No Arts without Artists
It’s said that, in August, if you listen quietly in Teviot or on the Mound you can actually hear the sound of money being sucked out of the city. There is a neat symmetry to the announcement a week ago that the Edinburgh Festival would get an additional £25million (‘Arts festival £25m funding boost – Angus Robertson‘) – and the announcement of £10m cuts to the arts – and then yesterday the announcement of the closure of Creative Scotland’s individual artists and performers fund.
If you were sending a message to cultural workers based in Scotland this couldn’t be spelled out any clearer. As the festival acts out an orgy of arts and millions of people pour through Edinburgh, locally-based companies will close, theatres shut, venues close their doors, and thousands of individual artists will just give up.
There’s a dark irony to all of this.
The first is that Scotland punches well above its weight in arts and culture. We have writers and directors and performers and poets and filmmakers and actors of the highest quality.
The second is that, in the wider scheme of things, the actual money required is small change.
The third irony is that all of this – all of this could and should be about how you build a small country, through storytelling in film and theatre and tv and literature.
The problem with the constant dangling of the bait for future funding is it will be too late. Angus Robertson has said: “Scottish Government funding, which is committed to raise additional annual spending on culture and the arts by £100m by 2028/29, aiming for an increase of £25m next year.”
By then it will be too late. Artists and performers will have given up. Theatres and cinemas that have closed their doors won’t be re-opened. You lose not just the infrastructure of the arts (the physical spaces) but also the joy energy and inspiration of those working in these jobs. Funding in ‘2028/29’ is no use if you have gone and got a job doing something else. And the danger is that you also lose a huge amount of experience wisdom and insight from the sector in this meltdown.
The tragic thing about all of this is that you literally have a showcase to the world every year and its a completely wasted opportunity.
Nor do the sums add up in terms of return of investment. These are false savings destroying not just an industry but a culture, our culture.
None of this is new. Heather Parry wrote, almost a year ago:
“In the era of streaming, and pirating, and retail monopolies and risk-averse capitalism, the payment for being an artist diminishes over and over. Meanwhile, the creative industries continue to generate great profit for the economy and constitute an incredible return on investment on what is, in the broader context, a tiny sum of money. The City of Berlin’s culture budget for 23/24 is about £840 million. The Creative Scotland annual grant-in-aid from the government, to cover the whole of the country, is only £63 million. In return, in the government’s own words: ‘Scotland’s creative industries contribute more than £5 billion to the Scottish economy every year.’
[you can subscribe to her Substack HERE].
She goes on: “Early this year, the Scottish government announced a 10% cut in the culture budget ; £6.6 million pounds that were set to come out of the already much diminished pot that supports the arts in Scotland. A quick response from the creative unions and the Campaign for the Arts forced a u-turn from the government—though they couched this in language of an “uplift”, when it was nothing of the sort; it was a return to the already massively underfunded original plan. But it turns out they never planned to do anything of the sort; eight months later and Creative Scotland still has not seen this promised £6.6 million, and Angus Robertson has now confirmed in writing that it will never appear. The Scottish Government have imposed a 10% budget cut by stealth, just two weeks before Regularly Funded Organisations are due to receive their quarterly payments, leaving Creative Scotland with no choice but to take the needed money from their National Lottery reserves, an action that can only happen once. Next time, there will be no reserves.”
Now there are no reserves.
Key institutions have been lost and more are to come. And people too who are like institutions in that they contain multitudes of knowledge and experience will be lost too.
Would independence make any difference to these funding decisions?
Probably.
That’s a definite maybe, then.
Next Q: How might independence make a difference?
Yes.
How?
(I’m an advocate for independence)
If you need to have it explained to you, I very much doubt that. You would be able to explain it yourself.
IMO that’s an issue en route to independence: no one can explain (with much confidence) how key problems that we face just now will be solved by independence.
