Good morning and welcome to the 18th meeting of the committee in 2019. I'd like to remind members and the public to turn off mobile phones and any members using electronic devices to access committee papers during the meeting should ensure that they're switched to silent. We have received apologies from Tavish Scott MSP. The first item on our agenda is an evidence session with two panels of witnesses as part of the committee's arts funding inquiry. I'd like to welcome our first panel of witnesses, Fiona Campbell, who's the convener of the traditional music and song association of Scotland, Jude Henderson, the director of the Federation of Scottish Theatre, and Irene Cernan, director of Kraft Scotland. Thank you very much for joining us today. As you'll be aware, having answered our call for evidence, this is a wide-ranging inquiry into arts funding, and it follows on from the committee's short inquiry last year into the issues that arose as a result of difficulties around the RFO funding awards at the beginning of last year. We're having a look at the way that the arts generally are funded in Scotland, and whether we could do it better, and particularly the tensions between larger organisations and individual artists and smaller organisations. Perhaps in terms of funding as a whole, what do you think that needs to be done in order to make funding sustainable, and what adjustments would you make to improve matters? Who wants to go first? That's a straightforward question. The first thing to say is that, in my sector, there is a great deal of collaboration between artists and larger institutions. We had a member's meeting in Aberdeen yesterday where members reiterated their sense that stable, on-going concerns as part of our cultural infrastructure is a good thing for artists because it provides them with supportive, engaged, informed and mentoring communities where they can make their work collaboratively, as all the work in our sector does. There is definitely an issue around what our cultural infrastructure is and how collectively we decide what that cultural infrastructure is and how far beyond buildings it goes. Members have discussed the potential for looking at entitlements to culture. What should people expect in any particular geographical area that they should have ready access to? That is absolutely a conversation that our members are keen to engage with in a wider conversation around what does the cultural infrastructure for Scotland look like. It is also important to say that that would never be set in stone and that that would be an on-going conversation about what, at any one time, a cultural infrastructure for Scotland would look like. Going on from that, I think that it is an important question about what is infrastructure and what does it consist of. I like not just set in stone because it goes beyond stone. There are other infrastructures on a physical level that have a great bearing on cultural activity in Scotland. One of them is the travel and transport infrastructure. One of the main barriers that a lot of people have done through the research that I was doing, particularly when working with Voluntary Arts Scotland, was how do we get places? How do we get there? For example, people wanted to go to Livingston to Haldan Park Centre, but the last bus back to Llythgo would leave about 7.30pm. There was no way that they could engage in the evening activities in that respect if they had to align public transport. In fact, I have often said that if you can get the transport right, you will probably get most of the attendance at cultural activities right. The other issue is digital infrastructure, which we all know in certain areas of Scotland is still lacking. People are not as connected as they would like to be and sometimes the strangest places are not connected quite near to urban areas that you would think would have all the digital fibre and whatever broadband you needed going. I applaud the looking at satellites and the other ways that we can actually get connectivity because also that will play in for not just people making a living online or using it to sell things, but also being able to connect with town twinning associations, being able to talk by email and all the things you can now do that you used to have to wait days for the post to turn up. You can now do a lot more things and there is a lot more connectivity that we could do to bring more culture to Scotland and more culture out of Scotland. From the traditional arts point of view, I think that it is interesting that a lot of people feel that they often see the word traditional and go, oh, they must be very far behind on things. Actually, I find that the traditional arts and a lot of the tradition barriers, for example, are often the first people to be the early adopters of cyber and digital work. I know that Sheena Wellington is a very active person on her social media, so it is just about looking at some of those other infrastructures that inform it and also, importantly, the people that make those infrastructures relevant because without thinking about the people. Thank you. I would agree with both of those points, but for just speaking from the craft sector, craft has a problem with visibility and part of that is infrastructure. There is a lack of security around studio spaces and studio buildings, although there is an excellent national network of production facilities, which is not as well known as it should be. There has been a lack of investment in those as well. One of the features of craft is the level of innovation that comes through in terms of the material skills and knowledge and how that transfers across different sectors and adds value in those terms in academia, business, health and science. I think that investment in the sort of infrastructure that will encourage that innovation would be badly needed. In terms of the way that organisations are directly funded either by the Scottish Government or Creative Scotland, there are obviously some organisations that are deemed important to fail the national performing companies, which are directly funded by the Scottish Government. Then there is the RFO funding process, in which organisations such as the Federation of Scottish Theatre Competing for Funds Against Individual Theatre Companies and Individual Artists were the source of some tension and debate during our inquiry last year. We have quite right in terms of the way that we fund, particularly organisations that are supporting the sector or are considered too big to fail, so to speak. Yes, I think that no is the short answer to that. Again, the discussion that we had yesterday was about people and honesty. It was about saying that if there are organisations that are deemed to be too important to a community, and that is not just even around culture, there are some of our members who are massively important in social and economic terms as players in their local communities. There is a real issue around making sure that you do not remove that vital infrastructure. Organisations such as ourselves are part of that infrastructure. The Federation of Scottish Theatre has been around for 43 years, and we offer support to our members in a variety of ways. It plays back into that conversation about what the cultural infrastructure is and how we work out what it does. Members at our meeting yesterday talked about the need for a multi-stage funding process. I think that there is a primary issue when you are talking about arts funding in the round, that all of the time spent getting funding from the arts funder is time that could have been spent on looking at other trusts and foundations or other collaborative or individual approaches to getting funding. People mentioned, for example, Foundation Scotland as a good model of an organisation where you can have a 20-minute phone call to determine whether or not they are interested in funding what you have to offer, and then you get what is essentially a champion within that organisation who takes you through the next stages. Those are felt to be respectful and human processes that take account of how people are and how they work and that do not try to fit everyone into a one-size-fits-all approach. The other thing to say is that the three-year regular funding cliff edge puts the entire sector in a state of, I do not think that it is an exaggeration to say, emergency. Every three years everyone in the sector does not know if they are going to have a job after the next funding announcement. It is as stark as that. We have lost members because of the last funding round where funding was withdrawn and members have asked me to say that the human impact of receiving an email which means that you have lost your job is really not a respectful way to treat people. In terms of that multi-stage, multi-year annual rolling, some people are going for one-year funding, some people are getting two-year funding, some people are basically being an assumption of five to ten years funding. That provides a stable platform for those larger institutions to genuinely start getting the investment that they need to make them sustainable for the future. Three years is not long enough for my industry. People are already programming beyond their funded allocations. An assumption of some level of core stability, however we decide to whom that goes, is something that we really need to have a conversation about. Those are some of the key points that people raised around multi-stage, multi-year and human and respectful approaches within that. I think about the applications. As a volunteer writing funding applications, my job—I am not being paid for that side of things—my life could be a lot better and doing a lot more arts activity, but I have chosen to make sure that we can support the traditional arts in Scotland, which I see is so key to the identity of this country. You might think, why is the New Zealander saying that? I am of the diaspora, and I know that if you do not nurture particularly the traditional arts of Scotland at its root—and that is a form of infrastructure as well—the leaves and the flowers and all the blossoming of it that we are. Actually a lot of people are very proud of their Scottish roots, sometimes more tenuous than others, but they are very proud of that. Also Scotland is very proud of how we have been able to contribute to the world, mostly positively, but I am aware that there are some issues around how we have contributed. The idea that people can come back and see where they come from is really important. I know that people have often said, oh, it is all about whisky and tartan and shortbread. I think that that view is actually the more outdated view. Whisky is evolving, tartan is evolving and shortbread is evolving. I think that people are actually getting an outdated view, so there is a personal bug there of mine. From the traditional arts point of view, we have got to be aware that there is an element of infrastructure in there as well from the language. We have got two very strong languages besides the English aspect of culture, which is the Scots and Gaelic. We are talking about key organisations. The TMSA Keith branch run the Keith festival, which has been going for over 30 years now. It is one of the key economic institutions of that area. It is also one of the major reasons that Keith was produced, given the title of Scots tune. It is an important thing to recognise that maybe the TMSA does not get regular funding. Keith branch, fortunately, gets a bit of local funding and support from its local community, but it is clearly because it is recognised that it is a very key part of that economic activity. I am just aware that it is difficult to sometimes ascertain what is of national importance because I would say something like the Keith festival is of national importance, but it is not a national organisation but it is a branch run by a branch of a national organisation. It is about working out what level of importance and significance to a local community as well as the national significance as well. From the craft sector, we are a national agency, but we are supporting a sector that is largely made up of sole traders with small businesses. Our role is to enable them to develop their careers and their business in various ways. I think that the fact that we can work to support makers very directly in ways that they would not be able to do themselves. I am just thinking of a show that we organise in London, for example. We organise all the logistics for the show and all that work is done for the makers as we promote them. It is very much about selling work and raising their profile. For an individual maker, that would take an enormous amount of investment in terms of time and resources that they probably would not be able to manage themselves working at the scale that they do so I think that there are examples where you can see where a national agency adds real benefit to individual artists. Thank you very much. I will make another point. Sorry, I knew there was something else. It is very important to understand that a lot of these network organisations were set up by individual artists or on the basis of them wanting to join together or smaller organisations wanting to come together to have either a national voice or be able to share concerns and get peer support. I think that that is a really important thing to remember when we are looking at that sort of—the problem is the way that the system works at the moment is that it is a versus rather than an and. It is sort of like an or. It is about how we make it more of an and type system and people will understand where the ecology is and maybe some artists aren't getting the best use out of their networks possibly. Thank you very much. I am going to pass on to Claire Baker now, but can I ask members and the panel to keep questions and answers as succinct as possible? We have two panels today, so we have just got until 10 past 10, and I am anxious to make sure that every member gets to ask their questions. Thank you, Claire. Thank you, convener. As the convener said, the inquiry came out of the consideration that we had last year over