Official Report 620KB pdf
Welcome back. Our next item is pre-budget scrutiny of culture sector funding. As part of its pre-budget scrutiny work, the committee is looking at the continuing impact of Covid-19 on the culture sector and its longer-term future.
This morning, the committee will hear from Paul McManus, negotiations officer for Scotland at the Broadcasting, Entertainment, Cinematograph and Theatre Union, and Barry Dallman, acting regional organiser for Scotland and Northern Ireland at the Musicians Union. I welcome them both to the meeting and thank them—and others—for the written evidence provided for today’s session.
Given the time constraints, we will move straight to questions. I note that Ms Boyack is appearing remotely. I remind members to direct their question to a particular witness. That will be helpful.
Good morning, panel. My question, which is for both of you, is about the emergency funding that has been distributed to the culture sector over the past year or so. For example, a month ago, £17 million was distributed through Creative Scotland. Is that funding reaching your members, either directly or indirectly?
In some respects, it is, indeed, reaching the members; in a lot of respects, sadly, it is not. A great many freelancers and people working under various arrangements in the live events and theatre sector still desperately need support and have not got it. There have been some issues around people falling between EventScotland, Creative Scotland and Screen Scotland, which has led to a significant number of gaps.
Very often, funding has not reached people who are more theatre based. Employers are relying on the furlough scheme. A number of organisations have used emergency funding to future proof their box offices rather than support staff.
I broadly agree with what Paul McManus said. The hardship funding for creative freelancers provided through Creative Scotland during the pandemic has been an essential lifeline for some of them. However, for various reasons to do with the nature of their portfolio careers or the way that they operate, many of our members have not been eligible for it.
I agree that the emergency funding that has gone through institutions has not necessarily been used in all cases to support workers. Of course, freelancers have been disproportionately affected because they were not eligible for the furlough scheme.
Where members have received the funding that has been made available, it has been absolutely essential for them. Unfortunately, however, a lot of people have been excluded due to the way that things have been implemented—particularly by the Westminster Government, but also simply because of how things operate and the rules around access to funding.
Is there a tension around funding going to organisations—be that theatres or whatever—and not to individuals? Is it a difficulty that funding might go directly to a small local organisation and therefore not reach individuals?
In my opinion, it is more to do with the criteria around what the funding can be used for and the way in which it is monitored and managed. There was a clear intent on the part of the Scottish Government to try to support freelancers. We saw organisations such as the Royal Lyceum Theatre Company immediately engage in wholesale redundancies, but during Covid it then started to hire freelance designers and directors more than it ever used them in the past. On the face of it, it was saying, “We’re supporting the freelance community.” We said, “You never used that many freelancers in the first place.” Staff lost their jobs and some freelancers gained more work out of it. We feel that the monitoring of the way in which the money was used was perhaps not as robust as it should have been.
Having said that, I think that there are clear examples where theatres supported their staff 110 per cent and there have been zero-hours contracts for freelancers all the way through. It was really left down to the ambitions and intentions of the organisations themselves as to whether they used the money to the benefit—in our view—of the workers and the staff or not.
I agree that the picture varies from organisation to organisation. It is very difficult to move at speed and get the money out there that we know is needed, but also to properly dictate what should be done with it and how it should be used.
My membership is slightly different from Paul McManus’s in that he has slightly more employed members than I do. My members who are employed are mainly orchestral musicians or teachers. Generally, the orchestras in Scotland have looked after the musicians very well. The majority have tried to take care of their employees, and in some cases they have gone beyond what they were legally obliged to do, even when implementing the furlough scheme.
The problem for those organisations has been where they regularly work with freelancers. For example, a symphony orchestra will supplement its core players as needed depending on the nature of a production; it will bring in extra players where a bigger orchestra is required and use freelancers to cover absences from the core team. During the pandemic, that has not happened at all, so those freelancers are not getting the work that they need. Some orchestras have given freelancers some support, but the money that is given to orchestras is not there to support freelancers and they will obviously look after their primary responsibility, which is the orchestra and its employees.
My members’ situation is slightly different, but I agree with the premise of the question. There is sometimes tension between funding that is given to organisations and how that then translates through to the workforce. However, the key point is probably the one that Paul McManus made: it happens on an organisation-by-organisation basis and it is hard to make generalisations because the picture has been different across the country.
It is good to have you both with us. I want to follow up on the point about people losing their jobs over the past year when live performances had to stop entirely. Do you have a sense of how many people we have lost from the arts and culture sector? There have been press articles about freelancers not getting support and having to go and get other employment.