I mean if we look to Ireland as I do here:
https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2023/01/29/ireland-at-the-oscars/
and here
https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2023/10/26/irish-pages-literary-ambitions/
you can see how successfully a small northern celtic nation supports and benefits from its own arts and culture output.
I suppose you could end up in an illiterate culturally useless independent Scotland, but I really doubt that would be the case.
You fund things properly, you have real aspiration, you have a joined-up strategy and you reap the benefits.
The primary advantage of independence would be in having the normal tax-raising and borrowing powers of any small European country. That would make a difference.
Of course, I agree with that. As an aspiration. But it would depend on the state of that new nation and the intentions and priorities of, and resources available to, the government of that new nation.
Lack of independence isn’t the only cause of current issues. Other factors are at play.
Well you could feasibly (not really) have a new independent country with no interest in art and culture or storytelling, or you could assume that Scotland would be so bankrupt by democracy that it couldn’t (for some unexplainable reason) afford any, er, culture, but that all sounds a bit ridiculous doesn’t it?
Yes. And it’s also unlikely that any country in its budgeting could satisfy all priorities at once.
The assumption that independence would do this and be the solution to all issues – much as I want independence for all the reasons you already know – is unrealistic.
Why not?
You really think that independence will solve ALL of Scotland’s issues?
I suggest that independence will give us better hope and opportunity for dealing with problems much better than the unmitigated disaster that’s been brought by Westminster. But it will be a Parliament of mixed and competing ideas and will have many difficult things to deal with…like any Parliament. Better, we hope and trust, but not the answer to all our ills.
Another way of looking at it Sandy is that by cutting off funding to the arts, we get rid of all those annoying people who think for themselves. When Scotland gets independence, the first thing we will do is sue the Anglo-British state for at least part of the money that has been illegally siphoned off over the past 300+ years. No?
There are many things I’d suggest a newly independent country could/should do.
And, in terms of negotiating a ‘settlement’ with Westminster, I expect hard bargaining and hope for a just and fair separation.
My comments here are to do with what seems unrealistic ie that all these issues we’re facing just now, including funding the arts, will be resolved by independence.
Well they surely will because as far as it seems, there’s simply nae money.
It’s literally 0.5%.
Ask yourself why Scotland would not be like other similar countries and have some … culture … ?
This isn’t really difficult. It’s not some huge impossible task ffs … what is wrong with people? Have some basic ******* aspiration
FFS! I don’t disagree! The money needed is small beer – as I said elsewhere…especially, if economic justification was needed, compared to the income being generated.
But this situation is not only down to the lack of independence and would not necessarily be resolved by independence.
Meanwhile fight like f for what’s needed.
It needs to be enshrined in the constitution, it’s important, we can’t live on bread alone.
I can explain it, but I’m not prepared to waste my time on willful contrariness. Why you should want independence is quite beyond me, since you affect not to understand the first thing about the agency that comes with it, and which we conspicuously lack at present.
Don’t waste your time then.
All I’m saying is that unrealistic expectations don’t help.
I want independence as much as anyone does.
But it’s not only the lack of independence that has caused the difficult issues facing us just now, including arts funding.
Am I right in presuming you are a man driven by presumptions Graeme? Let me educate you. Scotland belongs to Scotland and that is not open for negotiation. If you don’t believe me, go and do your homework.
He’s Scottish Art’s very own wrecking ball. Good old Angus, at least you’re good at something.
Spot on, Mike.
And how much is the CIA putting up this year?
I’m sorry but I have to reiterate if your art needs a grant then it’s not art, it’s a job. At every turn, on every year the unconnected artist fails to gain funding, someone has to miss out – do they give up? Do they say, “well that it then Better go back to the day job.”? But they already have the day job, that’s how they finance their art, the unconnected artist, the one who isn’t in the chummy circle. Yes, it’s not good that the budget has been cut but this is a bad government that has been messing the country up for several years now, not just in the arts but in mental health, education – in fact it’s not worth listing the extent of the mess here when the word ‘everything’ just about covers it.