Creative Scotland's funding. The question that I wanted to ask was whether we should be looking at the cake. Is it how we cut the cake, or is it about increasing the size of the cake? The submission that we had from Jude Henderson described by real terms cut of 12.5 per cent from government and predicted 25 per cent cut over the next 10 years, and the submission from Fiona did talk about proposals that we are trying to increase the amount overall. The panel wants to comment on that issue. If it is about how we increase the size of the cake, how do we make the case for that and how do we do that? I think that a lot of us have been making that case for a large number of years. It has always been important that, in the end, it is a priority to understand what culture and creativity and all the work that goes around that brings to the country from both the social as well as also economic value and understanding that what 1 per cent investment of the Scottish budget would actually do, it would release a lot more activity, it would enable a lot more artists to make a career to stay in this country, to better support it with its creativity. It is about understanding. It is just a question of priorities in the end when it comes to budget setting from the Government point of view. It is also about the public support. If you look at the cultural accounts statistics, you should have looked at it before I came, but it is a very high support. Also, the Scottish Government household survey finds this high support for arts and activity. I do not think that people would really budget, but the issue is about how it fits within the other funding infrastructure, for example the lottery. Unfortunately, it is not a devolved area yet, but it is the kind of thing that I read recently that £39 million was spent by Camelot on advertising the national lottery. The reason why they have to advertise so much now is because of deregulation, but think of what that kind of money could have done in the arts sector. For example, only £0.5 million goes towards for all. Imagine what £39 million could do. I would obviously always advocate for more money going into the culture budget. I think that we give enormously good value for enormously small amounts of money, if I can say enormously small. If you look at what we already deliver or not very much, imagine what we could deliver with not very much more. That would always be a primary objective for me. However, I think that there is scope to use what we have better to enable us to drive more investment into the sector. I was going to ask if the cultural strategy, which has been developed, will help to make the case. Do you understand the cultural sector strategy? Is it about increasing resources or is it about expressing value? Do you have a clear understanding of what it is trying to achieve? At the moment, the draft that came out made the case for understanding the different aspects of culture. It is not yet clear what the strategy will look like in terms of driving investment in culture and understanding culture's impact on other bits of the investment portfolio. I mean wants to come in. I attach to that. We have heard some evidence that we will know the value of arts to health budgets to education budgets, but there does not seem to be much sharing of budgets. Do any of you have experience of receiving funding from other areas rather than just cultural budgets? We have worked with NHS Scotland on small projects, which clearly deliver a lot of value. It is a bit frustrating. The difficult thing for arts is that we are all struggling to manage and maintain. Stand-still funding means cuts, which means that you struggle even more. The message that we are getting is that we all need to be more sustainable and bring in more income from other sources, but that is very hard when you are so overstretched. There needs to be a lot more connectivity across different sectors, because there is so much evidence of the value that the arts brings to almost every sector of society. We have actual academic and scientific research to show that. Those messages need to be articulated much more clearly and on a regular basis if we are to open up other funding sources. Thank you, convener. I will talk about the local authority side of things. If funding arts at local authority level fits into a wider strategy at national level, and if not, should that be the case? How would that work? Local authority funding is essential, and you can see the impact that there has been by having that removed or eroded over the past few years. Local authorities can work very closely with their communities and target funding in response to need or opportunity in a way that maybe the national funder is not always able to do. I know that in Ireland they have just started an interesting model now, compelling the local authorities to commit arts funding within their budgets. Something like that would have to happen. A very rigorous review system would be required to ensure the quality and sustainability of the actual activity that it is funding. I think that there are local democratic processes, national democratic processes or national democratic processes. I think that there is value and this is where the culture strategy may provide an opportunity in giving us a framework where people can interpret that at local level in the way that suits their local needs. I was going to say that I'd commend all the local authorities that are still able to produce some form of cultural budget and able to particularly offer maybe small grants out to small organisations locally, because again that close relationship, as mentioned before, but also being able to sustain a certain element of cultural venues because without places to meet it becomes very difficult. Thankfully, there are places that look like community asset exchanges and that kind of thing, but from a traditional arts point of view, where a lot of it's about place, it's really important that the local authority is able to value its heritage as well. Those authorities that have given a priority and continue to give that priority, they have seen some real expansion in the culture sector across their area. That has been because they have prioritised that that's what they believe should take place. There has been a collaboration between organisations yourselves and them to try to make that happen, but why should that not be the case all over? Postcode lottery, maybe? Is there a term? I think that the issue is about making the case locally values and again priorities of each council, how they're dealing with their cuts or how they see their best able to deal with those things. I feel that those who have actually completely cut their budgets are probably experiencing a poorer quality of life in general and will be affecting other services, but again it's that holistic approach to looking at how if people are happy, they tend to use the health service less etc. It's just a case in point and it shouldn't be about that you instrumentally they have to do the arts, it's about how it should be part of people's lives, makes a lot of difference because it builds resilience etc. Some local authorities have done the route of going down the trust route to try and support because that does give an arms length organisation, but that in itself has caused some difficulties too for some of them as to how they maintain and sustain that. Once again, what would your view be to try and ensure that we have that equilibrium between local and national level? I think it's a strategic framework that recognises culture's value at heart and allows people to implement that locally. We now have a national outcome for culture in the performance framework, which we warmly welcome. The question is always how will that be interpreted on the ground, and that's something that we've been working closely with Culture Counts, the umbrella body of all Scotland's culture organisations, to try and make sure that we get the measurement of that so that people can really see how that's working at local level. Sticking with the issue of funding for the moment, I noted with interest in the submission from Jude Henderson on behalf of the Federation of Scottish Theatre, an interesting issue that was on the topic of collaborative funding approaches. Specifically, the City of Edinburgh place partnership was cited, so that involves funds from the Scottish Government and from the local authority, which have to be matched by a new private sponsorship. I wonder if we could hear a bit more about that and why you think that, in some circumstances, there could perhaps be a useful way forward taking into account that the cake, as Claire Baker has said, is the cake more or less, and we need to look at innovative ways of increasing the cake. Yes, I think that that's a good example of where all collaborative funding comes from, which is that all the partners are articulating really clearly what they bring and what they can get and where the mutual benefit lies in the middle of that. One of our members, Pitlokry Festival Theatre, has secured a significant amount of funding through the City Deal, the Tayside City Deal, and that is really clearly about what they are articulating and what they can offer that aligns with the strategic objectives of the local authority. Again, when that comes to external funders, we know that trusts and foundations will have specific groups of people that they want to target, specific communities that they are looking to support, and it's always about acting with the integrity of the art at the heart and the quality of the art being absolutely the most important thing, and then looking at the broader impacts and the broader strategic priorities for that arts organisation and where those naturally align with the priorities for local authorities or other trusts and funders. If everybody is really clear that the best quality work that has the most impact is what they are looking at, it makes it relatively straightforward or less difficult perhaps to identify where they are aligned, and then I believe that that drives greater benefit for everyone. Everybody puts a bit in and everybody gets out of it what they need. As far as you are aware, is the City of Edinburgh Police Partnership unique in Scotland, or do other local authorities adopt similar? I'm not sure, but Creative Scotland has got a police partnership strategy, and I know that it has not been sufficiently resourced to deliver that across all the local authorities in Scotland. I believe that there is also a match funding approach in Ireland where central government offers funding to local authorities on condition that it's matched, and that may be a route that the committee might look to explore. In regard to the City of Edinburgh Police Partnership, it seems that a role is there for private sponsorship, and I wonder in terms of the general position whether you feel that that is an area that has really been—I don't want to use the word exploited, perhaps it's not the best word, but has been looked into seriously as a possible source of significant funding, because it seems to me that, if you don't ask in life, you don't get, and it seems to me that that could be an area of activity if there was more attention focused on it by all players, that it could be ripe with opportunity. I think that it could. I think that there's an issue of capacity and resource in the sector. When you've taken a pound out of every four away in the last 10 years, it means that you're operating at very, very slim margins. So, we would welcome support for collaborative approaches to looking at driving that kind of additional income generation. Yeah, I mean, obviously when larger budgets are cut from Westminster by some 2 billion over 10 years, it has no consequences, and I think that the Cabinet Secretary did very well indeed to protect culture funding as best she could. I was just going to raise that there are other organisations that may be not seen as cultural organisations from the offset, as the development trusts are quite a number of them operating a place format, because they're usually based around a particular island or geographic area. I'm just aware that Edinburgh, the Edinburgh Old Town Development Trust, which I'm involved with a bit, has worked with the City Council and the Artisan developers who are a private sector company around the whole Calton area development, I'm sorry, Canongate area, that they've got a community centre, which is actually going to have a lot of the cultural activities, because that's a demand of the local area. So, there's just that point that there are other examples of something similar collaborative for bringing in private sponsorship here and there that may not look immediately like a cultural venue, but they are. So, just a thought to look at that as well. The Foundation Scotland that Jude referenced earlier is a really interesting organisation, because they bring in philanthropic money and donations and business money as well, private funding, and their team are experts in managing those relationships and in nurturing donors and funders. They are also a very open organisation and very good at matching up activity and organisations with funders. Having that sort of expertise held within one organisation like that would be an interesting thing to look at for the arts as well. Okay, thank you for that suggestion. Cymru, good morning, panel. West Kilbride is Scotland's craft town, as you'll be aware, but I'm just wondering how many other people in Scotland are aware of that, and until this morning I didn't know there was a, you know, a bit about the Keith festival. And less than two weeks ago we had the Arnfolk Festival and I promoted it on my Facebook and had the organisers get back to be saying thanks, that's helped to sell additional tickets. The point I'm making is that there are so many things that are actually happening in Scotland which people would be interested in if they knew about it. Is there a way in which we collectively, because rather than organisations with very, very small budgets trying to promote by social media whatever their own events or what they're doing, is there some way we can coordinate that better to ensure that people who may wish to attend or participate are more able to do so because awareness is raised? Well, I don't know if you're aware of the newly launched SCAN campaign, the Scottish Contemporary Arts Network, and that is very much focused on raising profile of any arts activity across Scotland, and SCAN will be approaching you all about how you might raise awareness within your local constituencies, and I think that's a really valid point. I mean, as we've been saying, organisations and individuals are really stretched in just delivering their work, and so the promotional activity often falls to the side. I suppose one of our roles very much is promoting the sector, the work of the individuals within it, the successes of the craft sector, and so we do invest some resource in that, but it's still not enough, so I think those sorts of campaigns like the SCAN one, where the value of activity— So, before others, can I just come back on that and say, do you feel perhaps that this could be a kind of an all Scotland kind of website or whatever, where every organisation or activity could be logged, if you like, as soon as they're organised? So, if I decided, you know, I'm going to be going up to Nairn or something in July, you know, I wonder what's going to be happening up there, whatever, and I can go in and look at that, or I might say, well, actually, I'm interested in that, but I don't really know what's actually happening the other way around, you know, and then I could maybe find—go to a place where that is, or if there's specifics in terms of crafts or whatever theatrical productions that do you think there's a—you know, that there's a—we could perhaps do something much more— Well, yes, there are lots of them. I feel like I should be doing an advert for the TMSA. We actually produce the TMSA event calendar, which isn't just about the TMSA events. There's about 60 to 70 organisations who actually advertise their local folk festival events, services, et cetera, through this, and this is published each year around Celtic Connections. 