Good morning, and a warm welcome to the 14th meeting of the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee in 2023. As a result of a membership change, our first agenda item shall be a declaration of interest. Before that, I do give apologies from Donald Cameron, my deputy convener, who is not with us today. I echo Donald Cameron's comments from last week when he was in the chair with regard to the contribution of Sarah Boyack on the committee, and we wish her all the best for her new parliamentary duties. I would invite Neil Bibby, who joins the committee, to make a declaration of interest. Thank you, convener. Good morning. I have no relevant interest to declare. Thank you very much. Our next agenda item is to take evidence on our culture and communities inquiry, which is focused on taking place a place-based approach to culture. We have two evidence sessions this morning. Our first sessions were drawn by Crisanna Aigner, CEO of Creative Director of Fenton Bay Arts, Rachel Disbury, co-director of Alchemy Filmmat and Arts, Caitlin Skinner, CEO and Artistic Director of Stellar Quines, Arthur Cormack, chief executive of Fish and Gail, Murray Dawson, chief executive of Stationhouse Media Unit and Robert Ray, co-director of Art 27 Scotland and Steve Byrne, director of traditional arts and culture in Scotland. A warm welcome to you all to committee this morning. It is a round-table discussion, and we are hoping that it will be very free-flowing. If you want to comment or come in, don't feel you have to answer every point unless you have something new to say, as the time is very tight on a Thursday morning, but we do hope to be a very free-flowing and open session with my colleagues. We have three themes, which we wish to cover. One is place-based cultural policy, theme two is the cultural ecosystem, and theme three is unmet cultural need. We will try and have the three themes, but in all of these situations we usually end up talking about everything at once. I thank you all for your tendons, but also for everyone who submitted written submissions to the committee, which was very helpful. If we could start with place-based cultural policy, if I could open the questions, we are trying to understand the conditions that enable the development and growth of cultural activity within different communities across Scotland, as well as the barriers that impede cultural activity from taking place. From your own experience, do you have any reflections to share on what has supported cultural groups and events within your communities and what barriers currently exist? I will go around the room one by one. I am the chief executive founder of the station house media unit, which is based in Aberdeen. We are a community anchor organisation as well as a community media organisation. Our approach is very much place-based. We serve the regeneration areas of Aberdeen. In terms of culture and place, it is very much about the community owning activity. Our organisation, I am the founder as well, started in 1997. It was very much about the community taking action and the community wanting to get involved in the first instance that there was a film around community regeneration in Tilleron, one of our community, one of our regeneration areas. A management committee was formed then a charity. The organisation has grown from that first nugget of someone wanting to do something about their community to a community organisation, which has now got a turnover of £1.5 million. 40 mems of staff are quite a considerable organisation in delivering employability work as well as work in prison, a whole range of work with young people, with adults, community development. The principle of all of it is about the community owning it and a management committee involving local people. The key to the success of our organisation has been that ownership, that community ownership and local people being involved throughout the design and implementation of the organisation. In partnership, partnership is also key. Partnership across the board with partnership in the community, partnership with community planning, partnership with local authority, partnership with other third sectors. If it wasn't for the partnerships, we wouldn't exist. It's the same with volunteers. Volunteers are key to the organisation. If it wasn't for local volunteers, we have some like 150 volunteers actively involved on a weekly basis, so it wasn't for those volunteers that the organisation wouldn't exist here. I can't remember exactly what the first question was, but certainly in terms of that place-based approach. If the organisation is truly considering community and place, then make sure that the community is involved in the idea, the concept, the decision making throughout the organisation that the community is actively involved in making those decisions. It's not a cultural organisation sweeping in, delivering 12 weeks of programme and disappearing again. It's about that long-term engagement. We'll work with young people from the age of 11. They'll stay with us through our school work and our informal youth work through the transition into secondary school, transition into adulthood, get employability support, a whole range of support. It's not about a 12-week programme. It's not about learning some skills and then moving on to that programme. It's about creating opportunities across the board. That isn't just for young people, it's for adults as well. Our work within the prison, supporting people to engage in the prison, build relationships with our organisation, be released from the prison, support through the gate, meeting the same staff in the community, then beginning to volunteer with the community. Our key element to our organisation is that it isn't just the cultural activity. It's the broad base of support that communities need. We've got social workers, we've got community workers, we've got youth workers that work with the organisation. It's not just the cultural provision that we provide. When people are released from the prison, a lot of the work that we do is about stability and making connections and making sure that housing and all those things are in place. They then take part in the activity. For example, it could be radio or film or music, paper-based publications, online publications, they get involved in that because they're