I welcome to the 20th meeting of the Education and Culture Committee in 2015. Can I remind everybody to ensure that they have all electronic devices switched off? If you don't mind, please. Item 1 on the agenda. I welcome to the committee John Pentland, who has joined us. He is a new member who is here in place of Siobhan McMahon. I just place on the record my appreciation and thanks for the work that Siobhan has done as a member of the committee. She was a member of the committee from the start of the year, so he hasn't been with us that long, but it was good to have Siobhan as a member of the committee during 2015, but can I welcome and join formally to the committee this morning and can I invite John to declare any relevant registrable interests? I, convener, have no relevant interests to declare. Thank you very much, John. Our next item is for us to decide whether to take item 7 in which is to consider our work programme in private. Are members agreed? I agree to thank you. Item 3 this morning, as Siobhan McMahon has left the committee, we will now have to elect a new deputy convener. The Parliament has agreed that members of the Scottish Labour Party are eligible to be chosen as deputy convener. That being the case, can I invite nominations for the position of deputy convener? Mark Griffin is appointed as the deputy convener of the Education and Culture Committee. I thank all of you and, of course, Mark for agreeing to become our new deputy convener and welcome to his post. Item 4 on the agenda is to appoint a new European Union reporter following Siobhan McMahon's resignation from the committee. Can I invite nominations for that post? Mark has been nominated for that. Any other nominations? I take it that it is agreed that Mark Griffin becomes our European Union reporter. That is also agreed. Thank you very much for that. I congratulate Mark Griffin on your two new posts. Can I now turn to the first substantive item on our agenda? This morning, we will begin our work on examining the spending decisions made and the outcomes delivered by some of the key public bodies within our remit. Today's evidence session will be focused on Creative Scotland. I welcome to the committee Janet Archer and Ian Monroe. Good morning to you both, both from Creative Scotland. I believe that Janet Archer is going to give us some opening remarks. I do. Thank you very much. Good morning, convener and members of the committee. I want to start by thanking the committee for inviting us to give evidence this morning. This is an extremely dynamic time for the arts, green and creative industries in Scotland. The Edinburgh festivals have once again announced an increase in audiences and participants. Last year, the Commonwealth Games cultural programme reached thousands of people stretching from Orkney to Glasgow. There are many people in many places across Scotland contributing significantly to the arts, green and creative industries, all of whom will welcome the fact that culture and creativity are being discussed at the heart of government today. Our submission ahead of this session hopefully provides the committee with the detail and information that you need to make positive and constructive recommendations as a result of this inquiry. However, I would like to highlight some key points, if I may. As you know, Creative Scotland was formed as the merger of the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen in 2010 as part of the government's commitment to public sector reform. In addition, we were given a role in supporting the growth of the creative industries. Following a challenging few early years, the organisation took stock in December 2012 and the board made a series of commitments to change. I joined as chief executive in July 2013 with the task of delivering on these commitments, and key to this was the development of our 10-year plan, which we published in April 2014, which in itself was developed through consultation with a reference group and more than 1,000 people working across the arts, green and creative industries. It's a shared plan. It's interesting to note the publication of a widely discussed report earlier this year from the Warwick Commission, which talks about cultural value. It talks about the lack of attention that's been paid to the synergies between the interlocking sectors of the cultural and creative industries, mainly in England. It talks about an ecosystem. We talked deeply about this in Scotland last year when we were discussing our 10-year plan and we worked up what we call the creative system in our plan. In Scotland, we're paying full attention to these connections and working hard to develop an intelligent understanding of them, to strengthen everybody's ability to be able to deliver whatever they do. An important part of this plan was the simplification of our funding systems. We now have three routes to funding—regular funding, open project funding and targeted funding—and this enables us to carefully allocate our £88.5 million annual budget, which comprises grants in aid and national lottery funding. It's important for the committee to note that, across our three routes to funding, we receive more than 4,000 applications for funding each year of which we are able to support about a third. Thankfully, we're able to fund some amazing individuals, projects and organisations, but we also have to turn away more than we would like to support if we had more resources. This was thrown into relief last year when we launched our regular funding programme, which was aimed at providing funding for up to three years for organisations. We set a budget of £100 million for a three-year period subject to amendments if overall budgets change, and we received 212 applications, which in total amounted to almost £250 million worth of applications. The resulting portfolio, rich as it is, is made up of 118 organisations that range from the world-renowned, such as the Edinburgh International Festival, and sent to the moving image, to the locally significant, like Anne Lanter and Stornoway, the culturally vital, such as the Gallic Arts Body for Innovation and Gale, and the emerging, such as the Stove in Dumfries. Inevitably, however, funding decisions create tensions, and, as you've seen in some of the submissions that you have received as part of the inquiry, however, in the majority of cases, our relationship with the high volume of applicants that we engage with, both successful and unsuccessful, is a constructive, open and professional one. There's lots of independently gathered evidence for this, some of which has been presented in our submission, however, one figure that sums this up for me is the percentage of our stakeholders who feel favourably towards Greater Scotland, a figure that has increased from 67% in November 2012 to 91% in March of this year. It's recognised that we've listened and responded to the criticism levied at the organisation three years ago. Of course, there are always things that we can improve on, and everyone at Greater Scotland is committed to continuing to work as hard as we can to do this, to check, to listen and respond. One of the key leadership messages that I have given to my team is to see the organisation as a learning organisation that continues to adapt and respond to deliver the best possible results in everything that we do, even if that means saying no, which is always really hard, and especially when we're saying no to Scottish talent and creative potential. I'd like to finish with just a couple more statistics, which I think are relevant. Firstly, we know that the Scottish House saw the survey that cultural engagement in Scotland is increasing up to 91% in 2013, so more people in Scotland value and take part in cultural activities. Secondly, we know that internationally Scotland's positive reputation is increasing up to its highest level ever according to the nation's brands index. Culture has played a huge role in that reputation, and the ambition and the talent of energy and everyone working in our arts and creative sectors is pivotal to Scotland's continuing confidence and success. Ian and I are both looking forward to this morning's conversation. Before I come to other members, I want to start by taking you back to the merger itself. One of the consequences of the merger was a reduction in the overall number of staff that the new merged organisation had in comparison to the two previous organisations. Do you feel that you now have the necessary expertise and capacity to support the creative sector as Creative Scotland was in place when the two previous organisations existed? Yes. We had 150 staff prior to merger, and we reduced that by about a third. We are now operating with around 100 staff, and we have a number of fixed-term posts that take us up to 110. I was very impressed and pleased with the depth of expertise that my team holds. We have organised ourselves around arts, screen and creative industries. We have a director of arts and engagement, director of screen and director of creative industries. All of whom have come from respected and recognised long histories of working in the field. We have a team of team leads for individual specialists across the art forms, dance theatre, music, visual arts, literature and publishing, screen team and creative industries. I am confident that, as an organisation, we hold expertise. We are all pushed for time. Clearly, as we become more well-known and we generate increased numbers of applications from across the work that we serve, there is always pressure in terms of the administrative question that the organisation has in delivering funding. We think that we do that well now. We think that we are efficient, and the feedback that we are getting from people out there is that we are operating in an effective way. Can you give some detail about where the 50 were reduced from? Which areas of the business effectively lost staff? If you are saying that you have the necessary expertise and capacity to support the creative sector with the 110 staff that you currently have, in which areas were there cuts? Can you expand on that a little bit? Obviously, all organisations, particularly public bodies, have a lot of other duties that they have to perform. They have to meet the qualities duties and lots of other work that they must do, which is not necessarily part of their front-line operation, which is, in your case, supporting the creative sector in Scotland. Do you feel that the core purpose of the organisation is any way affected by the losses that have occurred in staff? What is the balance between the amount of work that is done doing other things and supporting the organisation in meeting all your public sector duties and your front-line core activities? I will say a few words if I may, and then I will pass on to Ian Monroe, who holds the corporate history of the organisation. From my perspective, when funding organisations reduce their staff, the first thing that goes is the development role of the organisation. All those careful conversations, advice-giving and working to ensure that the knowledge that the organisation holds is properly shared and disseminated out into the field in order to support the things that people do. We simply do not have time to do as much of that as perhaps we might if we had more people. Ian, I do not know whether you want to add to that. It is worth recognising that the financial