50,000 copies are distributed, about 20,000—sorry—30,000 around Scotland's fourth tourist pickup, as well as also local people, and another 20,000 recently in the last couple of years has been spread down beyond the south—the south border—to over to Ireland and into Wales. We'd like to go further, but we actually used to get funding for this under regular funding on the Scottish Arts Council, but now we have to make it pay for itself, so people have to contribute something in, which means some people have chosen not to take part in it. But that's been going for 20 years. It started off as an initiative between the TMSA and the then Scottish Tourist Board. We now still do work with Visit Scotland on elements of that, and we did a marketing process that was able to take us out beyond Scotland with it, so we're trying our best—ideally, we would have got one of these all given in because we gave in a whole pile to each MSP. So it's just that we're aware that there are things like that. We also have developed an interactive music map of Scotland, which, if people are in a relationship with Visit Scotland, people are going to Nen. They theoretically can click on that area and have a look and see what's happening locally. We've got to a certain point with that. We need more resources to continue building it and side of things, but we are already trying to do that for the traditional arts side of things. Okay. I think it'd be good if it could be done across all genres of the arts, if possible, but then you would get even more people into it. Just one final question, if I can actually convene on that. It's about the balance of arts funding. I went to see the magic flute a couple of weeks ago in magnificent. It was, and I understand the convener has also seen it, and possibly other members of the committee. I was writing a wee article for The And The Voice about Scottish Opera, and it's going out to some 34 communities later this year. I noticed they get £8 million of Government funding, which is a lot of money for that one particular area of the high arts. Do you feel that the balance of funding is right in Scotland? Obviously, you believe that there should be more arts funding, but do you think that the balance is right as it is at the moment? It could be better, definitely, for certain areas that are not so well funded. I think that some of the areas, for example, if you're going back to the language side of things, I think that if Scott's language had a similar level of funding to what Gallic currently gets, that would help bring that up to better prominence and support. I would say that there's definitely more, but I think I would rather grow the pie than cut it more, because I think all of these have a valid way to make sure our culture is enriched, but I think we need to actually put more money in, ultimately. I don't think that we should be continuing on the sort of why cut it thinner. I think that we should definitely make a case to grow the pie. I would say that Scottish Opera is coming out to communities all over Scotland, and that's not a cheap thing to do. Cutting that funding would inevitably have an impact on their ability to take that work beyond the central belt. That would be another thing to think about in terms of that balance. I was just playing devil's advocate there, because I was thinking that, obviously, if the pie is not going to be grown, and I don't know whether it will over the next few years, who can know the uncertainties there, I was just wondering how you felt we could do possibly better with the resources that we have. Thank you, Cymru. I think that Mr Gibson raises an important point there. In terms of obviously, Scottish Opera is directly funded. In terms of the traditional arts, do you think that there is more that we could do to elevate the traditional arts to the same level? I would always be pleased to see more support going in there, because there are things that are undone and could be done better if there was more money, but I still feel that we should be pushing for more pie than slicing it more. I also have come from a very diverse musical and theatre background, so I feel that there is a role for opera. It might be that maybe Scottish Opera isn't always the only one that needs to be delivering it, so there's an issue there, but it's about how do we offer the full range of activity, because I think we start saying we can only have this as opposed to everything else. I don't think that Mr Gibson was saying that. I think he was just saying, have you done a parity in terms of the art forms that you represent? Do you think that there should be more? We definitely have had one of our directors from quite a while ago do a comparison of the funding at the time. We haven't necessarily updated that. We don't necessarily have the capacity to do it, but I think that you will find that, yes, we could do with more money in the traditional arts and it could be elevated more and it could be supported more and enthused more, because a lot of people have been forced to do Scottish country dancing at some point in their lives and they disparage it, but it's an important way that people learn to move. The whole point of what I was really asking was the first paragraph for your own submission says, the budget allocated for public investment in the arts, especially for the Government's main cultural agency, is personally far below what culture takes impact on the economy and well being of the country. When I was raising that issue, it was just to see that for the money that is available and allows us to be short of money, is that the best way to ensure the boost to the economy and the well being of the country in a weight million in this specific organisation, as opposed to perhaps what would it million extra do for your own organisation, for example? All I'm trying to say is are we getting the right balance? Are we getting the best bang for our buck in terms of public money, in terms of promoting the arts and stimulating the arts generally across Scotland? That was really the kind of question that I was trying to ask. I wasn't particularly picking on a sector that I'm not actually very fond of personally, but I'm just trying to put that out there because we're looking—we know that funding is always going to be an issue, so it's just to see how we can optimise it. I agree with you there. I think that the other point that I made in the paper is about ensuring that the volunteer investment, because remember, a lot of people put their own money in, so you were talking about private investment earlier, is a help to be supported and that can be anything from making sure that cultural venues stay there so that they can continue doing their activity without huge amounts of expense through to basically every so often people want to try and develop and take a little bit of a risk, do something a bit different from what they've done, but they may not find it very easy to articulate the case or there's not really the resources available locally from a local authority or Creative Scotland's funding is either you've got to put it in a larger bid or there's not really a small part of funding like that's where the Tusca small traditional arts fund is working really well because it's sort of that good level to try something out, but that doesn't actually exist in some of the other sectors and the only reason that small grants funding exists is because Faish and Agail have been constantly taking the effort to approach Creative Scotland to do it because the original concept was there but we needed someone to lead on it so and they had the infrastructure to be able to support it. I guess you know like that there's an understanding that we have a national opera company and I think everybody understands why you have a national opera company in the same way as you would have a national theatre or orchestra, ballet company but traditional arts we don't have a national company for, we don't have a national youth company either that's directly funded which is I know has been in some of your submissions and is maybe a theme as well of our inquiry. There's different opinions about whether we should have a national performing arts company that's traditional arts based because then what's its main purpose and things like that there are some people who definitely advocated other people who feel that we should be better promoting what people currently already produce for example the idea of having a travel fund for artists to go beyond the borders of Scotland with what we're doing new and exciting and also supporting the tradition in Scotland as well as also around the country itself so it's about thinking I think that's the two main camps shall we say about that because then you could be arguing that you might end up codifying what traditional arts is as opposed to allowing it to breathe and develop which is actually one reason why it's still alive in Scotland. Okay thank you very much Stuart McMillan. Thank you, convener. Just a couple of questions first of all regarding the funding. One of the suggestions that has came up to the committee has been something called a percentage for arts and in terms of if there's any type of development taking place in the local authority area then a particular percentage should be allocated towards arts. Is that something that you would agree with in terms of growing the pie as compared to dividing the pie further? It's already a principle that operates from in a general purpose point of view for example that's where I mentioned a community or cultural centre being developed by an Edinburgh but I would always advocate that's a good idea because again it's that especially developers understanding that you need to create a community when you're creating the housing infrastructure. There's been issues around people building lots of houses but there's no infrastructure in there or from a cultural point of view or even a community point of view you might have the odd playground but you know they're not necessarily looking at shops they're expecting people to drive places and things like that so yeah I would say that there would be a good way to look at it that's one option. Yes I think if it's if it's about trying to increase the pie then that's absolutely to be welcomed I think we do warmly welcome the fact that culture has been protected as against the as the evidence says there's been an overall cut that is much bigger than the one that has actually been delivered to the culture budget at local authority level those pressures are there as well so anything that helps us to increase the size of the pie by placing culture at the heart of decision making such that people are always thinking about culture as a core part of the decisions that they make rather than some sort of add-on or something that you get as a luxury if you like rather than as a necessity and I think you know what would the world be like if we didn't have arts and culture and immediately everyone can picture that and see how what a grey place it would be so it's about how we support decision makers to put culture at the heart of that decision making and when they're thinking about decisions that affect their places and their people and their communities I would agree with that and I think the investment would be welcome but I would also think that artists should be involved in decision making and planning stages for development across communities as well they bring immense value at that stage so as well as it being just a sort of income in terms of investment I think if artists were also included in planning and development that would be valuable okay if you want to in your submission you state that leaving the EU has other challenges funding wise such as the loss of access to the collective cultural funding which is usually proportionally greater in return than the proportion of the funding the UK contributes can you elaborate on that please I understand from the information when I've attended seminars and sessions about EU funding is