in a stable and safe place. It's about that long-term engagement. It's about the community being involved in all aspects of the programme, including the design of the programme. It's about long-term funding. We'll probably talk about funding at some point. It's about that long-term commitment investment in funding, which isn't necessarily around cultural activity, it's around outcomes. We've secured funding from cash back for communities, from investing communities. Recently, there was some investment from the Sean Connery Foundation that was announced this week. Lots of broad investment, but generally the investment is about outcomes. It's not about the activity that's taking place. It's what happens as a result of that activity. I've probably rambled enough, I mean, on through all the questions at once. Very pertinent points, but thank you for that. Arthur, do you want to come next? I very much agree with a lot of what Murray was saying, so I won't repeat that, but a wee bit of background about the FACE movement. For 40 plus years, they've been supporting traditional arts and Gaelic language in communities across Scotland. There are 47 of them in communities across Scotland, not just in what you might expect to be Gaelic-speaking areas, but in some of the cities as well, and even down as far as to Freeson Galloway. Where there was Gaelic spoken at one time. There's a loose definition of what a FACE is, and they all follow the same sort of model in terms of teaching. Beyond that, we don't impose anything on them as an organisation, artistically or culturally. It's up to them what they do. It has to be relevant to their own local needs and our job then is to support them to deliver that. We do that through a number of means. We have a team of development officers who have a portfolio of FACE and that they look after, and we also provide funding and insurance and musical instruments and all that kind of thing that they need to be able to carry out their activities. Very much in terms of place, they're rooted in their own communities. They're doing work that's relevant to their communities, and our job is very much to support that. In our case as well, we want to promote traditional arts, but we also promote the use of Gaelic, and that's important in all of the FACE. It's about using the language outside school and engaging with the language for the first time for a lot of young people. Before Covid, we had something like 6,000 young people a year taking part in the FACE. At the moment, it's around about 3,500-4,000, and we're getting numbers back up to where they were, but clearly we're dealing with a lot more young people than are in Gaelic medium education, for instance. There's a big interest in my young people in engaging with the language, even though they're not being taught the language in schools. Thank you for having us today. Adding to what my colleagues have already referenced, for us, like many organisations, we're really fuelled by an individual artist who's passionate about their work and sees a need for a cultural intervention. Our organisation was started 30 years ago by a group of women theatre practitioners who were frustrated by a lack of gender equality on Scottish stages. Three decades on, our flagship community project funded by Culture Collective is Young Quines, which came from an extraordinary community practitioner named Rachel Jane Morrison, who's based in Levenmouth in Fife. I guess she perceived two distinct things. One was that her work in schools saw that young women and non-binary people and trans people in that environment were not able to express themselves in drama, in arts classes in school. That was not an environment where they could be themselves, and she was frustrated by that, and that was a distinct difference she was seeing in Fife from what she was seeing in the cultural centre. She perceived that need for a space for people to be themselves and express themselves. The second thing that she perceived was that, based in Levenmouth, she was passionate about that community, but she was being pulled to the urban centres in order to continue to be an artist. That's where the opportunities were. As a result, Young Quines was born. For us, what is successful for a community intervention is investing both in communities and in citizens but equally in artists and developing artists to stay local so that they have the opportunity to engage and make the work that they want to make and make the intervention that they want to make in their community at a local level. They are truly the experts in that. The second thing that really aids participation is for citizens to have capacity to participate. Citizens who have the income, who have the ability to travel, who have the free time, who are not caught in the rat race of trying to survive but are able to volunteer and be part of their community and part of their cultural lives of where they live. We know that, for women, there are particular challenges around that, around affordable childcare, economic inequality, the way that transport links disadvantaged women who are not travelling just to commute because they have care and responsibilities. As my colleagues have said, working long-term, the funding that we have had from Culture Collective has allowed us to develop work over two years, which is not a very long-term project, but in terms of arts funding and arts possibilities, that is huge. I often tell the story of doing a residency in a community centre and a worker there showing me into a cupboard, which was full of boxes of arts materials, of equipment, and she was like, I don't know what any of this is. All of this has been from short-term arts activity that happened. We got the resources and then it's never been touched again and we don't know what this is. Our concern now and our project is if the insecurity of the funding situation is all that work likely to become that relic in a community centre cupboard, which would be devastating. I'm also a performer, a traditional singer, but I've worked in archives and folklore research and things over the years and that will inform part of what I'd like to say today. Our submission is broadly shaped by our experience over the past year with our People's Parish project as part of Culture Collective, but it's also been through sustained periods of