Roanne Dods

Roanne. Your blog raises a range of issues and seems to add fuel to the fear generated by recent press and twitter comment. We have a clear plan, more money and a commitment to invest in Scotland’s Creative Future. I have spoken regularly about these organisations being central to the cultural infrastructure in Scotland. Our budget has to adapt to take Scotland forward and deliver for the geography, population and cultural ambition of the nation internationally. We are listening to people who talk to us directly and will have meetings with all 49 organisations in the next few weeks to discuss how they, in many cases build a stronger more certain future based on quality ideas and plans. Many will deliver strategic roles for Scotland, others will do program mes and projects on their own terms. The combined existing grants to those bodies, not transferred to Foundation or annual funding, totals £4.9 Million. To put this is perspective, last year we spent around £65 Million and made 1240 separate investments. We have already put £1 Million into transition for the FXOs for projects they have on the horizon and to assist with new opportunities. We have dramatically increased our open Lottery budgets to plan for their future ambitions. We are not replacing treasury money with lottery as these bodies never had revenue. They are currently funded for two year programmes of work. They are not the only bodies either. There are organisations like your own, Dovecot, who we wish to invest in.
Our roadshows in the next few weeks will roll out the full picture of the opportunities ahead. Yes in the longer term we would welcome more core investment in cultural infrastructure. There needs to be more energy put into celebrating cultural success in the sector as this is the way we will ultimately grow our core investment.

To answer your final point – any declarations of interest are recorded in our board meetings.

I am grateful that Roanne has had the courage to publish this considered, heartfelt piece, as her words have helped me to pin down my own response.

I have watched the handling of the FXO changes with increasing dismay. The initial press release was clumsily worded, brusque and seeming almost calculated to cause a fuss – I am still astonished that it came from the same organisation whose business plan ‘Investing in Scotland’s Creative Future’ I frequently cite as a model of clear, thoughtful writing.

Creative Scotland’s offices are full of people are used to a regular payment into their bank accounts at the end of each month. They are people with pension plans and probably looking forward to a pension that will be big enough to retire on. People who can take as a statutory entitlement 5.6 weeks paid holiday each year. People who can buy a new car. People who can turn the heating on in winter without worrying about the consequences. People who wear vintage clothes, not clothes from charity shops. People who don’t make a beeline for the marked down section of the supermarket and never have to calculate the value of every item they put in their shopping trolley to make sure they have enough money to pay at the cash desk.

The glory for artists who were flexibly funded was the financial security, even if only for two years; two years of knowing that rent, council tax, fuel and food bills would be paid; perhaps even being able to contemplate a proper holiday with the family, if they had been daring enough to have one (a piece of work I’d like to see done is a survey to find out whether artists are less likely to be married with children, and whether this is for economic reasons).

That financial security, such as it was, has been taken away from the flexibly funded companies as of next April. It ought to have been entirely foreseeable that they would be upset. The announcement was not accompanied by a full explanation of the timetable and mechanisms for the investment which will replace it, so it’s straight back to living in limbo. Andrew, you weren’t here then but many of your staff were and should have told you of the corrosive effects of the uncertainty in the years leading up to the birth of Creative Scotland.

The anxiety did not abate immediately as there was a funding hiatus for theatre, dance and touring in the first year, but nobody had expected perfection from the off. I was one of those who had great faith in you and the organisation, particularly once the business plan was published. There was a sense of a strong hand on the tiller. It makes this situation all the more disquieting.

If Scotland is to be ‘recognised as one of the world’s most creative nations’ (from your introductory letter to ‘Investing in Scotland’s Creative Future’, Andrew) those who create the work need to do so from a secure basis. Uncertainty is corrosive, debilitating and destructive, impairs emotional and physical health, and mitigates against the making of good work.

I hope, Andrew, that both you and Creative Scotland will take some lessons from this affair and will strive for more, not less, security for the artists whose existence – it must be remembered – is the fundamental reason for the organisation’s own existence.

Needless to say, the above words are entirely personal. They should not be taken as representative of the views of any organisation with which I am now, or ever have been, connected.