memorandum that accompanied the public sector reform bill set a head count for Creative Scotland at the point of creation. That is what led to the number that we are sitting at at the moment. The process that surrounded that journey from 150 down to 100 to 110 principally took the form of four rounds of voluntary severance. It was through a process of self-volunteering by staff, and therefore there was not necessarily control where everyone who was requesting voluntary severance was to be accepted. In the end, the majority of not all staff who were accepted on that basis left the organisation in certain quarters, however, since then, because of the process of recruitment where there have been further opportunities for staff to come into the organisation, we have been very careful to understand what the needs are looking forward as an organisation to therefore begin to target where we were able to attract the right skills and expertise into the organisation. I think that the balance is reasonable overall. I think that there are certain areas where we will want to keep a very close eye on how we can move forward, but the balance for us about ensuring that we have the maximum resources available to the front line in terms of skills and expertise and finances against the administration overhead that we have that we are keen to ensure that we continue to manage very tightly. We are very clear that we need to keep that balance in very close scrutiny. Kate Scotland has developed a number of strategies and sector reviews, and you mentioned the 10-year plan. How are actions proceeding? What progress are you making against those various strategies, reviews and plans, when do you expect to start seeing and reporting on the results of those? We produced the 10-year plan last April, and we said that we would produce an arts strategy, a screen strategy and a creative industry strategy. We have taken the screen strategy first, published, and it is now a year old. We are currently scrutinising the impact of that, and we will produce a report very shortly. The creative industry strategy is about to be published in draft form. That has taken a bit longer, partly because we appointed our permanent director of creative industries last this June. He has been in post for a matter of months. He has already produced the strategy and it has been discussed with our other public sector partners. We are almost at a point now where that will go out for public consultation. We will start reviewing how we are performing against it. The arts and engagement strategy is going to be published once we have completed the suite of sector reviews, which the organisation committed to three years ago. We are just finishing the visual arts sector review. We have just published the literature and publishing sector review. Once that is in tray, we will produce the arts strategy. We have a series of performance measures that are articulated in our annual plan. Under the 10-year plan, we produce an annual plan on a 12-month basis. In that, we set a set of performance measures that we are reporting against. Our first report, which will be set against our benchmark for the first year, will be published this autumn. You mentioned, as well, the research that you carried out about perception and relationships and trust with the sector. After the emergency, you mentioned a jump in satisfaction from 6 to 71 per cent, just to ask whether there are any specific areas where work still needs to be done to build trust and rebuild relationships? I think that it is an on-going piece of work. To be honest, an organisation like us should never ever get complacent. It is our job to listen hard to the feedback that we get from all quarters and respond to it as and when it comes in. The challenge that we face as an organisation is that we have to say no to some applicants, sometimes very painfully, even when they are very strong applications, because we simply do not have the resource or budget like any other public sector body to deliver to everyone. We have to make judgments, we have to make decisions. What is really important to me is that we explain those decisions really clearly and the rationale behind them. When we had our regular funding round just before Christmas, my team made a proactive decision to meet every single applicant that wanted to meet who had not been successful. We spent probably about six weeks of our time meeting people who were genuinely quite distressed. Some of those meetings were very difficult, and when we did not resolve or were not able to explain in that first meeting, we went back and had another meeting until we got to a position where things settled and things were clear. Then we started to encourage people to think about other routes of funding, both within Creative Scotland, but also making sure that people knew what the opportunities were outside of Creative Scotland in order to be able to apply funding for the things that they wanted to do. I do not think that that job of work ever stops. I think that is an ongoing process for us. I would agree. The bread and butter of our organisation, if I can call it that, is built on discussion, discourse and debate. It is really important that we organise ourselves in a way that ensures that we have easy connections into and through the organisation and staff that are genuinely engaged on an ongoing basis throughout the year. What we have been doing over the past couple of years is to reorganise ourselves in a way that enables that to happen most effectively. It continues to be a work in progress, and it is really important that we are seen and have a presence throughout the geography of Scotland on a regular basis, while acknowledging that we have limitations in capacity. It is really important that we are connected in that way through the staff and the expertise that they hold. We have organised ourselves around four areas of work. Funding is one advocacy, and championing the work of the sectors that we serve is another development, which is really about working in partnership with others to draw in and create the conditions for funding to be provided from other places, as well as us as one, and influencing so that we can use all of the knowledge that we hold and make it publicly available as a public body for anyone to use to inform the work that they want to do across arts and culture and creative industries in Scotland. You mentioned the sector's view of the organisation and improving from a satisfaction rate of 67, which was up to 91 per cent. What do you think is responsible for that impressive change? Partly, it is to do with the language that we speak. It is important that we communicate with people on their terms, so that we do not try and superimpose a dialect and a language that does not work. Across our remit, we have very different constituencies, so we have the arts sector, artists and arts organisations, but we also have the commercial creative end of the spectrum. As an organisation, we need to be dexterous and multilingual. I think that one of the things that came through from our reference group in developing the plan was that Creative Scotland needs to be multilingual. It needs to speak different languages, depending on which constituency it is talking to. I think that we are starting to become more adept at being able to do that. I listened carefully to your contribution in an extremely dynamic time.  You have given us a good pitch here today. As an MSP for the Highlands and Islands, I think that the remaining 9 per cent would probably belong to Uncommon Gallic and traditional music and song. If I can just read out very briefly what they say, Uncommon Gallic, I do not see anything that leads me to believe that changes have helped us to engage with Creative Scotland. Our community is excluded. As a non-beneficiary of Creative Scotland, it is impossible to speak about tangible benefits. Creative Scotland, I am shocked at this one, provides no support whatsoever for the national mod, and, sadly, from our point of view, they fail the Gallic community. Taking a few lessons in Gallic is not exactly going to bridge that gap. Why has that happened? Why do you feel this community? Why is there such a gap in empathy, understanding and support for the Gallic community from Creative Scotland? I want to tell you a little bit about what we do fund in respect of Gallic, which is the language that we are very interested in and we are very interested in Gallic culture and everything that it has to offer. Organisations that have a substantial focus on Gallic received 6.4 per cent of the overall regular funding budget when we made decisions last year. That is a number of organisations. That is Anne Lanter, Atlas Arts, Fais Roche, Fais Ni Gael, de Kershiva, the Gallic Books Council, the National Piping Centre and Tracks. Can I ask you to respond to the question that I asked you rather than giving me another pitch? In respect of the mod, we are interested in the mod. It is a highly successful and very strong part of Gallic culture. It is unfortunate that an application was submitted for open project funding. It was not successful. As I understand it, I had an email this morning from our Gallic officer. Dialogue is already taking place in respect of how that application could be strengthened in respect of the 2016 mod for next year. We are in closed dialogue. It is also important to say that our funding has to be used in places where funding is genuinely needed. In some instances, if something is incredibly successful without funding, and when we get an application in a panel where something is not successful without funding, then we have to make a judgment based on intervening where funding is absolutely necessary in order for something to happen. I understand that, but perhaps the witnesses may agree to give that in writing. However, I really want to know, as an MSP from the Highlands and Islands, why the organisation, which is totally respected in the Gallic community, feels that they have been so badly let down by Creative Scotland. If there is not time for you to address that today, convener, or I give you one more chance to do that, I have one other question that I want to ask. Why are they so marginalised? Why do they feel so excluded? Why do they feel so let down from Creative Scotland? I think that it is because they have not been funded by Creative Scotland. From what I understand, we have had a number of discussions and dialogues with the organisation this year, and we will continue to have dialogue and discussion. I have a long track record of meeting with organisations personally, myself, in many instances. I have not met with this organisation directly myself, but I am very happy to do that if there are still issues that have not been resolved by my team in dialogue with them. My second question is about the traditional music and song. Any of us with grey hairs that I have got and lived in Scotland all my life only has to look along the patrons—Allie Bain, Phil Cunningham, Barbara Dixon, Archie Fisher and Sheena Wellington—known to anyone who has lived all their life in Scotland. I find it very sad to hear that they are constantly having to make the case for traditional arts and music to be considered equally among other art forms. I would like you to address that. The second point, which is on page 2 of their submission, the third paragraph, is that they are looking for £5,000. The project was about supporting young musicians to develop their career as well as bringing their music to diverse communities around Scotland—£5,000. They tell us that your rule is to have only one live application for any project at a time, but they have been excluded. They are not asking for much, but the funding that they get can transform young lives and keep our Scottish culture of traditional music alive. Why are they having so many difficulties with you? I cannot comment on that particular application, but I will go back and— I have seen their submission. I assume that you have read their submission. I have. I can say that traditional music, song and storytelling are incredibly important to me. My background is dance. My first form of dancing was highland dancing because my father was very keen that I connect with my Scottish heritage. I fully understand the importance of traditional art forms in Scotland. Open project funding is competitive. We fund about 30% of the applications that we get, and we always have to say no to good strong applications that come into us because of the resources that we have available to spend in respect of that project funding. What we always do is talk to applicants when they want to talk to us to help them to strengthen their applications to be more competitive the next time that they come in. We are also in the process of reviewing the way that we deliver open project funding. We have had a number of comments from a range of organisations in respect of the issue around only being able to have one application in at a time. We are looking at that, and we are about to announce a refreshment of the guidelines for open project funding. Ian, I do not know whether you want to add anything to that. Is Scottish traditional music and song treated equally to all— It is. Well, they do not feel that. Historically, Creative Scotland had budgets that were ring-fenced around art forms and different areas of work. When I joined the organisation, I got rid of all of that, so now we have one open project fund, and everybody who applies to it is treated in the same way, no matter what their specialism is. There is the opportunity for traditional music and song to increase its funding based on the strength of its application in every way, as equal way, as everybody else who applies. We still need to work harder on communicating the changes in the way that we are funding and the way that we have addressed some of those historical issues. I take your point in respect of the need to do that. I think that a few tips up to E9 to Inverness would not be unhelpful. We will do that. Indeed, I have visited Inverness on a number of occasions. I enjoy it very much. I just add that it is worth recognising that we also convene—this is not an internal group, it is an external group, a traditional arts group, which includes all those who are working in traditional arts from music and dance and song and storytelling across Scotland. We convene that group. TMSA is a very strong and passionate advocate for the work that they do within the scope of that bigger and broader group. I think that it is an important role that they undertake. I would echo Janet's point, though, that absolutely traditional arts are respected and valued and are welcome within the open project funding. However, the example that you have given is a small amount of money, but it does absolutely illustrate the very tough choices that we have to make in terms of the volume of applications against the available funding resource that we have. I would like to ask a few questions about performance measurement and value for money. Perhaps starting with a very basic question, is there any inherent difficulty in defining and measuring the quartet of outcomes, given the remit of Creative Scotland, and how do you approach that? We are just in the process now of looking at how we assess quality, which is always a challenge for any public funder. We have just got to conclusion. We have been working with a reference group of external experts to pull together an approach to create what we are broadly calling an artistic and creative assessment framework. What that will do is it will build up a bank of expertise from staff in respect of properly recording and accounting for staff judgment in relation to artistic and creative expertise across the work that we fund. We will be working with a group of peers to produce peer reports, which will be part of that suite of tools that we will use to affect judgments. We will also take into account what sits in the wider public domain in relation to critical feedback, but also public feedback, which is now readily available to all of us in terms of social media. All of that will feed into the judgments that we make in respect of artistic and creative expertise. We are about to pilot that work. We will soon be announcing a pilot programme with a small number of organisations, because we need to take that very carefully. Once that is concluded and providing that we have the resources available to deliver it, we will roll that out more widely. Do you think that your current means of measuring and analysing quality is adequate? I do. I think that we have a—I can confidently say that we have experts who are respected both in Scotland but as importantly respected outside of Scotland in terms of the expertise that they hold. When we judge artistic and creative quality in an application, we take their views into account, but we also pull in other views across the organisation to be able to ensure that we have carried out a thoroughly robust process in terms of deciding whether something is strong or has the potential to be strong, which is important to us as well. Much of what you are talking about is very internalised internal analysis. Surely the final judgement is by the public. How do you measure that? We talk to the sector, so the artistic and creative communities that are part of our remit are people that we have ongoing daily dialogue with, and we listen hard in respect of views that people hold. In respect of the public, we have a very strong social media presence with a large number of Twitter followers, many of whom will comment on a daily basis in respect of work that they have seen. Through that, we build up a bank of expertise in terms of public view. I still get a very strong impression that this is quite an internal process in terms of judgment, but let me move on to something else. A comment has been made that Creative Scotland focuses a great deal on niche and specialist output as opposed to material that is attractive to wider audiences. How would you comment on that? I think the audience figures that have come through most recently in respect of the increase in audiences for the Edinburgh festivals signals that much of the work that we support is playing out to wide reach. That is incrementally increasing year on year. We will be in a position this autumn to have substantive data in place because we have systemised that, which will give us a sense of how well Scotland is doing compared to other nations in terms of its audiences for arts and creative events. My instinct in coming into Scotland two years ago was that audiences are good and strong in Scotland, not only in the central belt but beyond. I read with interest to see that Tam Dean Byrn, when he rode his bicycle last year from Orkney through Scotland down to Glasgow, was attracting—I think he had about 900 people who went to hear his stories on Orkney, which was very positive to hear. What we need to do is absolutely generate tangible data to be able to make sure that we can tell that story in an evidence-based way. We have now systemised the process of doing that, and we will be able to do that from the end of this year. How do you balance the question of supporting more niche performances versus the need to cater for the larger population? I would question whether, across the piece, everything that we do is only supporting niche audiences in Venice. The Edencourt Theatre is one of the most successful theatres outside of London. It only does that through playing out to a wide audience that comes in from a wide conference around the venue and the product that it produces and presents is very much geared towards a broader audience, and in Venice is one of our core regularly funded organisations. Perhaps looking at another aspect of Creative Scotland, Creative Scotland has got responsibility for allocating funding, but it has also got a responsibility for providing developmental and advocacy support for the creative sectors. Is that a conflict of interest? No, I would say that it is absolutely intertwined. In order to be a good funder, we have to have a good strong sense of what the developmental needs of each of the sectors that we serve are, and we have to make sure that we fund in a way that makes sense, that is strategic, that delivers proper resources and support for Scotland to be able to unlock its creative potential in as wide a way as is possible. Perhaps this is the final quick question on the film or your film strategy. There has been criticism, I think, that Creative Scotland has no clear objectives in respect of film strategy. How would you comment on that? I would point you to our screen strategy, our film strategy, which is now up on line. It's been published for a year. It has five clear objectives around film education, talent and skills development, film development and production, inward investment and co-production and exhibition and audiences. We're very clear in respect of what we're doing. We're already starting to see rewards come from that. Film production in Scotland is now over 40 million, I think, in the last year. That's a significant increase from previous years, so we're starting to see a real impact. We have had a number of conversations with a number of producers who want to bring productions to Scotland. I was really pleased to see that Trainspotting 2 has just been announced, so Andrew McDonald, Danny Boyle, is now committed to that with, I think, most of the original cast. We saw in the press, I think, a day or two ago, that Chris Young is now developing a, we're back to Inverness, a new television series which will be set in Inverness. We've seen Sunset Song, which is Bob Last's production, which has just premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, which has done incredibly well. I could talk for quite a while, but probably that's not appropriate. Okay, thank you. Check supplementary. Good morning, and nice to see you again. On that last question, you know that after the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee had our session with you, there was a lot of angst about the lack of a film strategy and about the fact that we'd slipped from second in the UK in terms of film production to fifth. Let me ask you, if I may, two questions. One is, do you believe that we are going to have a film studio in three years' time? And the second one is, CMI, the Centre for Moving Images, criticised the lack of clear objectives in relation to a CS's film strategy. And in fact, it said that while CS plans to translate the strategy into a work plan, there were no KPIs, no measurable objectives. Now, you know, we wish you well, but in terms of measuring performance, with such a critical item that was broadcast, not just in Scotland, why don't we have a meaningful, measurable strategy or