Reflections on Scotland’s Cultural Future: Culture Hustings for the Next Parliament

Thursday 26 February saw Scotland’s Cultural Future: Culture Hustings for the Next Parliament , delivered by Culture Counts and our partners the Federation of Scottish Theatre, Scottish Contemporary Arts Network, Festivals Edinburgh, Equal Media and Culture Centre and Campaign for the Arts .

Thank you to everyone who attended in person, watched online and submitted questions in advance. Around 130 booked to join us in the room and more than 400 watched the livestream. The level of engagement underlines the appetite for serious discussion about the future of culture in the next Parliament and beyond. You can watch a recording the event here.

Shortly after the event, Culture Counts and our partners reflected: “Culture is essential to improving our individual and national wellbeing, community cohesion, our economy, and our international profile. We are grateful to the representatives of Scotland’s six main political parties for sharing their priorities for the sector in the next parliamentary term. However, the sector needs much more than just warm words. We need politicians to commit to action that strengthens our sector and scales our impact for the benefit of all and support our call for a Culture Act for Scotland. We look forward to working with all MSPs and the next Scottish Government to make this happen.”

The opportunity to host a hustings comes around relatively infrequently, and the requirements of a non-selective event are carefully specified by the Electoral Commission to create the conditions for a fair and focused discussion. In the interests of transparency and sharing learning, this blog post shares more detailed reflections on the planning and next steps following the event.

Hustings panel

As a starting point, we thought it’d be useful to provide some information on how the panel was formed. We invited each of the main political parties standing in the forthcoming Holyrood election to nominate either their leader or culture spokesperson to attend the hustings, or to identify another appropriate representative where necessary. We did not select individual participants and did not seek to influence who parties chose to send.

The resulting panel contained representatives from six of the main political parties: Reform UK, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party, Scottish Green Party, Scottish Labour Party, Scottish Liberal Democrats and Scottish National Party.

A number of people have highlighted the lack of diversity on the panel, which was predominantly male and white. As our organising partners at the Equal Media and Culture Centre have outlined, this reflects the lack of diversity within the wider landscape of Scottish politics. They reflected:

It is important for us to note the stark lack of diversity on stage during the hustings, particularly how male-dominated the hustings was. Sadly, the lack of diversity of the speakers is representative of Scottish politics, which remains a space dominated by white men.

There are a record number of MSPs standing down at this year’s Holyrood elections. A striking number of 40% of women MSPs have decided not to run for election again. We know politics is a space of great barriers especially for marginalised groups. Engender’s work has also shown that it can be an unwelcoming space, leading to many women leaving politics shortly after entering.

The Equal Representation project at Engender, EMCC’s sister organisation works to increase women’s representation in Scotland’s democratic bodies and contains useful further information.

Hustings questions

The six questions asked at the hustings are listed below.

1 - Communities
Cultural activity is central to placemaking, community wealth building and civic identity across Scotland. It also plays a practical role in building bridges between different groups, strengthening local relationships and making towns, villages and cities places where people actively want to live and stay. Yet provision is uneven and often fragile, particularly outside the Central Belt and in rural and island areas. In many places, delivering cultural activity depends on short term funding cycles and centralised decision making, rather than stable local infrastructure and locally shaped priorities.
How will you ensure that communities in every part of Scotland have sustained access to cultural spaces, resources and decision-making?
2- Education, young people and skills
If we want a thriving cultural sector in ten or twenty years, we need strong foundations now in schools, youth provision and skills pathways. This includes specialist arts teaching, clear progression routes into creative careers, and sustained youth provision beyond the classroom. It also includes recognising the wider impact that creativity across the curriculum can have on confidence, attainment, wellbeing and community connection, as well as the role of international exchange and collaboration in expanding horizons and professional opportunity.
How will you strengthen youth provision, arts education, and creativity more widely within learning, to ensure young people across Scotland can participate in and shape cultural life?
3-Equality/equity, diversity, access
Across participants, audiences and the cultural workforce, there remain persistent and intersectional inequalities linked to gender, class, disability, race, geography and income. Research shows that greater diversity in the workforce drives innovation and outperforms on profitability. Beyond the business case, there are ethical and human rights considerations for achieving equality in the sector.
What specific actions will you take in the next Parliament to address these different barriers of inequality, so that cultural life and cultural careers are accessible for all in Scotland and not determined by background, identity or postcode?
4-Funding and Resource
The questions you are being asked tonight reflect the priorities of those in the room and watching online. When we asked what matters most, funding and resource came out clearly as the number one concern. Although some parts of the sector have stabilised in recent years, significant pressures remain across the system. Local Authority culture budgets are under unprecedented strain. Support available to individuals and freelancers for self-directed work is limited. Investment is unevenly distributed across the country, and overall, culture accounts for less than 1% of Scotland’s annual public expenditure.
How will you ensure that funding is sufficient, sustainable, and fairly spread?
5- Strategic direction
Recent years have seen significant growth in shared cross party understanding among politicians, policymakers, the cultural sector and the wider public about the value of culture and what it contributes to Scotland’s economy, society, communities and international reputation. There is also growing recognition of the scale of untapped opportunity, particularly in how culture can contribute to cross cutting outcomes in health, education, economic development and community wellbeing. Yet progress in translating that shared understanding into meaningful change has been limited.
How do we move beyond restating the case and begin working towards a coherent, shared and long-term vision for culture in Scotland? Is dedicated legislation needed to provide a clear and lasting framework for that future?
6- Workforce and conditions
Many artists and cultural workers face insecure contracts, low pay and limited progression, with freelancers particularly exposed to risk. Beyond improving pay, security and working conditions across the cultural workforce, financial pressure and instability in recent years have narrowed what feels possible for individuals and organisations alike.
What measures will you introduce to strengthen the cultural workforce, and restore a sense of ambition, risk-taking and long-term career confidence across Scotland’s culture sector?