There is as significant a problem with staff as there is with freelancers. The position for freelancers has been fairly straightforward in that there was no work for any of them and they were all scrambling about trying to access the emergency support that was available. The bigger issue that the culture sector is facing is to do with encouraging staff to come back. The Playhouse was aiming to do a show on a Sunday and it was 90 staff short of the number that it would have needed if the performance had gone ahead. I spoke to a deputy chief electrician yesterday who said, “When the furlough scheme ends, I’m not going back. I make more money driving for Just Eat than I ever made working in the theatre, and I get my weekends off.” That story has been repeated thousands of times.
10:15Theatre employers across Scotland have said that they are having to advertise to open a brand-new theatre. Thousands of people, both freelancers and staff, are being lost to the industry; indeed, a great many freelancers have moved into film and TV or other industries, and I have just mentioned that I have had a number of conversations with people who are much happier driving for Amazon or Just Eat. They love the theatre, but they do not want to go back to its low-pay, long-hours culture. In short, the biggest single challenge facing the cultural industries just now is probably the loss of staff.
I agree with that. It is difficult to put a number on how many people have left the profession; we do not know that and, in fact, will not know for some time, because things are still not operating as normal.
According to a UK-wide impact study that we carried out with our 32,000 members back in September 2020, a third of musicians—around 34 per cent—were considering leaving the industry completely, because of the financial hardship that they had suffered, and 70 per cent were unable to undertake more than a quarter of their usual work in 2020. Moreover, nearly half of them—around 47 per cent—had been forced to seek work outside of the industry. That was back in September 2020, and then we had a subsequent lockdown in January that will only have exacerbated the situation.
From my members’ point of view, the music industry has not seen too many redundancies. Fortunately, many orchestras are publicly funded, and they have been able to access Government support schemes to keep people employed. However, freelance work has been completely decimated, and it is not clear how many of those people are going to be able to return, how many have managed to hang on and how many of those who are able to come back will do so in the same capacity or will work part time in the industry.
It is going to take some time before we see the real impact of the skills drain on the cultural landscape, given that it affects everyone, including, for example, people who provide instrumental lessons to children in schools as well as quality freelance orchestral players, as a result of which the country’s symphony and other orchestras cannot get the quality of players that they need. The knock-on effect is unknown, but it is there and real and we are going to experience it in years to come. It is just very hard to quantify at the moment.
The two of you have spoken very eloquently about the short-term crisis, but thinking about this year’s budget, I note that there are, as you have highlighted, issues with venues as well as performers and all the staff needed to put on performances. Having met organisations such as Culture Counts and the Night Time Industries Association, I know that they are all very focused on what has to be done next. What are your thoughts on that? The issue of school tuition relates to local authority funding, for example. Does something need to be done about how employment is structured if we are to attract people into the industry or ensure that people stay in it?
Moreover, what about the debate over the percentage of funding for the arts? I see from one of our briefings that the Scottish Government spends 0.2 per cent on culture. Do we need to change how money is spent, and do we need to invest more? I would be interested in hearing both witnesses’ views on that.
There needs to be a fundamental rethink of how the cultural industries are supported. With the recent announcements, there have been a great many meetings with civil servants over the past week and, universally across the live events and cultural sector, the issue that has been pretty much at the top of the agenda has been staff shortages at all levels, whether it be front-of-house staff, stewards, technical staff or freelancers. As I have said, we need a fundamental rethink of how those industries are supported.
We would like longer-term funding, and we would like a significantly greater percentage to be spent on culture. In the live arts, theatre is very much at the bottom of the food chain. People are working for minimum wage for long hours and on zero-hour contracts—even the permanent employees are at the bottom of the food chain. A great many of them have seen the rapid expansion of film and TV and have taken their skills into that area, where they can work significantly fewer hours and earn two or three times the amount that they earn in theatre. Live events are facing a slightly different challenge, because many of the problems that are coming for them are driven by Brexit, although I will not sidetrack you into that discussion just now.
We would like the Scottish Government to become much more focused in how it supports organisations. It should stop trying to give everybody a wee bit to help them get by and should really sit down and support training and reskilling initiatives in a strategic way. At the end of the day, the Government has to deliver on the fair work first principles and help to drive up wages and conditions to acceptable levels, never mind high standards. If the Government does not do that, there will be a constant struggle. We need more focused longer-term support and significantly more support.
Again, it is hard to disagree with anything that Paul McManus said. There are two priorities. The first has to be to retain the people we need in the industry. One key thing that I stress is that, although certain things are now happening again—events and live performances are happening, and theatres are reopening—it will be a long time before freelancers can build up the portfolio of work that will allow them to be financially sustainable in the way that they were before the pandemic. Let us not kid ourselves: many of them were not making huge amounts of money then—they were barely scraping by.
If we want to support the sector, we cannot take the view that, now that things are opening and people can work again, it is all fine and back to normal, because it is not. If we do not provide immediate short-term financial support, particularly for freelancers, we will see continued hardship and people continually leaving the sector, with the skills drain that we talked about.
