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The case for traditional arts funding | | fishman
Posts: 180
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Posted:
16 Jun 2008 at 23:24 | You should be aware that tomorrow the Scots music group will make a case to the SAC for re-instating its funding. On 18th june the cross party group for Culture and media meets to consider funding for trad arts at 5.30.
I enclose below a paper I sent to Jim Tough and Richard Holloway the people making desicions about the future of arts funding in Scotland in lieu of anyone else doing so. The SNP have clearly stated they will take a hands off approach(Leadership?).
Now is the time to send off an email or two those on the group, and to Tough and Holloway to tell them what you think.
"'Patrick.Harvie.msp@scottish.parliament.uk'" , "'Robin.Harper.msp@scottish.parliament.uk'" , "'Margo.MacDonald.msp@scottish.parliament.uk'" , "'Cathy.Peattie.msp@scottish.parliament.uk'" , "'Frank.Mcaveety.msp@scottish.parliament.uk'" , "'Johann.Lamont.msp@scottish.parliament.uk'" , "'Ken.Macintosh.msp@scottish.parliament.uk'" , "'Patricia.Ferguson.msp@scottish.parliament.uk'" , "'Rhona.Brankin.msp@scottish.parliament.uk'" , "'Alex.Neil.msp@scottish.parliament.uk'" , "'Brian.Adam.msp@scottish.parliament.uk'" , "'Brian.Adam.msp@scottish.parliament.uk'" , "'Ian.McKee.msp@scottish.parliament.uk'" , "'Jamie.Mcgrigor.msp@scottish.parliament.uk'" , "Stan. Reeves (stan.reeves1@btinternet.com)"
WHY WE SHOULD SUPPORT SCOTTISH TRADITIONAL MUSIC
As a community educator and community development worker of more than 30 years standing, and the founder of the Adult learning project’s Scots Music group, I am appalled at the Arts Councils decision to with draw £60,000 of funding from the project.
This represents a denial and retreat from commitments made time and again in every policy document on the Arts since the establishment of a Scottish parliament (and in the popular build up to that event) to support Scotland’s traditional Arts. Grandiose statements that traditional music is central to Scotland’s identity, and should therefore be supported in the arts, ring with a hollow and false noise.
The total traditional music budget has never been more than 4% of the music budget and 1.5% of the total arts budget and as such represents a tiny slice of the art cake. To reduce it even further is a certain betrayal of all the hard work by an army of talented artists, staff and volunteers who have done so much to recreate the immensely vibrant traditional music scene, which exists not only in Edinburgh but also right across Scotland.
Of course in the distribution of limited public funds for the arts choices have to be made, but in the decision to change policy to favor new forms, performance rather than practice and the professional over the voluntary sector is a retreat to the metropolitan and elitist funding that prevailed in the arts throughout the 50’s and 60’s
Scotland is linguistically and musically unique, and distinct, in the UK and the world, and it is through this distinctiveness that we make our most important contribution to world culture. Much of what is funded by the Scottish Arts Council could exist, in a slightly altered form, anywhere in the world. I am not arguing for only Scottish forms to be funded merely that there is a more equitable balance between local, global and western bourgeoisie culture, and that there be people making decisions on arts funding that know the difference.
I don’t argue in favor of traditional arts ju | fishman
Posts: 180
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Posted:
17 Jun 2008 at 00:02 | I don’t argue in favor of traditional arts just because they are distinct, and an integral part of our identity and heritage, although they are all that, but strongly on aesthetic grounds. I, like many who have been listening since the 50’s to live and recorded music in an urban and industrial Scotland have been on a long and varied journey. Big bands, Sinatra. trad and modern jazz, Davis, Coltrane, Bach, Satie, the folk revival, Elvis, Pink Floyd, the Clash, and many musics of many cultures, we have heard and enjoyed it all. On rediscovering our connection with the music of this place we find that “ Neil Gow’s lamentation for the death of his second wife” is an exquisite, achingly beautiful, measured, complex and moving piece worthy of all these companions, and that the vast Gaelic and Scots repertoire contains thousands of these gems capable of expressing, the full range of human experience and emotion
Of course this wonder book is only available to those who choose to open it. Those, who like true provincials are dazzled by metropolitan tinsel, disregard traditional music by mistaking clarity and sincerity for naivety.
I would recommend a visit to Milan Kundera on this subject.
It is important that arts funding enable people to connect with the enormously rich cannon of work held in the great collections of Scottish music.
We should connect not just as consumers of the spectacle, the activity for which current funding is being prioritized, but we should also support organizations which enable many ordinary people to engage with, create and re- create this cannon for themselves, their families, and in their communities.