objectives in that strategy? And I'd like your confirmation that we will have the film studio in three years. We do have meaningful, measurable outcomes. So why does CMI say you don't? The strategy has been translated into work plan, we use that internally. We're very happy to share that and what we'll be doing is producing a report after year one of the film strategy being in existence and we will make that public. So that will come into play and already the impact of that strategy is tangible and we can evidence success against the work that's been taken place through that strategy. We've announced a skills fund and just delivered that and made decisions in respect to the partners that will be delivering that fund with us. So that was a million pounds, it was announced a week or so ago and we've just also been pleased to work with our partners at the Scottish Government to produce a new £1.75 million production growth fund and what that will do is unlock opportunity for more production to take place in Scotland. So incrementally, we are beginning to track real genuine success in respect to film and as I say it's certainly increasing the appetite of producers not just in Scotland but from beyond Scotland to want to come and work here in this nation and in respect of the film studio. The film studio is a commercial proposition, it has to be a commercial proposition because... It has a bearing on your costs going forward. There must be some element of the attachement, maybe not the capital spend, but there must be some element that goes forward as part of your 10-year plan. We have a film production fund of £4 million and we've now increased that by £1.75 million and that is attached to production both linked to a film studio but also beyond. We do have a film studio in Scotland in fact. We've seen Outlander and the production that it's been able to generate £20 million in the last year, incredibly successful and there's the opportunity to build on that. There are also production facilities in other parts of Scotland on Sky and so on. So there are a number of pop-up spaces which provide quite a significant amount of space for film production companies to use. Forgive me, we were talking at the time about how we move Scotland from fifth, hopefully back up to second. I prefer first but up to second. These pop-up film studios were there then. We were talking about the progressive future for the film industry in Scotland. I'm as driven and passionate about the need to develop a film studio in Scotland as you are. In fact, at this very moment there's a meeting taking place with Scottish Government colleagues and Scottish Enterprise to discuss the film studio and if I wasn't here or if Ian and I weren't here we'd be there keeping the momentum going in terms of that conversation. So I think we're all aware. There's a commercial proposition on the table. It looks very exciting. I think all of the players involved are feeling increasingly confident in respect of the film studio coming into realisation and we just have to wait until the processes that need to be gone through are delivered before that can be made public. So I think the answer is a possible maybe. I'm smiling. A hopeful possible maybe. Liam. I think what I would say is it's absolutely fundamental, really important. It's right there as a top line in our screen strategy. It has been signed up to you by our board as a priority and we're doing everything within our power to encourage and foster an environment where that becomes a reality. Liam, did you have a supplementary on that? Yeah, it was back more to the line of question that Colin had initially. Gordon, you're a question that probably fits in here. Yeah, it's basically along the lines of you mentioned the production growth fund at £1.75 million. I'm understanding that's an incentive to try and encourage more film and TV productions to come to Scotland and be based in Scotland. I also serve in the economy energy and sorry, tourism committee. I'm sure I. We did a report as you're aware into creative industries and it was a concern about lift and shift where we had TV production companies that would come up to Scotland and bring their own crew, their own technicians, their own actors, producers, directors, writers, be here for a few weeks, film it and shoot off back down south again. You know, the guidance, I understand, is being written for this production growth fund, but is there going to be anything within that guidance that is going to address that issue so that independent television production companies that are based in Scotland will get a share of this production growth fund? Absolutely, and Ian can talk in a bit more detail about that. Yeah, I think. It's title is important. It's called a production growth fund as opposed to an inward investment fund for that very reason. I think it's there to signal the fact that what we want to see is an opportunity for growth in Scotland be that from indigenous talent skills and production on its own or in playing alongside from those overseas. So I think it's really important and that this will be a clear point within the production growth fund guidance when it is made available and public and open for business later in October. I would be with you in saying everything we do has to be about both nurturing and growing talent here but also keeping talent here. It's fundamentally important. It distresses me when people take up opportunities elsewhere because they can't deliver things in Scotland and we have to focus everything that we do on that. Thank you very much for clearing that up. I've got one more question about regular funding. It's just going back to the point about measurables and the outcome of the Scottish Household Survey. I think that from the previous discussions that we had, maybe shortly after Mewtwo Cup posts, there was a discussion around whether or not Creative Scotland was better at broadening and deepening the engagement that it had with people that already had some element of engagement with the arts in whatever form rather than spreading it out to those who didn't have that engagement, either for socioeconomic reasons or extreme reality or whatever it may be. Can you point to anything in terms of what's come back through the evidence, whether it's through the Household Survey, whether it's through the work that you do with Ipsos Moray or whatever, that suggests that you're managing to crack that question of engaging with those that previously haven't had engagement? If you are doing that, is there much you can do by way of deepening and broadening that engagement rather than it simply being a tick box exercise? We've reached them. We'll move on and get back to those that it's easier to engage with. Yes, it's very important to me that we reach out beyond those people who would, as a matter of course, have access to arts and culture into people and communities who wouldn't ordinarily have access for whatever sort of reason. We have fed equalities, diversity and inclusion as a core connecting theme across everything that we do in our plan. We published a mainstreaming report which begins to outline how we might do that. This year, we're carrying out an equality, diversity and inclusion review, which is, for me, one of the most important pieces of work that we're doing as an organisation. We're doing that in two phases. We're looking at what we do internally as an organisation, but we're also looking at the organisations that we fund and what they do in respect of equality, diversity and inclusion. We want everyone to think hard about how they can reach out beyond what some would say the same or people that always access the arts and creative activities. The work that we do in some of our ring fence programmes, for example, youth music and through our youth arts hubs and through cashback for creativity, I think, is exemplary in terms of its reach. We've got some very robust evidence coming through reports around those programmes, which is beginning to signal that the arts have a significant impact in the lives of children and young people in a very impactful way into communities that wouldn't ordinarily have access to provision and all of those reports are available to read. Don't press it, so just leave it. The general reference earlier that we've been systemising the way that we collect the data and the stories from those that we fund and be able to present that back in the form of an annual report, and I think that we'll be able to tell the story over a number of years, but at the very point that you're asking. The other thing that we hold is quite an in-depth survey. We refer to some of the data here in our submission with a company TNS that undertake that work with us, and it complements the Scottish Household Survey. I think that there's probably more that we can do to share that information, and we will be looking to do that in a way that enables, again, this story to be seen and understood and then tracked over time, because this is an annual process that we go through to undertake that survey. If we get better at presenting the stories back out, people will be able to see and understand that more effectively. Back to the point that I think that Janet made earlier on about the number of difficult decisions that you need to make against a constrained budget and a wealth of applications for support. Presumably that work in terms of broadening the reach of the arts will increase the number of difficult decisions that have to be made in relation to people who perhaps have had quite a tradition of engaging with the arts and support through Creative Scotland or, indeed, through its predecessor bodies. Are you managing those expectations or can we look forward to further contributions to this committee along the lines that Mary Scanlon treated us too early on, which probably reflect a disappointment at not being able to draw down funding that previously had been available to me? Some of this work is about making the work that's already being produced more widely available, but also interpreting it and connecting with people in a way in which it's much more accessible for them. That's not necessarily about doing things in different ways and making sure that every seat in a theatre every exhibition gallery is full and that ways are found to reach out and engage with people from all places. I think there's still capacity within our existing portfolio of work to reach out more widely than is currently taking place. There's some really strong evidence in respect of why that's important. In our submission, we referenced a report that was produced through the cultural learning alliance in 2011. If you delve into that report, it talks about how participation in arts activities can increase cognitive abilities and how taking part in structured music activities improves attainment in maths. There's some very important reasons why we need to encourage our arts organisations to connect out. That report also talks about the fact that students from low-income families are three times more likely to get a degree. That's very compelling for reaching out more widely to communities. Interestingly, in the middle of that report, it says that children and young people who are involved in arts and cultural activities are 20 per cent more likely to vote, so another reason in terms of contribution. Can I add one further thing, which is to understand the