A commitment to approaching things in a long-term manner would be helpful. Part of the problem at the moment with the sector in general is a siloing of different activities because they are assigned to different budget holders and money comes from different places. For example, what we might choose to do in music education is often not tied in with what we do on cultural events or music tourism. A more integrated approach between all the funding bodies or budget holders, based on what we want the industry or cultural sector in Scotland to look like in 10 or 20 years and on a more holistic big-picture view, would be helpful so that all the individual parts can work together to deliver that.
Whether we are talking about local authority funding for things such as the youth music initiative, which is funded through Creative Scotland and provides music provision for primary schools, or funding for orchestras and theatres, the funding is very much done on an annual basis, which makes it difficult for organisations to plan ahead. We find that, even where people are employed, they are on short-term contracts because organisations cannot guarantee the position next year, as their funding is for only 12 months, after which they have to go through the reapplication process again.
The youth music initiative is a good example. Some programmes have been running through local authorities for 20 years but, every year, they have to go through the reapplication process. That creates uncertainty and short-term thinking in the way that things are done.
Longer-term planning, with guaranteed funding over a longer period, would allow publicly funded organisations to be more resourceful and make more money, because they would be able to plan further ahead and would not constantly worry about whether they will have the money to do whatever it is that they want to do the following year.
It is also key that fair work principles go to the heart of the cultural landscape, and that will certainly require a commitment to more spending. Recently, I have been involved in meetings in which officials have talked about how we implement fair work. It is clear that we will have absolutely no chance of persuading commercial organisations that they have to adopt fair work principles if those principles are not being adopted by publicly funded organisations. When public money is being spent, we need to ensure that people who are engaged through publicly funded organisations or schemes are paid fairly and that the conditions are as they should be, with people having job security and the adoption of all the other principles of fair work. That will require increased resources.
We have talked about what happens to money when it is distributed to organisations. Part of the problem is that organisations such as Creative Scotland do not have the resources, the remit or the instructions to follow up and ensure that money is being spent as it was purported that it would be. There are no checks and balances to prevent organisations that secure public funding through an application from choosing to do something slightly different with the money or from not paying workers what they said they would.
A more holistic view should be taken. Longer-term funding should be provided, with fair work at its heart. The Government should commit to providing the money to ensure that that is possible. That is what we need, as well as more integrated communication between the bodies that are responsible for funding the cultural landscape.
That was really helpful. In relation to longer-term planning, certain types of cultural performances move around the country, so venues will be thinking about not just this year but the next two years. The point about the public sector needing to think about longer-term funding, whether it be for three years or five years, was very well made, and the committee will reflect on that.
When I was looking through the submissions today, I noted that Mr Dallman suggests that there
“could be a 3-year recovery cycle”
for the UK music industry. If you have been listening to the news, which I am sure you have, you will know that, later today, the Scottish Government is likely to vote for the introduction of vaccine certification. How will that impact on your sector’s recovery? What will be needed to compensate for, provide financial support for, implement and manage a system in which passports will be needed for access to venues and live events?
It seems likely that there will be such a system in Scotland. The Musicians Union is not, in principle, against additional measures at festivals, concerts and other events. Our big concern with vaccination certification is that it could be discriminatory. We hope that any such measure that is introduced will allow people to show proof of a recent negative test, through the use of on-site testing or whatever, so that people who are unable to be vaccinated due to underlying medical conditions, for example, are not excluded from taking part in cultural activities.
In relation to what the industry needs, the problem is that festivals, venues and events will be responsible for checking the certification and dealing with people as they arrive, and in terms of security, administration and staffing levels, that will put increased costs on those events and venues at a time when they are already struggling massively. There is concern about how the scheme will be implemented and what support will be given to them to allow them to carry out the Government’s instructions if the proposal is agreed by Parliament today.
10:30
As Barry Dallman outlined, there are obvious logistical challenges to implementing the proposal. The consensus and feedback that I have heard from members asks why it will apply just to events involving over 10,000 people. If I work in a theatre that has 1,700 people in it and I have no idea whether those people are vaccinated, infected or anything, why am I not protected by having to check for Covid vaccinations? Why is there a difference between nightclubs and other sectors? Surely, if it is a good principle, it should apply to everybody. Undoubtedly, the proposal will add logistical challenges, but the Scottish Government could help significantly by working with the industry to come up with whatever technical solutions are required to make it as seamless as possible.
