Our evidence to the culture funding inquiry

The Scottish Parliament’s Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee opened an inquiry into funding for culture in the Scottish Government’s 2023-24 budget. As part of the inquiry, the committee has opened a call for views.

Our evidence submitted to the call for views can be read in full below. To reduce energy consumption, please only download the PDF if you have to.

Culture Counts CEEAC Submission (PDF)

Submission: Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture. Budget Scrutiny 2023-24: Funding for Culture Inquiry

Our mission is to work with members to:

  • promote the public benefit of the arts, heritage, and creative industries

  • protect the eco-system of the arts, heritage, and creative industries for our common future, through administration and policy change

  • demystify the operations of Government and Parliament; allowing more people from the arts, heritage, and creative industries to influence policies that impact on them

Summary of recommendations

  1. Legislate to allow local authorities to introduce Transient Visitor Levy schemes, to be used to support local arts, heritage, creative industries, and visitor attractions.

  2. Introduce a % for culture scheme from all Scottish Government infrastructure projects as soon as possible. This is an SNP manifesto commitment and should be realised as a matter of urgency.

  3. Increase the culture budget by 20%, to meet the ambitions of young people, improve skills infrastructure, ensure fair work, and carbon reduction and ensure that improvements in equality, diversity, and inclusion are realised.

  4. Invest in a leadership scheme to ensure that people from diverse backgrounds are heard at an early stage in the design process across Scottish Government policy-making and strategic thinking.

  5. Provide financial support to manage the decrease in ticket sales due to the cost-of-living crises and to invest in audience development schemes to mitigate against Covid-19 habit change, provide financial support to manage the increase in energy prices.

  6. Introduce a fully funded apprenticeship scheme to support 10-20 apprenticeships in live events technical staff, which is a major current skills shortage.

  7. Ensure that Creative Scotland and Historic Environment Scotland are invited as Statutory Consultees on all Scottish Government Infrastructure Projects.

  8. Explore the possibilities (within the review of the Community Empowerment Act) of leasing more venues to cultural organisations on ‘peppercorn’ rent agreements. This would allow for vital improvements particularly in town centres in terms of both the day and night-time economies.

  9. Support local authorities to drastically reduce or remove rates for arts, heritage, and creative industries organisations, allowing organisations to viably repurpose empty buildings in high streets across the country.

  10. The Community Wealth Building Bill should explore the possibility of a nationwide policy, where any contract under £15k goes to the local anchor network or community interest company to source a delivery partner, and not out to competitive procurement.

  11. Scottish Government working with the Centre for Cultural Value should host a Cultural Value Summit in 2023/24. There is a need to improve understanding of cultural value at the local level.

  12. In direct response to Brexit and in support of creative people across the nation: the Scottish Government should invest in an ‘Office for Cultural Exchange’ safeguarding international touring, festivals, and residencies.

How are budgetary decisions supporting the recovery of the sector from COVID and what should be the Scottish Government’s priorities in supporting recovery through Budget 2023-24?

The spending review does not support the recovery of the culture sector from Covid-19; however, the spending review is not the budget, and we hope that the budget will support the sector to recover from Covid-19.

In budget years 2020 and 2021 the Scottish Government and the UK Government worked well together to support the sector to avoid mass job losses and general destruction.

We did not avoid all problems though, for example we now have a major skills shortage of technical staff to cover live events and performing arts; and organisations and venues have a major lack of reserves and will struggle to get through winter 2022 without support. Ticket sales are down due to the cost-of-living crises and energy prices are set to increase again in 2022.

In terms of the future and looking towards 2023/24, it’s important to consider the budget landscape in the lead up to 2023/24. The following events provide a background to where the sector will be starting from in April 2023.

