Voices of A Culture Act for Scotland

We’ve been asking people to tell us why they’d like to see A Culture Act for Scotland, and what the benefits could be from their perspective:

Alan Bissett, Author and Playwright

"What is Scotland without its culture? It's how we know who we are. Let's ensure that for future generations of artists, but also for the many, many Scots who love Scottish literature, comedy, theatre, music and art”.

Alison Reeves, Manager in Scotland and Deputy CEO, Making Music

“Making Music supports the call for A Culture Act for Scotland, to recognise the value of, nurture and protect the whole cultural environment. Our members are groups of people making music in their leisure time, led by volunteers and serving their communities – choirs, wind and brass bands, orchestras, youth music projects, festivals, Gaelic choirs, chamber music promoters - spread across all communities, from inner city Glasgow to Shetland, some over 150 years old and others formed in the last year. This practice should be treasured; tens of thousands of people sharing music, with benefits for their own wellbeing and that of their communities, for placemaking and their local economies and for the health and wealth of the nation.

Our members are financially self sustaining, but they need an infrastructure that supports them – the halls they meet in, concert halls for performing, public transport, a healthy working environment for the freelancers they employ, libraries for music hire.  A Culture Act could mean that this infrastructure is noted, valued and protected, so that the environments that culture needs to voluntarily flourish are not carelessly damaged and so new communities can also come together in their own way to make music”.

Alistair Chisolm, Writer

“In an age of mass production, AI slop, The Algorithm, and billionaire-controlled media, our culture is the thing that makes us human. We must defend it, we must fight for it – and above all, we must celebrate it. I hope this proposal can help us do just that”.

Arusa Qureshi, Author and Writer

“The Culture Act emphasises the strength of our sector and with support, could be a crucial step in ensuring its continued growth”.

Asif Khan, Director, Scottish Poetry Library

“I am keen to see a cross-party commitment to a percentage of the Scottish Government's gross budget being ring-fenced for culture and the creative economy. With this guarantee in place, a model similar to Ireland's basic income for artists would be worth adopting”.

Ben Harrison, Co-Artistic Director Grid Iron and Freelance Director, Performer, and Producer

“I support this valuable initiative; a Culture Act could protect artists and audiences from setbacks like the storms we have had to weather over the last few years and strengthen the sector immeasurably”.

Brian Baglow, Founder and Director, Scottish Games Network

“Creativity is the software that drives Scotland’s economy and social identity. A Culture Act provides the essential update we need to ensure our world-leading talent has a permanent, statutory home in the nation’s future”.

Caroline Sewell, Regional Organiser (Scotland & Northern Ireland), The Musicians’ Union 

“The Musicians’ Union fully supports the call – and the need – for a Culture Act in Scotland.  We know that the cultural industries are a growth sector which contribute significantly to the economy and makes invaluable contributions to the health and wellbeing of our society and communities.  Our sector contributes positively to educational attainment and puts Scotland on the world stage where, despite our size, we are globally renowned and recognised due to the calibre world class musicians and artists, 

All too often, ‘culture’ is viewed as a soft target, providing low hanging fruit when budgets need to be cut.  This is entirely to the detriment of the people of Scotland let along the hundreds of thousands of artists and cultural workers engaged by the sector.  We need infrastructure and investment.  

The predominantly freelance nature of the work of our members, means that there is a level of precarity which has always existed, but in a challenging financial climate, has resulted in low pay getting lower and music and musicians becoming increasingly devalued and unsupported.  We need to scaffold the sector in order to provide the essential support required to nurture and grow the sector in order to maximise all of the positives that come with a strong and vibrant aulture sector”.

Chris Brookmyre, Novelist

“Our culture is an invaluable element of our national wealth, and not merely in monetary terms, and nurturing it should be a consideration for any responsible government”.

Emma Pollock, Singer-songwriter and Musician

“The music industry in general is really struggling now, as the global models that pay us for our work are now failing. Streaming has removed the majority of income from record sales, and touring, which has been a lifeline for many artists, is now becoming unaffordable due to the rise in cost of transport and accommodation. In the face of such global challenges, surely our own government must now step up to support its own artists. The time is now, to protect and preserve an incredible Scottish musical legacy and secure a future for its current talent”.

Fiona Dalgetty, Chief Executive, Fèis Rois

“I’m delighted to see the call by Culture Counts for a new Culture Act in Scotland, which would introduce statutory duties for public bodies regarding planning, funding, and support of arts and culture. If implemented, I am sure this would lead to positive change regarding the systems in which we work in Ross & Cromarty, across Scotland and beyond”.