In line with comments that were made earlier, the Government also needs to be more robust in any support that it gives. For example, the Ambassador Theatre Group received £300,000 in emergency funding at the time when it was trying to drive through reductions in the terms and conditions of employment and laying staff off. That company makes £20 million a year in profit. A great many of our members have asked why we have forgotten all the profits that the companies made in previous years. Surely, they should put their hands in their own pockets. Some hugely successful commercial organisations, including across football, live events and culture, should have to bear some of the cost and inconvenience. It is a public health issue, and if people have to queue a bit longer or it costs a bit more to get them in and there is a bit of hit to profits, that is a price worth paying to ensure people’s safety.
The fear of Covid is a big factor in people not returning to the cultural industry. They have gone from being at home and working online to suddenly being faced with going back into buildings where there are 500, 1,000 or 2,000 people. The stress of that is a big factor in people not returning to the industry.
Have you been consulted at all on how the enforcement and checking will take place? Have you had any discussions with the Scottish Government on that?
I have been in four meetings with the Scottish Government since the First Minister’s announcement about the proposal. So, yes, we are being consulted extensively on it.
The BECTU submission speaks about how the expectations and ambitions of your workers across the sector have changed significantly. I assume that that relates to the fair work principles that we have heard about. I am looking for a bit more detail on the specifics behind that statement, because you also say that
“the essence of the industry is the ‘Live experience’ and that is unlikely to change”.
Is there potentially a conflict between consumer expectation and workers’ expectation in relation to fair work principles? How might that hamper or be an opportunity for your recovery?
My understanding across the live events and theatre sector as a whole is that organisations just want to get back to doing what they have always done—getting the doors open and the public in. They do not see any significant change in trends; they believe that the public wants to get back in and see shows.
The issue that you raise has to do with the fact that theatre and live events staff do not want to work in the industry any more. Their expectations have changed, as have the expectations of many people across many other sectors, such as hospitality. Regardless of whether the Government puts more support on the table or changes its approach, the industry will need to change its approach. There are theatres and venues that cannot function just now because the staff are not returning or the freelancers are not available to service their needs.
As I said, the Playhouse wanted to do a show on Sunday but it was 20 staff short. There would have been chaos if it had tried to go ahead with the show. Other theatres around the country—producing theatres and rural theatres—just do not have the staff. That is going to be an issue for us, and shows are going to be affected. People are now coming to that realisation and starting to have conversations about how much they need to increase the rates of pay and improve employment conditions in order to get people to work for them. That conversation is going on just now, but the big commercial operators are saying that, in essence, they will plough on regardless and will not improve terms and conditions. They spent most of the pandemic trying to reduce them, so there will be real tensions around that.
Regardless of what we think or what the Government does, that is a big issue just now. The Government can help to alleviate it, but it needs to be addressed urgently. Theatres, live events and nightclubs are facing these problems right now.
I want to ask Mr Dallman a question about an issue that his and other organisations have raised in the past—namely, the impact on their members of the loss of freedom of movement around Europe. I imagine that, to some extent, the situation varies from one European country to the next, but I do not know. What is involved in artists in Scotland seeking to work in the EU now? Please give examples, if possible.
I would love to be able to answer that question with 100 per cent certainty, but the problem is that there is still a huge amount of uncertainty about exactly what is required for musicians and artists on tour. It is another time bomb, and the only reason that it is not a bigger issue at this stage, following our withdrawal from the European Union, is that Covid has kept everyone from touring. As we emerge and as live music continues, we hope, to be allowed to resume, people will want to tour but they will find that there are huge problems and barriers that did not exist previously.
I stress that it is not just about the freedom of movement of individuals in order to work. At the moment, every European country will have different requirements with regard to visas or work permits, and it is not always clear what those are. We are continually pressuring the UK Government to get a reciprocal agreement with the EU to allow musicians on tour to move freely between those countries. However, as I said, it is not just about the individuals themselves. It is about the vehicles that they take to transport their equipment; it is about the equipment that they take and customs regulations; it is about cabotage rules, which involve transport vehicles and whether their transit van, for example, can cross more than one border on a tour; and it is about what is required in terms of customs paperwork for taking their merchandise to sell. It is about all those other things, which are now problematic, post-Brexit, but which were not problematic previously. Those are huge threats to the touring industry and they are hugely restrictive. It is going to be a real problem.
Yes, the issue of freedom of movement for people is massive and we desperately need a reciprocal agreement on that, but that alone will not solve the problem. For touring musicians, there is a host of other factors that we desperately need the Government to start to address, otherwise the situation will be prohibitive and a whole chain of events will be set in motion by the continuing impact on the industry, including loss of reputation. The UK is one of the only net exporters of music in the world, but that will be seriously under threat if UK artists cannot tour the EU. Because of the size of the UK as an island and the number of people and venues in it, the EU has been our domestic market, if you like. Being able to travel freely and play in those countries has allowed musicians to build up a fan base and become self-sustaining in ways that they cannot do as things stand. That is a massive threat. It will cause huge problems down the line, and we desperately need something to be done about it as soon as possible.