We knew there was significant interest in the event, and that there would be a lot to cover. People attending represented a wide range of roles, artforms and interests. That meant we gave careful thought to question setting, to cover as much relevant ground as possible in a way that spoke to the breadth and range of interests of that audience.

In advance, we asked attendees to submit suggested questions and to rank a list of proposed themes in order of interest, with the option to add others. On the basis of that information, we grouped themes together to create a list of six questions, with equal time allocated to each candidate for responses.

Listed below are themes ranked by those who booked in advance, in order of interest. Also listed are the way in which these themes were then linked to the eventual questions asked of candidates

Theme - No. People interested - Links to questions
Public funding and investment - 159 -Qs 4,5,6
Cultural workforce, skills and talent development - 111 - Qs 2,3,6
Audiences, participation and access to culture - 104 - Qs 1,3,6
Freelancers and fair work - 94 - Qs 2,3,4,6
Culture and economic development- 89 - Qs 1,4,5
Culture, health and wellbeing - 88 - Qs 1,4,5
Communities and place - 83 - Qs 1,5
Infrastructure and cultural spaces - 82 - Qs 1,4
Children, young people and education - 80 - Qs 2,5
Long term direction and future policy frameworks - 78 - Qs 1,2,4,5
Local government and cultural provision - 77 - Qs 1,4,5
Equality/equity, diversity and access - 70 - Qs 1,2,3
International activity and cultural exchange - 64 - Qs 2,6
Rural and island provision - 55 - Qs 1,3
Governance, accountability and transparency - 54 - Qs 5
Climate action and environmental sustainability - 40
Role and reform of Government bodies - 33 - Qs 5
Cross portfolio policy integration - 26 - Qs 5
Data, evidence and impact - 25 - Qs 5
Digital, innovation and technology - 23

Outcomes and next steps

Since the event, a number of people and organisations have published their own reflections from different perspectives, which is a positive continuation of the discussions begun on the night. A survey has been circulated to all attendees to gather questions, follow-up thoughts and responses, which the organising partners will take forward in their ongoing advocay work. What was said at the hustings represents where those who may be making decisions about culture in the next Parliament currently stand and having that set out clearly and, on the record, provides a firmer basis for engagement as the election period continues.

Our role as organisers was to create the space for that discussion, which we are pleased to have done. At the same time, we and our partners are active in advocacy around cultural policy, and we have clear views and proposals that we will continue to advance through the election period and into the next Parliament.

For Culture Counts’ part, in the run up to the election we are proposing the development of a Culture Act for Scotland. At the hustings, it was encouraging to hear clear support for that proposal from both the Scottish Greens and the Scottish Conservatives, with most other parties indicating a willingness to explore the idea further. Receiving concrete support from across the political spectrum underlines that this is not a partisan issue, but one concerned with protecting and developing the sector for the long term.

Along with the questions on the night, we provided the panel with a list of briefings and manifesto asks published recently by the Scottish culture sector, which may be useful in terms of further reading: