Hansard

I thank the committee members who carried out the inquiry, those who gave evidence and the clerks and researchers for their work in distilling that evidence into the committee’s excellent report, which makes a timely and important contribution to the debate on the crucial role of the culture sector in our local communities.

I was particularly pleased that the committee took time to visit my home town of Dumfries, where members experienced an outstanding example of the place-based approach, taken by the Stove Network and genuinely shaped by the community.

I have had the privilege of working with the Stove Network since its inception more a decade ago, including in my role as local councillor when the council transferred the High Street base to the Stove in a community asset transfer. I have seen at first hand how that property has been developed into a cafe, a meeting place and an outstanding events venue, but it is what the people inside do that excites me. Those at the Stove have used arts and cultural activities to bring together diverse communities to drive positive, place-based solutions to challenges that people care about, such as the future of their town centre, using arts and culture not as an end in itself but as a means to deliver a wellbeing economy.

The Stove’s engagement with often underrepresented groups in some of most vulnerable communities on issues that are relevant to their lives ensures that those solutions are genuinely bottom up, not top down, which is an important principle that was stressed by Dumfries and Galloway Council in its submission to the committee.

It was that work by the Stove that led to the creation of the Midsteeple Quarter in Dumfries. A community benefit company took on the problem of absent landlords in the town centre, becoming the landlord itself, taking back our high street shop by shop, investing in neglected properties and using them for the benefit of the community.

The work of the Stove goes beyond Dumfries town centre. I know that the committee also visited Lochside—a community I am proud to say that I was brought up in—where members witnessed the Lift D&G project, which is also supporting and transforming the community. That project is community driven, using culture and the arts to build community confidence to take on and dispel the outdated and negative perception of the area and, in doing so, to change the perception that “culture’s not for me”.

The committee heard that one of the biggest barriers that the Stove and others faced with those projects was the outdated approach that is taken to how we fund culture and the arts. That approach is about performance, which is often professional, rather than participation; it is certainly not about community participation. That means that, when the Stove seeks support for its important cultural contribution to building the wellbeing economy, it often finds itself competing with wellbeing projects, such as food banks, for non-culture-based sources of funding, because the current silo model of Creative Scotland funding does not properly recognise cultural and community participation.

On the committee’s visit to Dumfries, members heard about the different approach that is taken in Ireland, where there are separate bodies and separate funding streams for participation and community-based practice. However, we do not have to look beyond Scotland to see that: sportscotland recognises the role that sport plays in our wellbeing, especially our health, and it provides separate funding streams for elite sport and for participation in sport. As the Stove said in its submission to the committee,

“In culture we do not have the ‘Participation’ strand, but only the ‘Elite’ one.”

The Government has said that it now intends to double culture spending, which I welcome, but I hope that, as it grows that budget, it will not be—it must not be—simply a case of more of the same. We need to better recognise the wider role of culture in delivering the wellbeing economy, and its preventative social impact on social isolation and mental health, by better ring fencing funding streams for community participation.

I also hope that the Government will look again at the geographical spread of funding. The focus on professional performance often means that a disproportionate amount goes towards big events in our cities. That often leaves events in peripheral communities, where margins are tighter, in a precarious position. Festivals and events are hugely important to my home region of Dumfries and Galloway, but in recent years we have lost major festivals. The Wickerman festival, the Electric Fields festival and the Big Burns Supper festival have been cancelled for this year, and the Eden festival has been scaled back, given the challenges of higher policing costs since the establishment of Police Scotland.

However, when new, developing events such as Music at the Multiverse have emerged in a bid to replace those that we have lost, they have not received the support that they needed from EventScotland and other national agencies in order to develop. In the three years since Music at the Multiverse began, studies have shown the important economic benefit that it brings to Upper Nithsdale, which is one of the most deprived parts of Scotland. It is clear that the potential exists to grow that contribution to make the visitor attraction of the Crawick Multiverse viable for the future, but that has not been recognised when it comes to support.

Likewise, as a result of the Scottish Government’s decision to remove winter festival funding in 2022 and the rejection—again—by EventScotland of an application from Dumfries and Galloway, sadly, the plug has been pulled and the curtain has fallen on the Big Burns Supper this year. That is a genuine grass-roots event that has transformed the lives of hundreds of young people who trained as the producers of the future. Ministers used to queue up to cut the ribbon at the opening of the Big Burns Supper. Now, sadly, the only cut that is being made by the Government is in the funding for the main event to celebrate the birthday of Scotland’s greatest cultural icon—all for the sake of £25,000.

That is a huge blow to the south of Scotland, and it shows that we still have a long way to go to properly recognise the value of grass-roots community participation events and to ensure that every part of Scotland is fairly supported in delivering them. That is why I very much welcome and thank the committee for its important contribution to the debate on tackling the issue.