review and I suppose in-depth discussion looking at our experiences and identifying gaps in thinking and provision, a space in which we as tracts could join together several emerging strands of our on-going activities in the traditional arts in communities. At the core of what we do is the belief that per the UNESCO 2003 convention on intangible cultural heritage, which the UK Government hasn't signed up to, but the Scottish Government has been very active in trying to progress things on the ground in Scotland since 2007. There's various reports which have been involved, but the key part of that is the decisions on which elements of culture should be foregrounded or celebrated and safeguarded should be led by communities themselves. How those decisions are reached is a process that we're largely developing at the moment through the People's Parish, which by next year will have worked with 14 different communities across Scotland using traditional arts and creative field workers within communities doing things with them, not to them, to tell the story of their place. Fundamentally, traditional arts are all about places. As you'll see from our submission and also from Faishan and Gail, in which I took a great interest in so many parallels, more specifically people in place, traditional songs, tunes, dance, craft, ways of life, all related to the place that they live. In recent years, there's been a greater recognition, I would say, of the relationship between the archival resources that we have in Scotland, which are frankly unrivalled really anywhere in Europe, outside of perhaps Ireland, in terms of the way that we've systematically studied our own local cultures, albeit within that academic sphere. What we see our role at Trax is bringing that into what we call the public arena or public folklore, and that's using those archival resources as wellspring boards for communities to engage with the traditional culture again. Sometimes we characterise it in the way that the Smithsonian has with some archival work that's been done over the past decades in terms of cultural repatriation. We're literally doing something as simple as taking songs from the archives back to the towns in which they were originally recorded. In my case, I've done that with about 600 kids in our broth, my hometown, taught them a song about the local mill, and from that, I suppose, has been the benchmark for me of cultural policy in place. One of the barriers to place-based cultural policy is, I suppose, what I'd describe as an unfinished conversation in relation to all of that, in more detail with central and local government, as well as in wider society of the importance of this kind of traditional and local culture, which we often might just describe as local traditions or everyday culture that surrounds us all. Traditional arts and their impacts are often a highly personal, meaningful way to relate to the places in which we live, and it's sometimes still at the margins of discussion, and as I say, we see it tracks our role to promote a greater understanding of that. It's taken several years to get to the stage, for example, where our people's parish model, which is laid out in the submission, has gained traction with funders, and happily at a time where ideas of place-based work, localism, perhaps in some way emphasise through the practicalities and taking stock of Covid, 20-minute neighbourhoods and so on, that I suppose we found a lot of interest all of a sudden in an approach that, for many community-based traditional artists over the past decades, and as Arthur has reflected, has been quite a natural thing to do in communities anyway, to sing, write, create about our people. We're really formalising that and seeking to bring that into the policy arena more actively, because we think that it has a lot to offer, especially for many of the areas of health, wellbeing and sustainability that are key topics at the moment, and we think that it's just long overdue recognition of the vital importance of local culture and what I would call cultural equity, and I'll tell you more about that later on. I'll give you a moment to get settled, so I'll bring in Rachel. Thank you, Clare. Thanks so much for having us here. I'm Rachel. I'm here from Alchemy Film and Arts, which is a visual arts and community-engaged organisation specialising in film and based in the Scottish Borders. We produce Scotland's festival of experimental film and also an award-winning community engagement programme. Our enabling factors are access to resources, time, money and sustained support, echoing what Caitlin was saying earlier. I really want to emphasise that we need to be looking at the organisations across Scotland such as Alchemy in the Scottish Borders that are doing successful place-based work. That already exists. The evidence is there, the evidence for the benefits of the arts as a process, rather than necessarily just an outcome, are there and there are such successful case studies happening. The investment of funding and support such as Creative Scotland RFO and in particular Culture Collective have allowed Alchemy, for example, to employ a large team of people in the Scottish Borders as one of the only creative employers there on payroll rather than short-term contracts that the creative sector can be notorious for. Pay staff fairly, pay Scottish arts union rates to artists, also a really rare thing which produces amazing results. Employ staff, artists and trustees with diverse lived experiences in supported and meaningful ways and develop robust policies around inclusion, anti-racism, environmental commitments and safeguarding in particular. We've managed to develop a two-year partnership with all seven primary schools in Hoik using the iPads that they've had access to and allowing them to really activate that knowledge by integrating filmmaking across the curriculum. We've been mentoring them to do that and we've been able to produce an engagement programme that sees us go to the spaces of community groups rather than just putting on lots of public arts events but go to them and hear what they want to say, what they want to make and really platform their voices. That includes NHS-supported groups dealing with bereavement by suicide, community and gardens in areas that register one on the SND, Borders additional needs support