process of decision making that we go through, particularly on the open project fund? There's one component part of that against which people apply and against which we would undertake an assessment to inform the decision. Open project funding runs throughout the year. As we go throughout the year, those decision making panels get statistical and data reports that enable us to really understand the map of what is coming in and what is being supported so that we can be mindful of the extent to which public engagement is a component part of the work that we are supporting. Find and tune our decision making to make sure that we are addressing the widest geography of Scotland, for example, in the process that we go through for open project funding. Can I say one more thing? This has to be about us asking the right questions. Just by the very fact of us asking organisations when they apply to us, what are you doing about diversity and equality and inclusion is starting to accelerate the thought and care that people that we fund are putting into widening their reach. We saw that in our regularly funded applications. We had some extraordinary, compelling narratives and propositions that were put forward to us in respect of this area. That was very heartwarming. I've got George and then Gordon and then we'll move on to the next area with Chick and Mary. I would like to ask—I'm just what Janet Brown said about engaging with young people in the arts and culture and making such a difference in areas of deprivation—that can be used as an example. As far as I'm concerned, all roads lead to Paisley. I had a wee look to see what Creative Scotland had done in the Renfrewshire Council area. There was absolutely zero funding from the three-year programme, from the fund that you managed for the national lottery. That seems bizarre to me, because I could tell you as the local MSP for one part of Renfrewshire that there are three or four projects that are looking for funding from that side of things. If we are backing up the idea that my constituency is one of the biggest areas of deprivation, why are we not going down the route? Is it the fact that there is nobody making applications or is it because we've made applications and they haven't actually been successful? I find it strange that we don't have that in that area, considering the cultural impact that the great town of Paisley has had in the world. That's not just me. I, too, have a concern about that. This morning, at about 6 am, I was busy scrutinising the areas that we don't fund. It's eastern Frewshire, as you say, it's Renfrewshire, it's South Lanarkshire and Clackmanarkshire. All of those areas are areas where we have some work through some of our ring fence programmes play into Ayrshire, but not in relation to regular funding for sure. We fund 21 out of the 32 local authorities, have got regularly funded organisations and clearly we need to focus on looking at how we can better extend out to more local authorities in the future. We have a place team, so we have a directorate of strategy whose remit is to look at how we can develop relationships with local authorities across Scotland and work effectively to ensure that we can make sure that across Scotland there is good delivery into every place. We know where the gaps are and that's not good enough and we need to do something about that. Because you've already stated the difference that we can make to education attainment regularly in the committee and that culture has a serious impact on that as well. One of the things that I was quite shocked with so much that we don't seem to have any applications coming from Renfrewshire and Paisley in particular is that Paisley is bidding for the 2021 city of culture. I find that bizarre that there's been no work going backwards and forwards with local authorities and others to get towards that bid and to make sure that we're in a position when it's announced in 2007 that surely there will be some conform of strategy and working together at this stage. There is and we are talking to Paisley about UK city of culture and looking at how we can align our support into that bid. We're just giving them no funding. I think that you'll find that that will change once we co-ordinate an approach to strengthening applications coming through. We've just had news that Paisley have appointed their, I don't know whether it's secret or not, they've just appointed their lead for the delivery of the bid. It's someone who we have a very strong relationship with and who will be incredibly dynamic in terms of shaping and I know that we will work very closely with Paisley in respect of delivering that bid. As indeed we will with any other propositions that come forward from other places in Scotland for the place that you've come to. I'll tell you truth on the board a bit of the rest. Of course, George is interested in all the areas of Scotland in this committee. Maybe just in that vein actually, not to focus on Paisley specifically but a couple of points really, general points. I think it's worth recognising that work does travel and that audiences within Paisley and Renfrewshire and Ayrshire and Cluck Manusure and so on do benefit from those that we already support. That's not to say that we wouldn't want to be able to support those directly. The second point is one where we recognise that we often need to have very targeted conversations in certain areas in order to build capacity and confidence and generate and stimulate ideas and be able to have those discussions that will lead to better quality applications that stand a greater chance of success or indeed stimulate some new and fresh ideas. The place-based working that Janet Reffair referred to has other parts of the countries as good examples of that in Dumfries and Galloway, for example, in Aberdeenshire, for example, where quite targeted conversations through place partnership working can really stimulate and improve the overall level of support that's available in certain parts of the country. I think it's also important to say that institutions are important but so are individuals and Scotland has an incredibly rich mix of individuals who are doing all sorts of different kinds of creative things often in very small ways but very impactful ways and it's important that we support the individuals that come to us to be able to move and work in many different places across Scotland as well as the place where they're based and as Ian says, touring and it is important within that. Our art strategy will focus both on supporting institutions but also I think probably quite prominently really thinking hard about what our responsibility is in respect of individuals and micro enterprises who make a tangible difference to communities often can make a bigger difference to communities through their effort than large institutions. As an Edinburgh MSP, I'm more than happy with the level of funding that comes from Creative Scotland. I am aware about a fifth of the population of Scotland that doesn't get any funding on the regular funding from the national lottery money but what I wanted to ask you about was this £100 million fund that you spend over three years. The average allocation is £33 million per year but at the end of 2014-15 the £6 million of that hadn't been drawn down and 11 per cent of organisations who had been awarded funding hadn't received any money. Can you explain why that situation has arisen? Do they then get that shortfall in year 2 and 3 or is that money a loss to that organisation? I'll ask Ian to explain that. It's to do with the profiling of the way that money is distributed. The organisations that are in receipt of regular funding, we have an annual process of contracting with those organisations and what they have done at the start in year 1 of their three-year regular funding agreement is to profile how they would plan to expend over the course of three years subject to resources in years 2 and 3 being available. That's partly the answer that lies behind that. The other is one of a matter of timing of being able to agree the funding agreements with the organisation. The direct answer to the question is no, the money is not lost. It's just a matter of timing and profiling. If it's a three-year package of £100 million, are we in a situation to understand the point about profiling? Will the lottery allow that money to be carried forward from year to year? The way in which the budget's work is granted from the Scottish Government has an annual income and expenditure profile that has to be pretty exact. National Lottery, we seek to employ the same rules around that, the same basis, but the actual nature of it enables us to flex over years and that's why you will see our ability. It's mainly capital that has the biggest effect on this, the ability to be able to play the budgets through over a number of years in the way that we can both cash profile as well as budget. Just to follow on the question of funding, I'd like to talk about governance and also the tangible benefits that may come from funding. Before I do, I have to say that Paisley is on the route from Ayr to Glasgow. I'd like to talk about Ayr. In terms of looking at Ayrshire, where we had no non-regular funding, there's certainly frustration in terms of getting funding. I don't know what the criteria is, but I'd like to send you a link that two young filmmakers have made a film about second world war, aircrafts and interesting film, very short, but it couldn't get any funding, and I couldn't get any funding for them either. Just on the funding, can you tell me what your revenue expenditure budget was last year and what you actually spent in terms of your direct spend, not yet? Operation Loan Heads or Grants? In terms of revenue expenditure budget for grants and loans, what did you actually spend? We are undertaking our annual accounts at the moment. It's going to our board for sign-off next week, and we'll be publishing that November-December time. That includes all those figures. I'm sorry that I don't have them to hand, but I'm happy that we can share that with the committee. I think that that was one of the concerns that we had in terms of not spending up to the budget before. Can I come back to governance, which again was another issue at the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee, when there was a question raised about who calls the shots and where does the buck stop, etc? In the papers submitted to us, we had a comment from Common Guild that made an interesting point that Great Scotland's ability to manage the difficult funding process has been undermined by the Scottish Government's decision to fund Scottish Youth Theatre despite the company's failure to secure funding. Do you believe that you have control of all spending related to culture in Scotland? The honest answer to that is that we don't have control of all spending, because we don't have control over the spending in respect of the national companies and national galleries as those are funded directly by the Government. Surely you have a responsibility for the Scottish Youth Theatre? We decided not to fund the Scottish Youth Theatre as part of our decisions around regular funding on the basis that we had to make judgments and decisions set against a finite budget. Scottish Youth Theatre assessed very strongly, like a number of other organisations, that we also decided not to fund through