The Commonty has talked before about the
It was heartening yesterday to hear that Creative Scotland are taking note of the progress being made in rural areas - and then depressingly familiar to watch Newsnight later in the evening and see some defensive manoeuvring by two of the Central Belt big hitters -
Francis McKee from Glasgow's Centre for Contemporary Arts and Joyce McMillan (Theatre Critic) were interviewed on the programme following that day's Parliamentary Culture Committee hearing into Creative Scotland. The premise they appeared to put forward, was that rural areas had no right to expect high-quality arts in their area. Bizarrely, Mr McKee then went on to make a case for public subsidy for art that is 'evil'…
Frankly, the mighty Queen of the South beating plucky underdogs TheRangers at Ibrox last night seems more representative of the zeitgeist just now than this level of debate on the arts in Scotland (#montheQueens)
Those of you intrigued by Mr McKee's bafflement at the term 'Arts-Led Social Enterprise' will be unsurprised by the news that the CCA IS an 'Arts-Led Social Enterprise' - we hope the Charity Commissioners are understanding about his conversion to the Dark Side.
See also - Parliamentary Committee on Education and Culture - re 'Creative Scotland - one year on' - here
Posted by TheCommonty
Deftly put Mr McKee - at this time when we are 'all in it together' it is utterly preposterous for anyone to propose spending money on culture that ordinary people might see. We put one of our thinktanks onto this and they came back with the worrying conclusion over exposure to culture can to encourage people to think for themselves!
ReplyDeleteHowever, they did also suggest that using public subsidy to boost the value of rich people's contemporary art collections was tax efficient and should be encouraged in moderation.
Very interested in your ideas about evil btw - we should get skypecoffee sometime.....do you have the internet in Scotland?
George
The bit that concerned me was the suggestion that Creative Scotland needs to engage more with councils in hard-to-reach areas. This is great if you have an enlightened council providing enough support and personnel to do this. But without that you get a huge bottleneck and ridiculous burden on the tiny arts support team (eg Borders). Having worked in D&G, I'm amazed at the disparity between council support for arts in the two regions. Artists need to be able to go direct to CS. Blocked funnel of disinterested councillors - no thanks.
ReplyDelete