My next question is related to that. Are there funding streams from the European Union that you accessed in the past but that you think you will not be accessing once you get back to touring? I am thinking of things such as the Creative Europe funding stream. Is that a major consideration for you when you are planning ahead?
It depends on the levels and artists. The problems around the increased administration costs and the red tape of touring will not affect the top-level artists. Household names will put two or three pounds on to the price of an already three-figure stadium concert ticket and that will cover it. It is the grass roots—the emerging artists and the bands that have a domestic following but that need to get out to broaden their fan base and develop their audience—who will be reliant on funding and support mechanisms to allow them to tour in order to build up a reputation and a fan base. Those funding sources might well be significantly reduced through Brexit. That is certainly another factor that will make it harder for people to tour.
Thank you for joining us. The session has been very informative.
To follow on from Dr Allan’s questions, I am interested to hear a bit more about the touring that we will—we hope—be able to start seeing happening in Scotland and about your thoughts on the fund that the Scottish Government introduced through the programme for government to get musicians and theatre companies out to more rural areas. They, too, are crying out for much more culture and creativity to come back to them.
I live on Islay, where the very successful Cantilena festival brings in young musicians. I am interested to hear what the MU is doing to support young musicians again. It is clear that, through lockdown, their education will have been taking place in their own rooms and online. What support structures are needed to ensure that the throughput of emerging artists in Scotland continues?
That is a very big question. You are right in saying that music education was much harder to access during the pandemic. As a union, we tried to support our members who teach by giving them advice about providing lessons online, advocating for online lessons, encouraging schools to move their peripatetic tuition online, and helping teachers to have the equipment and training that they needed in order to carry out lessons safely and effectively.
The digital activity that has come about because of the pandemic will probably be one of the few upsides and positives of it in that people are now much more familiar with using technology in that way. They are much more open to the idea of working remotely. For musicians and students in rural areas, in particular, who might not have local access to teachers of the quality that they need or musical activity that they can see physically in person, a greater emphasis on the digital side of things can help to join the dots a little more.
I agree that it is hugely important that, regardless of where a person lives, they have access to cultural experiences, because those experiences can inspire or light a fire in them and set them on the path to becoming a professional musician, actor, artist or whatever. Many of my friends who are musicians were inspired by seeing a particular orchestra or band, or by being taken with the school to see a production. Suddenly, a world that they did not even know existed was opened to them. Therefore, it is vital, particularly when there is a concentration of activity around major cities, that the Government tries to encourage the taking of that activity across the whole country so that access to such opportunities can be provided to as many people as possible without their having to come to the cities all the time. I support such initiatives.
I think that the digital access is good and that we should look at expanding it to join the dots, but there is no substitution for the in-person experience. We need to focus on that as well, and I thoroughly support that.
10:45
Mr McManus, do you want to come in on that subject?
Yes, please. The issue goes back to what we were talking about—the provision of funding to support rural and outreach work and the need for strategic thinking. Eden Court, in Inverness, has a long history of doing very successful outreach work in the Highlands and Islands, yet it has had to scale back that work in recent years because of local authority cutbacks.
Therefore, although a number of organisations have ambitions to do such work and to support it on an on-going basis, they face two challenges: constant local authority cutbacks and the annual funding cycle. That is particularly the case for smaller organisations that support such work. In my submission, I mentioned the divisions initiative. Our managers spend half the year lobbying for public funding to support the following year’s work. That public funding sits in somebody’s bank account for four, five or six months until we get it agreed, and then we have four, five or six months in which to spend it, after which the whole cycle starts all over again. More strategic funding would allow people to spend less time and money on administrative processes and more on supporting the delivery of such viable initiatives.
I would like to make a quick point about the question about the European situation. For every musician who goes off to tour round Europe, there will be anything from 20 to 200 support staff—truck drivers and all the rest of it—who go with them. The UK is a net exporter of that talent. A great many of the bigger American companies come to Scotland and England, pick up their whole crew—because they prefer to work with English-speaking crews—and take them around Europe. Equally, many of our members do not go with just one band or one act, do a tour and come home again. There are integrated networks with European companies that mean that they spend between eight and 10 months a year touring round Europe. When one act finishes and heads home, they join another tour or another company. Their whole working lives are planned in that way. Those people are now moving to Europe or have left the industry because they think, “If I’ve lost nine or 10 months’ work, I’m not going to get that work back in Scotland.”
That goes across television as well. With all the sports coverage—the coverage of formula 1, the golf, the tennis and so on—it tends to be the same crews that follow the tour. That talent has been lost—those people have now moved to Europe because they thought, “I can live without the couple of months’ work that I got in Scotland, but I can’t live without the 10 months of work that I got in Europe and the middle east.” As a result, they have relocated.
