Opinion: We need more investment in the arts, not less

Cairn Committee member Andy Clark (Photograph; Eoin Carey)

Guest blog from Andy Clark in response to the Scottish Government’s recent £6.6M cut to Creative Scotland.

Another day, another protest against cuts to the Arts in Scotland. On Tuesday (3rd Oct) we joined around a hundred activists from Equity, The Scottish Society of Playwrights, BECTU and other trade unions and allied organisations at the Scottish Parliament to demonstrate against the Scottish Government’s decision to renege on its promise to protect £6.6M in funding to Creative Scotland.

For context, in December last year, the Scottish Government announced a 10% cut of £6.6M to Creative Scotland’s annual budget. In February of this year, after a short, intense campaign led by Campaign for The Arts which delivered a petition with over 15,000 signatures, those cuts were reversed and were even described-somewhat disingenuously-by the SNP as a ‘substantial increase’ in their Scottish Budget statement. Despite knowing this wasn’t an ‘uplift’ but effectively a cut in real terms, the culture sector breathed a collective sigh of relief none the less. Better in oor pocket, eh?

In late September, however, the Scottish Government re-instated the cut which was confirmed by Culture Secretary, Angus Robertson, to the Scottish Parliament’s Culture Committee on Wednesday. Defending the decision, Robertson claimed the cuts would have ‘zero detriment’ to the arts, explaining that Creative Scotland has access to its reserves to make up the deficit. However, as Brian Ferguson in the Scotsman and others have pointed out, almost half of those reserves have already been apportioned to protect companies from the threat of going extinct in the next twelve months. Whichever way you slice it, the money is gone. Additionally, a ‘gold-plated’ commitment to re-instate the £6.6M next year might as well be a ‘pie-crust’ commitment; Easily made, easily broken, as anyone who’s seen Mary Poppins will know.

Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if these cuts were always on the cards and that the initial reversal was part of a strategy to buy more time until it was too late for us to do anything about it. Despite the fantastic mobilisation of activists online and outside Holyrood, these cuts now look inevitable.

When you look at most political parties’ manifestos, the arts are usually so far down the page, you’d think it was the printer. Creative Scotland’s entire budget represents a tiny percentage of Holyrood’s overall spending. If Scotland’s international festivals alone contribute £800M to the Scottish economy, why are we quibbling over less than 1% of that sum? If you want to talk about bang for your buck, go to any children’s show and observe the hundreds of happy wee faces in the audience. Talk to recovering addicts who have discovered a free art class or prisoners connecting with their kids through drama. If the government is serious about creating a genuine ‘well-being economy’ then we don’t need less investment in the arts, we need more.

However, whilst it is imperative that we continue to advocate for more investment and push back against the constant threat of cuts, the system of how we fund the arts in Scotland must change. Freelancers like writer Peter Arnott have been arguing for years that the entire arts funding model needs to be scrapped and started again from scratch with input for audiences and participants alike. The current system of what is, effectively, trickle-down economics is haemorrhaging in a bloated layer of bureaucracy and the money getting through to freelancers is a fraction of what it should be. Of course the arts need to be administered efficiently – a Cultural Civil Service if you like - but the balance has tipped too far the other way.

Artists are also scunnered with the laborious application process, answering the same question three times with a different five hundred words, jumping through all sorts of liguistic hoops and petrified that they’ve given the ‘wrong’ answers. Next time you see a freelancer who looks like they haven’t slept for a week with a thousand-yard stare and has started smoking again, you can be pretty sure they’ve just completed a funding application for a three-day development at Cove Park.

Yes, we are a resilient sector. Yes, we are using every ounce of ingenuity to mitigate the harsh financial realities to create work. Operating on a project-to-project basis against a backdrop of squeezed budgets and uncertainty, artists continue to defy the odds and produce fantastic work. Those achievements are now being used as an argument to implement the cuts and continue stand-still funding (ten years and counting).  What’s to stop the Government saying next year ‘Well, you managed fine with those cuts, let’s reduce your funding again and see how you go.’

The knock-on effect of these decisions also fosters an atmosphere of unnecessary competition and resentment, pitting sector against sector and even causing friction within the arts. Some have deliberately remained silent on the cuts or been almost celebratory in their reaction on the basis that, in their view, most of money would stay in the pockets of those on generous salaries and was never going to filter down to them in any case.  

When I graduated from Drama School in the late 90s (cue the Hovis Bread music) Perth Theatre produced eight full-length shows a year (yes, folks, EIGHT) plus a panto. Dundee Rep, the same and the Byre Theatre, at its peak, had a similar output. All with regular casts of up to ten, twelve, sometimes more. That seems inconceivable today. When I mentioned to a pal the other day that the play I’m on tour with, Tally’s Blood, has a cast of six, he nearly died with his leg up. The landscape has changed. These days are gone but, if we are going to engage more people through the arts, we need to increase our regular output, or a generation of audiences will disappear for good.

This morning I heard a quote from Fiona Stewart from Foolproof Arts on Radio Scotland’s thought for the day; ‘Beauty lifts the eyes.’ The Scottish Government must open theirs and see that culture is not a luxury or something we can’t afford when times are hard. It’s an essential part of a healthy, happy, thriving, society and worth its investment in gold. Well, gold-plated at least.