groups, service users of gender-based violence organisations and young LGBTQIA people. Our practice is embedded in and within our region and its people and through resources like culture collective and long-term support we've had the time to really develop projects with people and platform their voices, develop digital skills, social skills, creative skills that we can already see are leading to employment opportunities, educational opportunities and actually just people being able to walk into rooms and speak about their lived experience for the first time. We're seeing that on the ground. The problem is that we don't know what we're going to do if we have to pull back. It's not a case of being able to scale back a programme or maybe we just won't do that at exhibition or won't do that festival because what we've been able to do with sustained support over the last few years is actually build a practice that is meaningful to the people that live and work in Hoik and the Scottish Borders and is inclusive and energised and actually has meaningful impact on people's lives. We can't sort of chop a part of that off and that's our focus at the moment is we've done our growing, how do we sustain what we've built. I completely echo what all my colleagues here have said, very inspiring and passionate articulation of the power of the work that we do. I'm Crisanna. I'm the creative director of Fintorn Bay Arts. We're based in Forrest, which is nestled on the bay of Fintorn and we're rooted in the communities around the bay of Fintorn. Over the ten years that we've been going, our work has grown to extend across the region of Murray. We work and very much are rooted in people and place. We do this through creative learning programmes, through artist residencies and commissions and festivals and events, most notably our biennial Fintorn Bay Festival. Place based cultural policy, it's absolutely informed by the needs and aspirations of the people. There is no one model fits all or each individual community, even within the villages neighbouring around the bay that we are rooted in. Through the work with the Culture Collective programme, our programme is called Combined to Create, we've been supporting artists and creative practitioners to connect with communities and with each other through long term residencies. Very much embedding artists and communities of identity and place to work with communities through active listening, through taking part, participating and building relationships, as well as access to the training and resources that they may need to ensure we and the artists we work with are resourced and equipped in supporting our communities to express the future of themselves and the culture that they see for their future. Specifically, our programme is supporting six longer term residencies and it has been an absolute gift to have long term, two years at the same time, you kind of think that's not actually that long term, but within the sector it can be two years. We've been supporting 190 days, six longer term residencies over the two years to work in partnership with community organisations, education sector and people such as, and these are just some examples, we have artists working in primary schools through embodied learning programmes, with one artist embedded in one primary school. We have an artist working with children and their families with autism, artists working with LGBTQ plus community, with young people through schools and the local council and youth team and an artist embedded in Murray women's aid working with vulnerable women. We also have another section of our residency programme, which is the small halls, which are slightly shorter. There are 30 days, although we're looking at increasing those in phase two, where we're positioning artists to work within rural communities through their village halls and working with those committees and those communities. We know from our research and feedback that immersion and creativity helps people to cultivate greater self awareness, to connect with ourselves and with each other, fosters great sense of identity of place and community, and this is what enables people in communities to build resilience, to face the challenges, to face the unknown, to build community wellbeing, community wealth, to have hope and to thrive. Another really positive thing that this programme has enabled through the time is that we're working actively with those community partners and with the artists to look at those through roads and those next steps. There might be things that we continue to be involved with, but we're also looking at how do people carry on without us, we constantly do ourselves out of a job. For example, we've already had some successes in this area. After working with artist Jen Cantwell, Murray Women's Aid have now found some local funding. It's a small pot, but it will enable Jen to stay within Murray Women's Aid one day a week for another 80 days. Eat and Killie Village Hall has managed to find a little bit of local funding to support the artists that engage with them to carry on delivering weekly creative sessions. The children and families with autism have really come together and are together looking at what do they need as children and families and how can we as artists and arts organisations support make that happen. This has been a real incredible part of the work that we're doing. Good Place cultural policy happens when people are involved. They're very much part of the process and they are invested because their voices are heard and the benefits of taking part are experienced and the role of creativity and culture and the contribution to regeneration, innovation, learning, community wellbeing. The opening question was just about a reflection on your experience of what works to support communities and what maybe the barriers are, so if you want to come in. I got caught in a security sort of loop at the desk. Art 27 takes its name from article 27 of the Human Rights Act, which gives everybody as a basic right to participate freely in culture. I suppose we were inspired initially by the decision of the Scottish Parliament to incorporate Isesca into Scottish law. We started to investigate that and found that really in the area of cultural rights, which is an aspect that is to be incorporated. There was very little