Gayle Rankin, Actress

“There are few things that have impacted more on my life than my exposure to the arts within Scottish culture. I want to see the next generation and many to come grow and benefit from even more exposure to culture than I did. We must see ourselves in art.It is how we grow our humanity and feel the breath of our souls”.

Greg McHugh, Actor and Writer

“Expanding the growth and governmental support across all sectors of culture and the arts- to give more access to those who don’t see themselves as natural participants, is something I would love to see”.

Heather Stuart, Chief Executive of OnFife

“Culture and creativity aren’t luxuries, they are fundamental to who we are and how our communities thrive.

Culture strengthens wellbeing, tackles inequality, builds confidence and connection, and yet despite that impact there is still no statutory duty for bodies to invest in or report on cultural outcomes.

Culture is too often at risk and squeezed by short term pressures, but legislation could unlock long-term change, strengthening not constraining local decision-making”.

Helen Moore, Deputy Director of the Scottish Contemporary Art Network

“A Culture Act for Scotland would help elevate our core belief at SCAN that art is a vital part of Scottish life. Art helps us to explore complex histories, helps us to explore science, and it helps to foster stronger communities.

A Culture Act could ensure that the work that that we all do would be embedded within the work of other sectors. Culture partners should be seen to be as important contributors as those representing transport, education or health and social care. I believe that a Culture Act could mean that decision makers and and politicians would be more likely to see us as equal partners and it would elevate the importance of culture in a number of policy settings.

A Culture Act would mean that artists and arts workers would be properly supported to engage in socially impactful and place-based work in communities across Scotland. And I believe that a Culture Act would highlight the unique visual arts infrastructure that we have here in Scotland, and the potential that they have to bring people together to learn, be creative, but also to participate in a way that is really meaningful for everyone”.

HORSE, Singer-songwriter

“At times I struggle to make ends meet. It’s been like this for me for decades. Not only do we need to encourage our unique creative culture but we need to ensure that erosion of this does not continue to happen, almost subliminally. We have an abundance of riches in scotland. Sometimes these riches are not financial. There has to be recognition and a priority of the arts. This depletion has to be not only halted but a universal road map developed that we all recognise as a route to move forward, one that upholds and supports those of us creators working at the coal face. We are are creative nation of souls all struggling to make art. We only have to look back a couple of years to those days of being locked away and one of the only the only antidotes for us all was music or creative works. We are all made better whether creating participating or simply by reaping the rewards from people making art… "Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." — Pablo Picasso "Where words fail, music speaks." — Hans Christian Andersen”.

Sir Ian Rankin, Writer and Philanthropist

“Arts and culture need to be protected and cherished, especially in an age of AI. They not only nourish us but help us define what it is to be human”.

Jenny Niven, CEO & Director, Edinburgh International Book Festival

“A Culture Act for Scotland would help establish a long term, sustainable, equitable framework for the development and provision of culture, which is a cornerstone not only of Scotland's identity, but also our economy, our education and our health and well being. The time is absolutely right to enshrine a proper nonpartisan commitment to culture for the long term, for the benefit of everyone in Scotland and for those who visit”.

Jo Clifford, Writer and Actor

“At this time of profound global crisis, the voice of artists matter more than ever. So it is essential that Scotland's government implements an effective policy to support the culture of its own people”.

Karen Koren, Artistic Director, Guilded Balloon

“It is time for Scotland's political parties and the pubic to support a Culture Act in the next parliamentary term, in order to help the talent that lives, works and comes out of Scotland”.

Katie Goh, Manager, Equal Media and Culture Centre

“We think there’s great potential for a Culture Act to make women’s inequality in the culture sector more visible, and therefore make positive changes to policy, regulation and practices, that currently negatively affect women, particularly women who face multiple forms of discrimination in society.

From our perspective, a Culture Act in Scotland could and should include plans to better mainstream gender equality and wider equality issues too. We’re particularly excited that a culture act could encourage and design new practices and funding mechanisms, particularly ones that take an intersectional feminist approach.

For us, these alternative ways of working that a Culture Act could bring about, could look like the creation of equality and diversity funds to help meet additional costs faced by diverse groups of women in the sector, especially parents and carers; the development and piloting of alternative funding arrangements in the sector; and mainstreaming alternative working practices that reduce barriers to women’s participation in the sector.

These alternative ways of working and mainstreaming require long-term strategy, oversight and secure funding – which are things that a Culture Act could enable.

We think a culture act could be part of that meaningful long-term change that needs to happen to move towards a more equal and fair culture sector”.