that the UK when we take part in the sort of cultural funding that comes through the EU the various funding strands that we've often done pretty well out of it when we take part and it's only unfortunately fairly recently that the UK has become a more active partner in a lot of these creative collaborations across Europe and actually apparently we're quite well liked on the continent because we've very good at the evaluation and monitoring side of things and that sort of reporting and we bring those kind of skills partly because we've been having to do it for a long time than some of the counterparts in other countries and the issue is that from what I can see that there's potential that that money will not be replaced and of course there is also another strand of EU funding which is all the sort of social funding the infrastructure funding that has benefited culture because of the venues that have been built the transport that's better and also just the social capital that's been built around this money and it it's very rarely that if you collaborate and bring money together that you get less out of it and the issue for me is that I don't think we've seen any indication from the UK government negotiations that they are intending to join as a non EU member country which you can do Switzerland for example is one example in Norway and there's a lot of they put some money in so they can get the value out and of course the value is beyond the money it goes through the collaborations the things people learn the peer support and and the other thing is also beyond culture is also eurasmus or the sort of education and lifelong learning so it's a lot in there that I think people haven't realised is not going to be there anymore and we're going to note I think you're going to notice it when it's gone. Sadly I very much agree with what you just said and also our committee has undertaken work regarding eurasmus so it's a huge amount of uncertainty clearly. Just one final question for me and that's just regarding the some touch upon by colleagues earlier regarding the the spread across across the country. I represent an area that's not a city and there is a perception that the cities and larger population areas actually do obtain more per head as compared to areas like mine. Is that a fair assessment in in your opinion to any of the panels? Well I think in general that often happens because there's a larger concentration of groups because there's more people and an activity and I don't think I've got figures to hand that tell me exactly but I'm aware that also in the traditional arts you will often find that the a lot of the small groups will be interested in promoting their own local traditions so there's often quite a good activity from that point of view whether they get a good funding share I imagine that they probably don't get so much but often that's because they are working at a level that they don't necessarily seek it but again that's where venues are very often very important the opportunity to come together and meet somewhere and collaborate is very important. I think in terms of that would be a key part of looking at cultural infrastructure and potentially entitlement you know a human right to to arts and culture and particularly for young people what is your entitlement to be able to access arts and culture near you of different kinds and in different ways and whether that's participating or consuming if you like so there's one of the things that was suggested I believe many years ago when Creative Scotland was set up was potentially having local offices or local officers in local areas and anecdotally again I don't have figures to hand but anecdotally local authorities have reduced the number of arts officers which means that their capacity at local authority level to engage in the kind of collaborative dialogue that would support everyone that that grassroots artist provision without which nothing else happens ultimately has been eroded I think over time so anything that could be done to strengthen capacity for making those partnerships to support local artists in ways that are more efficient than I think as you said than individual artists having to to reinvent that wheel multiple times I think members members would welcome well I would just just add to what Fiona was saying earlier on I think it's very hard for artists to participate when they have to travel quite far so we were just at an event organised by the chart network and it was clear that it was a huge effort for artists to attend that networking event valuable as it was because they had to spend up to six hours travelling to and from so that's you know they might also have to arrange for care they might have that's a day out of the studio and it's just that you know funding isn't generally available for that sort of support that enables artists to help their professional development but would be really useful okay thank you thank you very much Ross Greer thank you come here I'd like to get your thoughts on how we support grassroots art at an individual level or small groups quite a number of the written submissions that we received in fact including the one from the Federation of Scottish Theatre mentioned bursaries and micro financing I was wondering what your thoughts are on what specifically that would fund is that how open ended would you imagine that being or would you like to see a system if one was established that was quite specific about things like travel accommodation materials et cetera I think when we talk to artists and I would say that our membership ranges from individual artists producing their own work through to Scottish Opera in fact and the national theatre of Scotland what they need is time and space and so while specific funds for training and travel and networking and writing bids is important making art is about time and space so I guess I would advocate for an element of thinking in that decision making process whether that's through a universal benefit or whether that's through bursary support for individual artists and whether that's distributed centrally or whether that is distributed through the existing network or our new network of cultural infrastructure many of my larger members already offer residences artist support events mentoring a wide range of activity is already offered through the regular funded the current regular funded network so it may be that there is capacity there to to build on to support individual artists in that way but I think ultimately it's about time and space so just on that point about administration sorry for bringing the others in would you suggest then that that's best administered through the individual organizations rather than centrally creative Scotland issuing to individual artists that I think there are different opinions there some I think you wouldn't want a situation where individual artists felt that they were unable to access the the central funding body that doesn't feel right but at the same time there are already as I think I said earlier you know supportive engaged informed people who are seeing the work that's one of the problems that people say about the funders is that they don't always get the chance to see all of the work because so much is happening but people who are working in regular funded organizations often are very aware of what's happening they're very aware of what works going on I think looking at diversity there would have to be safeguards to make sure that there is appropriate diversity in the people anyone who is selected we would all support that I'm sure but there it does feel as though there are existing mechanisms out there for supporting individual artists that it might be possible to build on those rather than or perhaps in addition to building things from scratch but I wouldn't say that in this as in everything a one-size-fits-all is unlikely to to work I'd advocate that that time and space works not just for the career artists but also for small and grass roots organizations some of them are very happy that they're working at a certain level that they're sustainable because they're not relying on an external feed of money but they sometimes want to try something a bit new or risky or how they see it is that and that could be the time and space they need to maybe put out some extra leaflets to try and get new people involved it might be about trying a different space in the next door village because people said they'd like to do the same thing over there but and one of the members is prepared to travel there but they need to have the the money to go and get a space or something on those lines and so I'd be I'd be anxious not to sort of lock it down and say it's only for this because actually that then stifles creativity in itself I think it's that almost like that form that word development and I know Rollinshire Scotland has you know some micro grants and that's one of the reasons is that groups can apply for what they need to develop the tuska small arts funding we get a I'm sitting on the ground panel for that and we get a wide range from you know the artists trying to develop their own artistic practice to an organization trying to bring more participant activities to an island or a different type of music within the traditional arts so it's about trying to shape it but in a way that it doesn't close it and I echo actually that thing about professional development or that idea of being able to access opportunities there have been times that even people you know maybe do things on an amateur basis they're not expecting to be paid for it but sometimes they have a professional development need along with the career artists but being able to access that small amount of money that allow them to travel pay for the fee could make all the difference to the community that they will bring stuff back to and we also know that some activities cost more than others and it's about being able to maybe take that risk to do something a bit more expensive and see if people want to do it and then people may be quite happy to say yes it will will continue and we're happy to pay another five but now we know what it's like so it's about you know that idea of trying something and I think risk is a very important thing that we need to be allowed to fail more often because I think there's a lot about you have to always be successful you always have to be smiling and I think that's an important thing that's being lost in the defense of public funding you want to be able to also take risk but people with smaller pots of money people become more risk averse so it's just a point. Thank you. Irene, do you have anything on this specific point? Well I suppose just flexibility of funding so as well as you know the value in micro funding and seed funding a more sustained approach so that funding can be available over a longer period for individual artists or smaller organisations can make an enormous difference. It's very hard to develop your career or develop your ideas in finite periods so I think providing a guarantee of some sustained funding as well is really essential. Thanks and just one point to pick up on briefly and Jude you mentioned a universal benefit potentially for individual artists that's something that's come up in previous sessions around the concept of a universal basic income their four local authorities in Scotland have committed to taking forward trials on that. What do you think the impact of a UBI would be for arts in the creative sector and if the trials are to go ahead how do you think artists in the cultural sector in those four areas should be considered when designing those trials? I'd say yes we should try it and we should definitely have people in there because I think it will allow not just people who want to make a career out of the arts class but also be able to enable other people to expand that side of things which may make them a happier person may be more productive and things like that. I was also I was reading back the evidence and I was thinking that there's also that aspect of a universal basic income for groups maybe so you're talking about grassroots maybe there could be something about some of these important organisations that I don't necessarily want to get too big that's the other thing is we always think bigger is better but sometimes keeping small and fleet of foot is really important. A universal basic income for some groups could make a lot of difference to how they're able to then source other income earn income support other people for example the idea of writing funding applications supporting that you know there is a lot of expertise out there but people aren't able to afford that capacity to help other people so it's just a universal basic income not just for individuals but maybe certain groups. Our industry of course has many freelancers at its heart and the struggle for members to survive whilst writing unfunded applications while waiting for applications to come in whilst being kind of the bedrock in local communities you know the artists live in local communities they're part of those local communities and I would certainly advocate that as a sector which is already quite literally in some cases a gig economy it might be a really fertile test bed to say how does this work in practice what is it that people need I know that speaking and again anecdotally to members who were in receipt of the benefits that used to be possible to get back in the 80s that people were able to get housing benefit and I think it was an extra 10 pounds a week on the unemployment benefit in order to set up as a small business and many creative people did that and many of the much of the flourishing that we have now is really as a direct consequence of people having access to a roof over their head and a basic level of money coming in for a period to enable them to get going if they're going to be professional but I think then there's the other issue of community and engagement and and again not wanting to keep that too rigid so it's about flexibility to enable people to make the right contribution for them and to be able to grow their own practice