that route. We are now working with Scottish Youth Theatre through the different routes of funding that they have been able to generate to support them to transition and strengthen their opportunity next time around. Frankly, that is an unacceptable answer. I know that we had this big discussion about where the buck stopped and it was agreed that Creative Scotland would do it. You have a responsibility to say that you are working with Scottish Youth Theatre who got funding elsewhere, and elsewhere was the Scottish Government. Either you are in control of all the funding and the strategy that goes with it or you are not. It is disappointing to find that we have a sum of money allocated to an organisation for which you have strategic involvement in terms of the strategy and your strategy, and yet there is a sum of money that has been given to them by giving you a body swear. What was your reaction to that? I think that the way I reflected on that is that additional money was found for the arts. As the organisation that has the responsibility for generating opportunity for the arts, any additional money is welcome. We were comfortable at that stage on that decision on the basis that Scottish Youth Theatre scored well in its assessment. It scored exceedingly well in some of the areas of its application. A number of organisations that were on the cusp of getting funding fell below the line where we had to draw a close on the budget, and therefore we were not able to fund them at that point. That means that you are not in control of your strategy. If somebody else can fund part of your strategy, you are not in control of it. However, let me just ask somebody else. Currently, in the economy committee, we have been looking at the internationalisation of Scottish business, of which culture, crafts and such are very important. When did you last meet the digital games industry, and what discussions did you have with them regarding internationalisation of their sales? We worked with Scottish Enterprise around the digital media industry leadership group. I hope that I have that right. Through Clive Gilman, our director of creative industries, we are going to be carrying out reviews recommended by the committee of the games industry, its impact. Out of that, we will come a more focused, shared approach in terms of how we can When did you meet them last? I would have to go back and check the exact date of when the last meeting took place. Will you agree that a critical part of the overall... I do. Certainly feedback from people outside of Scotland, and I was talking to someone involved in the creative industries in Paris. Perception in terms of Scotland's brand is that craft and games are two pivotal areas of quite potent brand recognition for Scotland. We need to work very closely with the games industry in respect to how we help to continue to build on the huge strengths that we have developed already as a nation. I just wanted to return without reopening up Scottish Youth Theatre as such, but I wanted to record the fact that there are very robust conversations around that particular and I would suggest unique circumstances. The second thing is that we are in the process of discussing with the Scottish Government about a refreshed framework agreement, which is the formal governance structure between the Scottish Government and Creative Scotland about the very governance issues of the kind that you are referring to. It is under discussion at our board next week and will be published online in due course, but that will set out with absolute clarity the relative and respective roles and responsibilities. I am conscious that I declare interest as the father of a son who benefited enormously from a residential course at SYT this summer, but following on the responses to the question, you describe it as a unique circumstance. Other people would describe it as a precedent and I think that there is a concern that unsuccessful applicants go through a robust process that you have described and where uncomfortable, unpopular decisions have to be made can then go off and seek solace from the Scottish Government that you are inviting a process that in a sense has now an alternative route to it. I cannot see how that can be avoided in subsequent years. Many organisations seek to make direct representation to the Scottish Government about funding decisions that we take. The cabinet secretary is very clear about the extent to which she has no locus in the decision making of Creative Scotland. There was a unique circumstance there and I think that the way that we have ensured that the framework agreement with the Scottish Government sets out the very clear relationships should guard against situations such as that in the future. Yes, we have a list of the monies that you have given to organisations and allocated, but I wonder if I can ask a question. How open and transparent is your process? If an organisation applies for funding, it does not meet your criteria in terms of tangible benefits or connecting themes or whatever. Are they given the reasons for refusal? Is their feedback given and would we be able to go into your website to see why organisations have not been given the funding that they have requested? How open is it? We do talk to individual organisations in depth in respect of how we make decisions. It is important to say that sometimes organisations meet all of our criteria and we still are not able to fund them because of the resources that we have available to us. We will share a written assessment with an organisation if they are unsuccessful or if they are successful, which gives them exactly how we have evaluated their application set against their artistic proposition, against their governance and management, against their financial resilience, against their audience reach. We will talk through that directly with folk when they want feedback from us. We do not publish those reports online because it would be against the individual interests of the organisations involved. I do not think that that would be a popular move in terms of organisations that have put in an application that has not gone through. They might feel that it prejudices their chances of getting that application strengthened up and being successful next time round, but we are certainly very open on a one-to-one basis with individual applicants. We are getting much better and, in many instances, we are very good at providing sensitive, clear, direct and honest feedback. In some instances, that simply means pressure on funds when we had to make strategic decisions and fund something that we overtyped or in a place where we have not funded things before, not necessarily because the proposition that is coming forward is not very strong. That is a tough call. The level of detail that you expect in funding applications, it sounds from some of the submissions that we have today, that you seem to have created a very bureaucratic process. If I could go back to the traditional music and song association, it suggests that organisations and staff, mainly by volunteers, often struggle to provide the level of detail that Creative Scotland is looking for. It suggests that applications should be segregated by the size of turnover. We have also had other concerns in relation to delivering the four connecting themes. The onerous task of reporting on those themes. Do you think that you could perhaps be effective, efficient, have a proper audit trail but a bit less bureaucratic and a bit more understanding of small organisations? I go back to the £5,000 organisations that are staffed by volunteers rather than professional fund risers. That is one of the key themes that has come through the open project funding review, the six-month review that we have just completed. How can we deal with the smaller, lower level of applications in a more straightforward, easy-to-access, easy-to-implement on all sides and we are thinking hard about how we can address that. At the moment, our lowest level of funding is £1,000. Sometimes people want to apply for less than that and we need to think hard in terms of how we can deliver that. It is a tough one because, administratively, dealing with small applications requires a lot of resource. We are looking hard at how we can partner perhaps with others to be able to deliver those smaller awards. You are confirming that you have an audit trail for every application for funding. With that audit trail, I appreciate that feedback would not be available to the public, but would that audit trail and that application for funding be available to members of the public? We publish the applications that we have awarded. We do not publish the list of people who have applied for applications because, for many, having it on public record, they have failed in making an application may not be in their interest in terms of— For those that you have awarded, you would have an audit trail of how they had managed to meet the tangible benefits criteria and the connecting themes. We publish the name of the applicant that has been awarded funding, what the funding is for and the amount of funding that an applicant gets. We do not publish an account of how strong their application has been because that would prejudice their opportunity not just for us but also for other funders, and applicants have fed back to us that they would not want to see that detail. In that case, I am also on the audit committee in the Parliament. So, could we assume, given your rigorous process, that organisations that had been awarded money would have fulfilled the eligibility criteria for connecting themes and tangible benefits? Absolutely. We have on record at Creative Scotland an audit trail of every single application how we have made the decision through the various stages and processes of making that decision, and all of that is kept on our system. Okay, so just finally, can you point to specific examples of projects that you have funded that have directly resulted in increased social or intrinsic value of the arts? I am just looking at the criteria that you are using to judge because, if there is 5,000 for traditional music, whether they are filled in the application right or not, I do not know, but if that is not acceptable, you could maybe give us an idea today, which I think would be helpful to organisations looking in on this discussion to see what criteria you do use to judge when a project is worth awarding but also when it has been successful. Ian Chairs is one of our panels in making decisions. I am going to pass over to him before I do that. I suppose that one of the exemplar projects that we fund, which increases social access to the arts, is Systema, which we fund, which provides for the children and young people from Governe and Rapplock up in Aberdeen. Rapplock is not in Aberdeen, it is in Stirling. No, no, I meant Rapplock in Stirling and then also separately in Aberdeen. I have met some of the young people who benefited from the Rapplock project, visited a few months ago, and I was incredibly impressed by what that work had offered them, not necessarily because they are all going to go on and become artists, but just simply in terms of their ability to be able to articulate ambition, their ability to be able to develop their interpersonal skills, their confidence, it really is making a genuine difference, I think, to the lives of those children and young people, some