The axe? The
scalpel? The salami slicer? Culture and Sport Glasgow, one of the major funders of the arts in Scotland, is set to tackle the dilemma faced by all bodies with shrinking budgets fielding grant applications: do you go for equal pain all round, selective surgery, or chopping some clients off your list altogether? The precedents for boldness suggest they’d better invest smartish in tin helmets.
In December 2007 the Arts Council of England sent out a missive informing a quarter of the folks in receipt of an annual grant that they were off the Christmas list and not to expect a cheque in the next financial year.
Enter stage left armies of thespians and artists predicting the end of civilisation as currently known. In truth some of the decisions seemed perverse, like the theatre given £2 million to go dark and
refurbish its premises, then told the lights wouldn’t go on again.
But behind the headline rows lay an attempt to bring a new philosophy to bear on how the arts should be supported. Former Edinburgh Festival Director Brian McMaster had been asked to take a radical look at the cultural scene and his report was published barely a month later.
In essence it made a plea for excellence as the touchstone, and an end to target-setting, box-ticking bureaucracy. He pled too, for more practitioners on arts boards, (a sort of bonfire of the beancounters), and more peer reviews to determine successful product rather than diktats from the deskbound. All this would have been music to the ears of organisations sitting with wet towels round their heads trying to write up accountant-proof funding applications.
So too, his suggestion of giving selected big hitters a 10-year funding cycle. (Though you might imagine the bunfight if that particular prize ever comes on stream). The Scottish Arts Council has had a stab at introducing more stability by designating some applicants “foundation” organisations, giving them a five-year ticket to ride instead of the three it handed to those deemed “flexible”.
There’s also a plethora of other SAC funding doors to knock on, some courtesy of the Lottery, under a bewildering range of headings. A tidy payday awaits the arts practitioner who comes up with a digitally driven, multi-media, multi-cultural, collaborative production featuring a partially disabled company and a Scotland-based playwright with a work aimed at growing a new audience at an Edinburgh Festival Fringe venue.
Meanwhile, when Creative Scotland arrives next year with its ambition to broaden and deepen how we define our creative industries the emphases on who gets how much seem likely to change again. It is, as they say, a work in progress.
To the practitioners at the sharp end of turning a coin however, the priorities are rather more firmly focussed on whether they make the cut, or get the chop. It’s worth bearing in mind that when the English Arts Council splattered all that blood on the walls, it did so when its budget was growing, and it brought on board upwards of 80 new applicants.
The harsh truth is that the arts, glorious and nourishing as they are, are not immune to the normal human cycles. Over the years different
organisations and individuals will know creative peaks and troughs. And while they must be given space to fail, or there would be an end to vital innovation and experimentation, they can’t expect a licence to coast or live off past glories.
There’s another conundrum here which I don’t envy Culture and Sport Glasgow as it fields applications, evaluates them and makes recommendations to the City Council in advance of its final decision. For it would be iniquitous if people were denied funds for no better reason than they’ve been around a fair few years, yet iniquitous too if new blood was denied the chance to compete because the funding bodies put up a house full sign. What matters is finding a way to cut the cake in a way most neutral observers can see is defensible. Which won’t, of course, stop the shouts of pain and outrage.
