Robin Downie
Can we all be managed in the great cause of efficiency?
Also on this page:
Rear Window
Ian Mackenzie on a man who
broke all the rules
Alan Fisher is an Al Jazeera correspondent
Two more contributions to the SR debate
I. Catherine Czerkawska
In his reply to SR, Andrew Dixon says: ‘I find no trace of the uncertainty and insecurity that you refer to. Instead I find a country brimming with brilliance; creative people producing work of outstanding quality’ as if these were somehow contradictory. They are nothing of the sort. The former are states of mind, the latter a description of achievement.
Scotland is indeed brimming with brilliance. People, young and old, are producing work of outstanding quality. But almost everyone in the arts community is simultaneously smitten with uncertainty, with fears and misgivings about the future. Of course we will go on producing the work. It’s what we do. But that doesn’t necessarily make individual writers, artists and musicians any more optimistic that Creative Scotland will serve their needs.
‘Ensuring that the country’s creative professionals can profit from their talent’ is a laudable ambition, but nowhere in any of CS’s pronouncements have I seen an inkling of an explanation of how that is going to be achieved. The picture for the individual practitioner is indeed gloomy, with theatre, bookshop, library and gallery closures, redundancies, company collapses and a general withdrawal of funding. Business sponsorship of the arts is, I believe, at an all time low. Newspapers and magazines employ very little freelance talent. Even the design of CS’s own logo is farmed out to an advertising agency, rather than to an individual designer. So how are creative professionals going to profit from their intellectual property? Through what channels?
Well, there’s always investment.
The website tells us that Creative Scotland will:
• invest in ideas
• invest in talent
• invest in education
• invest in places
Nowhere does it say that it will be investing in the creative individuals without whom nothing would ever be produced. We have every right to expect a modicum of openness and honesty. For Creative Scotland to launch itself without any clear indication of what, exactly, it is going to do for its clients, seems a little remiss and would not be countenanced in the corporate world whose language CS seems content to borrow.
To describe these services as strategic only compounds our misgivings. But then, it occurs to me that we are not the target clients of this new body, otherwise they would be talking about serving rather than leading us. We need clarification, and we need it urgently.
II. Jane Alexander
I’ve been following the Scottish Review’s series of articles about Creative Scotland with increasing irritation at the splenetic tone. In the absence of any actual information, SR is too keen to speculate, treating the worst fears of the arts community as though they’re facts.
Privatising the arts: where has this come from, this idea that CS are sneakily selling off our cultural capital? Perhaps just from the introduction of the word ‘investment’ – arguably a reminder, for anyone who doubts the value of channelling public money into the arts, of the £8 that’s supposedly generated by every £1 of grant money.
But don’t you think there might be a less sinister, less dramatic possibility than privatisation – which at any rate could hardly be a realistic plan with the economy as it is? If you look at what the SAC has already been doing with partnerships and funding (those key words from Andrew Dixon’s letter) it seems likely that what CS intends is to devolve the various grant-making elements of its activities to other organisations that are well-positioned to take them on. As, for instance, the SAC did with the New Writers Awards a couple of years back – these are now run by the Scottish Book Trust; emerging writers receive the same amount of money as they previously did from the SAC, and also benefit from mentoring arranged by SBT.
I stress I have no inside information on what funding models CS might be developing; this just seems to me a far more likely explanation – if not quite such a juicy story. Perhaps the reason CS has not made a public announcement to this effect is that the details of these partnerships are yet to be agreed.
It’s true the establishment of CS has been a shambles. It’s also true that CS is staffed by committed, capable, highly professional individuals – some of whom are facing redundancy, with ‘hefty severance packages’ according to Kenneth Roy – but again, no facts: just insinuations, and a suggestion that CS would be better pushing its former employees out the door with the bare minimum of compensation.
Artists and arts administrators (at CS, or any arts organisation) are not on opposing sides. Sometimes they’re even the same people. Setting them up against each other is unhelpful. (I’d like to know, by the way, what the evidence is for Kenneth Roy’s prediction that small grants to individual artists will soon disappear.) By all means question the priorities of CS, the salaries of its senior staff, the cost of its branding – but some balance, please. And please – some facts.
Kenneth Roy replies: I’m with Jane Alexander on the need for facts but, in the almost complete absence of them, SR has been entitled to question, challenge and draw informed deductions based on what we are told privately. A week ago I offered Andrew Dixon an opportunity to write a major piece for SR setting out the facts. He has not responded to this offer. He has however pointed out in an exchange of correspondence that the chairman of Creative Scotland, Sir Sandy Crombie, is not drawing the fee to which he is entitled. I have suggested to Andrew Dixon that this fact should be made known in the Scottish government’s online directory of public bodies, along with Mr Dixon’s own salary, so that there is no room for misunderstanding.
