The Scotsman Bulletin Monday August 26 2024 #Arts #Cuts
Scotsman deputy editor Alan Young hears from arts correspondent Brian Ferguson about the ongoing row over cuts to arts funding.
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CreativityTranscript
00:00Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Built-in for Monday. I'm Alan Young, I'm Deputy
00:05Editor of the Scotsman. I'm joined today by our Arts Correspondent Brian Ferguson to reflect
00:09on the festival as it's just ended. Hi Brian.
00:12Hello there, good morning.
00:15Let's have a look at the front page. We splashed today on Scottish Government finances and
00:23the revelation that money intended to restore nature is instead being diverted to pay for
00:32the council wage rises. We picture on the front there protests which took place at Fringe
00:39and Festival shows over the weekend, which we will speak to Brian about in a minute.
00:45But also there today we've got the Women's Open, we have an exclusive around ScotRail
00:51averting strike action but disruption continuing, and we have a pullout wrapping up the best
00:58of the final weekend of the festivals. So Brian, as the dust settles, firstly, I think
01:07we can look back on 2024 as a reasonably successful festival season.
01:11Yeah, I've not quite seen the numbers when we're doing this, but it feels to me as if
01:17it's been a pretty good year. Certainly the work that I saw across all the festivals was terrific.
01:25I don't think I was in a venue that wasn't pretty much full. Some of the Fringe venues had
01:32what appeared to me to be great years, particularly Traverse and Summer Hall did exceptionally well,
01:39particularly with our Fringe First Awards, which reward new theatre. The International Festival,
01:44I think it really is hitting its stride now under Nicola Benedetti, particularly on the music front,
01:51they've had some terrific stuff. I was at a lot of things at The Hub, which has really been
01:56reinvented as a great kind of intimate music venue. And the Brook Festival obviously,
02:03what appears to have been a pretty successful move to, I mean they had a huge challenge obviously
02:09moving to a brand new site after a few years at the art school coming out of Covid.
02:15It all seemed to go well. It was a mixture of indoor and outdoor venues
02:20at the back of, inside and at the back of the old Emory Royal Infirmary. That all seemed to go well.
02:26I think they've had more than 100,000 people through the gates there. And the Film Festival
02:35under new director Paul Ridd, also a pretty good first go at it. It came back on a pretty small
02:42scale. Most of the festival was focused on the film house cinema. They did use a couple of other
02:48spaces, particularly the Fringe venue, Summer Hall, but they certainly had some big names in town.
02:55And a couple of really good Scottish films bookending the festival. Obviously, the big
03:01thing for them next year is hopefully that event will be back at the film house, which will have
03:06been, certainly has been shut for nearly two years. So, all things considered, it was pretty good.
03:11And although it got a bit cold over the weekend, there was pretty good weather, better than any
03:17weather I can remember, certainly in the last 10 years. So, all things considered, it was a pretty
03:22good year. You could be forgiven for thinking that festivals have never been in better health.
03:29You talk about looking ahead to next year, but there has been a real dark cloud in the background
03:38over the festivals with the ongoing uncertainty around funding and the closure of Creative
03:44Scotland, a fund for individuals, which we reported on last week. And that came to a head
03:51at the weekend with some quite powerful protests across some of the most successful
03:58Scottish shows that have been put on this year. I think we can see a clip from
04:03what happened at one of them now.
04:06Amidst the joy and celebration of live performances this month in Edinburgh,
04:10the Scottish theatre community has been given some devastating news.
04:14So, we wanted to use this platform to the world, to show the world and to make you aware of this
04:19and of the crushing impact that this is going to have. So, feel free, if you'd like, put your
04:24phones down, take photos, film it, share it, whatever you want to do. New work in Scotland
04:28doesn't appear out of thin air. We have a vibrant culture in Scotland making work in every art form
04:34and we've had it for decades, which has been hailed across the world. And we're only able to
04:38do this because Scotland understands the value of culture and the importance of sharing stories.
04:45One of the ways that we have been able to do this is through a fund called the Open Fund
04:49for Individuals. And there we go, and we saw similar statements at several shows. So, the
05:00Open Fund for Individuals, which was mentioned there, just explain firstly what's happened to
05:06that. So, Creative Scotland basically handles various pots of money, either Scottish government
05:13or national lottery money. A lot of that money is eaten up through long-term funding deals,
05:21which are of vital importance. There's about 120 organisations have them at the moment.
05:27And one of the big dark clouds has been there's basically a big deadline coming up for theatres,
05:34festivals and events to find out if they've got, you know, whether they're going to get long-term
05:40funding for the next three years. That deadline has been coming in October. So, before the festival,
05:44the really big dark cloud was huge uncertainty over what's happening with those funding
05:51agreements, mainly because the Scottish government has yet to give Creative Scotland
05:56a budget for that programme. There's big decisions due in October. So, that has been the backdrop
06:02really for the last two years. There's been a lot of anxiety, people applying, not really knowing
06:07what's going to happen. So, that's been in the background. It's not gone away. It's been a huge
06:12issue. But, you know, Creative Scotland, halfway through the festival, basically started alarm
06:18bells ringing by telling the Scottish Parliament that they still had no word on this programme,
06:25and really raising really the alarm bell about what might happen if they don't get, if they're
06:33left on standstill funding when they have to make those decisions, partly because everyone's
06:37costs have been going up. But they also said in the update for the Parliament that they'd
06:43had about ten and a half million pounds worth of funding, which is in this year's budget,
06:48either frozen completely, either frozen or cancelled completely. And one of the things
06:55that was in there that they took another few days to properly explain was an open fund for artists
07:03There was some money in their budget set aside for an open fund for artists. Now, there are two
07:08different open funds. There's an open fund that organisations can apply to for projects,
07:14particularly organisations who do not have these crucial three-year funding deals.