  • real terms cuts due to inflation at national level, non-inflationary budgets or less from 2012-2022 (Scottish Government Figures)

  • real terms and severe cash cuts at the local level, 13.8% cuts 2012-2019 (Audit Scotland figures)

  • lack of reserves due to impact of Covid-19, (closure or reduced capacity for 24-30 months)

  • habit change, audiences not returning post Covid-19 (Centre for Cultural Value Research)

  • decrease in access to EU markets due to Brexit, January 2020 (loss of access to live touring EU markets). In 2019, 45% of the creative industries’ service export markets went to the EU. (Creative Industries Federation)

  • major increase in energy prices

  • cost of living impact on ticket sales (Federation of Scottish Theatre)

  • shortage of live events and performing arts technical staff since 2021 (Various venues inc Fife Culture Trust, SECC, National Theatre Scotland)

Real Terms Cuts (National)

On the national level, it’s important to remember that most parts of the sector received standstill budgets for the decade in the lead-up to both Brexit and Covid-19. National Performing Companies being the worst affected. This creates an imbalance in the production of culture. It’s important to have a balance of both production and distribution of culture within the overall ecosystem.

Local Cuts

At the local level, Audit Scotland reported a 13.9% reduction in investment in culture between 2014 and 2019 (see budget inquiry evidence 2021). The local cuts are more obvious than the national, for example, libraries operating on reduced opening hours; community centres closing and almost no opportunities for young people to take part in things like local authority (or ALEO) produced summer arts programmes. Some summer arts programmes still exist, though across the country they are few and far between and are nowhere near level with opportunities for participation in sports.

Reserves

There are issues with reserves across Scotland. Many venues and organisations had to use up their reserves throughout Covid-19 closures. This fuelled the skills shortages as the pipelines closed. Energy prices in winter 2022 may force some venues and organisations to close for good, unless government support comes through.

Brexit

There are still issues with accessing the EU marketplace. As far as we know arrangements for bilateral work visas have been arranged for 24 of 27 EU countries, though there is still a major issue to be resolved in terms of access to work permits, and both are required for touring. Work permits and visas are costly and time consuming to arrange. The ideal scenario would be for the UK Government to enter into a bilateral agreement with the EU for arts, heritage, and creative industries workers to be able to move freely and to work for up to 6 months at a time.

There are also several in-bound issues for festivals which remain, for example the Home Office holding onto passports for too long, curtailing artists ability to apply for visa’s they need for other events. The application is costly and processing times are too long and at times up to four weeks more than advertised.

Energy Prices

Energy prices for organisations, particularly those with buildings are a major issue. Due to the energy price increase, swimming pools have already closed in Scotland and that’s before the price increase which is set for October. Most are already paying +50% on what they were paying last year, and many will see a further 33% hike in October.

Skills Shortage

Covid-19 shut down live events though continued to allow film and tv to operate. Therefore live events technical staff went to film and tv and the pipeline to train new technical staff for live was cut off.

The sector now has a major shortage of live technical staff. One local authority can only operate a fifth of their venues at one time, due to the shortage of live technical staff.

Scottish Government should introduce a fully funded apprenticeship scheme to support 10-20 apprenticeships in live events technical staff, which is a major current skills shortage.

What should be the Scottish Government’s priorities?

To actively support the rebalancing of the major decline in cultural investment at local level, it is vital that (as set out in the SNP Manifesto) the Scottish Government introduce a % for culture scheme as soon as possible. The Scottish Government should also legislate to allow local authorities to operate a transient visitor levy as soon as possible.

Scottish Government should ensure that Creative Scotland and Historic Environment Scotland are invited as Statutory Consultees onto all Scottish Government Infrastructure Projects. This would ensure that the potential for the cultural economy to improve bids is realised and not overlooked.

The Community Wealth Building Bill should explore the possibility of a nationwide policy, where any contract under £15k goes to the local anchor network or community interest company to source a delivery partner, and not out to competitive procurement, or not to private companies based out-with the area, whose sole purpose is their own singular economic growth.

Increase the culture budget by 20%, to meet the ambitions of young people, improve skills infrastructure, ensure fair work, carbon reduction and to ensure that improvements in equality, diversity, and inclusion are realised.