There is a more important issue here, independence. The more we guff around talking about what might happen in this sector or that when we get independence is a waste of time. This government has no idea how to pursue that aim, so why speculate? Independence strategy? Someone else has to do it for them. The arts? Come on.
This is quite a confusing ramble and I’m finding it hard “tae mak heid nor tail o it”
But, you do have a point in a roundabout sort of a way. Sure, the art will still happen maybe, or will it? If you have no outlet for people to see or hear your art, what’s the point?
On the point of Scottish self-determination, we’ll have plenty to write about in a positive environment and we’ll have funds enough to promote it once we put an end to all the thievery.
I’m sorry if my contribution was incoherent, obviously it wasn’t meant to be. If it’s a reference to unconnected artists I mean those outside of the art world in Scotland. I’m sorry I can’t explain that better but to put it in a crude way: those artists not connected to the art market, the Schools of Art, those who have exhibitions, people who make art, music, write but have no outlet for it because it is not valued, or they don’t have pals. If the confusion is over the funding aspect of my contribution what I was referring to was those artists at the bottom of the ‘league’. The one who just misses because the pot is empty, but they still make art. I hope this is more clear.
@WT, I interpreted your comments as saying pretty much what Carol Vorderman was reported as saying in ‘this year’s alternative MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh TV festival’:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/article/2024/aug/23/neglect-of-working-class-has-decimated-tv-industry-says-carol-vorderman
which seems well-evidenced, at least at the UK level.
I’m sorry but you do realise some people – thousands and thousands are employed in the arts?
I’ve never witnessed an article receiving such ill considered responses. Remarkable that people think people working in the arts do it as a sort of hobby. Incredible amounts of ignorance.
I agree.
Me too. There are no real arguments here, just people who do not like artists and do not value art. I am not sure there is much one can do about that, certainly no persuasion will help when discussing art with philistines.
It is a bit surprising though, such reactionary forces lurking on the site and suddenly bursting to life, sounding for all the world like Daily Mail readers, or worse. So much for the progressive but at least it reveals just how conservative people can be, even apparently progressive supporters of independence, when their prejudices are touched on.
It’s quite alarming. Do these people never watch the telly, read a book, see a film? They must think these things just come out of the ether.
@Niemand, setting aside for a moment your choice of an Israelite slur against an outgroup in their book celebrating their land-grab by genocides, this what Wikipedia says about usage:
“The denotations and connotations of the terms philistinism and philistine describe people who are hostile to art, culture, and the life of the mind, and, in their stead, favor economic materialism and conspicuous consumption as paramount human activities.”
Now, I would argue that this exactly how the neoliberal Scottish government presents its case:
“Our Economic Strategy identifies creative industries as a growth sector where Scotland can build on existing advantages to increase productivity and growth.”
combined with its promotion of the advertising sector. I cannot find a recent breakdown online (and there will be overlaps between the 16 distinct industries that the government considers the creative industries sector is made up), but this is interesting testimony from a few years back, from the Advertising Association:
“The advertising sector is likely to see one of the largest increases of all core creative and media sectors. From 2012 to 2022 employment in the advertising industry in Scotland is predicted to grow by 30%, becoming the largest creative media sector in Scotland. In comparison, the UK is expected to grow 21% and Northern Ireland 23%.”
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/58582/html/
Now, the GDP production/growth argument and the conspicuous (over) consumption driven by the advertising sector are exactly what Wikipedia says that ‘philistines’ are interested in.
So, far from despising Art, I take a deep interest in it. For example, I’ve been watching some videoed productions of Shakespeare in the Park and comparing them to the UK state-patronised counterparts. It’s very interesting. The Park version rely heavily (they tend to say) on voluntary donations (the shows are typically free-ticket), and the good will of local parks authorities. And this is exactly how I’d expect a lot of art to become popular: local government, NGO, local business and community providing support with venues, success based on popularity with audiences.
