There may end up being something for some members of the Scottish Arts Council rump when the culture minister discovers her civil servants lack the relevant expertise to administer arts bodies. And last but not least (this was an arts policy statement, remember) there was something for the arts, though not very much as it turned out.
Ferguson pledged to invest “significant resources” in realising her arts blueprint, but an extra £20m a year from April next year falls far shy of the £100m recommended in last year’s report by the culture commission. Whatever Ferguson claims, £20m goes nowhere near bringing arts spending up to 1% of the executive’s total budget of £27 billion, or even restoring funding to where it was before devolution.
When there is so much money sloshing around at Holyrood, why so little for the arts? In the mountains of paper, in the months and years of reviews, as culture ministers come and go, it is easy to forget that money is the problem and money is the solution. Now we are not talking about masses of it, but enough to transform arts organisations throughout the land so that they can concentrate on producing art and not on managing debt.
The last thing the arts in Scotland need is bureaucratic restructuring, but that is exactly what they are going to get, thanks to Ferguson’s intervention in the debate. The arts commentator Robert Dawson Scott hit the nail squarely on the head when he dismissed Ferguson’s plans as moving the furniture around when you should be attending to the dry rot in the joists.
The SAC will be merged with Scottish Screen and be known as Creative Scotland. Scottish Opera, Scottish Ballet, the National Theatre of Scotland, and the national orchestras will be taken over by the executive and made to comply with new guidelines decided upon by the arts minister, and meet “operating criteria” again to be decided upon by the minister. With its vague pilot schemes and testing of “new approaches”, this reorganisation will take until summer at the earliest to implement, adding to the uncertainty in the arts world, which has been plagued by government indecision for six years.
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“Today marks the start, not the end, of a new journey towards achieving our ambitious aspirations for Scotland’s cultural life,” said Ferguson ominously. So far, achieving Scotland’s ambitious aspirations has involved Rhona Brankin’s Cultural Strategy of 2000, a St Andrew’s Day speech by the first minister in 2003, the creation of the £500,000 culture commission, its year-long deliberations, the publication of its 500-page report complete with 124 recommendations, and now this, the minister’s response.
Ferguson also announced a raft of measures that seem to skirt the issue of funds altogether and rather focus on the redistribution of the arts to “local people”, as if “local people” were somehow different from people who currently enjoy the arts. Local people are to have a “menu of cultural options” to which they will be legally entitled. Local councils will be responsible for “entitlement-setting”, which I think means devising cultural endeavours and guaranteeing mass participation, even if this entails free access.
Entitlements, to be enshrined in legislation, will be monitored and every national arts body will be expected to contribute to their development.
“Citizen-first” cultural activity is a curious concept, as is the notion of a minister and her department delivering art to the people. No matter what a person’s cultural preferences are, few could disagree that those best placed to deliver art are artists, not politicians. Yet artists — and any mention of them — are thin on the ground in the new order of state omnipotence.
The delivery of cultural services must centre on meeting the needs of “service users (rather than service providers)”, according to the minister for culture. Unfortunately, this is the whole thrust of the executive’s attitude to the arts in Scotland and always has been. Nothing has changed and, with this lot in power, nothing will.
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The national companies may have been assured greater security under the new arrangements, but how can they have confidence in an administration that is uncomfortable subsidising what it regards as “elitist” culture? Successive arts ministers have failed to champion the arts for art’s sake, and have not made any attempt to repair the awkward relationship that has grown between arts bodies and the political establishment since devolution.
Now, with the familiar language of the political left, the arts are to be politicised in Scotland. With this executive’s record, how can that be a step in the right direction? If the principle of state control was a bad thing under communism, why is it a good thing under Jack McConnell and his arts administrator wife, Bridget? Will we have to stand back and watch government dismantle all that was excellent about the arts in Scotland and erect in its place monuments more appropriate (a favourite Ferguson word) to a levelled society?
If the aim is to bring art to the widest possible audience it must be done through education, not inclusiveness targets. Simon Rattle, the Liverpool-born conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, recently led a performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, accompanied by 250 young people from the city’s most deprived areas dancing like a troupe of professionals. It was part of his project to educate children by exposing them to high-brow culture at its best and to the idea of life as a constant challenge. The arts, said Rattle, are not a luxury but a necessity, “like the air we breathe”.
The Scottish executive could breathe life into the arts, if only it trusted the arts community in Scotland and let them get on with it.