Provide financial support to manage the decrease in ticket sales due to the cost-of-living crises and to invest in audience development schemes to mitigate against Covid-19 habit change, provide financial support to manage the increase in energy prices.

Equality, diversity, and inclusion

Invest in a leadership scheme to ensure that people from diverse backgrounds are heard at an early stage in the design process across Scottish Government policy-making and strategic thinking.

Skills shortages

To rebalance the skills shortage caused by Covid-19, introduce a fully funded apprenticeship scheme for live event technicians. Approx cost £350k to £500k for 10-20 x 1-year fast track apprentices. National Companies, the FST, event and festival sector could house apprentices throughout 2023/24 working closely with Skills Development Scotland who already have an apprenticeship scheme framework for the role set up: https://www.apprenticeships.scot/browse-frameworks/modern-apprenticeships/creative-and-cultural/employer-creative-and-cultural/

Understanding cultural value at the local level

Scottish Government working with the Centre for Cultural Value should host a Cultural Value Summit in 2023/24.

There is a need to improve understanding of cultural value at local level. For example: Arts and Culture organisations are eligible to apply to deliver on Mental Health and Wellbeing targets via the Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund, though they are being overlooked at local level.

In some cases, local delivery partners such as third sector interface organisations do not always understand why they would invest Mental Health and Wellbeing funds into cultural organisations to achieve outcomes. The value of sport is well understood though culture less so, there is also occasionally an assumption that arts and culture should be treated differently than other third sector organisations and that they should seek funding elsewhere and not apply into general third sector funds.

There is an urgent need to improve the understanding of the value of culture at local level.

Support for organisations, venues and freelancers

Organisations and venues will require financial support to manage the decline in ticket sales due to the cost-of-living crises, audience Covid-19 habit change, and will also need financial support to manage the increase in energy prices.

Venues in receipt of support should where possible provide space for freelancers (who will need somewhere warm to work every day) through the winter months.

The Community Empowerment Act Review should consider the fact that local authorities can often not afford to asset transfer potential cultural venues because they need to borrow against the capital. Scotland needs to explore leasing more venues to cultural organisations on ‘peppercorn’ rent agreements. This makes vital improvements particularly in town centres in terms of both the day and night-time economies.

Rates relief for arts, heritage and creative industries needs to be drastically reduced for most organisations to viably repurpose empty buildings in high streets across the country.

Support for cultural trade and exchange

In direct response to Brexit and in support of creative people across the nation: the Scottish Government should invest in an ‘Office for Cultural Exchange’ safeguarding international touring, festivals, and residencies.

Despite an increasing recognition of the established health and wellbeing benefits of culture, the Committee has previously heard that this had not led to transformational change in terms of both a cross-cutting approach within Government and increased budgetary support for culture across a number of spending areas - what needs to change to embed culture and health and wellbeing across government and the public sector.

Please note:

The Arts in Education Recovery Group should be consulted on arts and education cross policy working. They may not have had capacity to respond to this inquiry and as such should be considered to give evidence as the discussion continues.

Likewise, the Arts, Culture, Health and Wellbeing Network should be consulted on cross policy working between arts and health.

Part 1 - What is arts?

The culture sector is keen to work with health and education, though how we get there has always and continues to be an issue.

One Third Sector Interface (TSI) that we spoke to who distribute national health and wellbeing funds locally approx. £132,000 annually, told us that arts organisations are not eligible to apply because they “have a special pot just for arts which is distributed by the local arts council” approx. £8000 annually.

We were very concerned about this as it seemed that the local TSI had decided to treat arts and culture separately, unable to see their own bias and ignoring the eligibility guidelines.

However, the interesting part here is that when we received our Freedom of Information Request detail (see Annex 2), this TSI did fund arts projects. Around 20% of the projects they funded were arts projects. Possibly what we mean by arts organisations and what TSI’s understand to be arts organisations are different things?