I still haven’t read the argument for state funding of Art being plausibly articulated in a non-materialistic or non-economic way here (as the Shakespeare in the Park examples suggest, people will donate to and pay for art they like). Saying ‘people like art’ is not an argument for state funding. And incidentally, the German example is a terrible one, since state funds have been removed from pro-Palestinian and pro-peace voices, showing that such funding can in fact amount to censorship of the unfunded.
First to Edward Cairney, apologies again as on re-reading my ‘explanation’ of my earlier contribution it seems even more incoherent that my first. I don’t think I’ll even try again, suffice to say that my position is this: if you rely on a grant it is a job. If you create art it’s art.
To Mike Small, yes thousands are employed in the arts but then again thousands of artists are not. Artists Mike, real artists, artists just as real as the grant funded ones. They get no dosh but they still produce.
To Neimand, those who do not have much sympathy with the cuts in grants for artists are not “just people who do not like artists and do not value art” they are people who have different priorities in the spending of money, for me it’s the cuts in mental health services £30 million, a lot of money in an already underfunded area. Not a lot of open letters appeared about that! Didn’t see a lot of articles on here about it either, but phuq it, I accept that it’s way down the list of priorities. Bizarrely, I also have to raise the issue of what’s the matter with being a Daily Mail reader? I’ve never read the thing in my life but you’re making a generality here, painting a whole readership with a brush that only you know what it means but we all ‘kind of know’ what you are getting at.
I admit that my posts might be a bit smoky, but they are honest. I try to have an honest debate with people, non judgemental (if I can help it). I learn a lot on this website and that includes from the posts btl, but sometimes I think the erudition of the contributors above and below the line forget the main point and that is Independence. Guffing about talking about what may or may not be possible after independence is like having a debate over what the national anthem will be.
I hope that I have not insulted anyone here, if I have I apologise itisjust my opinion such as it is.
Going back to Edward Cairney, if part of the confusion over my earlier contribution was the bit I tacked on about ‘independence’ perhaps because you may have thought it unrelated to the guff beforehand, then I’m sorry again, but the point has to be made clear that Independence is at the front of everything, Ultimately, every penny that Angus Robertson and the Scottish government spend or do not spend is not ours – it is Westminster’s. We are lackeys. The SNP are the lackeys of the Westminster government running a shit fiefdom for their master and their pocket.
There is nothing wrong with government funded arts’ subsidies as a matter of principle. I cannot add any more arguments than I have already given for thinking that. I think what I have said is decent justification. Yes, I do find it miserable, dull and sad that others seems to find it so objectionable. It is like going back to previous ages where artists were often seen as second class citizens who really should scrape around begging people to support them if the deign to with a few coppers (now translated as ensuring there are is suitable for the capitalist system to ‘sell’). Meanwhile the people enjoyed and expected their music at the tavern or wherever.
I would ask those speaking out against subsidy in one form or another to ask themselves that question of principle, because whilst there are complexities to how much, who, when and how money is allocated, if you are always citing one of those reasons then you do not really believe in the principle. It is like those who say they support the right to strike as a matter of principle in a democratic society, then object to every single strike as unjustified ‘in this case’.
@Niemand, but that’s exactly the objection: selective state-funding of individuals by arts gatekeepers is undemocratic! It privileges (gives a platform to) some voices, at the expense of many! If the state subsidises art, subsidise it for everybody (that’s why I say the focus should be schools). Why is it that there should be a division in society of people with recognised voices, and people without? It’s like Sneetches on the Beaches. I’m not against *local* government support of arts either (providing venues, workshops, training etc). I think that’s much healthier than having one big national theatre in the capital, say.
Why do you think some groups (including Bella, it seems) don’t take state funding? How could democracy work if they did? What was the point of Punk?
Anyway, I’m off to watch the MacTaggart and Alternative MacTaggart lectures now.
