because we are having to be extremely thoughtful about what we are able to do to make bridging that gap happen within those constraints, for example by finding imaginative ways of doing so that might not cost money, or by identifying other funding streams. However, for me the key point is that we have to make it happen. How, then, do we do that? That is where the discussion is. Again, if the committee has views on that, I am very keen to hear them because I think that there are ways of finding and marshalling resources that should make it possible. I am very keen to make sure that it happens.

At the moment, I am here every week, so I would be massively disappointed if you were to have me back only in a year’s time.

It is not just museums and galleries; you could add to that list our very significant built environment—I cannot call it housing stock, but you know what I am trying to say—for which Historic Environment Scotland has responsibility. A dimension of that very much feeds into the net zero side of things.

We are very conscious of that, and we need to understand it better. Indeed, we are engaged in doing so, but again it is all about asking the right questions, and we need to get the answers not just for the net zero side of things but for the cultural resource—if one wants to call it that—or opportunity that we could have in that respect. Of course, that brings us back to our earlier discussion about partnership working not just with national companies with regard to culture at a nationally funded level but with those at a local authority level, too.

I do not want to put words into Maurice Golden’s mouth, but I think that what we are talking about is trying to unlock as much of the existing resource allocation as we can. This is not a matter of reinventing the wheel; instead, it is about finding out how we get everything to work as well as we possibly can and identifying any gaps. However, the only way in which we will know whether there are any gaps is by getting the data back not just from health but from the culture side of things, and if there is a takeaway for me from this meeting, it is definitely to work out what the quality of that information is. I am happy to come back on this issue for Maurice Golden’s benefit, but if other committee colleagues are interested in finding out more, I am happy to share that information with them, too.

There is another part to the equation. It is one thing people being aware that this is a good thing to do, but there are other questions to consider. Where does one plug into the arts and cultural offering? Are all arts and cultural organisations aware that they can and should play a part? How do we get that partnership going and working at scale? The deputy convener highlighted that that is the challenge, as there will always be early adopters. The challenge is how we ensure that the provision is offered across the country, without there being geographical or social demographic variances. Ensuring that we match things up is work in progress.

You might imagine that, in advance of such a meeting, we would be well advised on the state of play in our departmental settings. I am happy to go into some detail with the committee about that, because it shows that things are happening, which is heartening. For example, if we consider the programmes that some of our national cultural companies are already involved in, that should give us great heart that a lot of work is on-going.

My question—I need to work with my colleague the health secretary on this—is how we can be satisfied that there is a transmission mechanism in the areas for which we are responsible. As Mr Yousaf outlined, when the support workers, the mental health professionals and the GPs who will prescribe such opportunities are all in place, we need to ensure that we have the transmission mechanism, for want of a better description, for how that should work. That is work in progress. We will have to ensure that the cogs or gears work in harmony.

I will try to be quick, but maybe this is an appropriate point to give some examples. You mentioned the Christie commission and how long ago it made recommendations. When looking at the concrete examples that I gave you a sneak preview of, I am struck that they have been operating for some time. The question is how we make them scalable.

To give some concrete examples, the committee will be aware of Big Noise, which is run by Sistema Scotland. It is a high-quality music education and social change programme that works intensively with kids, young people and families in specifically targeted communities and it has benefits that relate to the national performance framework—child-focused wellbeing outcomes such as increased resilience, happiness, sense of belonging, fulfilment and emotional wellbeing. This is a scalable programme. It is up and running. Do we recognise it for what it is? Yes, absolutely. Is there more that can be done with it? Yes, there is.

The Scottish Ballet dance health and wellbeing programme has been across Scotland since 2013, not just for the past few years. It has been up and running for a while and is considered a global leader in the field. Many referrals, particularly for those living with Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis, have already come from partner consultant neurologists at Ninewells hospital and medical school and the Queen Elizabeth university hospital. The programme has been going for some time. Is it scalable? Yes, it is.

The National Theatre of Scotland has just been running a two-year project addressing ageism, social isolation and transphobia, supporting the recreational, artistic and social rights of LGBT+ over-50s. Is that scalable? Yes, it is.

National Museums Scotland has tailored programmes for people with dementia, offering social experience connected to collections and reminiscing. I could go on, as there is more that National Museums Scotland has been doing, and theatre groups and the Scottish Book Trust have been doing things.

There are a wide range of things that are up and running and have been running for some time relating to the Christie commission recommendations. The challenge is how we build on the very good work that is currently happening to make sure that, as we scale up and have the wider awareness that these schemes are up and running, they can provide the capacity when GPs, as the deputy convener was alluding to, are adopting social prescribing across the piece. That will be the challenge—making people aware of schemes and then doing them at enough scale to satisfy the demand as the approach that we are trying to get between health and social care and culture and the arts becomes more mainstream.

We need to open things up, because we certainly do not have time to do this. There is also the question of what culture is in this context. We can establish a cultural and arts community and organisations and it is very observable what a local arts or cultural group might be doing in Argyll, as Jenni Minto has said. There are so many other things that we know from the research have an impact but might not be viewed as culture with a capital C, if that makes sense. Sorry, I do not want to open up a conceptual conversation, deputy convener, but I am very keen that we are able to capture that. An example is gardening and allotments. There is a whole series of things that would not necessarily be thought of as being culture with a capital C but which clearly impact on people’s wellbeing and are part of a continuum of what might be offered and supported.

It will be a future evidence session perhaps, deputy convener.

Forgive me, but I did not get to Mr Ruskell’s question about language skills and assisting people who might not have English as a second language. The Scottish Government has been identifying a number of colleagues who are speakers of Ukrainian and/or Russian. The Ukrainian community in Scotland is, as you might imagine, seized of doing absolutely everything and anything that it can do to help people who are arriving, which is why we are working so closely with them to mobilise as many resources as we possibly can.

I should perhaps clarify that what we are learning about the significant change in the UK Government’s approach is that it is not moving from a position of waiving visa requirements for entry into the UK to the same position as the European Union countries are taking. The system it is changing to is making it possible for people to apply online and to receive a reply to that request online. We do not yet know how long applications might take. We are still at the early stages of understanding how things might work. Given the constraints on human resources, I imagine it would be easier administratively to deal with any application online, compared to using a smaller number of outlying visa offices where there are now long queues.

Our preference is for the UK to emulate the approach of Ireland and other EU member states and waive visa requirements entirely. That is not, apparently, what it is planning to do. It is changing the system in a way that should make application and the processing of such applications a lot speedier, with the anticipation that that would allow a lot more refugees to arrive here much more quickly than would otherwise have been the case.