To Quote Richard Holloway before approving these cuts.
“No longer are we to limit our thinking about creativity to the small elite we call
Artists. While they, as a class, may possess creativity to a heightened degree, it is a
Basic human attribute:
The great thing that is happening is that we are stretching our idea of creativity to
Include the whole oikumene, or human family. We need to unleash it in every aspect
of our national lives. “
This current round of funding cuts does nothing to include more people in the human family in the way that the Scots Music Group and the Adult Learning project have reached out into the lives of thousands of people over nearly 20 years and unexpectedly given them the opportunity to create beauty, mystery and joy for themselves and those they love.
While many of these thousands across Scotland who have begun to interact with this cannon seek only to bring living, moving art to the living room, and the social gathering, the sheer number of new people who have been introduced to the traditional arts over the last 20 years has meant that it has become a hot bed of experiment and innovation. Graduates of the community based traditional music organizations have gone on to win music award after award and have a disproportionate effect on the British and world folk scene. Classical, jazz and rock musicians have been drawn into this maelstrom of joyful discovery in a way unprecedented and more far reaching way than anywhere in Europe, and European musicians are moving to Edinburgh in particular to be part of this creative force. For the Scottish Arts council to turn its back on organizations, which form the seedbed of this outpouring, can only be seen as blinkered to events under their noses. The withdrawal of funding also obliterates the multiplier effect where young professional artists, beginning to make their way, and having a fierce loyalty to the organizations and communities, which supported them, work as teachers and organizers. Without these modest fees in many cases they would be unable to support themselves and would have to give up promising careers and be lost as performers.
Scotland’s Traditional arts have never been more popular with the general public, or have before harbored such high levels of participation, which is in direct c | fishman
Posts: 180
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Posted:
17 Jun 2008 at 00:04 | Scotland’s Traditional arts have never been more popular with the general public, or have before harbored such high levels of participation, which is in direct contract to the continuing struggle the National companies have in filing seats.
This from one of the Arts Council documents:
Four National Companies - Scottish Opera, Royal Scottish National
Orchestra, Scottish Ballet and Scottish Chamber Orchestra - received a 31%
increase in funding in real terms over the eleven years to 2004/05. Audience
and participation figures declined by 37% and 33% respectively over the
same period.’
Many people in Scotland legitimately ask why the lion’s share of arts funding should go to minority interests with ever declining support and little distinctively Scottish contributions to make to local or world culture.
For every Pound spent supporting the traditional arts, such is the enthusiasm and commitment of those who benefit, that the community is given back much more in voluntary time and effort.
If the Taxpayer is to fund the Arts, it is simply not good enough to say that someone other that SAC should pay to support voluntary traditional music organizations while £60million is spent elsewhere on the arts in Scotland. Tradional Arts grow out of the lived experience, environment and values of a people and as such have the ability to characterize, reflect and give identity and a sensed of belonging back to them.
The Traditional Arts of Scotland therefore deserve an equitable part of the community’s patronage.
“ The weird, beautiful wild and mournful reel tunes that entranced me as a child, a youth, and a man, in the street or barn at the bonfire or the hill top; the music, the never-to-be-forgotten strains that often made my blood alternatively flame or freeze -that made me when a child, sitting beneath the fiddlers chair, weep with delight or sadness”
This should surely be cherished.
I urge The Scottish Arts Council to re instate funding to The Scots Music group and consider how better it can cherish the National and Traditional Music Song and Dance of Scotland.
THE CASE FOR FUNDING TRADITIONAL MUSIC
1. Scotland has one of the richest living traditions in Europe
2. Traditional arts, amongst all the arts that are funded, are what make our unique and distinctive contribution to world culture.
3. For every £1 spent the we gain at least £10 of voluntary effort for those who nurture the organisations which teach and promote
4. £70million is spent on the arts in Scotland from the Government. After years of lobbying and voluntary effort there has never been more that 1 million on all the traditional art combined. It is worth more than a 70th of the funding.
5. The “National Companies” (opera, ballet, orchestras, and theatre) are guaranteed secure funding. Traditional arts much more “of the nation” having been developed over a millennium, and should have at least the same level of respect and security
6. The acoustic form and instrumentation of Traditional arts mean that it can be performed anywhere from a bar to a concert hall and can be taken into the heart of the community.
7. The traditional arts by their nature are inclusive and participative. Much of the music is designed for social dancing, and a common repertoire of classic tunes enable instant connection between musicians including the Scots Diaspora.
8. The traditional arts are more highly valued by the people of Scotland than the arts of the national companies according to much research.
9. Visitors value the traditional arts as an expression of the essence of our community and an antidote to the commercialising and commodification of art.