in ways that are good for their community as well as for themselves and that will also ultimately be economic because some of those people will fly some of those people will be the people that make the money that comes back into the system that supports everyone else in future thank you oh sorry I am really a bit no well thank you you can hear okay and thank you very much and that was a very interesting and wide-ranging discussion and thanks for coming in to speak to us today and now we shall suspend briefly to change over our panel witnesses can I now welcome our next panel of witnesses we have next steward from the music venue trust and we have david laying head of art music and cultural venues at Glasgow life and can I thank you both for coming to give evidence to us today and we're looking at our infrastructure our cultural infrastructure as part of our inquiry in this particular session and of course this panel allows us to talk about the importance of our capital infrastructure the committee's been trying to do outreach as part of this inquiry and last week we went to denfermline to the fire station creative which was very interesting and they obviously have created a new cultural venue out of nothing and certainly the evidence that we took from artists across there was that just having that piece of capital infrastructure had been quite transformative for individual artists and artists organizations and having an additional venue so it really certainly brought home to me anyway the importance of capital and actually transforming the opportunities for artists themselves which is a big theme of our inquiry how we actually support individual artists so perhaps i wonder if if you could perhaps give us your view on the existing capital infrastructure available to support the arts across scotland and what the particular challenges are facing artists in terms of showcasing their work who would like to start Mr Lang I think I've been volunteered I can speak mainly I suppose for what are perceived to be the issues in Glasgow specifically but it may be that some of them apply across the country to some extent or another there is significant capital or building based if you like cultural infrastructure within the city among other cities and those usually take the form of venues I would also like to talk at some point about the the role that key festivals and local arts officers play in part of that infrastructure but in terms of physical infrastructure I think the evidence that you've heard there in Fife is certainly would apply in those cases venues when they are established as arts venues within certain geographical areas can certainly do have a transformative effect on the opportunities for artists and they do that in a number of ways and the challenges that they face are linked to each of those ways so one of the key things that sometimes that we hear about a lot from artists and organisations that we work with is that venues need to and succeed more in boosting the artistic sector when they can offer time and space and support for the development and making of new work as well as the showing and performance of work to audiences and that is something that we hear regularly so not all venues have the space or the variety of spaces to allow that to go on while also having public facing spaces for audiences to attend work but is a key function of a good strong network of arts venues or an arts venue in a particular location to be able to offer. The other thing that's very important is that venue-based producers, individual art form specialists, curators obviously form a crucial way for individual artists to connect with the network and find out about and take advantage of opportunities at local national and international level. It's a really good way for an artist to have a pipeline from working as an individual completely alone to having a first small show within a venue that itself is internationally recognised that starts to put them on other radars if you like where venues can function really well and Tramley is a good example of that, I believe, in Glasgow. They can offer a range of sizes of shows or spaces to present work and develop work over a period of time and thus can support individual artists through a whole initial and mid-career stage and fully professional high profile career stage by supporting all of those levels in different ways. That is some of the ways in which I think that the venue infrastructure is important and currently functions. The pressures and challenges are that they are in many cases funded entirely locally, so it's only perhaps the city council or local authorities that are funding them. There is huge pressure on that resource on those funding streams and while there is a lot of work and attention going on behind the scenes and being paid to addressing that, it's a demographic and a public sector finance pressure as a whole. That means that all of those beneficial ways in which a good arts venue can support individual artists and audiences to make and see work are under pressure as well in turn. The way in which venues such as ours benefit artists is that we are the research and development arm of the UK music industry, so the industry itself last year was worth £4.4 billion and yet the place where say the rock and pop and wider versions of that part of the sector hone their craft, where they initially perform etc are very seriously under threat. There's a real crumbling infrastructure issue there, so the requests in short from the music venue trust where funding could be available would be to put it into infrastructure to improve the quality of the venues themselves and some money for talent development programmes. We're able to take the next generation of talent, put them on in a better environment than what we currently have and to take them up to the next levels thereafter. What are the reasons for the decline in the number of venues? There are many, so live music is very popular at the moment. It continues to grow greatly at the top end, but increased costs of rent, stagnating ticket prices have been a factor. Lower sales of alcohol are really big at the moment and there's an issue where GMVs tend to be seen as pubs that put on music, at least that's what our rateable value is tied to etc. Traditionally the sector has always existed completely in the commercial sphere, but there's now an issue where we have a market failure where you can't really get by by losing money on ticket sales and then making up the rest through alcohol sales in the longer run that's not sustainable. How do you think that problem should be solved? There should be funding for grassroots music venues. A very similar set of evidence to what you were sent was sent to the Department of Digital Culture and Media in Sport down south. One of the recommendations was that Arts Council England should be funding grassroots music venues. Some big news is why I'm getting to this quite quickly is that since we submitted our evidence, Arts Council England have agreed to make a ringfenced fund of £1.5 million for grassroots music venues in England. They have also allowed music venue trusts to second a member of Arts Council staff to make sure that those grants are applied for and that the money is received. That money is all to be paid out by March next year. I don't think that Creative Scotland at the moment has a good idea about how they would be able to do any kind of proportionally matched fund and we're beginning to have some discussions with them. You've already started to speak to them about that. Do you think that there's an understanding, the same level of understanding here, as there is in down south about the nature of the problem? This conversation that we're having is part of the growth of that understanding. A music venue trust has been around for five years. I often speak for music venue trusts but I'm a small venue operator. I've run a place called Sneaky Peets on the Cairgate, so not far from here. Those arguments have been, once we've been starting to have, of last few years. There was more of an understanding last year that what we would do was we would try and get more of a pipeline investment fund that comes from the industry. But since Arts Council of really straight England have really straight away recognised the importance of supporting what could otherwise be a crumbling infrastructure, I think it's on Creative Scotland now to look at what they can do about that. If you've got a situation where a venue in Barrick upon Tweed can apply for funds, that a venue in North Barrick can't, clearly there's an issue in the parity there. How are you defining a grassroots music venue? Is there a definition in terms of the Arts Council of England as to who can apply? There is a definition which you will have received in the evidence that came through before but essentially we're talking about a network of just over 500 smaller music venues, mostly independently owned, who programme primarily new music and who have direct relationship with the artists themselves as well. Generally GMVs are under 500 capacity and they are all the places where the future stars learn their trade. Thank you very much, that's very interesting. I have one question for David Lang, if he's able to answer that question. It might have been better directed at the chief executive of Glasgow life but we have heard a degree of disappointment around the operation of trusts. If this is developed because we went through a time of austerity where funding to local authorities has been tight and that's had an impact on the few trusts that we have in Scotland and whether there is merit to a trust model when we're looking at sustainable funding, do you think that they have been effective in drawing in additional money that local authorities who haven't moved to that model haven't found more challenging? I think that there is information available which I would be happy to arrange to supply perhaps after the event but speaking very broadly my understanding is that yes, in terms of the proportion of expenditure and income that a trust such as Glasgow life now has passing through its hands, if you like, the proportion has shifted from the degree to which the local authority is directly accounting for or the size of the proportion that is accounted for by grant directly from local authority has reduced quite significantly and the other sources of funding be they certain types of commercial or semi-commercial trading, leveraging in grants from other external and funding bodies and other types of trusts who may be specialised in particular areas, art form specific funds, European and international funds various links. My understanding is that there is some evidence to show that it has been successful in reducing certain types of costs and increasing other funding streams into the mix so that the proportion is slightly rebalanced over time. I believe that that is there and I would be happy to arrange to supply that. That's great, thank you. Earlier you were both in, I asked questions about cutting the cake or increasing the size of the cake. It's chained into a pie during the course of the morning, but I don't think that anyone is going to disagree with increasing the size, but you both in your submissions did discuss issues around the way that it's cut and David, you had talked about existing power structures that exhibit institutional racism, ableism and classicist discrimination and there should be consideration given to the benefits of cultural, social and economic prosperity for everyone. You made arguments around social inclusion and discrimination. Nick, you gave figures that showed the amount, you have 36 per cent of funding going to classical music and it's less than 5 per cent going to contemporary music. Was it linked to Kenneth Gibson's earlier question about Scottish opera, so Nick, do you want to clarify? To the extent of that, 0 per cent of the RFO went to grassroots music venues, which are the venues that the sector that I specifically have been talking about. Yes, you did go on to say that there's no support at all, it goes to the area that you're representing. Do you want to have a comment on the issue around is it more funding that's needed or other issues with the way in which the current funding is distributed? Nick, if you want to go first.  