research going on behind that. It was a bit of a neglected right. So we took on the mantle of doing that and then through the culture collective we started to explore what that might mean in practice, what's that real, what would that incorporation look like. We're based in the south side of Edinburgh, just up the road, which is a very diverse area and a rapidly changing area where the impact of global migration has had a very immediate impact with the mosque. Is that and that's had an impact. Edinburgh University, for example, recruiting quite heavily in China and Hong Kong has created a very diverse area. We did a survey around, there's a community centre that sits in the middle of that, which because of the pandemic had been closed, but also in talking to staff there. There were longer term problems about its use. So we did a survey locally of the people who worked and lived around the area to see how much they knew about the centre and how much they could use it. Even sometimes standing outside of it, people were completely oblivious to the fact that it was a community resource there for them and a place in which they could express their culture. So through the culture collective we were able to employ a number of artists to address specifically those different communities. So with Polish community, with some of the Arabic-speaking communities, Yemeni, Palestinian, through the Hong Kong community and Chinese community through Cantonese. One of the things that we discovered early on that by offering access through first language had become quite an important part of that offer and was a way to encourage and bring people in. In many ways it was quite liberating both for the artists, the vast majority of whom who had not had the opportunity to work in their first language before and they could bring a depth to their work that didn't need that level of translation that they would bring automatically. Also it brought in the other communities and we came across lots of interesting things within that. So for example working with the young Sudanese community by the time they had got to the age of 16 or 17 they were starting to explore what does it mean to be Sudanese, what does it mean to be living in Scotland and have that identity. Yet didn't have the linguistic skills in order to access and find their way into their own culture really and many talked about when they went home of feeling quite alienated in a way because of the language barrier. That coincided with a piece of research that demonstrated in the education sector that children who were speaking their first language at home were actually doing better in English medium education than those kids whose parents were naturally going, no you need to do that in English and we will speak that in English. I think one of the joys of the culture collective was that we were allowed to select artists and work with those artists without many of those usual you have to do this or you have to tick this box or tick that box but we could say okay. So we've got this community, we employed an artist whose father for example is a Cantonese speaker but has been here since 1974 but still doesn't speak a word of English. So how would we engage with those people so that they felt part of and they felt the opportunity to express their cultural rights. I think the lack of, I mean it's its strength and its weakness but the lack of that specific direction within the culture collective was really helpful which allowed us then to respond to what we found on the ground. And I think that is that places aren't, yes they may be geographically defined, however they're about culture, they're about the impact of the people that are staying, that are living there or working in there and it's how they create that place really. And through working with seven or eight artists to facilitate that we were able to not only work more in depth with those communities, the people that wanted to come forward to be involved in that but we also were able to show the work to the other communities. And so we sort of, there was a significant, in our research there was a significant sense on the south side that we all lived in little bubbles and there was our culture and there was their culture and there was this culture and that culture. And so through the culture collective we were able to sort of show but on their terms so for example we were also able to respond and I think that's one of the most difficult things is that in place making you have to have the flexibility to respond to the change and the change in place. So for example two Yemeni artists arrived and they'd been through artists in exile, they'd gone to Edinburgh University, found that everything had been shut down, Edinburgh University said can you help, so we said grant, yes of course. And we found a way in for them to start functioning as artists, I mean they'd been exiled from Yemen because they were artists and because they were a couple who were working together and in the context of the war in Yemen that had made life impossible really and they had received multiple death threats. So how could we then facilitate that? Now the great thing about the culture collective we were able to respond. We created some pieces and an art exhibition for Shadda and she went on to win the John Byrne award for some of her artwork and we did a piece that told a play that told the story of the kind of cultural traditions in Hadamar, the part of Yemen that they come from and some of the obstacles that they faced and we did that in Arabic but we had English sir titles so Yemeni and other Arabic speaking audiences came to see it but other people also came to see it and had a different experience of understanding the kind of complexity of the culture really. For example in that piece we were very keen to work with them and other people who had a sort of sensibility about the notions of Islam and women's oppression and things like that and how could we talk about that in a way that brought people into the conversation. So it was quite complex issues that we addressed in there and I think that the freedom that the culture collective gave us in order to do that was brilliant. I think that we've got a picture of each of your organisations, that's very helpful. That being said we are kind of tight for time so if we could be consistent