Creative Scotland Roadshow..South Scotland

It was great to see the Catstrand packed out for the Creative Scotland event on Friday. After a year in post the director of CS Andrew Dixon has been touring the country to unveil the new 'Corporate Plan' for the arts in Scotland.

This is by no means a detailed critique of 'the plan' - because, for the most part, the document (download it here) is a statement of intent rather than a set of detailed proposals. What can can be discussed is the energy and some of the headline ambitions of the new organisation.... CS has set itself a clear mission to present the creative arts as a major part of Scotland's identity - both to its own people through education and audience development and to the wider world through coordinated promotion and international exchange. It was obvious that the vision is for an organisation that has strong direction and, as practitioners and arts organisations, we have a clear choice about whether we want to buy into that vision or not.

Creative Scotland @ The Catstrand..Andrew Dixon on the decks and Venu Dhupra on vocals

In this respect this represents a significant shift from the old days of working with the Scottish Arts Council - which lets face it, sometimes felt like taking tea with a rather dotty maiden aunt who kept your inheritance stuffed under her mattress.

One of the specific changes that is very welcome is the assignment of senior figures within CS to oversee different geographic areas. Surely the idea of seeing regions as having different cultural identities and hence requiring a different approach to cultural provision makes good sense rather than the previous situation of different artform officers who all had a national remit? Our geographic representative is Venu Dhupra who impressed many people at the Catstrand event with her willingness to talk to everyone there and her growing grasp of what is happening in D+G.

The new CS approach also places emphasis on transparency in their dealings with the sector - like any incoming administration this is probably very easy to say at the outset (ie it is often convenient to be talking about an 'inherited' regime) but there was an audible dropping of jaws in the room when Andrew Dixon showed this slide:

Spread of CS funded organisations 2010/11

This shows the spread of funded organisations across the country with the darkest colour representing the most and the lightest the least. Strictly speaking the South of Scotland should be completely white....neither D+G or the Borders have a single CS funded organisation. Maybe we will qualify for 'special needs status' from here on then?

There were at least eight Commonty members at the event and the consensus seemed to be a welcome to the energy and drive, the geographical awareness and the proposed clarity of purpose....with a slight suspicion that the 'clarity' might be relying too heavily on the personal taste of a very small group of unaccountable individuals.

The new Creative Scotland website will be unveiled at the end of April and will contain details of the new funds and application procedures.

PS It was great to see folk from the Borders at the event - the new Creative Arts support project (Lesley Rogers is working on this for D+G) is a joint initiative with the Borders - hopefully working closely with another region will have advantages for individual practitioners and make our regional voice heard more loudly. The Borders are a bit further on with the Creative Arts support project - the website is here