The well paid bureaucrats currently in charge of Creative
Scotland should be worried. Having made yet another pig’s ear of the latest round
of Regularly Funded Organisations (RFOs) by inexplicably cutting valuable
resources for some of Scotland’s world renowned artists, theatre-makers and
musicians, they have put themselves in the firing line of a justifiable barrage
of anger and frustration.
Cutting two major children’s theatre companies –
Catherine Wheels and Visible Fictions – in the first month of Scotland’s
dedicated Year of Young People – was at best insensitive, at worst gross
stupidity. Slashing regular funding for disabled theatre companies Birds of
Paradise, who are about to celebrate their twenty-fifth anniversary, and
learning disabled pioneers Lung Ha’s was just as baffling.
It was odd too to see a cut too for Transmission, the
artist-led committee-run Glasgow art-space which since the 1980s has pioneered
a wave of grassroots visual arts activity. This helped foster and inspire a
slew of other young artists seizing the means of production and setting up
co-operatively run ventures. Others losing out include Glasgow-based purveyors
of street-art spectacle, Mischief-la-bas, the Hebrides Ensemble and the Dunedin
Consort. Other companies have been placed on stand-still funding or else
maintained RFO status at a reduced level, as is the case with the women-centred
Stellar Quines theatre company.
One of the other noticeable aspects of the RFO
decisions is the amount of ‘umbrella’ bodies who were successful in their
funding bids, while many companies who produce artistic work were rejected.
While many of these such as the Federation of Scottish Theatre do significant
work, the seeming imbalance between funding networking bodies while artists were
turned down suggests that bureaucrats would rather fund other bureaucrats than
artists themselves.
Two weeks ago it all looked so different. Having spent
months arguing her case at Holyrood, Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop announced
an extra £6.6 million for Creative Scotland. Arts organisations and individuals
had been wrestling for months with the draining job of having to fill in
complex and at times according to some of those having to navigate them, incomprehensible funding application forms.
RFO announcements were supposed to be announced last autumn, but were stalled
until the Scottish Government could announced their own budget.
This left many organisations unable to plan ahead, and
there were private fears from some that they might not be able to continue. The
announcement of extra funding, however belated, suggested everything was going
to be alright. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, Creative Scotland has
seriously wrong-footed such a rare display of unbridled optimism.
Such a wave of public spleen-letting by assorted
artistic communities hasn’t been seen since CS last messed up in 2012. Back
then, an artist’s revolt triggered the resignation of the arts funding quango’s
two most senior staff, who had overseen a culture of poor communication,
bureaucratic gobbledegook, top-down thinking and the apparent belief that
Creative Scotland was somehow a producer-led organisation rather than a funding
body set up to enable and administrate the brilliant ideas of Scottish artists.
There have always been winners and losers in arts funding, usually to do with a
lack of money caused by the miniscule amount of capital – currently less than
1% in Scotland – channelled into arts funding.
With a full-scale revolt averted with the appointment
of Janet Archer as a new CEO who appeared to be more in tune with a modernising
artist-led approach, everyone went quiet, and revolution was averted. The fact
that Archer was steeped in exactly the same managerialist philosophy as her
predecessor Andrew Dixon, to the extent that he had even referenced her during
a speech in the early part of his calamitous tenure in Waverleygate seemed to
go un-noticed.
As with 2012, this latest and arguably more serious
stooshie has exposed visible ideological cracks in an organisation which
remains entrenched in the same bureaucratic, hierarchical managerialist
philosophy that it was supposed to have done away with five years ago.
On Wednesday, Archer appeared on BBC Radio Scotland’s
Janice Forsyth programme to discuss the debacle alongside the Herald’s arts
news reporter Phil Miller. Sounding noticeably and perhaps understandably
nervous, Archer talked soothingly about how CS were ‘listening hard’, which,
given some of the decisions made on her watch, suggested they hadn’t been.
When asked about CS funding for the umbrella bodies,
Archer answered saying that CS provided ‘bespoke business support for the
creative sector’. That one ice-cold phrase summed up everything that is currently
wrong with Creative Scotland. There is no love in a phrase like that, only fear
of being found out that the organisation you represent has nothing to offer.
In this respect, Creative Scotland have become
something akin to the Wizard of Oz, L Frank Baum’s much feared magician who
projects a terrifying and alienating persona to keep people in their place. Once
you get behind the veil, however, the Wizard turns out to be a little guy with
as little clue about things as everybody else. It’s a suitably theatrical image,
and one CS should learn from.
The resignation
this week of Ruth Wishart and Professor Maggie Kinloch from the Creative
Scotland board is a clear pointer to the mess the organisation has made for
itself. As did too Fiona Hyslop’s tweets on the matter last weekend, which
suggested a diplomatic displeasure at what appears to be an ongoing lack of communication
skills from CS. Wishart and Kinloch are two of the most experienced voices in
Scotland’s arts scenes, and understand with a passion the importance of arts
and culture at every level. The somewhat testy response to their resignations
from CS’ interim Chair Ben Thomson did little to dent Wishart and Kinloch’s credibility.
Things are moving fast, and an emergency CS board
meeting will by now have taken place with some serious fire-fighting required
regarding a set of bewildering decisions. If any of those decisions are reversed,
heads may roll. They might do anyway, perhaps deservedly so.
But let’s be clear here. The dunder-headed
managerialism Creative Scotland was founded on is a microcosm of a far greater
global malaise which, like Creative Scotland, is in freefall as its arbiters
attempt to shore up their botched system with increasing desperation. Creative
Scotland was an ideological construct from the start. That was exposed five
years ago, and despite the efforts of some dedicated staff, hasn’t changed one
single iota.
If one wanted to be fanciful, one could liken Creative
Scotland to the biblical myth of the Tower of Babel, in which a once unified
people attempting to build a tower to heaven are divided from on high by a god who
would rather no-one understood each other. Up until now, at least, Creative
Scotland’s divide-and-rule tactics, whereby those who do well in various
funding rounds are invariably silenced lest they risk rocking an already leaky
boat, do much the same thing.
Scotland’s artists mustn’t fall for this any longer. A
change of management won’t be enough to save CS this time. It’s time for
artists to seize the power back from an organisation that has never been fit for
purpose, to dismantle its unworkable structures from the top down, and to
reimagine it from the ground up. Creative Scotland in its current guise is in
its final days. It’s time for artists to speak up, and to speak loudly, with
one voice.
Bella Caledonia, February 3rd 2018
ends
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