and please in your answers so we want to cover as many of the topics as we can this morning so I'm going to invite questions from my colleague Matt Ruskell. Thanks very much for those introductions and stories as well. I think you're all good storytellers. There were some great examples in there. I wanted just to drill this down a bit into what actually works in terms of funding and partnerships. It seems like there's a diversity of different connections that have been made between your organisations and maybe statutory agencies and councils and other organisations within your area but if you're to really sort of drill it down quite succinctly into what actually works then what is it? And I think we've heard in previous sessions in this committee how for example the NHS I think in England have employed people who go around sort of finding opportunities for social prescribing. We've heard a bit about community planning partnerships and some of the kind of partnerships that emerge from that but I'm interested in your perspectives on the essence of it. How do you develop those funding partnerships which allow you to do that more longer term work with your projects? And it's just open to whoever would like to come in. Thanks Mark. I think the face movement for instance that we've involved in has been successful because it has been invested in over a very long period of time, 40 years plus as I said the first face is in Barra in 1981. And we've been fortunate to have had support from the Scottish Arts Council and now create a Scotland over that period almost without a break. But on top of that we've been able to pull in funds from other agencies like HIE for the Fasion and the Highlands and Islands. We've recently bossed the Gaelic and we've also worked with local authorities. Most notably perhaps in our case we've worked with the Highland Council, Argyllun Beat Council and Cornelon Shear successfully over the years. But what works, I suppose the Fasion will be there after 40 years if it didn't work and you can look around the traditional music scene in Scotland and most of the young people involved in that will have been involved in a face at some time in their lives probably when they were younger. More recently than that we've got involved in a project, the Scottish Government approached the student during the second Covid lockdown and looking to get involved in a project that would help deliver the national islands plan at the same time as offering regular work for freelance artists and also supporting communities. The project that we devised very quickly was eventually called Throed Wodver and it encompassed Gaelic, Arcadian and Shetlandic. The challenge for us was to offer that in all schools and all island schools in Scotland. Now about 80 per cent of them took up the opportunity but those projects were very much rooted in those communities and although they were happening in schools, schools are part of communities as well and the artists involved were going into schools but they were coming from their community and involving the young people in local storytelling, local songs, local tunes, visual art as well. That worked really successfully and if the funding were there we would be very willing to continue as well. More recently, as a second part of that, we worked with Corinne Neal and Shear just in the last few months in the celebration or commemoration of the sailing of two ships, the Meta Gamma and the Marlach, more than a thousand people from the islands to America and Canada. It's a hundred years since that happened and they wanted to mark that and we worked again with the schools of western Isles to produce locally based events that encompassed the story but also the songs that are connected to that and tunes as well. Those things do work but the challenges are always the continuation of funding for those kinds of things. The regular funding for our core work, like I say, has been fairly secure over the long of the years. It's worth saying that it's on standstill and has been for six or seven years and will be for another couple of years and that is having a real effect on our ability to even sustain what we're doing now. I never mind developing it just because of the cost of everything having increased as well. The cost of delivering everything has increased but the funding hasn't. If we want the kinds of things that have been successful to continue then that's something that needs to be looked at. I know that the committee is not particularly looking at funding as part of this inquiry but it's hard to divorce that from the reality of trying to deliver stuff in communities. We made a decision five years ago to diversify our financial strategy for the organisation. We recognise that we're too dependent on funding. We're not regularly funded but we're too dependent on funding so we want to look at contracted provision. I said earlier that we've got a £1.5 million turnover at annual turnover. About £600,000 of that is contracted income. We're contracted to deliver employability programmes. We're contracted by Aberdeenshire Council to deliver foundation apprenticeships, creative and digital media foundation apprenticeships and IT software and development. We're working with over 100 pupils across the year. Those two main contracts allow us to build our team, build our staff team, build the workforce. Rachel mentioned earlier about the importance of building a staff team that's part of your team and not necessarily all freelance so we can give proper contracts. If people are delivering our contracts they can also be available to deliver other work so we can be nimble and flexible and we can respond to community needs. As I said, £1.5 million, about £600,000 of that is contracted provision. As long as contracts continue and as long as we deliver on those contracts then that work is ongoing so we can build our team around that. That allows us then to apply for funding and to be nimble and to be able to be successful with our funding needs as well. I suppose I've done all these piecemeal projects that I think Caitlin was referring to. We end up with a community centre covered with bits and pieces of the remnants of previous projects and people not knowing what to do with them. Culture Collective has given us the space, the flexibility and the freedom to be in a place, to