of whom come from very disadvantaged backgrounds indeed. So, if we were to ask for the audit trail, for example, for tea in the park, you would be able to supply that? We could, yes. We have funded, I think, I am right in saying, and Ian will correct me if I am wrong, we have provided funding for activity taking place at tea in the park once, and that was specifically to fund the arches, which is the organisation in Glasgow, which unfortunately does not exist now. It was to assist the arches to deliver a programme of arts work in that context in order to increase its marketability in terms of its commercial prospects. That is for this year's tea in the park? No, that was in previous years. We have not provided funding for tea in the park this year. One of the reasons why we have asked a number of organisations to come along, including yourself, is to allow us to try and assess the tangible outcomes from the organisation, in particular what we effectively get for our money, if we want to put it in that crude fashion. One of the issues today has been that—maybe that is our fault, maybe it is a timing issue—you have mentioned repeatedly that you will publish, you will shortly report in the near future, and I could go on. You are going to carry out, it will have a significant impact. We will be in a position to—a lot of it is talking about something that is not yet happening. It will happen in the future. You will send us it when it occurs, et cetera, et cetera. Is that our fault for asking you along at the wrong time of year, but even if we have done that, would it not have been possible to look back at the previous year and answer many of the questions with evidence-based answers about what has happened and you have got information for it and you have published already, rather than some of the answers that have been very much looking to—well, we cannot answer it because we have not yet published. It is possible that I may have confused the issue here. We have just published our figures for 1314, so those are now online. You can access them. The figures that I am referring to this year are the first set of figures against our current corporate plans. We have published figures for last year. They are available online to access. I am making a general point about many of the answers today, but about announcements yet to come. Would you suggest to us—I am asking for genuinely advice—that if you publish everything in the autumn, are we better to come and ask you to come and see us in the January? We would be very happy to do that and come back once we have published. No, but if we did this on an annual basis, is September the wrong time of year to ask you here? Potentially, because, just to be absolutely clear, the 10-year plan started year 1 in 1415, the evidence on the deliverables and tangible outcomes from that work is what we will produce or collating at the moment that we will be producing November-December time. January is a better time for the actual— That would be on an annual basis. That is when you would produce that material. Yes, that would be the cycle. There are six months apart. The annual plan within each year of the 10-year plan is produced in April. Six months later, the annual report on the previous year is published. Okay. Thank you for that, sir. Chuck, did you want to— Yes, just for clarity. I may have misunderstood, but when I asked my question about the numbers, I think Ian said that these were going to the board for approval, but they were drafted and yet Janet has just said that last year's numbers are already up on your website. What is the situation? Two different things. What Janet is referring to are the data that we hold in relation to the audiences and the number of performances and so on and so forth. What about the financial numbers? The financial numbers around the annual accounts for both grant and aid and national lottery are what is going to the board for sign-off next week. They have been to our audit committee and they will be laid before both parliaments in November-December time. Thank you. My questions are probably in and around collaborative working. Some of your key partner relationships are with Skills Development Scotland and Scottish Enterprise. The Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Economy and Fair Work made clear to Scottish Enterprise and to yourselves that a memorandum of understanding must be put in place. Can you advise the committee on how that work is progressing and what, from your perspective, are the key parts of the agreement and what do you hope to achieve from the memorandum of understanding? Yes. We have a memorandum of understanding that is in progress. I spoke to Lena Wilson last Friday and I had a number of conversations with other members of her team about the content of the memorandum of understanding. It will identify what our shared interests are, what our respective roles are and how we will work together in respect of creative industries development in future. We are in the process of, as I have said, developing our creative industries strategy. Clive Gilman began his post in June. He has already produced the strategy. We took it to Skip, which is a Scottish creative industry partnership that pulls together all of our partners around the creative industries at the end of August. We have had a lot of interest from Skip partners in respect of working with us on ensuring that the content of that strategy works as a shared vision for how we might work together. Since the end of August, we have been having some quite detailed discussion with each of those partners. It is a very positive discussion, but it has taken a bit of time to work through. It would not be appropriate to sign off our memorandum of understanding with Scottish Enterprise until that work has fully taken place. I had a report at the end of last week, which was very positive. Clive has met, individually, representatives from Scottish Enterprise, Skills Development Scotland, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, and we will now share all of that with our colleagues at Scottish Government. Once we have got to that stage, we will then play that strategy out for public consultation in the same way that we did for the screen strategy. We will want to get public feedback into it. I presented the headlines of that at a creative industry symposium last week, last Tuesday, I think it was. Broadly, it generated, I think, positive response in respect of what it contained, but we just want to make sure. I think that it is interesting because we have really gone into this in the spirit of public sector reform, in the spirit of making the best use of our shared public resource with our partners in the best possible way. The appetite for that amongst the team across Osket partners has been tremendous, but, obviously, the more people who are involved in producing a strategy, the longer that it takes. We are very close now to getting that position, and at that point we will be able to pin down that memorandum of understanding with Scottish Enterprise in a proper way. When you say that you are close, Janet, I mean how close are we? Your answer to some of the questions has been about some time in the future. I know that you have a 10-year plan, but, obviously, there are things that need to happen and need to happen again quick. We have published the screen strategy. The question of memorandum of understanding is one of the priorities. If the difficulty is not with yourself in relation to coming up with that, where does the problems lie? Probably, from my point of view, the question is how soon is soon. Lina and I had a good constructive conversation and tackled some of the outstanding issues last Friday. We need to now share that with our more widely in our teams. I need to share that with my chair, Richard Finlay. I am confident that we will get to a good solid place in respect of that MOU. For me, we have to take account of the overall ecosystem of public bodies working together. We have needed to run through the time that it has taken to get people fully across and comfortable with the direction that we are proposing and give people a chance to chip in. For it to make sense for them. I think that it is really exciting that we have got to a place where, in Scotland, we are able to have good, honest, clear dialogue across public bodies and harness our efforts together. As I say, I was comfortable with the creative industry strategy probably two or three weeks ago. I want to give everyone a chance to be able to feed in and make sure that it makes sense to them. Ultimately, driving the creative industries forward or supporting the sector, supporting industries to drive itself forward, has to be something that we all collectively do together. If we are going to do that, then everybody needs to have a chance to go through that strategy with a tooth comb and make sense of it for themselves. Are you unable to put a definite time on it, then, would it be within an extreme months, six months? On the strategy? No, you are memorandum of understanding. As I say, it is almost there. Personally, I do not think that it should be published before we have got to a point where we have got collective agreement on the strategy. In terms of order of things, we should have that shared agreement around the strategy, play it out to consultation, and at that point we should be then defining how we work with our public sector partners around that agreed purpose. I think that it is important to get the order of things right in respect of how we approach that, but there is certainly no resistance on our part in terms of holding an MOU, not just with Scottish Enterprise, but with other public bodies too. We have MOUs with a number of different organisations. It is a good way of signalling shared intent around this area of work. John. Aids have said that they have a good work in relationship with yourselves. However, they have suggested further work could be done to develop links with the education sector. Could the use of that strategy time to shine be adapted to take account of its views and how receptive is the education sector to further promoting the art in schools? Yes. I should start by saying that the curriculum for excellence, which contains the expressive arts as a core part of its function, is a fantastic thing. It is very important to us that we work very closely with the education sector to support the delivery of it. The way to do that is to ensure that Scotland has access to the right skills through its teaching resource to be able to effect that as fully as possible. Again, through the work that we do with children and young people, through the MOU that we do have with Education Scotland, we are working to foster an environment where better, more assertive work in schools can take place, and those skills gaps can be addressed. I am sorry, but I want to pick up some of the entries. Yes, just to the previous one, and forgive me if this is feeling robust. John quoted Fiona Hyslop making clear that there had to be a memorandum of understanding. She did so on 3 September. Of course, as we meet on Wednesday, on 3 September it was not this month, it was last year. Why has it taken a year to get a memorandum of understanding? I would like some clarification in terms of whether our first point of discussing a memorandum. We only meet on Wednesday. If there is no Wednesday 3 