From our point of view, we think that if there is a question about how much proportionally should be spent, we're not asking for a lot, but we think that there should be more than zero. That's certainly the case. The figure in England until this recent announcement was also very, very small. It was 0.03 per cent of Arts Council England's spending for the RFOs, but actually we won't be talking about RFOs or NPOs, we'll be talking about really targeted funding which has to come from strategy and Creative Scotland's strategy is a little bit up in the air at the moment. So until we have strategy, we can't really create those targeted funds. So yes, I think there should be a situation where Scotland's, and I wouldn't like to pen it just into rock and roll, but there's a sense in which you can more or less understand what grassroots music venues tend to do when you talk about rock and roll sector and the research development of that. Those should be and can be seen as culturally prestigious. I think that money goes to ballet, theatre, opera, before you get to what money is then spent by Creative Scotland and distributed thereafter, so not the money that comes from direct government to portfolio organisations. That these matter in terms of people's sense of what they are as Scots, as people's perception of what Scotland is, they're hugely important in Scotland's cultural output. But in terms of where they're funded or the amount of funding that they get, they're not viewed as prestigious at all. I think that that standpoint needs to be changed. I think there's a common conception that Scots love to go to see live music, that in Glasgow the venues couldn't be busier and there's a huge amount of them. But where does the funding go? Historically, because GMVs have always existed in the purely commercial sphere, they haven't had the conversations with potential funders with Creative Scotland when I went to see Creative Scotland recently. They really hadn't had someone from a venue like mine come and have a long chat with them that might lead to some other chats, so it's quite new all this. But we haven't had a seat at the table and if you're not at the table then you're probably lunch. Just for a big David in, Nick, do you want to say, just to finish this, a wee bit about because convener, I shall ask the question if you mentioned market failure. If you look at a few years ago, tenant sponsorship used to sponsor a network of local grassroots venues and they supported bands on tours. We're going back to the early 90s, late 80s type. And then they moved their support more towards Tea in the Park and big festivals. We do see huge growth in ticket sales on that end of the music business but you're reporting that there has been a fall-off at the more grassroots level. I don't think it's true to say that there are less sales at GMVs but the standard of infrastructure is decreasing because there's not quite enough income going on there. I said there's stagnation in ticket prices, live music on the whole is more popular. The venues are doing very well, are doing very well, the venues that are not are doing poorly and in particular if those venues are not in Edinburgh and Glasgow, when you lose a venue like that you don't really tend to get another one to replace it. So there's definitely a problem with market failure in more rural areas. In your briefing for us, you said that 1.5 million have come from the Arts Council England and that's a recent announcement. In the sound and vision report, you talked about match funding from the sector. That's correct. There is a plan that Music Venues Trust has where they could unlock a lot of matched funds to be able to kit out 100 grassroots music venues by—I think the date is now 23, if correct funding was in place. The amount of money that's come from Arts Council England isn't quite enough but there could be a serious improvement in the standard of venues that we have in Scotland with the correct funding for infrastructure from Creative Scotland or should it be elsewhere than fine but I personally think that Creative Scotland is probably the correct instrument to be able to give funds to grassroots music venues to improve infrastructure and that would probably come through the creative industries team but again these were just conversations that we're beginning to have at the moment. Because the creative industries team takes another tangent but my understanding is that the Scottish enterprise of the body that still has the budget for creative enterprises and industries and Creative Scotland doesn't really have much of a budget for that at all it just comes in The officer that I speak to at Creative Scotland who takes care of creative industries team is at Creative Scotland so where his funds come from exactly I'm not sure except that he is the person that I speak to. Do you have any involvement because it is a business with the Scottish enterprise? Do they give any support that you're aware of to? No and again that's a set of conversations that haven't really begun generally but perhaps Glasgow Life has more of these kind of conversations and maybe you can speak on that David. David sorry to go back to the original question I'm trying to take up too much time but around you had commented around the distribution of funds and that the cultural sector is not representative of the general population and express some concerns about diversity and accessibility and those issues do you want to say a bit more about that? Yes I think it's quite widely acknowledged that the particularly professional art sector if you like is not hugely diverse in some ways and therefore there are clearly mechanisms at work somewhere in the system that are tending to exclude some people. I don't think that we have the answers particularly to that issue but I think it is fair to say that we believe that consideration should be given to those issues along with other considerations around the health of the art sector itself as it currently stands. I want to just come back quickly to one point and just really agree with Nick about the historical perception of music as an art form and how it should be supported particularly contemporary or what's often referred to as Pop and Rock and in our evidence did also suggest that in the same way as all other art forms, small music venues and small musical groups and individual musicians should be considered for support on an artistic basis in the same way as other art forms are. Sorry perhaps you could remind me and I'll come try and come back more to the point that that's fine that answer I want to just you had talked about I would like to say something really quickly on diversity which is that it's quite important that if you support music about art forms generally from the grassroots up that you will automatically get diversity if you put all your funding into more traditional art forms and by which I mean those those art forms which have tended to get funding whether it be theatre opera ballet yes those art forms can all say that they have got people from lots of different economic backgrounds and lots of ethnic diversity from the people involved in it but they are still making the same kinds of art forms and where you will get the next levels of development in the art forms is where you get people who come from different backgrounds to represent the types of art forms that they come from not what they have been schooled into through the conservatory. Thanks very much Ross. Just to follow on this point that Nick made there about prestige and a lot of it's included in David's written evidence you know and it's quite obvious opera has prestige hip-hop often does not and how do we tackle an issue like that within our public bodies because it seems that that ultimately comes down to who's in the room when funding decisions are being made or when the structure of a funding pot is being decided on so how do you increase diversity at the level that is distributing the funds rather than we obviously want to increase diversity in the arts itself but you have to go upstream to do that it would strike me yes well it's that's a great question and it's one that is talked about and discussed a fair bit certainly with the organizations and artists institutions that we work with and there are a few I guess broad ways in which we here as an organization from people might might be beneficial to look at one key thing probably is to be quite artist and audience led so the art sector has a professional element to it but it also needs to be it needs to be opened up if you can involve individual artists and individual people at a very grass roots level very early stages then that should tend to help promote diversity and overcome a sort of institutional inertia around what is funded or what is perceived to be prestigious being I think through Tramley's work for example it's probably fair to say we feel that the experimental art forms and art forms that are difficult to categorize are very fair to our grounds for the kind of new thinking and new ways of working that is therefore more exciting and more diverse and less in a in a sort of defined and formal you know type of art form that you may see elsewhere and so having capacity both organizational and financial to take risk to experiment to work from artist level individual artist level up and build around that as opposed to the structure and organization leading everything and then only funneling through the artists and art forms that fit that institution's ideas is really important. The socioeconomic factors behind why that will lead to some of the lack of diversity in the professional art sector are often to do with the legacy of the sector often being based around people who can work on a free internship and people who can have that support to go and do a stint in another arts organization and start building a CV that's not open to everyone by any means and there's a parallel issue around individual artists who can't participate sometimes in even types of consultations or being asked to be on panels that select work even when institutions do try and have wider panels that are not just salaried you know arts professionals who are sitting on them that is important efforts have been made those people then have to be paid in a way that a salaried an institution can send an arts officer or a specialist along to a selection panel to sit on it to help select artists individual artists that's a whole that might be the whole day that they were planning to be chasing up leads for commissions that might actually make you know the difference between them surviving another year as an artist or not now as an organization we've made some specific changes around how we do that in terms of paying for attendance at consultations and supporting freelancers when we commission work but we don't have enough resource to make a whole sale you know revolution in that regard but we are trying to take conscious steps all the time to work more in that way and it does seem to be an issue that is quite significant in terms of the end results and who is in those positions of influence that you mentioned and Nick you mentioned that the discussions you've had with creative Scotland recently are perhaps not ones that they've had at least for quite a while your sector is not one that they engage with often from the sector's point of view do you feel that this is an issue of a perception that creative Scotland's doors would be closed if folk approached them or that they seemed so distant that for a lot of folk in the sector they wouldn't even really know where to start they wouldn't know the first person to actually get in touch with at creative Scotland to try and get a meeting to try and get discussions going I feel that there is a will from creative Scotland to try and do something for the sector the music officer and historically music officers at creative Scotland have more recently tended to be people who come from our sort of contemporary background so there have been some struggles for them to try and work out how it is that they would benefit they don't get enough applications and venues that have tried to apply for open funding in the past particularly for the made in Scotland fund have tended not to receive funds for that some of that is to do with the specifics of open funding so for instance the cycle of time that it takes to get an application in now if I book a show really far ahead of schedule at this point if I was to book a show and it was really far ahead of schedule it would be November but if I was to apply for funding for made in Scotland I'd be applying now to put on a show in August next year so historically when I've tried to go apply for that kind of fund and to be fair we're very organised and not all GMVs have got that privilege of being as organised stars we are because they're busy fixing the loose we haven't received those funds because we will have to say well we will put on someone we think will be great who will be touring around about then and that just doesn't cut it for an application so in terms of the ability to fund talent development programmes or the ability to fund touring to work on contemporary music schedules the current open funding model is slightly ill-suited there is a better model for that which we so sneaky beats the venue that I run is almost unique in the UK in that we have bursary from the PRS foundation it's small it's £10,000 a year which we spend exclusively on artist fees because we have a track record of putting on great bands and for developing careers we receive a bursary which we are allowed to then spend on the artists that we choose to spend money on creative Scotland have said that that we would potentially be open to the idea and I can't quote anyone here of doing talent development programmes along those lines but again these are the beginning of conversations and the big ask from the music venue trust right now is for investment infrastructure and then later on talent development programmes but if talent development programme funding comes first we'll take it. Nick makes an important point and it reminds me that there's something that I should have mentioned in response to previous question around some ways to tackle lack of diversity and it's related to the idea that key venues and key locations whose teams or specialists are kind of deeply connected to their sector like CQPs or like a venue like Tramway or an organisation like Glasgow life when they hold smaller sub schemes if you like sub streams of funding that they then distribute in turn that can be very powerful and there's a couple of examples within Glasgow that we're involved in managing on behalf of the city one is the arts development scheme under the integrated grant fund and one is the visual art makers development scheme. Now in both cases what we find in terms of the individual artists and small organisations who apply and are successful for these funds is that they tend for various reasons to be much more diverse than the bigger organisations who secure other streams of funding and I believe that a large part of the reason for that I think I believe there are two main reasons for that one is that because we as an organisation have had the capacity to fulfil a lot of the bureaucracy and management and formfilling if you like that they went along with getting the original sort of total fund if you like and we have been able to then take all of that out of the equation for smaller arts organisations or individual artists and the system that they then have to apply to is just a very light touch simple quick one where they're applying to us our officers are doing all the work of translating that into what then the original funder be that this council or or another body then require and that's a really important role actually that a support role that individual artists do need from the sector that there are if you like there is a bureaucracy that happens