literally be in a place for a year or more. From a folklorist, traditional artist point of view, with that particular perspective on a community, we tend to see ourselves as seeing the joins between things, joining the dots with that cultural heritage view. We just find that that is something that has been a radical change for us in terms of being able to do the kind of things that aspirationally we'd wanted to do for a long time but had never really, as I referred to in my first comments, found a kind of willing partner in terms of funding. The freedom, the flexibility and not always focusing necessarily on sheer numbers and outcomes, what Rachel was saying about process versus outcome. The actual process of engaging with a community every Monday in a community centre in Langleys, one of the deprived areas of Falkirk has been phenomenal. Sometimes we might only have half a dozen people, the next week we'll have 20 people, but the connections that we're making, the confidence that we're building there through having that facility and almost that relaxed element to a degree that allows us that flexibility to build the project, to do that active listening that someone else mentioned as well, that we can then respond quite readily. We know that we're going to be there for the next nine, ten months or whatever and we can put things in place so much so that one of our people's parish projects in Falkirk that's got a very low score on the SIMD, we're staying there for an additional year because we found the process so useful. That's something that's really key. One of the things that I would say that doesn't work and that we have found difficult in this is that our relationship with local councils in terms of what council cultural provision is because the arms length organisation model is not consistent. Local people don't necessarily know even what the organisations are called. I've mentioned that in the submission Angus Alive on Fife, all of these nice active sounding titles but it's not the council arts department. The parallels in Ireland where you can look up a list of all your council arts officers and find out who they are and what services they offer is quite an interesting one for us. The final thing I would say is just to flag up the encroaching danger of the loss of third spaces, which are not work or home. That is in Falkirk particularly looking at their strategic property review, 133 community spaces are potentially being divested from their estate over the next two years and some of them are key community centres that we've been meeting in for the People's Parish project. So there are all of these reactions and sort of unintended consequences that might be responses to short term financial problems but ultimately there's longer term problems for the communities there if some of those centres are shut down. Kate, I've got Katelyn and then Robert. Yeah, thank you. I think in terms of what works, what Robert's alluding to there in terms of being responsive has been a key part of culture collective because we've been allowed and encouraged to run pilots. What we've discovered is that a lot of the barriers that our participants are facing are relatively bespoke and the only way you can find that out is by trialling things. We were able to trial hubs in different local areas. What we discovered is that one of the major barriers for our young people was about food. We needed to feed people so that they could come. We needed to provide taxis so that people could come. But there's no way we would have known that in advance and culture collective has really given us that opportunity to learn and to be a network to really develop what socially engaged practice is, to learn from one another, to develop that as a practice in Scotland. And there isn't really anything else like that and that's been really significant for us. I think the other thing that we are alluding to is that challenge of working with local authorities. Our experience is that it feels like we're really very much being pitted against front-line services in that space. Having meetings with the organisations that have been mentioned, they're just trying to keep the doors open. They're trying to meet that front-line need. So us coming in and trying to talk about a feminist youth theatre feels like another extra additional thing and that makes our work really challenging because we know the benefits of it. I know that this inquiry will have heard this many times but the situation in arts funding having been chronically underfunded, having been on standstill for so long, does create such a limit on what's possible. Our organisation has been on standstill funding since 2015. Social engaged practice is a relatively new part of what we do. We want to do more of it. In 2018 we applied to create Scotland to do more of that work. To do that work in a significant way, that funding application was initially rejected and in fact the organisation was completely cut along with the other theatre companies who fulfil that equality remit. So the companies who work with disability and young people. After a public eye cry that was reinstated but at that standstill level. It really has only been the Covid funding that has allowed us to achieve our ambitions and looking forward it's unclear what that picture is going to be for able to continue doing it. I'd just like to support what Steve says and from our direct experience of working with the local authority in relation to Ascento. Article 27 has been adopted as part of the cultural policy brief of Edinburgh City Council. When it comes to access to public spaces, however, as Steve has alluded, it's now being driven by sustainability which is about finances really. That leads to models of programming in public spaces that are about revenue generation and that's quite complex and it's incredibly complex web for arts and experience or arts organisation to go through but for community organisations. If you say something like the Sudanese or the Senegalese community, for them to try and negotiate even just how to book a space in there is virtually impossible. The complex thing that emerged in our case was that a lot of the structures around community centres and those public spaces have gone through a democratisation process whereby they've got a fairly unaccountable management committee. You can