September this year, and I remember it, it was Wednesday 3 September last year. In the EET committee, when she attended and when we were doing the inquiry, it was Wednesday 3 September 2014. Why has it taken a year to get a memorandum of understanding? I would like some clarification of whether that is an accurate date, but I think that the principle of an MOU with Scottish Enterprise and, indeed, our other partners in respect of the creative industries is something that we are absolutely subscribed to. It is important to have something to gather our energies around. But why does it take a year to produce a strategy? Well, to produce a memorandum of understanding of who has what roles and responsibilities. It is a question that we asked then. It is a question that I asked today in terms of body swears around you making decisions. I will ask the question again, why does it take a year to create a memorandum of understanding of roles and responsibilities? I will just say again that, for us, having a clear sense of direction to gather our shared intent around is important. We appointed a director of creative industries to do that work after two rounds of recruitment. I have to say that we set the bar high, so we did not want to point straight off. It took us a bit of time after our previous director left to appoint somebody. Clive Gilman was appointed in June this year. He produced the strategy within a month of being in post. We have now shared that with our other public sector bodies and are working on getting that to a point where we are all comfortable that it represents an appropriate way forward. A memorandum of understanding with all of those partners needs to follow on from Creative Scotland's perspective. As you rightly pointed out, that decision at the end of the day will be made by the chief executives of the bodies involved. Before you develop your strategy, you need to have some idea of what the roles and responsibilities are going to be. I am afraid that the question still stands. I do not want to push it any further, but it seems, based on my experience, inimical to wait for a year to produce a memorandum of understanding as to how organisations will work together. What we have is published terms of reference for Skip, which is available on our website. That gives you a clear sense of how all of the Skip partners, as a group of public bodies, meet on a quarterly basis and our joint commitment in respect of how we work together. That document is live, available and accessible and does exist. What we are talking about in terms of next steps is the detail of how we work in respect of the creative industry strategy, which has not been finalised yet in terms of individual relationships across that group. It would be helpful to the committee if you were able to write to us afterwards and explain in some detail the process that has been undertaken since the point at which the statement was made that there should be a memorandum of understanding put in place to the point that we are at today. I think that that would be helpful if you wrote to us and explained what has been happening during that period so that we are clear about the process and what has actually been achieved during that period. I just wonder if a memorandum of understanding is needed in the first place. I mean to look at the respective roles and ask them to talk to each other. Why does the Government have to step in to get two organisations to talk to each other? I am sure that Creative Scotland can mention in the letter why it is necessary. I assure the committee that we do talk to each other and indeed have been criticising for talking to each other too much in the past. I am going to the dialogue. I know that John Scott has one final question. How does Creative Scotland ensure that funding programmes connect with the various strategies issued by other organisations such as SDS skills and investment plans, and could further work be done to ensure greater cohesion across the two public bodies? That is where the slowing down of our strategy has been for that very reason in that we are now going through very detailed read across in respect of individual strategies that have been produced by other public bodies in respect of their focus on the creative industries, which for most of them, I think it is important to say, is only a small proportion of the overall work that they do. For us arts and creative industries is everything. For other public bodies, it is a part of a wider suite of interests. But, nevertheless, we have been meeting and going through line by line how what we are producing weaves across into the strategies that others have produced and are in the process of producing to make sure that we have got a joined up approach so that we can all make the best proper use of public resources in the most effective way that we can. That is very important to me. It is not straightforward as you will all be aware, but it is something that I know that I am comfortable with, is now taking place in a good Team Scotland collegiate kind of a way. I just want further supplementary to that. On page 14 of your submission, Creative Scotland has funded organisations that have supported 4265 work placements, 76 apprenticeships and traineeships and 108 internalships. Can you perhaps advise, if you cannot tell, as you might be right to the committee, could you tell us what was the duration and nature of these apprenticeships and whether the apprentices remained employed afterwards and what they are doing to expand modern apprenticeships in the creative sector? We will write to you with that information, but I can tell you that one of the intern's apprenticeships that we had in our organisation set up a company that we continue to use from time to time in respect of documenting conferences and such like, but we will write to you with a detailed response to that question. Can I finish off this morning's session with one question? One of the reasons to be asked you along at this time of the year is because it is in advance of the Scottish Government's publication of its draft budget, which I am sure is all waiting on with a great deal of interest. If you find that your budget has been increased, what added value would you deliver with that increase? Equally, if your funding is squeezed in that draft budget, what would be the tangible impact of such a move? Iain will add to what I say. In terms of added value, we know that when we received applications for regular funding, we received £140 million worth of fundable applications. Had we had the resource, we would have funded. In the event, we had to cap our limits at £100 million over three years, so that would give you an indication of where some of that extra resource may go. There is also the softer end of the work that we do in respect of development, where we are unlocking opportunity for other resources to come in alongside ours through working in partnership with others in Scotland, and beyond increasing our capacity to be able to do that is important. Thirdly, I would say that what we would love to be able to do is to have a better focus for individuals, for those people who make a difference in communities, in places that sometimes organisations do not reach. There are many examples globally of governments who are able to fund individuals in different ways to us to be able to stretch out more generously in working with people in communities across Scotland. There are some of the things that I would say in terms of where additional resource might go. On the screen and creative industries side, we have managed to increase our screen funding through working with the Scottish Government to generate more production resource. There is clearly an opportunity to think about that more ambitiously if one wanted to compete with other nations on the creative industry side. Interestingly, some of the feedback that we have had from the industry workshops where we have been meeting with folk is not so much about funding. It is about access to venture capital, business angels or investment or small loans that would make the difference in respect of that space. We are looking at how we might be able to partner with others to make that happen. In terms of a decrease in funding, that is a very difficult question. We would have to make difficult decisions in respect of where our priorities lie. I think that we would want to come back to you with analysis around where the impact of that would sit if that were to be the case. Clearly, all of the things that we have talked about this morning have given a sense of the pressure and stretch that we feel as a funder that operates across a hugely creative nation. I think that, comparatively with other nations, we have a significantly larger number of both organisations and individuals operating per population as a whole. In fact, in truth, I think it came through from one of the submissions that you had, the level of funding that we are able to offer. Even those who are funded now, comparatively with organisations in other countries, including England, is a little bit less and therefore the stretch and the risk factor that plays into those organisations being able to be stable, sturdy and sure-footed is quite high. We are challenged in respect of the way that we fund. We would have to think hard, and in the context of any reductions in funding, we would have to have some very honest conversations with the committee and with Scottish Government colleagues and accept that there would be some pain and difficult decisions in some quarters. As you would expect us to be, we are thinking about that, and we will be able to report back to you on that front in due course. Scotland's culture is absolutely recognised globally and the art screen and creative industries have a major role that plays into that. We have written in our submission that our budget represents 0.02 per cent of the Scottish Government overall budget, and it seems to me that that offers and delivers huge value for what is around the margins of the overall Scottish Government budget. Exponentially, therefore, it has a huge leverage and effect in the way that it affects intrinsic social and economic value. For a wee bit more, it could deliver that multiplier effect in even more powerful ways. If there were to be a reduction, as Janet said, we are looking at that carefully to understand what the implications of that might be. Again, because it is around the margins, it would not save much in terms of the Scottish Government overall budget, but because of that multiplier effect, it could be quite damaging for the longer term. Some parts of that fragile infrastructure exist on very low levels of public funding in some instances. It could be fundamentally damaged and irrecoverably so, and therefore have a longer term impact on Scotland's global reputation in terms of art screen and creative industries. There are small amounts of money, either way, that can have exponentially beneficial or detrimental effects potentially. I thank you both for being here this morning. I know that you had another meeting, Janet. Maybe you would have preferred to have been at that meeting, I am not sure, but I thank you very much for coming along this morning. We do appreciate you taking the time to come to the committee. However, we have agreed to take items six and seven in private, therefore I now close the meeting to the public.