10. Scottish Traditional arts contain an incredibly wide range of aesthetically profound, and complex expressions of our shared humanity, which connects us to peoples across the globe
Stan Reeves
12th May 2008
| bigmooth
Posts: 1391
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17 Jun 2008 at 08:29 | Well said Fishman.
As I said in a previous debate on this issue I have serious objections to the SNP adopting a hands off approach. We should be able to trust aScottish Government to support Scottish culture and make the SAC support it too.
Seems it's more worthy to support Italian opera than Scotish trad. And more likely to lead to a career than following trad.
Proving what many of us have long felt to be the hegemony in schools and arts institutions.
| Onny
Posts: 12843
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17 Jun 2008 at 10:01 | Linda Fabiani at The Art of Conversation yesterday <http://www.footstompin.com/public/forum?threadid=211719> made it very clear that the hands off approach Stan mentions is the way it's going to be; to the extent of refusing to countenance ring fencing funding.
Let all of you who voted for this culturally bankrupt administration hang your heads in shame. | Onny
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17 Jun 2008 at 10:02 | | .............................................. | orion
Posts: 58
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17 Jun 2008 at 16:21 | | And there was you layin odds she wouldnae turn up. | Tam O' Shanter
Posts: 201
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17 Jun 2008 at 17:30 | "Let all of you who voted for this culturally bankrupt administration hang your heads in shame."
Ach yer just being all dramatic now! | Mairi
Posts: 1008
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17 Jun 2008 at 17:45 | Aye ... the truth hurts, does it not. The pity is that the drama is a tradegy for the arts in Scotland.
Terrific expert case put forward by Stan - and thanks for posting here - we should all be able to use these arguments now.
| Tam O' Shanter
Posts: 201
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17 Jun 2008 at 18:34 | "Aye ... the truth hurts, does it not. The pity is that the drama is a tradegy for the arts in Scotland."
Well I'm sure we'll all get through this tragedy if we all pull together.
| Onny
Posts: 12843
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17 Jun 2008 at 18:49 | Don't kid yersel' Tam. The best bits about Fabiani's 'performance' yesterday were 1) the fact she had to curtain it because of a sore throat and 2) her reminiscences about teenage misbehaviour in the Bluebell Woods.
The only honest bit was when she had to acknowledge she didn't know where she was supposed to be on a certain date in August. | Arthur
Posts: 274
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17 Jun 2008 at 20:31 | I support Stan's paper and will make representations as far as I can.
On the point about the 'arm's length' principle though, I think we all need to recall Sam Galbraith's breathtaking arrogance at bunging Scottish Opera £2m a few days before he left office! A lot of us were moaning then about the breach of the arm's length principle and if Linda Fabiani's sticking to her guns on that, good on her, I say. We can't have it both ways!
| FB
Posts: 133
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17 Jun 2008 at 21:05 | I believe that Arthur is right. Stan's argument is first rate but the arms length principle is common throughout many forms of funding in Scotland and throughout the UK and has much to recommend it.
In the field I know best, the funding of research in the social sciences, the relatively rare occasions when the principle has been breached have allowed ministers to pursue vendettas. For instance Keith Joseph wished to abolish the Social Sciences Research Council (as it was then called) and it was only saved by an enquiry headed by Lord Rothschild, an extremely distinguished scientist chosen by Keith Joseph in the mistaken belief that he would do his bidding. I suspect that examples could be found right across scientific research as well as in the arts.
As Arthur points out, it is unwise to press government to intervene just because one believes that on a particular issue they will bring about what one sees as desirable. Not only do governments sometimes do otherwise but they may change and policies change with them. | bigmooth
Posts: 1391
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17 Jun 2008 at 21:07 | No actually Arthur we don't have to recall Sam Galbraith.
Fact is he should not have done what he did but that does not commend Linda Fabiani's actions for sticking to her guns and doing the wrong thing.
She should be ashamed. To think I actually believed her at last year's Trad Awards when she said all that stuff about supporting Scottish Tradition.
And as for Holloway and the SAC. I'm lost for words.(nearly!)
| Mairi
Posts: 1008
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17 Jun 2008 at 21:33 | Just because one parent adopts an - ill-advised - liberal use of the punishment principle, doesn't make it right to never reprimand the child.
So if the approach adopted by Sam Galbraith is not to the liking of some, it does not mean that Fabiani is necessarily right either.
FB is correct to say that the arms' length principle has its merits. But only when it is deployed in a well defined environment – he cites research funding – and I will take his word on that. I think that Auldtimer has already highlighted that in Arts in Scotland there is a dearth of clear policy at the moment, and no coherent framework for arts development / funding (as in the introduction of Creative Scotland, as I recall).
