Phil Miller: New National Cultural Strategy prompts some questions
By PHIL MILLER
Fiona Hyslop, culture secretary
THE artists are being summoned. Fulfilling a promise in its 2016 Holyrood manifesto, the Scottish Government is to write, indeed is writing, a National Cultural Strategy. As part of this, artists and other members of the cultural community – about 90 people – have been invited to a meeting in Glasgow in late June to discuss the way forward with the culture secretary, Fiona Hyslop.
I am told that the final strategy will be formalised and published following an "extensive engagement", in late 2018.
A letter has been received by artists and others, inviting them to the meeting. The letter says that the Strategy will be based on the principles of "access, equity and excellence." The formulation of this strategy will be informed, the government says, by consultation with "artists, cultural and creative producers, organisations and companies and other sectors" as well as "organisations and individuals across the country with an interest in culture and the ways in which it contributes to all our lives." The session in Glasgow on June 26 will be the first of several events and discussions planned in the coming months. In the letter, signed by Ms Hyslop, says the event will be a 'discussion.'
This is not the nation's first cultural strategy since devolution: back in 2000, under the Scottish Executive, a strategy was launched that, like this one, "celebrated excellence" as well as the social benefits of cultural funding.
Indeed, one could say Scotland's culture is already quite strategised. The nation's arms-length arts body, Creative Scotland, has strategies of its own: it published its Arts Strategy in 2016, and has also released Screen, Youth Arts and Creative Industries strategies. It has also, under chief executive Janet Archer, a ten year plan, which was published in 2014 which takes its planning through to 2024.
Creative Scotland is at arms length from the Government - but one would assume if the Government publishes a Cultural Strategy, the quango would be obliged to follow it. Will the new strategy tie in with, or supersede, all the work done by Creative Scotland in the last five years? Creative Scotland have been invited to the Glasgow meeting, but as yet that is all the body have been asked to contribute to the process.
There is, however, a crucial link between the quango and the Government. The body's Director of Arts, Leonie Bell, is on an 18 month secondment to the Scottish Government to help write the strategy. But as yet, I am told the funding body is fairly in the dark.
There is also a funding wrinkle in all this: the three year funding deals that many major arts companies recently applied for will be announced this autumn, well before the Strategy is published. Will these bodies have to accommodate new ideas, or make changes to their work, to absorb the Strategy in late 2018?
The arts, of course, are not all there is to 'culture': presumably the strategy will cover museums, heritage, popular music, festivals, craft, and the vexed issue of film making and studios? Perhaps, if it is mildly radical, will it look at whether Scotland needs its own film agency again, like Scottish Screen. There's a lot to chew on.
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