Part 1 b

Glasgow City Council changed their investment criteria (Sept 2020) for third sector organisations, which cut off arts and culture organisations working in the city. This ill-thought-through decision was realised (due to arts and culture organisation campaigning) and has now been remedied. The Communities Fund now aims to aims to tackle poverty and inequality through:

Building the skills, capacity and resilience of individuals and communities

Supporting activities and services that will enable and empower communities to become involved in the social, economic, and cultural life of the city

Arts and culture organisations managed to fix this, this time, but they do not have the capacity (particularly post Brexit and Covid-19) to deal with the lack of knowledge around cultural value on an ongoing basis.

Part 2 - Business Models

Those who work in health and education are largely employees with permanent contracts; whereas those who deliver arts and culture are usually in precarious work, working contract to contract.

Sometimes that simple fact is a huge barrier, for example there is sometimes an assumption from health and education that the culture sector is funded in the same way that they are. Essentially health and education don’t understand that culture don’t have any money!

At an arts and health meet-up I once heard the phrase ‘all the arts and culture do is talk about working with health, but they never actually do anything’. That’s because we can’t do anything until we’re commissioned, we don’t have people on a permanent contract ready to deliver, it needs to be commissioned. Some Health Board staff know this (particularly those who are artists who happen to work in health), though others don’t. Are Health waiting for Culture to make them an offer, and Culture are waiting for Health to make them an offer?

ALISS: To support the development of understanding and learning about each other, Arts and Culture Organisations, either directly or through their community partners depending on how activities are accessed - need to ensure that their activities are visible on ALISS A Local Information System for Scotland.

Arts, heritage, and creative industries organisations can ensure that the cultural offer that they do have is further assessable to communities by being visible to people in Scotland by adding their information to ALISS – A Local Information System for Scotland – a web-based resource for community assets. online database of activity.

Any organisations or individual can add information to ALISS without being members of Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland. Uploading information about services, groups, activities, and resources is free and it allows Community Links Workers and other health and social care professionals to direct people towards activities to support their health and wellbeing.' https://www.aliss.org/#

Part 3 - Stakeholders, connections and understanding

To improve connections and general understanding between arts, heritage and creative industries and the health sector; Scottish Government working with the Centre for Cultural Value should host a Cultural Value Summit in 2023/24. There is a need to improve understanding of cultural value at local level. Council leaders should be invited, to help to avoid the situation that happened in Glasgow from happening again.

There are several organisations involved at local level, for example:

  • Third Sector Interface Scotland Network

  • Scottish Community Link Worker Network

  • Carers Trust in Scotland

  • COSLA

  • Scottish Association for Mental Health

  • Age Scotland

  • Scottish Commission for People with learning Disabilities

  • Development Trust Association Scotland

  • Scottish Social Prescribing Network

  • Scottish Environment Link

  • Coalition of Care and Support Providers

  • Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations

Cross Policy Work Areas

As above we referred to the Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund, though other key cross-over areas to consider include:

  • SG Reshaping Care for Older People

  • SG Scottish Attainment Challenge

The Scottish Government’s independent Advisory Group on Economic Recovery in the wake of COVID-19 recommended that Ministers should in relation to the creative sector seek “ways to increase public and private investment across the sector to allow it to recover and compete” – can you provide examples of where this is happening or ways in which it should happen.

The recent decision to decrease the culture and business fund by 33% goes entirely against the advice of the Economic Recovery Group. Arts and Business Cuts https://www.insider.co.uk/news/arts--business-scotland-chair-27365321

See also https://culturecounts.scot/news/2022/6/22/culture-counts-statement-on-the-scottish-government-spending-review-2022-2026

The Scottish Government have invested in Scotland Food and Drink and have also invested in Screen Scotland; though there are many other areas of the creative industries who could deliver major economic results and we hope to see some of that ambition within the work of the new International Hubs and within the Cultural Diplomacy Strategy.