So ‘arms length’ in this situation is simply evasion, in my view. Maybe out of cowardice, lobbying from other arts organisations, lack of ideas, being thrawn, or in thrall to the notion that arts are principally valuable as a form of economic activity – any (or all) is possible.
Anyway, the results are powerful evidence of the failure of the current approach. | Arthur
Posts: 274
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17 Jun 2008 at 21:45 | Let me be clear Bigmooth and Mairi.
I used the example of Sam Galbraith as the most breathtaking one I can remember, and although I mentioned Linda Fabiani in relation to this instance, I don't believe that ANY minister should interfere in the decision-making of a body set up to serve a specific function. If they want to do that, they should do away with the body in question and simply make the decisions themselves.
It doesn't matter whether it's the Scottish Arts Council, Highlands & Islands Enterprise, SNH, Historic Scotland or whatever. If a body is set up as some kind of 'expert' organisation to fulfil whatever function, it's presumably because Ministers don't want - or don't feel qualified - to make decision in relation to that body's functions. That's why we have loads of NDPBs in Scotland. | Mairi
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17 Jun 2008 at 22:54 | Their Non-departmental status is not a licence to do whatever they want. While independent to a degree, they are still tasked to carry out a particular function - by their political masters. They need a clear mandates as to strategy and priorities - from politicians ultimately. And as public bodies using public funding, they need to be publicly accountable. The only real recourse that the public has to them is via elected politicians.
Personally – I think that we have too many NDPBs, and more should functions and services should come under more direct democratic control. There needs to be a degree of moderation for certain aspects, as FB points out – to minimise inappropriate interference. But in general, more democratic control would – in many circumstances – be a good thing. Especially where big amounts of funding are involved, and important decisions are being made on topics where we obviously feel so exercised. | fishman
Posts: 180
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18 Jun 2008 at 00:30 | The Government may adopt an arms length approach to some arts bodies, but they are in bed with no jammies when it comes to the "National Companies' who are guaranteed £22 m without having to compete or even fill in funding applications.
These companies(except the new national theatre) are losing 35% of their audiences per decade(SAC figures)
In 2005 Scottish opera had approx 70,000 attendances for a subsidy of just over £7m. That £100 handout for every seat filled. In the same period Scots Music Group had 15000 attendances for £60,000 . That £4 per attendance.
This is how much tradition is valued by the Arts Funders
So if the govenrment refuses to decide who gets the funding thats left after they have given 1/3 away to the National Companies, who will??
Creative Scotland Transition project task force will decide the model for funding. They are Tough and Holloway, Ray McFarlane - a banker BOS, Barbara McKissack - BBC producer of "Monarch of the Glen"
John Mulgrew - Learning and Teaching Scotland, and Ken Hay of Scottish screen. They are advised by two metropolitain Consultants and one from the opera and ballet worlds.
Thats it folks. Thats who shapes Scotlands cultural funding future.
Creative Scotland want to fund "Development" I propose a separate body which will "Maintain" and pass on our traditions without organisations always having to prove they are the lastest thing. | FB
Posts: 133
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18 Jun 2008 at 14:31 | Arthur is in my opinion quite right - one can't have it both ways. The government did indeed decide to move to direct funding for the national companies. It would in theory at least be entirely possible for them to move to direct funding for any arts sector including traditional arts and music. If that is what people want then that is what they should lobby for. My guess is that it would be no better and might be even worse than what we have at present.
Alternatively, by all means press for clearer government statements of the aims, objectives and priorities they expect a particular arms-length body to observe. Whether we would find such sharper frameworks to our liking is another matter. My experience is that it generally leads to the key criterion becoming the extent to which a particular activity contributes to economic performance, GDP or whatever. | bigmooth
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18 Jun 2008 at 19:01 | So FB let me get this right.
The big national companies get £22m( according to Fishman's figures) whether or not they fulfill audience needs , desires or expectation. They also seem to get other grants too.
Trad music, not directly funded, doesn't get much in the way of other grants in comparison and is in line to lose what they do get.
How could it be worse if trad got direct funding?
It might go from zero to a bit.
As to Holloway and co and SAC funding I agree with Mairi
Setting a direction and demanding accountability and the same degree of scrutiny that other public organisations have would be a wee start.
It's my bliddy tax money and I want the same degree of scrutiny over the millions SAC disburse that I have exerted on me with the budget I hold in the public sector. And it's a few thousand!
And I do not expect the govt to slip the leash on these guys in a way that would never be allowed in other sectors, whether or not they are "experts".
And, I'm sorry, but all this stuff about innovation and professionalism smacks of snobbery to me. And that's why high arts will get the cash.
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