As Barry Dallman said, that train has already started. Since January, we have seen the big crew companies in Europe—which are primarily in Holland, Germany and Poland—advertising for their normal levels of crew and saying, “UK passport holders need not apply.” That has affected hundreds of members in Scotland and thousands across the UK.
You have painted a very stark picture, Mr McManus.
I would like to move back to the issue of tours. We have festivals that have musicians coming across from Europe. I would like to hear your thoughts on how the present situation is impacting on the work that our musicians are doing. I have heard from musicians that they are concerned about the creativity that is brought about by their ability to spark off people from other traditions and countries across Europe. Looking at the funding, is there anything that we can do to support them in that regard, following on from what Dr Allan was saying about us losing access to Creative Europe?
We expect that the costs of those festivals will increase and that the quality will decrease. As Barry Dallman pointed out, the bigger European acts might well be able to afford the increased administration costs of moving between Europe and the UK, but the smaller acts—the ones who are trying to establish themselves and who are the kind of acts that you would see at festivals across Scotland—will just not come to the UK, because it will be too costly and will involve too much administration. As Barry Dallman said, under the current rules, the logistics of trying to get a Transit van’s-worth of gear across Europe and into the UK are daunting. The feedback that we are getting from a lot of colleagues in Europe is that they are just not going to come here. Therefore, you will either need to find a lot more money to hire the bigger acts that can afford to come or you will lose quality.
The other impact that a lot of music promoters are talking about is that, if artists choose to come from Europe to the UK, we will not get the same experience as people in Europe will get, because the artists will be flown in to perform on a bare stage with a few lights. They will not bring their whole experience with them into the UK because it is prohibitively expensive and logistically impractical to do so.
Exactly. The key issue at this stage is not so much about funding—I think that that is something that will need to kick in a little further down the line. At the moment, the key problem involves the logistics of getting people in and out of the country to perform, which is important in terms of the ability of Scottish festivals to book European artists to perform on their bills and provide that access to the live experience that we talked about before as being transformative and vital in inspiring the next generation of artists and musicians. That is going to be more difficult now.
Simultaneously, Scottish and UK artists are going to lose out in terms of opportunities to play at festivals and events in Europe, because it will be harder to book musicians from this country than it is to book musicians from other countries in Europe—it is just easier and cheaper for those festivals not to bother. That reduces the opportunities that are available for everyone: it reduces access to music and performances for audiences in Scotland and it also reduces opportunities for musicians to play abroad.
In terms of collaborations, digital technology has allowed people to start working with musicians in other countries very easily, and, after an initial digital collaboration, many musicians have gone to gig in EU countries with the artists they have been collaborating with, but they will probably not be able to do that now.
If we do not get some resolution on making it easier for people to move and work in this industry, we will find that the industry will become smaller, more isolated and more insular, with fewer opportunities, and that will have a damaging impact on the financial aspect and the broader cultural aspect in terms of the valuable role that the culture and music sectors play in our society.
On funding, even with some better reciprocal agreements in place that might reduce some of the logistical issues that we have been talking about, it will undoubtedly be more expensive for artists to tour Europe, regardless of what agreements are in place. There will be administrative requirements that they will have to fulfil and it will be logistically more difficult for them to do so, so it will take more time and more money. Again, as we have been stressing, it will not be the household names that will be hit but those artists who previously would have been at that stage in their career where they had to go to Europe and develop a fan base abroad. They will just not be able to do that now.
The Scottish Government could help by providing some funding to make touring easier and to offset some of the costs. UK Music has been calling on the Government to set up a UK music office to help export music, and some ring-fenced funding from the Scottish Government to help touring musicians in Scotland would do something to help, too. These people are going to need support if it reaches the point where touring is not viable for them, and that is where the Government can help. The bigger problem for Scotland, though, lies with the UK Government and the reciprocal agreements that we need to make it easier for people to move and work in the first place.
Those answers have been really interesting in highlighting the pressing problems that you face at the moment.
However, I want to pull back out to the bigger picture. Scotland’s national performance framework has four indicators on the dashboard for measuring our cultural health: attendance at cultural events; participation in activity; growth in the cultural economy; and the number of people working in arts and culture. Are they adequate in describing or showing us the health of the sector and our cultural health more broadly? Looking at your submissions, I have to wonder whether the metric with regard to the number of people working in arts and culture, in particular, adequately describes what is going on with regard to fair work, insecurity of contracts and other such issues. Could that be improved, or are the metrics on that dashboard the right ones to be thinking about as we recover from Covid?