it's not necessarily the case that although you want to be artist led artists want to be doing that so in having these sorts of locally embedded schemes with arts officers who are deeply connected in their in their local area who can create a process that's very light touch quick and easy for the artist and then can take care of the rest and bundle that up and and take care of the the sort of upwards flow then of reporting and evaluation and equalities tracking and all these things that can be very powerful and we see from the list of organisations and artists that benefit from these smaller schemes that they tend for various reasons to be much more diverse than the art sector as a whole and they tend to be quite fragile organisations and in many cases these sort of small grants of two three four five thousand pound are absolutely crucial to their survival but they're working with communities or in art forms or with individual artists that are otherwise underrepresented and so do feel that that is an area that could be essentially quite simply if that was a bigger fund that we were managing in that way then we could amplify that effect quite considerably and relatively straightforwardly and the other the other the other role that's important is making sure that there is a way for those individual artists who might be coming from a different cultural background and they may have and they may be new citizens of Glasgow and that they have locally accessible not just funds but people who can connect them with the wider high profile opportunities that are going on and so how do you get a slot on one of the prestigious festivals that might you know happen within Glasgow that we might because life might be involved in or or others and it's local officers and investing in that capacity that can actually really help connect people to those opportunities so that they're given a platform and it's not always just the same people that are getting the benefit of those high profile platforms that the infrastructure of festivals and high profile moments for showcasing are in helping to give individual artists a real step up in their careers I don't think the importance of those can be overstated thank you very much just the first question is a point of clarification relates to nick in your written statement under e1 it states that significantly reduced audience attendances but to a question it's from clear baker's question to you on you stated that it's not necessarily fewer people actually attending venues so I'd be grateful if you could just clarify which of those are correct please my experience in Edinburgh and doing shows in Glasgow is that tendences are good across GMBs in the whole of the UK I think sales may be down in certain areas one of the as I say live music keeps expanding and things are getting tougher for GMBs one of the big factors that we face is that so many more people are going to festivals now we've seen a couple of festivals sadly in Scotland collapse of last couple of months in roughly 1970 there were about 150 live music festivals in the UK in the year 2010 there were 1000 in 2019 there are 3000 so there's a three fold growth to an unsustainable number within that time and that has a lot of impact upon GMBs as well so live music continues to grow I don't personally although you have some figures in front of you I have those figures on attendance for venues I believe that attendance for live music in the UK is generally very good but it's still hard for GMBs I mean with that with the wider music industry is there a feeling that obviously it's good that people are going to we're going out to go to watch and listen to live music but is there a feeling that people are doing that because they've been fed a diet of the big stars on a daily basis on the radio and TV so they're not actually getting an opportunity to actually listen to potentially new and upcoming singers and bands I think there's more diversity of listening now than there ever has been and I think streaming has really enabled that to happen there's also a real diversity in media outlets from which people can get music and the rate of discovery as platforms like Spotify describe it as seems to be increasing it doesn't necessarily mean that there are more professionals and I think the hurdles to get over it before you can call yourself a professional musician now are much stronger I think you would need to be doing tours of venues that were say 800 to 1,000 capacity size in the UK and Europe before you could say that your main income within my part of the contemporary sphere would be would be as a musician so no I don't think it's just the big headline artist getting all of the all of the pie but clearly they do get a lot there's beginning to be an understanding from the industry that and this is the music venue trust pipeline investment fund that the industry should be giving back to the smaller venues for the development role that they do across the continent for instance in France there's a 3% tax on all tickets that goes towards the grassroots and I think the UK industry may at some stage agree to do some small taxes some of the way of paying it back there's small commitments from some of the ticketing companies and the record labels are still keeping away from it at the moment the major promoters are not very interested in it but in other European countries they do have agreements where they have to do it and they have been fairly willing to do so so we'll see what happens in that part but that certainly kind of led me on to that area of questioning because you quoted Steve Lamac in your submission and I thought his quote generally was extremely interesting and so in terms of the industry notwithstanding also what you just said do the industry actually put anything back in at all because also if you're here today also highlighting the issue of creative Scotland and also about public money but the industry itself to be actually helped and invested at all there is a request now that the industry does much more to do so I think the industry does at times and in ways philanthropically choose to fund music education and things like that but it's really it's really small beans compared to the bigger picture and as I say UK music industry was worth 4.4 billion last year and there's a lot of venues that can't afford to fix the locks on the toilet doors right now in terms of their capacity and time they have for the staff to fix things properly thank you very much and good morning panel and thank you for your excellent submissions Nick you talked earlier on about the grants that are going to be provided the UK and you're looking to in your office to suggest that we do something similar here I mean I noticed that in your own submission you talked in the area where you're defining grassroots music venues you talk about for example what defines it in terms of equipment so you talk about stage monitors, lighting rig, drum kit, backline, stage microphone, stage box and snakes, ben instruments, instrument consumables, signal processors, recording rig etc. Alexander knows a lot more about these things than the rest of us but is that the kind of stuff that you feel would be really good to be able to get a grant for so for example if we if there was a kind of firm set up in Scotland you know grassroots venues could bid specifically to say look we really need to replace this new bit of equipment I mean talk for example about still a lot of analog being used in venues you talk about some of the equipment not being in is environmentally good as it should be is this the kind of stuff that you're thinking about you know specifically items of that to level of infrastructure yes it's that type of infrastructure and in the details the sound vision product that you have there specifically I think that to have a proportional to the English award kind of award coming into Scotland would exactly do that so if it's 100 venues across the UK then roughly speaking it's 9.6 or 10 venues in Scotland and it can make a huge difference to upgrade the infrastructure in 10 venues to start with yeah and it is that kind of infrastructure for sure um other when you invest in the infrastructure that way you massively increase audience experience you make the live music much more attractive but it also frees up venues then spend any leftover sums that they may have to work on audience development and their talent development programs to give better fees to touring artists venues are very efficient in the way they spend money they spend what they can they almost always spend all of the money and I think you have a figure there somewhere that says that venues spend 130% of their ticket income on artist fees or rather I'm putting on the shows so they're already running a loss which is subsidising from alcohol sales when the alcohol sales really start to disappear and I believe there's a news story yesterday saying that Scotland's alcohol sales last year turned out to be at the historic low it's not sustainable that we continue to try and operate as pubs in order to be able to put on bands so where we can improve the quality of experience we'll be able to continue to develop audiences and we're going to be able to continue to develop audiences for the next generation of musicians coming through in scotland to be fair that allotted bait on this issue yesterday in the figures in terms of alcohol consumption the reduction tends to be in the high strength low cost alcohols which we're obviously trying to reduce because of the impact it is social and economic impact but I can say that the the reports that we have from event bright and others have done great reports on youth trends that last few years has definitely shown a reduction in the consumption of alcohol in young people and the young people who go out to music venues more specifically people who go to music venues drink less than people who go to pubs for a drink typically be one or two beers this of the spend per head is much lower as I often say running music venue is a crap way to run pub and putting on live music is a crap way to increase the value of your pub okay so to go back to equipment would you envisage a situation whereby the kind of them the venue put up say so you were p you were investing in a piece of equipment at a cost five thousand pounds the venue would put up say 20 percent of that and the rest would be providing a grant is that the kind of way you see it some kind of balance rather than a just an outright grant for the piece of equipment because I think anyone who's funding would want to say we want to show that we want the venue to at least show some kind of you know determination to invest in its own business how would you see that working these grants it could work on any one of those models and as you'll notice in the details of sound vision there the point is to get money from governments ideally to unlock funding that we already have and there's match funding available and some that actually comes from the PA and lighting companies as well and part of that is about building for them longer term relationships as well now interestingly there's nine members of this committee actually two are unable to be here at the moment for other reasons but none of us represent Glasgow or Edinburgh and yet I noticed that in the Scottish Music Alliance 27 of the 47 venues are in Glasgow and Edinburgh which is about 20 percent of Scotland's population we've got some real concerns that I certainly do over how Creative Scotland and other organisations spread their funding I mean for example in North Ayrshire I represent the per capita spend is 25 times higher in Glasgow than in North Ayrshire now we know there's obviously always going to be more venues in the cities because people go into them but do you feel that there's an opportunity to actually ensure the time that some of these resources are actually invested outside the big cities for example in venues and how do we stimulate the growth venues in other parts of Scotland rather than having a focus and I mean I know it's neat to preach to Edinburgh but in other parts of Scotland? I and the Music Venue Trust are all for ensuring that we maintain whatever network we have outside the bigger cities of smaller music venues those are those which are most at risk and under current situations where you have rent hikes for instance sneaky peats our landlord is currently trying to increase our rent by 45 percent rates went up by 50 percent for us two years ago if you're in a rural area with it or an outside a city area where you have a smaller audience to play to obviously these financial concerns are much more extreme it's not for me to divide the pie but I do think that if you lose in that venue now in those areas I don't know what kind of person would choose to then open an almost certainly loss making business I allowed music venue under those circumstances so it's about maintaining before we grow and yes if you think that in your opinion there should be more money given out to venues in those areas I would say the venues that are most needed certainly deserve to have a cut the pie yeah I mean I think that consolidation is obviously vital I don't think we'll ever see the return of flicks and breaking right enough David you're obviously I've got real issues in terms of diversity I mean obviously there's a real issue with geographic diversity I don't know if you want to comment on that and how do we actually deliver that diversity because diversity comes in many other ways I mean you obviously talked to about ableism etc races and perhaps I mean some of the high arts companies in Scotland are extremely diverse if you want to look at where the artists come from I mean if you look at scottish balor scottish opera you know they come from dozens of different countries globally so how do we how do we actually look at improving that situation I think there's a range of approaches probably required I'll talk specifically about the ones maybe they link back to your opinion sorry just one other thing I should say because I don't want to interrupt you but just one thing and how do we encourage