It seems that artists are going to have to fight for arts funding in Scotland

It is difficult to find any evidence of even a passing interest in Scotland's art and culture among the ranks of those who run Scotland. Our politics and our arts have become strangely divided from each other with little demonstrable political interest in culture at all.

That makes the intervention (reported today) of some senior SNP figures in the debate over arts funding more notable. But it also highlights a seeming political disinterest in the treatment of Scottish arts by the national broadcaster. This appears to be a ‘ruling class problem’.

The pattern of funding for the arts in Scotland has not been a happy one in recent years. In fact if you take out two specific events – a boost in funding for Screen Scotland in 2018 and emergency support during Covid – arts funding has declined almost continually since 2014.

It is difficult even to classify the funding boost for film as support for Scottish arts – in reality this has been seen as economic development support mainly for bringing international productions to Scotland for location shooting.

All other arts combined have been treated more harshly than almost any other spending department – there are few government functions which have faced year-on-year cuts for a decade. Reluctance to fund art in Scotland had become almost an enthusiasm for cutting arts funding.

This led to an inevitable outcome – a severely struggling arts sector and a backlash. In fact the bigger question is probably why this took so long and why for so much of the period between the independence referendum and Covid, the arts sector seemed constantly to be praising government even as it was cutting their funding.

It appeared that this had reached a dénouement when an angry campaign forced what appeared to be a off-the-cuff promise by former First Minister Humza Yousef to give a significant boost to the arts. That promise was largely fulfilled in this budget – and yet somehow the Scottish Government has contrived to create significant animosity with this.

Cutting the real terms funding to Scotland's flagship national arts companies seems inexplicable in this context – as in literally difficult to explain. Why would that be the conclusion administrators would draw from a significant increase in funding? Scottish arts funding strategy is encased in jargon and is the sole preserve of a quango. It makes decision-making opaque and lacking in democratic debate.

But this really is about officials because the Cabinet Secretary for Art and Culture seems little interest in this role – or in his role in constitutional policy – and favours the 'External Affairs' aspect of his brief. Arts policy in Scotland appears to reach its legislatures via the media, not via any lively or vigorous national political debate.

This problem of attitudes to the arts goes beyond Holyrood. The new Head of BBC Scotland seems obsessed with dumbing down content, excising 'difficult' new and traditional Scots music in any genre and converting Radio Scotland into a combination of easy listening hits and talk radio.
The outcome is depressing; over the same period at the start of last year and this, the amount of Scottish music on Radio Scotland fell by 26 per cent overall, new music fell by 69 per cent and new Scottish music by independent artists fell by 67 per cent. There has been media debate but very little political debate about this.

It is certainly possible to argue that the arts sector has partially brought this on itself through a reluctance to organise and fight back earlier, but there is a bigger question about why Scotland in particular is so hesitant to back its own culture.

This would make more sense if this was a victim of constitutional politics and it was an anti-independence government which was doing this. But it isn't, and if it is senior officials who are ideologically opposed to Scottish culture then it is hard to see why government politicians don't overrule them.

Common Weal believes that if arts is of so little interest to the Parliament, its funding should be democratised. We propose abolishing Creative Scotland and replacing it with a Scottish Arts Council made up of an 'academy' of practicing creatives in Scotland who could govern their own funding independently. More details can be found in Sorted.

But this cannot address the lack of political interest and the lack of funding which goes along with it. If a nationalist government isn't interested in Scottish culture, the arts sector is going to have to dig in for a long campaign to put this issue on the agenda – or revert to longer term neglect and decline.