07:19There's a lot of festivals and a lot of events do rely on that open fund.
07:26But there's also been a really, really important one, which has been open to individuals.
07:30And a lot of that really is about the early development of work. So it could be
07:35a writer doing some early research or getting some funding from a book, basically,
07:42maybe to do the first draft of a book. A lot of it could be somebody developing a film script.
07:48And, you know, the protests that were staged at the weekend really all involved
07:55either writers or theatre makers who have, in some way, been supported through that fund over
08:02the years. All the protests involved Scottish artists and theatre makers, who are all now
08:10at a very, very high level. But they've all come through. Certainly, I would say over the last 10
08:17years, they've all kind of really emerged and are really big players in the Scottish theatre scene.
08:23But still now, every single one of one of those individuals, to some extent,
08:28will be relying on that open fund for work. But, you know, huge alarm bells started ringing right
08:34away. It wasn't even a case of Creative Scotland saying that the future of this fund was in doubt.
08:40They have basically frozen applications from the end of this week indefinitely and basically said
08:48the money they had set aside for that fund from the government. It is quite complicated because
08:54they've used National Lottery funding to support this fund, but they have used the National Lottery
09:02money for this financial year. And they were planning to use another £3 million
09:06that is in their budget. That was a budget that was signed off by government ministers,
09:11approved by the Scottish Parliament. So that's in their budget for the year, along with a number
09:15of other things, about £10.5 million worth of projects and initiatives. And they basically said
09:22that they can't guarantee that that money is going to be there, so they're having to close
09:27that fund indefinitely. Now, there's been a bit of debate over exactly how that decision has come
09:34about. It's come about without any warning for any of the organisations that represent artists,
09:40any of the theatres and organisations that work with artists, because basically that is
09:45the crucial pipeline for new work and new talent to come through. You know, it's an open fund.
09:52The clue's in the name. It's open to anyone to apply. It could be just an idea for something.
09:57One of the protests at the weekend was at one of the great successes of the festival, a show
10:04really all about a country singer from Glasgow who's inspired to create her own show about June
10:09Carter Cash. Basically, that show only came about because in lockdown she applied for
10:14funding to do a bit of research for the show. You know, a couple of theatre companies, including
10:19the National Theatre Scotland, you know, she used the funding to make a video promoting the idea.
10:26A couple of theatre companies bit her hand off, you know, and it's ended up as one of the big
10:31fringe shows at Summer Hall. And every ticket was sold before it even started. It's one of
10:36Scotsman Fringe First. It's about to go on a national tour. That show just wouldn't have
10:40existed had it not been for this open fund. And that is basically these artists and theatre makers
10:48and musicians and authors, you know, they've basically just been cut adrift by this decision,
10:55which really just seems to have been a consequence of funding cuts that have been imposed
11:00by the Scottish government in the middle of the financial year, despite these, you know,
11:06a budget being agreed and approved by the Scottish Parliament. And, you know, these people need an
11:10explanation of why this has happened. And, you know, the government, obviously, they've got
11:16huge spending pressures on all kinds of different things right across every department of government.
11:22But I think the thing that's really infuriated a lot of these artists, it's just that, as usual,
11:30it seems that they almost feel that they're the first to be sacrificed. And, you know, I think
11:35the thing that's maybe angered people even more is that the government has been continually
11:40saying for the last 10 months that they were committed to more than doubling arts funding.
11:46And particularly for the next few years, there'll be another 100 million pounds of new investment
11:52put into the arts industry. Those commitments have been consistently repeated by
11:58John Swinney, Angus Robertson, and the finance secretary, Shona Robinson. And I was hearing
12:04those commitments have been repeated during the Edinburgh Festival period. But at the same time,
12:11Creative Scotland has been hit with new spending pressures and budget pressures that have resulted
12:17in the closure of this fund. Now, none of that adds up to me, and it certainly doesn't add up to
12:24people in the arts industry who are absolutely livid at the way this has turned out. So we've
12:29had protests at the end of the festival across the International Festival on the Fringe. We've
12:34had a petition, a huge petition set up, two petitions actually, that have got something
12:39like 18,000 signatures at the moment. And there's a lot of questions really for both Creative Scotland
12:46and the Scottish Government to answer about what on earth is going on. Indeed. Well, worrying times
12:52ahead. It sounds like we'll hear a lot more about this in the coming weeks. Thanks very much for
12:57talking us through all that. Brian, now go and have a rest. It's the end of the festival, go and
13:02have a lie down. Please keep an eye on Scotsman.com throughout the day. We'll have all the very latest
13:08news and analysis. If you can do subscribe, then you can read and watch absolutely everything we
13:13do. And if you are out and about today, please do pick up a copy of the paper. But for me
13:17and from Brian, it's bye for now.