Chamber and committees

My question is for Duncan Dornan, although, if he can speak for the culture sector more widely, I ask him to do that.

There has been quite a discussion about what “place-based culture” means, and we have had some evidence give a definition of that:

“Place-based working is a person-centred, bottom-up approach used to meet the unique needs of people in one given location”.

That was from the charity Iriss. What do you understand that to mean? How do we genuinely celebrate local culture—local contributions that can be made to cultural life? I am not, I hasten to add, as I have done before, making a case against money going to national companies or anything like that. In budgeting terms, how do cultural institutions get that balance right?

In mentioning the wider world, you lead me nicely on to the other issue that I want to ask about, which again touches on budgeting. Scotland is presently preparing to welcome people from Ukraine—we hope—in the coming days. Do cultural institutions need to start thinking about how to celebrate the culture that those people will bring with them and how to involve people in that community in the work that you are already doing?

My only other question is for Mr Robertson again. Visitors to Scotland often comment on the effect on their wellbeing of being able to see Scotland’s natural environment, historic buildings and so on. One would think that there must be huge potential for health and culture to work together to utilise the resource that is simply Scotland itself. Of course, there are many people who either do not know that those opportunities are there for them or who know that they are there but cannot afford to visit places around the country. Is there more that can be done to try to break down some of the barriers that, in some cases, might be caused by deprivation?

Mr Yousaf, you have talked about breaking down the barriers between silos. This is something that has come up in the committee before when we were talking about budgets and the relationship between health and culture. Of course, apart from the department that you run centrally, there are territorial health boards. Do the messages about working across these barriers get through to health boards? What can you do to ensure that they are thinking about culture? What is the culture of culture in health boards? Given the pressures that they are under, how can they accommodate some of these ideas?

I imagine that almost every member has been contacted, as I have been, by constituents who are reaching out to offer their support and welcome Ukrainians to Scotland. Is the First Minister confident that the roll-out of the supersponsor scheme can fully utilise and co-ordinate that outpouring of generosity, particularly on the part of Scots who are unsure how to proceed when they have a room to offer but, as yet, no name of a person to whom they can offer it?

In case the member thinks that I have concerns, I should make it clear that I said that I consider these so-called therapies to be unacceptable and harmful.

Will the member take an intervention?

As we have heard, the committee noted that many of the religious organisations that it heard from are in favour of a ban on conversion therapy practices, although views are varied, of course. It is therefore important that we always make it clear that the measures are not about restricting religious teaching or preaching. Does the minister agree that, in seeking to end the demonstrably harmful effects of the so-called therapies that we are talking about, it is important that we get representation from a broad range of religious and other organisations, in order to achieve the best possible legislation?

I have another question for Jane Salmonson. We have talked in the past about the convening power of your fund and the Scottish Government to bring others to the table in Scotland at times such as this. Could you say a bit more about whether there is scope in this emergency for that to happen and to get the most out of the sums of money that you are distributing in terms of bringing others into the conversation?

To build on a question that Mark Ruskell asked, this morning we had a conversation with the consul general of Ukraine, who made a very impressive contribution. One thing that came through loud and clear was the pressure on the consulate to provide information at a time when the UK’s policy on the matters that you have described has changed and continues to change.

Looking back, post-Brexit, we provided information to people in communities in Scotland, who realised that although the Scottish Government could not sort out the problems that the UK Government was responsible for, it could provide information. In our earlier session, we asked whether there was anything that could be done to provide a single point of contact for information, particularly for the community of Ukrainians in Scotland. Would the Government be able to work with that community and its consulate to find ways to do that?