I have no issue with the metrics on the dashboard, but I think that we need to rethink the emphasis on how we achieve them. A great many of our members see the value that is placed on culture and just wish that a similar value would be placed on their involvement in culture in Scotland and what they get out of it. They feel somewhat disconnected from those metrics, which always seem to be about what society gets out of culture and the impact of culture on the economy and the wellbeing of the Scottish people. They feel that they are not part of that equation. The ironic thing is that the vast majority of those people, certainly in the live arts, do it because they love it, not because they want to make a living out of it, which, after all, is impossible. As a result, they have always felt that the emphasis has not been weighted sufficiently towards the experience of working in culture.
That is why we in the entertainment unions have put so much emphasis on fair work principles. Agencies such as Creative Scotland, Screen Scotland and EventScotland need to champion those who work in the industry much more significantly than they have done. To be honest, a lot of people have, as I have said, felt abandoned rather than supported by those agencies over the past year or so.
The metrics are a good barometer of where we want to get to, but there needs to be more emphasis on taking the workers in the industry with us on this journey.
The metrics are okay as far as they go, as long as we understand, first, that we are measuring only certain things and that there are many other things that we could choose to measure; secondly, that they are not really giving us a full picture of what is going on; and, thirdly, that it is notoriously difficult to get accurate numbers for these things anyway. For example, when we talk about the number of people working in, say, the music sector, how do we define the term “work”? There is a big difference between the first violin with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and someone with a 9-to-5 job who gigs in a band in local pubs at the weekend for fun and a bit of beer money. Those two people are both technically working in the music industry, but they have very different roles and are coming from different places.
11:00In terms of attendance at cultural events, again, what are we talking about? If we are just looking at the number of people who went to an event, we can skew those figures massively, based on whether we include the Edinburgh festivals, for example. Therefore, it is not just about the number of people who are going to events; it is about understanding that the numbers cannot be the only indicator.
One of the other key things that is not covered is education in the cultural sector and, in particular, in the creative arts. Although the recent commitment to remove instrumental tuition fees for all children in Scotland was great and we were really pleased to see it, there is a much bigger conversation to be had about the value of culture and the way that we perceive it, as a subject in education and also in the role that it plays in our society. For too long now, the creative arts have been somewhere near the bottom of the hierarchy of subjects, in which English, maths and sciences are at the top. The creative arts are seen almost like a hobby—nice to have but not that important. If we want a thriving cultural sector, we have to inculcate the notion that creative arts are valuable and essential to society and just as important as the other subjects.
Similarly, with regard to the way that we view the cultural industries, the perception too often is that jobs in the creative industries are not real jobs, that they should be done for fun and that the people who work in them are hobbyists so, if it is hard to make a living, they should go and work in another industry where they can make a living. We saw that in the pandemic with those reprehensible adverts from the Westminster Government about people’s next job being in cyber, so they should go and retrain, because they cannot continue as a musician or ballet dancer. Until we change that attitude—that culture is an add-on or an option, rather than a totally integrated, thriving, vital part of the human experience and our everyday lives—we will always struggle a bit. Those softer, harder-to-measure intangibles are still worth striving for and are probably a better indicator of the success of culture and creative industries in Scotland, rather than what can be seen in spreadsheets about the numbers of people who attended or had access to events.
I will make a brief point, which I wanted to make before, about access to events. One of the points in the written submission, which I want to stress again, is the uncertainty around events in the years ahead. At the moment, particularly with the rise in case numbers in Scotland, the discussion around vaccination certification and the real fear that restrictions could come back, it is a very uncertain and nervous time for organisers of events and festivals and the management of orchestras. Although it is not the main remit of the committee, it is important for me to be on the record as saying that a reintroduction of restrictions and social distancing measures will be absolutely disastrous for the cultural and creative industries. Events and gigs will not be able to happen, because they will not be financially viable. The fear of the return of those measures is making it really difficult and, even on the assumption that restrictions are not reintroduced, some events will not go ahead, just because of the worry of that possibility. That is a shame. The Government needs to recognise that and start to take measures, not only to ensure that there will be financial support if events have to be cancelled but to give confidence to the industry, so that, in the short to medium term, people can plan to host events, make commitments and engage artists, which they are very twitchy about doing at the moment.
It shows the different perceptions that we have across the sector. As I mentioned earlier, following the First Minister’s statement last week, a great many of our members were saying, “Why are we not protected by these measures?” It varies dramatically, depending on whether you are face to face with the audience.
I made the point at a meeting the other day that there are different aspects and challenges that need to be thought through. People need to understand the realities. Football clubs have an issue and a challenge with getting 10,000 people into a stadium and checking that they are Covid vaccinated. However, the staff working on the outside broadcast to film that football match have all been tested and all have to prove negative, but they then have to work their way through and intermingle with audiences. They are fearful for their safety, because they have no idea who they are intermingling with. Logistically, it is a big challenge. Public health has to come first and, as Barry Dallman says, there has to be a realisation that, with every decision that the Government makes in addressing Covid, it needs to be there ready to support, and it needs to have robust measures in place.
