Hansard

Thank you, convener, and good morning, everyone. We are pleased to be able to give evidence to the committee this morning. I realise that this is the last public meeting of the committee in this parliamentary session, so I want to take the opportunity to thank the convener, the deputy convener, all committee members past and present, and the committee clerks for the important work you have been doing in support of Scotland’s creative and screen sectors over the past four years. The focus of this session is on our response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which we are dealing with daily. In our submissions to your inquiry, we set out a timeline for the actions that we have taken in response to the pandemic, all of which have been aimed at alleviating, as far as possible, the negative impact that Covid-19 has had on Scotland’s creative and screen sectors and the people who work in them. When the reality of the pandemic became apparent in March last year, with the support of the Scottish Government and the Big Lottery Fund, we quickly adapted Creative Scotland’s and Screen Scotland’s operations to focus on the delivery of emergency support to those who needed it. We moved into parallel tracks. The first track continued delivery of on-going support to our established funds such as regular funding and open funding; targeted funds such as the youth music initiative; and funding for screen production, skills development and our focus on expanding Scotland’s studio infrastructure. The second track focused on securing and delivering emergency support through new funding streams such as the bridging bursaries, hardship funds for creative and screen freelancers and emergency funds for cultural organisations and independent cinemas. Both tracks were and continue to be critical to providing support. The scale of the work, although absolutely necessary and wholly merited, has been quite unprecedented. Since March last year, and by the end of this financial year in a couple of weeks’ time, we will have delivered almost £75 million in emergency funding support in addition to the £90 million in on-going support that we deliver each year from the Scottish Government and the Big Lottery Fund. That amounts to almost two new emergency funds each month and the delivery of almost 12,000 funding awards to individuals and organisations, which is nearly 10 times what we would normally deliver in a year. That has been delivered at pace and with maximum efficiency from existing staff resources, while people are working from home and also dealing with their own personal challenges brought about by the pandemic. I publicly thank the staff of Creative Scotland and Screen Scotland for their impressive resilience, their relentless hard work and their enormous commitment in delivering all of that vital support—and that work continues. As I speak, we are in the middle of delivering the latest round of hardship funding for creative and screen freelancers, using the additional £3 million provided by the Scottish Government last month. We are rolling out the recently announced £6 million culture collective programme, which reaches communities across Scotland. We have recently announced the recipients of £4 million emergency support through the second round of the grass-roots music venues stabilisation fund. We will shortly announce the recipients of the touring fund for theatre and dance, and we have just confirmed the fourth year of regular funding of £33 million to 121 organisations across Scotland. We are also discussing with the Scottish Government how the recently announced additional funds for culture from the United Kingdom Government will be deployed over the coming weeks and months. Therefore, work on addressing the pandemic is far from over. The challenge facing Scotland’s creative and screen sectors, as we move, I hope, to an environment of recovery and renewal, cannot be overstated. Creative Scotland’s recently published survey of the sector, drawing on more than 600 responses, makes for stark reading. It provides real evidence of financial loss, impacts on jobs, reduced creative work being produced and cross-sector concern for the future. All of that makes it clear that cultural recovery will be slow and will require continued investment and support. We should not expect the post-Covid cultural environment to return to where it was pre-pandemic. The work on our strategic priorities and approach to funding that was undertaken in 2019 and the early part of 2020 was paused due to the pandemic. We are now revisiting that as the route map for moving out of the pandemic becomes clearer. We intend to finalise our approach and publish it as early as possible in the new parliamentary session. That will include a new approach to funding for individuals and a new approach to providing short and long-term support for organisations. The timing of that will, of course, be carefully considered to ensure a smooth transition from the existing funding model. Our published research also demonstrates the important role that art and creativity have played in helping people through the pandemic, their importance to people in communities and how much people are looking forward to re-engaging with culture once the pandemic recedes. However, for that to happen, purposeful and sustained funding for creative and cultural recovery will be required over the coming years, if we are to maintain and develop Scotland’s cultural strength—and there is real cultural strength. The recent Nation Brands Index, published in February, which looks at the global reputation of different countries across the world, demonstrated that the most improved aspect of Scotland’s international brand over the past two years has been its reputation for culture. Given the context in which we have been, that is nothing short of remarkable. It also demonstrates the importance of art and creativity not just to jobs, the economy, and our health and wellbeing, but to our international standing and our collective future. There is clearly much to talk about, as is set out in our submission to the inquiry, but I will stop at this point. Isabel Davis and I are happy to take questions and look forward to the discussion. Thank you.