Kenny McGlashan, Chief Executive, Federation of Scottish Theatre

“Our members see both the extraordinary contribution culture makes, and the strain of trying to deliver it on unstable foundations. A Culture Act would let Scotland move beyond emergency fixes towards long-term, cross-party commitment to cultural rights, fair work and regional equity. Federation of Scottish Theatre supports this call and stands ready to help shape an Act that is ambitious, inclusive and rooted in the realities of artists, organisations and freelancers”.

Kirsten Innes, Author

“The precarious, haphazard nature of funding has left the industry chaotic and prone to too many cycles of sensationalist cuts then outrage. A healthy, mature culture strategy creating stability for artists and prioritising culture in schools would create the conditions in which a wealth of work which nourishes the future of the country could be created”.

Louise Scullion & Matthew Dalziel, Artists

“The cultural sector of Scotland has constantly punched above its weight and delivered projects that have both focused our sense of self and created ways of promoting the inventive character of our nation – this is exactly the time NOT to cut back on this vital sector, but instead bolster it by enshrining it in A Cultural Act for Scotland to ensure a more buoyant future and signal to the world and our neighbours THIS is who we are and what we value”.

Mairi Campbell, Musician

“Art is essential in all cutures. A Culture Act would give Scotlands' arts the support it has long deserved”.

Marc Lambert, CEO, Scottish Book Trust

“As the review into Creative Scotland makes plain through its recommendations, transparency, equity, and clarity of communication are prized in the Scottish Arts world, and are especially important to the sector now, after a very difficult decade marked by considerable disruption, and - until last year perhaps - declining levels of investment and uncertainty as to Creative Scotland's budget. Managing an arts organisation under these circumstances has been very challenging, not least because there has been an endemic lack of predictability as to what the future might involve. 

This has made the job of arts organisations delivering effectively and impactfully on their mission to serve the people of Scotland all the more difficult. And it is one big reason - and there are many others - that a Culture Act for Scotland is so necessary, since, however it was framed, it would ensure a degree of investment predictability for the arts over time that would allow those arts to flourish, and would allow arts organisations to plan ahead, and to act really effectively in growing audiences through actions and programmes that are creative, bold, memorable and impactful. In other words, looking forward, a Culture Act for Scotland would provide the basis for a very different decade - one characterised by a Scotland flourishing domestically and internationally through the joys and inspirations of culture and the arts”. 

Mariem Omari, Bijli Theatre, Co-Artistic Director and Co-founder

“Culture is a measure of the health of a nation and its people. A Culture Act would reinforce Scotland’s commitment to art at a time when political division is actively encouraged. Thankfully art and culture remain one of the few spaces where considered conversations can still happen”.

Pat Kane, Musician and Journalist

“Culture should be embedded at the heart of our lives. In this highly mechanised age, we need to keep the “why?” question to the front. That’s the artists’ job”.

Paul Buchanan, Singer-songwriter and Musician

“It is important to nourish the empathy and understanding cultural activity provides”.

Robert Softley Gale, Artist Director and CEO at Birds of Paradise Theatre Company

“Scotland is internationally recognised for our disability-led arts - we need the support to keep working at this level”.

Sadenia “Eddi” Reader, Singer-songwriter

“We have an immense untapped resource in our cultural history. A good and bad history, JUST as valid as any other countries cultural history. With clarity we can promote the linage of our peoples history through this rich cultural historical landscape of Scotland. That we must focus on its nurture is a given and necessary for the future children of this land to express themselves creatively within the backdrop of who we actually are as a population and how we communicate who we are to the rest of the world”.

Shauna Macdonald, Actress

“Art and culture is fundamental to everyone’s health, wellbeing and happiness. What is the point of living without art and culture?”.

Siobhán Redmond, Actress

“The culture of the country tells us who we could be as well as who we are”.

Tony Lankester, Chief Executive, Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society

“Scotland's approach to - and investment in - Culture already recognises its importance in the life of all who call Scotland home, as well as a key driver of its visitor economy. Codifying this in a Culture Act would be a groundbreaking next step and a public affirmation of the importance of culture across our society, and a building block for the shaping of our national identity”.

Val McDermid, Writer

“Culture should be broad enough to reach all our communities and deep enough to enrich our lives. It should be diverse enough to include all, not to exclude”.

Vic Galloway, Broadcaster, Journallist, DJ, Host, and Actor

“Music, Arts and Culture are among Scotland's greatest assets and exports. The Scottish people are extremely creative in these areas, and wherever I go in the world people agree. In my opinion, Music, Arts and Culture should be cherished, nurtured, developed and loved across society, as a matter of priority”.

Zinnie Harris, Playwright and Screenwriter

“The Culture act is a vital and necessary way to ensure resilience and growth in the creative sector”.