Scotsman Bulletin Thursday 28 March

The Scotsman

2 years ago

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00:00 [MUSIC]

00:07 >> Hello, welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Bulletin for Thursday.

00:10 I'm Alan Young, I'm Deputy Editor of the Scotsman.

00:12 I'm joined today by our Arch Correspondent, Brian Ferguson,

00:14 to take a look at some of the headlines.

00:16 Hi, Brian.

00:16 >> Good morning.

00:17 >> Let's have a look at the front page first off.

00:21 We lead today on the big story in Holyrood,

00:25 which is the third attempt to introduce an assisted dying law.

00:31 The bill has been lodged by Lib Dem MSP, Lee MacArthur, today.

00:38 And on the back of that, or ahead of that, rather,

00:41 there's a new poll out today that finds 78% of the public in Scotland

00:48 now support the move that is obviously highly controversial.

00:52 And we'll be writing a lot more about that in the coming weeks and months.

00:56 We put you on the front page there.

00:58 The soft launch, I guess, of this year's Edinburgh military tattoo.

01:04 We have the King's Easter message there as well.

01:08 And in the wing column, you may be able to see Joseph Anderson,

01:13 our health reporter, has been looking into this cyber hack on

01:18 NHS Dumfries and Galloway, the hackers yesterday issuing a demand and

01:23 warning that they may release patient data, very worrying.

01:29 Indeed, what I want to talk to you about, though, Brian,

01:32 is a story we've got inside today and writing high on our website at the moment.

01:37 And that is the iWrite Festival in Glasgow,

01:41 a very well known festival which has lost its funding.

01:46 Bring us up to date firstly with the story.

01:49 Yeah, so Glasgow has some of the basically gold standard festivals

01:55 in the first half of the year.

01:58 We've just had the film festival Celtic Connects at the start of the year

02:03 and the international comedy festival was ongoing.

02:05 But the next big one, it was meant to be iWrite.

02:08 It's a really highly regarded celebration of books and literature.

02:12 It's been running for nearly 20 years.

02:14 Next year will be, if it happens again, the 20th anniversary.

02:19 But like a lot of events and festivals,

02:23 they are basically reliant on securing annual funding from Creative Scotland,

02:32 like so many others around the country.

02:35 It's only certain events have secure three year funding,

02:39 but a lot of people just have to go in every year.

02:43 This particular one is run by the city.

02:45 It's not really independently run.

02:48 But like a lot of Celtic Connects,

02:53 they're not a good example of one that is effectively run by the city of Glasgow.

02:57 But this particular one does seem to have been reliant on securing Creative Scotland funding,

03:04 which does appear to be a mistake, basically,

03:08 because it has been well rehearsed.

03:11 There's huge pressures on Creative Scotland to fund things.

03:15 Through what's called an open fund, there are two main categories.

03:21 Really, individuals can apply for funding,

03:23 but organisations can also apply for funding.

03:26 And they've got, I think, rough budgets, about 10 million annually.

03:32 And obviously, a bigger proportion of their budget is allocated for long term funding.

03:38 So later in the year, I mean, there are

03:41 something like almost 100 million pounds worth of applications

03:44 that they have got and are assessing at the moment for long term funding.

03:48 But there are some of these annual events that get annual funding at the moment

03:54 have gone into the mix for next year and beyond.

03:59 But the ones who don't have it at the moment, like I write,

04:02 basically are heavily reliant on securing annual funding.

04:06 The funny thing about this is,

04:08 I just wrote the other day about a festival which had been turned down

04:13 for funding three times in the space of a year,

04:15 the Llama Muir Music Festival in East Lothian.

04:18 They actually got a two year deal agreed with Creative Scotland,

04:23 which has allowed them to press ahead.

04:26 But basically, they only got that after launching a huge campaign to try and

04:30 secure, effectively, a rethink on a U-turn from Creative Scotland.

04:34 So, you know, they had to get some really big names behind them.

04:37 There was a lot of lobbying of politicians of every party.