In direct response to Brexit and in support of creative people across the nation: the Scottish Government should invest in an ‘Office for Cultural Exchange’ safeguarding international touring, festivals, and residencies.

Scotland has an international outlook and to support and protect that part of our culture, our people need to interact with the international community. We currently share ideas internationally through our world-class network of festivals and residencies. For example: Margaret Atwood Residency at Cove Park; Arundhati Roy at Edinburgh International Book Festival. The combination of Brexit and ill-considered immigration policies threaten our reputation and ability to share in international learning and development. The ‘Office for Cultural Exchange’ would support the cultural sector to ensure that we are able to host, and share ideas with the most talented, innovative, artists, thinkers and activists from across the globe.

Scotland is a small marketplace and the livelihoods of many creative freelancers as well as organisations depend on finding audiences beyond our shores. 45% of the current UK creative industries service exports go to the EU, we need to be able to work in the EU, upfront costs and administrative costs of visas, work permits, local taxes and vat could exclude us from competing in an EU market. The ‘Office for Cultural Exchange’ would support the cultural sector to compete in an EU market by supporting the sector to navigate the new relationship.

The strength of Scotland’s cultural reputation brings us a voice in international dialogue far beyond our size. The Office for Cultural Exchange would support the cultural sector to connect with individuals, organisations and institutions across Europe and target countries, making Scotland an attractive partner for European Partnership Projects and for wider global collaborations.

The Committee has previously agreed with COSLA that a ‘whole system’ approach is essential to the spending review and that this is consistent with an outcomes-focused and collaborative approach; our view is that it is only through such an approach that the necessary funding can be freed up to ensure that sufficient cultural services are available to meet the increased demand arising from cultural prescribing – what progress has been made in moving towards a whole system approach, what are the main barriers and how do we overcome them;

The issue covered above around the lack of understanding of the value and impact of the culture sector may also be alive and well within COSLA.

For example there is support for sports, for example the following consultation briefing: https://www.cosla.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0021/24942/COSLA-PA-Contribution-Briefing-V8.pdf

We asked for a similar version for culture and were told that there is no capacity for this. Sport and Culture have the same status within the National Performance Framework and within the Improvement Service the understanding of value is there. Though it seems that bias and self-selection of what’s important is playing a part within COSLA.

It would be interesting to investigate if a potential lack of board diversity is playing a part in the preference for sports over arts, heritage, and creative industries. The detail of who is on the board of COSLA is not available on the website. The detail of who is on the Community Wellbeing Board is not available on the website.

It’s understood that budget cuts are impacting on local authorities, which is why we recommend TVL and % for culture schemes. We don’t understand why the policy can’t be aligned with sport though.

The Committee’s view is that it is essential that, wherever practical, multi-year funding for the cultural organisations the Scottish Government supports is passed on to the groups and individuals being funded who should, where appropriate, also receive a multi-year settlement – what progress has been made in moving towards multi-year funding, what are the main barriers and how do we overcome them.

Creative Scotland have now launched their new funding framework. It’s too early to say if this will be successful and inevitably there will be teething problems. There is currently no solution to the fact that there is not enough money to fund the level of ambition that applicants have.

Increasing the national culture budget by at least 20%, would go some way to creating an atmosphere of ambition again in the sector and would go a long way to achieving results in EDI, Fair work, and Carbon Emissions, which without increased investment are near impossible. With no new increase in investment, it will be very difficult to bring in new entrants to the sector, which may create a skills shortage in around two years’ time.

Scotland’s spend on culture as a percentage of GDP is one of the lowest in Europe (Scottish Government Stats + Audit Scotland Stats / Eurostat) and this does need to change if ambitions for the country are to be realised, and the health and wellbeing of the nation improved. Culture is not an add on or a choice, it’s a necessity and the basis of how people connect and belong in their communities.

Culture is a wide variety of opportunities to connect and belong and this is a fundamental part of good health and wellbeing.

Policy PositionsLori AndersonScottish Parliament