people from say a deprived background in Scotland to think they can have a future in some of these companies okay so I'll try and pick up on those questions as well as adding a little bit to the previous one tonight because I believe that they are they are related so in terms of geographic spread in the same way as I believe that strong local arts venues and I include small music venues in that have a range of benefits excuse me at various levels within their kind of local city area if that's Glasgow for example absolutely believe that that same benefit they can function in that same beneficial way as an access point and as part of our strong network you know in other areas that are currently underserved and from the point of view of the venues that Glasgow life are operating on behalf of the city within Glasgow they are to an extent part of a national international network and are very open and willing to work in a way that helps transfer some of the value and benefits that happen through our work and coordinate in both ways in two directions with venues maybe in smaller towns and cities around the country. In terms of specific funds that you were asking Nick about earlier I think there is a really strong case for specific funds maybe with a slightly different focus than what Nick is talking about although I also support that and this is around funds being available specifically for venues of all kinds but particularly smaller ones who tend not to have the internal resource to do it to make improvements to their physical and non-physical structures and processes to address inequality of access so that can be everything from signage that's suitable for people with visual impairments and it can be around BSL interpretation being much more universally provided for deaf it can be around ramps and lifts and you know changing places standard toilet facilities it can be around supported attendances or different programming at different times so that perhaps people who are neurodiverse can enjoy engage more with art forms currently there are a range of things that for smaller organisations and venues although it's fair to say they lack the resource to spend that money it seems to me to be really important that that money somehow is found because these are very real barriers that act to exclude large groups of people from accessing arts and that is one of the ways in which we can improve diversity. The other thing is to bear in mind that this applies equally to performers and artists as it does to audiences there are still challenges even in some of the venues which are quite accessible in many ways to audiences where actually if the performers or artists themselves are disabled in any way or have any other challenges that require support that actually we're still a long way off that being universally provided sort of back of house if you like and it's the same in terms of space to make and develop at work that all acts to filter out obviously and excludes certain people from participating fully in the benefits that arts has to offer. Thank you very much Alexander. Thank you. David you talk about the short termism of creative Scotland in its three year cycle you also then come on to the idea of that there's a perception that's still very biased towards Edinburgh and national institutions and we've discussed already about the funding process that we find ourselves in today so what do you think that the Scottish Government in creative Scotland should be doing differently to try and support the creative industry because we heard from the earlier panel that it can be something as basic as the lack of public transport that stops people going to locations from being able to be supportive of a group, an organisation, an institution because they're not able to get that ability to even travel to the location, far less affordability of actually going and using the venues. So what do you think the government should be doing different and what do you think creative Scotland should be doing to try and manage that situation because you've highlighted today some really very interesting and quite important aspects about what's wrong with the industry. So I think that it's fair to say that it will firstly just to mention the evidence that I've submitted was as much a collation of views that we hear so much as it's necessarily. I don't think there's anything there that I disagree with but it's an attempt to represent the quite diverse sector that we engage with and work with. The sector is diverse in some ways and can speak for itself in other ways but that is an attempt to do that. However, I think that we welcome the huge efforts that creative Scotland are currently making to review how they work. It seems to be a really deep and meaningful process of review that's going on and we have had opportunities to feed into that which we're grateful for and welcome and are confident that that may lead to optimisation of how they work because it's a hugely important body and works well in many ways. It does function well in many ways although you're right when you ask people about anything to do with the cultural sector, it will be the problems that you'll hear about more than anything and that's maybe worth noting. I think that there is some scope in looking at how that national body works with city and local authority partners over the long term. There is a network of venues, some are under threat in some sectors, as Nick has pointed out, and some others are under threat. The network in some places is fragile but it does exist and it can be strengthened. It may be that there will always be a case for very short-term, quite short-term, medium types of funding because they're appropriate for different types of projects and programmes but I think that there will be some merit in consideration of the idea that there is a key series of partnerships with a geographical spread with anchor points in significant locally-based organisations that could work with a national body to each do what is most appropriate that they do effectively and whether or not that funding sort of cascades in a slightly different way is worthy of consideration. The whole idea of partnership collaboration that we've touched on. There are capacity workers in culture in some locations. There's the art officer that is there to try and support the mechanism to ensure that they can engage. That has worked really well in some locations and in other locations it's completely non-existent so there's not the comparisons that can be looked at. How do you think we should be trying to look at that to ensure that we get the benefit from them all? I have to say that in terms of the whole national picture, I'm very focused on Glasgow so I'm not necessarily best qualified to answer. What I can say is that the local authority resource in many cases is under pressure for various reasons and so the number of those local arts officers who perform that function has been reduced or they are stretched. You're right that there's a question about ensuring that there's adequate capacity provided on a fair and equitable basis across the country so that citizens everywhere can tap into those benefits and participate. I think that that sort of co-ordination of provision and a sort of national strategic view is the function that national bodies and government can do really well. I think that maybe I'm suggesting therefore that some aspects of delivery and connection are in turn best carried out at local level. Nick, do you have views on what should change within the government and the cultural side of things to try and support what you're trying to achieve? On the idea of local authorities talking to grassroots music venues, there are currently almost no conversations in Scotland on those lines so if there are funds then it would be great to see some kind of outreach to the venues and see how those conversations could start. If there are funds that are being created and say that you're in a city like Edinburgh, which has got 20 or so GMVs or less recently, then it doesn't take much for the appropriate person to pick up the phone and start the conversations, bring people in and really see if they're using their funds to target exactly what the funds are invented for. There's a knock-on benefit for you all if there is that dialogue to support you to ensure that you can, because it's a cultural tourism that expands across many sectors so that that opportunity to develop and to expand is there, but if there's no conversation taking place then there's no dialogue then there's a real difficulty. Great, there's a movement towards music cities which is a bit of a UK thing but it's international as well and some of that work's been done in Berlin for instance and the idea is that cities should be taking pride in the amount of music provision that they have but you have to have conversations between local authorities and music groups to have that. In Edinburgh we have one such group which is currently slightly dormant which was set up to try and fix some licensing issues that we had around inaudibility which I don't know if you're aware of that campaign, I partly ran that. In Scottish cities it would be great to have much more conversation between councils and those involved in music provision. I believe in Glasgow it's increasingly strong. Is it strong in Glasgow, David? Sorry. Sorry, I was making notes about something else and I'm not sure exactly what. I think about that for instance, Susan Aitken is very in favour of Glasgow being a music city, of Glasgow's status as a UNESCO city of culture. That's right, and this will lead on to a wider point and I'd like to make, if I may, around what could be done or thought of differently. The recognition that arts funding is not just about funding the arts, in terms of looking at it, in terms of what you get back for it, it's a much wider and much more significant issue than that. Yes, one of the very significant things is the economic impact and within Glasgow's economic planning the cultural tourism is a key driver for the next few years, specifically around contemporary visual art and around music. Glasgow is a UNESCO city of music and, as some people have said, the unofficial European capital of live music. The fact that people come to the city because of its cultural scene and in large part its music scene definitely seems to hold true and it's something that can be further developed and it is officially a part of the city's tourism and economic development plan. Seeing the arts, music and other forms of culture in their most diverse and vibrant forms as being things that play a huge part in other outcomes is another part of the thinking that I think potentially could be different and to everyone's benefit. Tourism and the economy directly is certainly one. The other one is around health and wellbeing and quality of life into older age attainment in young people, educational benefits, overcoming some of the disadvantages that some of our young people are facing and people at all life stages. There is increasingly a strong body of evidence that can show the benefits in many ways of both participating and being an audience for art forms. That can range from increasing language learning and emotional regulation and other types of learning in primary school age. Young people to the proven benefits in reduction in anxiety and need for medication, through people who are experiencing dementia in later life. There are a number of significant reports that point to those benefits. There was the all-party parliamentary review of the benefits of culture and prescription in art forms that came out in 2017, which is quite a good summary of the state of evidence currently. Even since then, in the past month, we have seen a powerful study that took 10 years of museum visit data, analysed it and showed even controlling for the simple benefits of getting out of the house and going and doing something or interacting with some people. That was controlled for and yet they found specifically cultural engagement had additional benefits over and above just those simple factors. It was all forms of cultural engagement, although the study centred on museum data. What was fascinating to me about it was that it was only not true for cinema and the working theory that screen-based forms of cultural engagement are not as effective as any sort of live cultural engagement. I do not know whether it is a shift that is possible, but seeing the country and each city within it in Glasgow has some challenges in this area. Seeing the health and social issues that citizens face that most people want to try to address, the arts and culture and cultural engagement in various forms can be a huge part of the answer to that. Thinking of its funding in the same way or a similar way or related to how you think of education and health funding has a great deal of merit. I believe that that is something that we as an organisation are actively engaged in exploring. You know, did you just want to make one last point, Nick? Yes, and it relates to what has just been said as well. For the reasons that Dave has just expanded upon, that is why attending cultural events is part of the national performance framework. I would say that the indicators are the attendance of cultural events or place of culture, participation in cultural activity, so if you want to get musicians who are not just a professional level, but amateur level and just keen, growth in the cultural economy, which we discussed, and people working in the arts and culture, I have to say that grassroots music venues are already very good at achieving those aims. Like many other sets of organisations, we have done so thus far without subsidy, but as I say now is a very particular time for GMVs to make sure that they continue to do so, to provide those things, which do filter into the national performance framework. There will be less from GMVs soon if the right funding is not in place. I think that we definitely got that message today. Thank you very much to both of you for coming to give evidence to us today, and also for your very helpful written submissions as well.