Local government support for the arts would involve just the same choices about who gets money as those done centrally.
There are always choices and vetting, it has to be faced if you think state funding at whatever level is justified. I see no logic in trying to get round the problem of who to give money to by giving everyone equal money to create art for the sake of some ideological dogma since many people would have no use the money.
@Niemand, if a local authority provides a swimming pool and charges subsidised rates, this is quite different from state grants to support elite swimmers with the aim of competing at prestigious events. You don’t have to apply for a grant to swim in your local pool. Encouraging everyone to be able to swim is a world away from the Olympics.
I strongly suggest watching the 2024 MacTaggart Lecture before commenting further. The dramatist James Graham credits his good start to watching working class television drama as a kid and going to a state comprehensive school which provided excellent arts and crafts teaching (which is *exactly* where I suggest arts funding be targeted). I haven’t found a specifically Scottish breakdown in the Edinburgh TV Festival information yet, but if it follows the English model, it will favour higher socio-economic groups (those people who are best at applying for grants, networking, and succeeding at interviews).
It’s been a bizarre twist to see Bella ranting about diagonalism and quoting Chomsky while staunchly supporting art elitism (and attacking critics just like Chomsky–Herman’s Flak filter). Why support the neoliberal policies of the Scottish government which seem clearly designed to make the advertising sector the biggest jewel in the Creative Industries crown? The advertising sector being the Second Filter of Manufacturing Consent.
You should listen to James Graham on social class in television and film, the amount of young people apparently at the mercy of boom and bust economics, unemployment and poor mental health, and tell me if this applies in Scotland too. I’m still to watch Carol Vorderman’s Alternative Taggart Lecture, but reportedly it picks up on social class themes and takes it further.
It’s a perfectly respectable philosophical position to hold that arts lie to us (that’s what both James Graham and Alasdair Gray have said), cast distracting shadows on our cave walls, though they can have positive value. Artists like Shakespeare tell us that poetry is likely to be feigning, and gives us a great example of an arts gatekeeper in Duke Theseus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream:
‘“The thrice-three Muses mourning for the death
Of learning, late deceased in beggary.”
That is some satire, keen and critical,
Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony.’
I get the strong impression that Duke Theseus doesn’t like satire at the best of times.
https://www.folger.edu/search/?q=satire&area=works&work=a-midsummer-nights-dream
“It’s been a bizarre twist to see Bella ranting about diagonalism and quoting Chomsky while staunchly supporting art elitism.”
Not ranting about diagonalism, writing about it. How is it contradictory to quote Chomsky and support the arts in Scotland?
I think you’ll find that quite a lot of the projects that have been defunded are directly or indirectly community projects. Artists, musicians, dancers etc aren’t ars’s, they are mostly nice people who have a talent, a passion and get inspiration because it’s their life. They’re not bean counters or politicians, they’re artists and they live and die on the vagaries of their art and the hope that it has somewhere to go.
I agree
@Editor, in (gadfly and midwife) Socratic mode I should ask you what you think the biggest of the ’16 distinct industries’ the Scottish government’s Economic Strategy defines?
https://www.gov.scot/policies/creative-industries/
I should also ask if you agree these are indeed ‘distinct industries’ art-wise.
I’m glad that supporters of arts-elitism feel able to put their case here. Whether, how and to what extent we want the state to fund elite and/or common arts and crafts is a political question, and will be informed by such values and beliefs, as well as how empirically the state has gone about or achieved its professed goals. I presumably don’t have to restate my opposition to right-wing ‘Great Man (Occasionally Woman) Views of History’, the use of ‘genius’ in colonial, Cold War, misogynistic and racist arenas to make my political stance on this clear.
But I would expect you to publish some kind of response to the theme of the 2024 Edinburgh TV Festival (and perhaps offer some views on what they left out, and maybe other bodies like Ofcom pick up). And some comments will be best pursued on articles there. I would hope somebody would publish some analysis of the Scottish advertising sector. I hardly think this is a benign growth.
