Meeting of the Parliament 16 November 2023
I am pleased to be able to contribute to today’s debate on how we can empower our communities to deliver a place-based approach. It is great to hear from around the chamber today that, if there is one thing that we all agree on, it is how important and valuable our cultural sector is.
Scotland is a country that is rich in cultural heritage. It is, therefore, not surprising that, in every corner of the country, we see communities approaching cultural projects in their own unique way. I take this opportunity to acknowledge the amazing work that is done by the great organisations and volunteers in my region, including the Milngavie Town Centre BID, which does great work in bringing the local community together with events such as Milngavie street party, merry Milngavie and many others.
I welcome the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee’s report, which sets out a way forward for a place-based approach to culture. I would also like to thank everybody who came along to provide evidence to the committee.
I hope that the Scottish Government will pay close attention to the report’s recommendations. The report speaks about the key role that local support networks play in our communities. It is important that we recognise the importance of the cultural ecosystem in communities. Local networks of community-based organisations are vital to the ecosystem, and we should not forget that those networks are often made up almost entirely of volunteers whose time and efforts are essential to the delivery of cultural projects.
Volunteer Scotland has highlighted that much of the work that volunteers do is unseen. That work is essential to community projects, but we need to recognise that not all communities have equal access to those local networks of support. The committee’s work revealed that communities in more deprived areas simply have less time to volunteer. In 2021, the Scottish household survey revealed that just 21 per cent of people in the most deprived areas were involved in volunteering in the previous 12 months, compared with 33 per cent in the least deprived areas. However, a community with fewer potential volunteers does not mean a community with fewer cultural needs. Cultural events can provide an important boost to people’s mental health and allow people to escape their everyday lives. That is just as true in one area as it is in the next.
We also know that many volunteer-led groups face significant financial challenges. Many of those groups are almost entirely self-funded, and more and more of them have to charge for their services. At the very least, that makes cultural activities even less accessible to communities with more deprivation; at worst, it makes many cultural projects unsustainable. The committee is therefore right to urge the Scottish Government and Creative Scotland to explore further avenues of support to protect and enhance those fantastic volunteer-led projects in our communities.
On that note, it is, of course, difficult to talk about support for cultural activities without discussing funding. As has been mentioned, today is not the time to rerun debates on local authority funding trends. However, it is a fact that local government funding has fallen in real terms over the past decade. It is therefore unsurprising that analysis by Audit Scotland shows that local government spending on cultural and leisure services has fallen by nearly 20 per cent since 2013.