Chamber and committees

I have a question for Michael Clancy about the references to the domestic advisory group and civil society forum that he made in his submission. I was not aware of them before, but I note that an advert in the middle of October invited people to register their interest if they wanted to be a member of the UK domestic advisory group and civil society forum. Can you say a little more about that? The bodies are clearly an attempt to broaden involvement from third sector organisations and trade unions, to enable them to have some sort of say in the process, but they have not had a lot of public awareness. You talked about annual meetings not being appropriate, because meetings need to be more regular. Could you say something about the potential opportunities that come from membership and to what extent the bodies have relevance in Scotland? Are they established primarily at a UK level? The advert says that meetings

“will rotate between all four nations of the United Kingdom”.

I was not aware of the domestic advisory group and civil society forum before. Have they gone under the radar for us? Will they be significant?

No, not at this point. The meeting that we had was a high-level discussion with a big attendance. Culture Counts commented that we could have about 20 different culture groups. We are thinking about the whole range: crafts, fashion and textiles, design, photography, writing and publishing, heritage, cultural education and performing arts. It is still a huge section, even without thinking about the CPG on music. We are not worried that we will overlap.

Thanks very much, convener. We want to set up the group after a lot of reflection from the members of the group and after learning from experiences, particularly during the previous parliamentary session. The term “culture” covers a huge number of areas, and there was a very strong suggestion that it is too broad a term for a cross-party group. For example, the Scottish Government has separate culture and creative industries departments, with a full department for each with different aims, objectives and strategies. We therefore think that the proposed group would make a lot of sense in relation to exploring accountability issues.

There is also a real grass-roots sense about it, looking at the two areas of communities and the industrial sector. There is the publicly funded sector of libraries, museums and national performing companies, and we have lots of community arts and culture groups that want to have a voice and speak to us in the context of a CPG rather than through a committee. We also have the industrial sector of publishing companies, record companies, entrepreneurs and the media. There is therefore a huge area to cover.

We have spoken to Culture Counts, which represents the sector, and we think that, if we had two cross-party groups, that would allow both MSPs and the sector to have a proper focus on both areas. I reassure the committee that we are not necessarily planning on having eight CPG meetings a year, as opposed to four, though. In the first year, we are thinking of experimenting with having two meetings for each of the CPGs, with the opportunity to have more, depending on the members of our groups.

I think that that will work really well, and there is a lot of enthusiasm for it. I hope that the committee will be okay with it, because we think that it is a good idea.

There are now so many grass-roots organisations that are involved in culture throughout the country that we wanted to be inclusive. We will be concerned with engagement opportunities and following up how the Scottish Government’s strategy is working in practice. The Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee is examining that, but the CPG would enable us to take a much more grass-roots approach and involve people on the ground. That has been missing because the proposed cross-party group on creative economy tries to cover too much.

People in the sector being happy, feeling included and having access to MSPs is our number 1 objective this year as the culture and communities group.

That is on our form. We have formally applied as a group, have we not?

The only thing that I did not clarify is that we would be looking at the publicly funded sector and the creative economy CPG would be looking at the private sector. That goes back to the different Government departments. That was a key issue for us.

We will definitely review it at the end of the year. There is a sense that people at the grass roots have felt excluded from the CPG on culture in the past because it has tended to be dominated by the creative industries sector, which is also important. We want to ensure that both sides get a voice and an input.

I have not been to one of these meetings, so I appreciated looking at previous committee discussions. I hope that I have answered your questions.

For each cross-party group. There will be a cross-party group on culture that relates to communities and then one that will be concerned much more with the culture industry. We wanted to mirror the two Scottish Government departments, so we will have one for each. To be honest, as we come out of Covid, we are thinking of giving ourselves the aim of having two meetings each. We have had one first meeting of everybody and we reckon that, in the next few months, we will have another two meetings for our cross-party group in the first year. We might have more in the future.

I thank the committee and the technical staff for enabling me to join you virtually this morning.

Cabinet secretary, many of the cultural organisations that we have spoken to recently are grateful for the support that they have received during the last few months, but they highlighted two issues. First, they are worried about the coming months, not just in the pandemic but in the period after that, and they are finding it incredibly hard to plan ahead without multiyear funding. That relates to venues both large and small, many of which have lost their reserves because they had to use them before they got funding.

The second issue, which is slightly different, is about smaller groups. Although they welcome the funds that were available, many feel that the application forms were totally inappropriate because of their complexity and length. In some cases, filling them in was actually stressful, and in other cases it was just not possible for organisations to fill them in, given their lack of professional support. Will you and your officials comment on those two issues?