One other consequence is that, throughout the pandemic, a number of commercial operators have submitted inquiries to some Scottish theatres to ask whether they would be willing to sell out. As I said, generally during Covid across the UK, the approach of the commercial operators has been to try to reduce staffing costs, reduce terms and conditions and go in the opposite direction from what I believe we are trying to achieve in Scotland. If some organisations are not supported to rebuild in the right way, commercial operators could end up coming in and taking us in the opposite direction. For instance, there have been discussions with some organisations and the Ambassador Theatre Group, which runs the Edinburgh Playhouse, and it is safe to say that that group is horrified by the prospect of fair work principles coming in.
That is at a time when we are trying to take the cultural industries—live events, theatre, film and TV—to new levels and to improve the lives of the people who work in them. You had the earlier discussion with the BBC. People liken the BBC to the big commercial operators in the theatre world. The commissioning tariffs since the introduction of the BBC Scotland channel have, in essence, been a race to the bottom. More and more of BBC Scotland has been sliced off, with power sent away to London in terms of staffing, production and commissioning, and with rates being driven down. People see that, if more commercial operators are allowed to come into the theatre world in Scotland and operate in the same way as the BBC, in effect, we will be going in a diametrically opposite direction from the one that we would prefer to go in, which is about investing in the staff and workforce in Scotland.
Mr Ruskell, do you have a small supplementary question?
It is a very quick one. Clearly, the cultural sector and cultural activity are hugely important in their own right. However, is what the sector does for the rest of society being captured by funding streams? Some cultural organisations do a lot of regeneration and placemaking work. Can they get access to funding to do that kind of stuff, which does not easily fit into one box?
I will go to Mr Dallman first to answer that. If you could try to keep your answers short, that would be helpful.
It is a little difficult for me to say purely from a music point of view, because, with so many freelance members working in such a variety of situations, we represent individual musicians and not organisations. However, I can tell you that most orchestras are doing increasing amounts of outreach work with more emphasis on education and broader cultural engagement than they might have done previously. In years gone by, they would just have run a concert series in a hall. That broader work is tremendously important.
Culture is important not just for the economy but, as I mentioned, as the fabric of our society. It is the thing that everybody turned to during the pandemic. Everyone started watching Netflix, listening to music and consuming culture produced by the creative and cultural industries. It is the heartbeat of our society. There is a big role for the cultural industries to play in linking up with people, in regeneration, in bringing communities together, in reaching out to rural communities and providing access to opportunities, in inspiring people and in showcasing a different range of possibilities from what they have ever received from day-to-day society around them.
That is part of the reason why I am so passionate about our industries and why I believe that they are so important. It goes way beyond the economic impact because it is to do with who we are and how we live our lives. As I mentioned, those things are hard to measure on a spreadsheet, but they are crucial. This is part of a much bigger conversation about the society and the country that we want to live in and what we want life to be like—in terms of quality of life, not just how much money we make or our financial security.
I ask Mr McManus to be brief.
I would like there to be an increasingly strategic approach in all the initiatives. Too often, as I said, we just try to give whatever money we have to as many people as possible who seem to be trying to do the right thing. At some level, we need to sit down and make a conscious decision to try to pull all the different strands together, including the local authorities and the national agencies. We need to come up with a clear strategy for the next five to 10 years and then fund it as best we can. There are always budget pressures, but we need to decide on the proper level of funding that organisations need to deliver our priorities. We cannot go on just trying to chuck money at everybody.
I will explain what I am thinking of when I say that we need to be more strategic. We recognise that the cultural industries are essential for people’s wellbeing and that the more people engage with the cultural industries and sport, the less money will be spent on treatment in hospitals and all the rest of it. However, are we going to get any hospitals or the national health service to put money into culture, given that they have their own bills to pay? Somebody needs to make a decision and say that we can save X amount in hospital bills if we put more into culture. That is what I mean by taking a more holistic and strategic approach across the piece.
Thank you. Your final comment goes into an area that we have not been able to touch on today, which is the importance of the cultural community to the wellbeing economy agenda. In our budget scrutiny, we are focusing on funding for the culture sector, but we have already seen how many other areas it picks up on, including the fair work agenda. We also did not talk about the climate or the net zero targets and how they will affect touring companies and the industry in general, but there is a lot there to discuss.
This is pre-budget scrutiny as the budget is yet to be published, but a touring fund was announced in the programme for government. Also, given that the subject came up, I note that the Government has said that it is committed to providing regular funding by agreeing three-year funding settlements. I am sure that the committee will be interested to see the detail of that, given the evidence that we have heard today.
I thank Mr McManus and Mr Dallman very much for their attendance.
11:13 Meeting continued in private until 11:19.Air ais
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