I do not need to watch a lecture to think some state funding of art projects is a good thing, especially in a time when we have been persuaded to think that only things that make money have any real value. Do I think in an ideal world it should not be necessary to enable it in that way? Quite possibly but that world is a fantasy.
What is noticeable reading quite a few comments on these recent articles is that when it comes to the actual funding mechanisms, who they go to and how the money contributes to society generally, is the serious level of ignorance about all three.
There is nothing wrong whatsoever about the concept of an elite who do something extremely well and that within reason they should be supported doing it, be it sport or art. People love experiencing elite performers as it is life affirming and is not at all mutually exclusive of the idea everyone can be a performer too if they wish to try and that that can also be great in its own way.
For a site which promotes degrowth theories, I’m surprised that the ‘contribution to GDP’ argument is used here for arts. I’m sure the CIA funded tons of Art in the UK too, yippee.
And what is this contribution exactly? Aren’t many Scottish creatives not actually edgy novelists or seditious painters but marketing copywriters and graphic artists for the advertising industry? Or even propagandists for the main political parties and their backers? Our would-be druggers-and-enslavers, in other words.
If the taxpayer pays for these grants, why doesn’t the taxpayer own the copyright, or get free tickets or subscriptions? A plumber doesn’t charge us rent for sitting on our own fixed toilet. I know the scientific publishing system is a racket, but is it the only one?
Surely we have the makings of a Great Experiment here? Turn off the tap of state funding for a couple of generations and see what flowers bloom! What carbon is unreleased! What ideas unpleasing to the corporate-state-military-psyop overlords bubble upwards!
Or maybe artists are just delinquents and these grants are simply intended to keep them off our streets, from spray-painting our walls, from shouting rude slogans that might wake us in the night? State save us from from such independent sorts!
Are you alright?
@Editor, since you mentioned Berlin, here’s one account of what’s happening in Germany:
“The most troubling among them is almost certainly a draft resolution being debated in the Bundestag. If passed, it would enact a wide range of measures that critics fear would have a broadly chilling effect on speech in Germany, including a provision that would require anyone seeking federal funding to submit to a background check conducted by Germany’s domestic intelligence service. The bill enjoys broad support across the political spectrum.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/16/germany-free-speech-israel-gaza-war
I’ll leave you find out about MoMA and the CIA yourself. The CIA’s funding of the ‘anticommunist left’ through arts fronts is a matter of record, but I introduce it more as a tried-and-tested template. It’s unclear if you got other references. Maybe you think Banksy would have amounted to something with a government grant.
You also seem unaware of what artists have said about patronage. I read an anarchist piece on how Mozart apparently opposed the system and tried to go freelance, and there’s an interesting contrast in Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens between the artists and the philosopher (guess who’s least popular at dinner parties?). Anyway, humans have evolved to be poor autocrats, and even the Roman republican consuls worked in pairs with a pool of ex-consuls to draw on for advice. Research assistants and fact-checkers are valuable staff roles too (not sure if a gov.scot grant is available for these).
Why does Scotland not have a thriving and original film industry?
Carol Vorderman’s Alternate McTaggart Lecture from the Edinburgh TV Festival 2024 (theme: social class) is now free to watch, and well worth watching, with a trenchant criticism of Westminster/London-dominated television broadcasting (largely about England, not UK), snobbery, corruption, nepotism, sexism, fascism, riots, gatekeepers, Tufton Street, ludicrously unfit politicians inhabiting television studios, personal insights and a wealth of statistics showing a downward trend of representing regions and working-class people that Vorderman predicts will likely cause a crisis by 2029:
https://watch.thetvfestival.com/videos/the-alternative-mactaggart-carol-vorderman-presenter-and-commentator
Not sure why Bella hasn’t picked up on this festival?