04:41 And that has been successful.

04:42 But, yeah, I didn't really know, little did I know,

04:46 there was going to be bad news coming down the line for I Write.

04:49 And basically...

04:51 Do we think a similar campaign may be coming for the I Write Festival?

04:57 We know it attracted the interest this morning of the former First Minister.

05:03 Yeah, I mean, I had to laugh, you know,

05:05 because Creative Scotland has been saying for more than 18 months now

05:09 that there are huge problems with the funding landscape in Scotland.

05:14 They've been banging the drum as much as they can,

05:17 given that they're a government agency,

05:19 to try and persuade the government to put more money into the system,

05:22 because a lot of the problems are that anyone running a festival event or

05:25 organisation has had or is currently grappling with hugely escalating costs.

05:32 They're having trouble finding staff and paying them at the levels that people

05:35 are looking for, that there's increasing demands on them to meet,

05:41 you know, to meet new...

05:43 Grapple with climate change, for example.

05:46 And again, another thing that Creative Scotland is really assessing people on

05:50 is their commitments on equalities and diversity is a huge priority

05:54 for the government and Creative Scotland.

05:57 So, I mean, you know, I just, I fear that there's going to be a lot more of these

06:02 coming, but we cannot get into a situation where, you know,

06:05 there are multiple campaigns being launched every time there's a,

06:10 you know, what appears to be a baffling decision made.

06:12 You know, it's a complete nonsense of a way to run arts funding in Scotland.

06:18 And, you know, I mean, that's really a lot of the problems go back to the fact

06:22 that, you know, Creative Scotland were warning about a perfect storm for Scottish

06:27 culture in the autumn of 2022.

06:30 The government's response at the time when Nicola Sturgeon was first minister,

06:34 you know, two months later was to impose a cut on Creative Scotland.

06:38 They reversed that decision the following spring.

06:40 There was a huge campaign from artists and writers and companies.

06:45 But then lo and behold, last autumn, they reinstated that cut.

06:49 That's had a huge knock on impact on not only Creative Scotland's ability to fund

06:54 organisations, but also, you know, really has eroded confidence within the arts

06:59 industry and basically very few organisations or festivals or events are

07:05 able to properly plan ahead because literally nobody has any guaranteed

07:09 funding from the spring of next year.

07:13 You're only a handful of organisations that I know have actually got that.

07:17 And like I say, a lot of people are in for three year funding, which they're

07:21 supposed to find out about in October.

07:22 The last I heard from the Scottish government, they were saying that they

07:26 might not actually be able to tell Creative Scotland what their own budget is

07:29 until December. How that's going to work out?

07:32 I have no idea.

07:33 But, you know, organisations could potentially be told, you know, that they're

07:39 losing their long term funding with a few months notice.

07:42 And what's happened with iWriters, you know, Glasgow Life, who run this event,

07:47 have been told fairly recently, look, we just can't fund you for this year.

07:51 So they've had to pull the plug because they've just not got a budget within the

07:56 city, which I mean, I do think has a flaw.

07:58 I can't understand how Glasgow as a city can't find any funding for this event.

08:04 Just seems to me to be crackers.

08:06 But also it's equally mad that Creative Scotland has not been able to

08:11 prioritise an event that, you know, most of Scotland's leading authors have

08:15 appeared at. It's hugely popular within the city.

08:19 You know, it's of the same standard as all the other major festivals that it does

08:26 support in Glasgow. So I just don't I don't understand what's going wrong here.

08:30 Thanks. Thanks for talking us through that.

08:32 Brian, we have not heard the end of this.

08:34 I'm sure that is the case.

08:37 Please keep an eye on scottsman.com.

08:38 We'll have all the very latest news and analysis.

08:42 If you can, do subscribe and you will not miss a thing.

08:44 And if you're out and about today, please do pick up a copy of the paper from me and from Brian.

08:50 It's bye for now.

08:51 (Music)

Scotsman Bulletin Thursday 28 March

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