Committee
Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Affairs Committee 30 May 2019
30 May 2019 · S5 · Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Affairs Committee
Item of business
Arts Funding
Harry Josephine Giles
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Sure. The basic problem is that the majority of money that an artist gets to make art comes from public funding bodies, and that, in order to get that money, they have to fill out a funding application. Filling out a funding application is difficult and requires a specific skill, which an artist has to learn and really work at—I have been doing it for 10 years now and I just about understand it. It is not a skill that has any correlation whatsoever to artistic talent or merit. If an artist is any good at it—I am lucky enough to have become decent at it—they are more able to get the money. However, if they are no good at it, even if their art is brilliant, they have to pay somebody else to do it for them. That is why we have fundraising officers in arts organisations; we employ people in arts organisations with the specific set of skills to persuade people to give artists money, so that the people who are good at making, managing and directing art can focus on the stuff that they are better at doing. However, that obviously creates an inequality, because when an organisation can pay a fundraising officer, it has better skills in getting money than freelance artists, who are not being paid to do that. As a freelance artist, I never get paid for the time that I spend writing funding applications. As co-director of an arts organisation, Anatomy Arts, I can be paid to do the work of trying to get more money—as we have got more money, we have been better able to that. If that sounds absurd, it is because it is absurd. We have to try to get money to pay me to get us more money, because if we do not do that, we are less able to get money to do the work that we want to do—which is, for the most part, paying artists to make art. One of my major suggestions is that, when an arts organisation is funded to have a fundraising officer, that fundraising officer should have some time set aside to support freelance artists, specifically freelance artists in their sector. It is not that radical a suggestion, because it is already happening. I have been really well supported by organisations that support my work or Anatomy’s work by offering their fundraising officer’s time to help me to figure out how to write funding applications. However, that is entirely voluntary. Although that is reasonable enough, there is still an inequality that disfavours freelance artists and makes it harder for us to get money.
In the same item of business
The Convener (Joan McAlpine)
SNP
Good morning, and welcome to the Scottish Parliament. I remind everyone to turn off their mobile phones, and I ask any members who are using electronic devic...
Emma Harper (South Scotland) (SNP)
SNP
I do not.
The Convener
SNP
Thank you very much. Our first item of business is a round-table evidence session as part of the committee’s inquiry into arts funding. The inquiry follows...
Harry Josephine Giles
Sure. The basic problem is that the majority of money that an artist gets to make art comes from public funding bodies, and that, in order to get that money,...
The Convener
SNP
Thank you very much for that. Does anyone else want to come in on that particular subject?
Raymond Vilakazi (Neo Productions)
The point that Harry Josephine Giles made is particularly acute for black and minority ethnic people, some of whom do not have even the language skills to be...
David Leddy (Fire Exit Theatre Company)
As a measure of the amount of work that Harry Josephine Giles is talking about, for the past nine years, we have been funded as a regularly funded organisati...
The Convener
SNP
Richard Demarco, your perspective goes back quite a long way, if you do not mind my saying so. Is the situation for artists that has been described today a h...
Professor Richard Demarco CBE
Things have changed dramatically in my lifetime. A meeting like this would have been unthinkable in the days when the Scottish Arts Council existed. That bod...
The Convener
SNP
That has certainly given us a lot to think about. Thank you. I will bring in Alexander Stewart because I know that he has specific issues to ask about.
Alexander Stewart (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Con)
Con
The witnesses have touched on the whole idea of the funding and support that they have. It is quite obvious that those in the sector live from hand to mouth ...
David Leddy
That is how it appears, but it is actually worse than that. The current funding system works in a way that claims to be giving us a series of priorities that...
Alexander Stewart
Con
So, you fulfil all the criteria and are doing a really good job, but you still go to the wall and you do not get feedback telling you why you do not get the ...
David Leddy
It is even blander than that. It would just repeatedly fall on the idea that the situation is very competitive and it would just generally repeat that it wil...
Alexander Stewart
Con
So, what needs to change in that environment, and how should we be involved in that process as well, because we have a role in it?
David Leddy
For me, the highest priority is peer review. I do not know what other people here, such as Rhona Matheson and Ken Mathieson, feel about that, as they have no...
Ken Mathieson
I can say that part of the problem is the way in which the absence of budgeting impinges on everything. I say at the outset that I do not see this as a Creat...
Alexander Stewart
Con
It seems that a relatively small number of people have control over what is given and where it goes.
Ken Mathieson
There is clearly some issue inside the funding body. There are always tensions between finance and the other departments and finance has the responsibility f...
Rhona Matheson (Starcatchers Theatre Company)
There are several issues. Creative Scotland is the primary funding body in Scotland and that is one of the biggest issues. If someone is making art for art’s...
Alexander Stewart
Con
You end up having to follow the money to obtain the money: if you fit the criteria you get the money and if you do not fit the criteria, you do not get it.
Rhona Matheson
Yes and no. One of the biggest challenges is that there are lots of applications that absolutely do fit the criteria, but the resource is finite. When there ...
Raymond Vilakazi
I want to put in a perspective from the BME community. In the context of the limited resources that Creative Scotland has available to push out, what is happ...
Annabelle Ewing (Cowdenbeath) (SNP)
SNP
On Ken Mathieson’s point about viring and so forth, many of the submissions that the committee has received have called for long-term funding. How would that...
Ken Mathieson
The nature of the funding system makes it very complex. Large organisations and established companies are in receipt of regular funding, which is on a three-...
David Leddy
That is a serious problem.
Annabelle Ewing
SNP
That point has touched a nerve; I know that we will come on to ask about peer review shortly. Ken Mathieson made an apt point about the lack of involvement ...
Ken Mathieson
I cannot possibly say whether Creative Scotland has a commitment to jazz, but its response tells me that there is no analytical mind to separate one-off fund...
Harry Josephine Giles
I will touch on both of the previous questions, which were about the role of long-term support and how to approach the need to prioritise if funding is restr...
David Leddy
A few years ago, I had an interesting experience at a conference in Europe, at which a European just laughed at the United Kingdom and said, “You can’t get a...