have one department in the city being very supportive of cultural rights and how to do that. Another department going, well actually we're about sustainability, how do we keep this centre? Then you get a management committee that you have to deal with who in our case was a group of people who had been very engaged in the centre but about 10, 15 years ago. Some had even moved out of the area. What we were trying to do was find routes in for the changing community and that was blocked. There's also a plethora of various committees around that like the Southside Association and community planning and all these things which we were found complex to negotiate a way through that. How a relatively small community who wants a space to celebrate their culture is going to find a way through that. I think that it's virtually impossible for them. I think that it's important to understand that I spend 60 or 70 per cent of my time writing funding applications that are often for small pots. They always need new ideas and what we actually need is trust, flexibility and support in what we do because we have the evidence and you can see it in our communities and we're based there. We are off that community and working with communities every day. The culture collective has allowed us to build in significant access budgets so that we're not just running fun and meaningful creative projects because we know how to do that. That's almost the easy part. The hard part is getting funding so that we can provide descriptive subtitles for deaf and hard of hearing audiences, audio description for blind and partially sighted audiences and other access costs which are high. It's all of these things which are core and not seen as exciting potentially in a funding application that initiatives like the culture collective have allowed us to be flexible to actually really hear what participants need and really deliver supportive long-term work. That's all I want to say. I'll try to whistle through a couple of thoughts really quickly. I'm partnership working, absolutely integral to the way we work. We work with a range of partners and stakeholders from third sector education, community groups, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and we work in collaboration with local artists and arts organisations, local and national networks. The culture collective network has also been a fantastic resource of shared learning and opportunities to participate in training and go and see an upskilling as well for both the organisation and the artists that we're working with. Working in partnership quite simply helps to improve and broaden our impacts, delivers shared outcomes, share skills, expertise, information, knowledge, learn from each other and quite simply really reach the people that we're all looking to engage with and wanting to engage with us. We're in Murray and our local authority cut the arts and cultural budget 100 per cent back in 2010. The creative sector rose to that challenge coming together as a sector and through strengthening our networks and by building cross sector relationships. We engage with a number of departments within Murray Council and those relationships are very positive such as the youth team, economic development, education, health and social care and they do engage with us but there is no money, there is no funding and I know this inquiry is not about funding but it is important discussion. I think we need to recognise that not only has there been standstill funding within Creator Scotland, coupled that with local authority budget cuts, coupled that with services being picked up by the third sector and the cultural sector, the unprecedented challenge on trusts, foundations, local funding, local wind farms, local organisations and businesses who might support and on Creator Scotland. We're all trying to do what should be happening is a basic human right with resources and resources reducing so this really needs to be heard. I'm happy to allow others to move on. As a follow-up to Mark Reilly, I know that I've said that this is not about funding but I've got a question about funding because I think that it makes a difference to how we have a place-based culture approach and particularly Caitlin made a point earlier around Covid funding via Creator Scotland and I'm aware that that particular funding is due to end in October 23. So, later this year, I'm interested to know what the impact will be on projects and your organisation in terms of delivering your cultural outcomes. Who would like to start? For us, we came into being with the culture collective so for us, the ending of that funding is pretty catastrophic in terms of sustaining the relationships with all those different communities that we've now built the relationships up. We try to meet against it and almost warn the communities that we're working with so we don't lead them up the garden path and leave them but in reality the withdrawal of that funding, we're already applying into little pockets of money. For example, there's a funding around loneliness so we're having to work out how can we shape what we're doing to fit that little pocket but that then comes with all sorts of things that we have to do and have to achieve within that context. So it will leave us looking for little bits here and there to see how we can pull that together to sustain the work that we've done with the communities but apart from that it's going to be tough without it. The situation is pretty critical in the arts because of the longevity of the issue. We need to start talking about artists in Scotland living in poverty. That is the situation that we are in and our organisations. That funding has plugged a gap, has for many organisations, has kept us going. We need to see that gap, that period between one thing ending and another thing that is a real critical moment. That needs to be an emergency to be avoided when we look at arts funding because so much can kind of come in on itself in that moment. Rachel? It's simple because it's crucial. People have found a cultural home in our organisation because of the sustained work and the way that we've been able to improve all aspects of our practice. I don't think that we can go back. We can't just remove those things because they're not single elements. They're waved through everything. Importantly, a lot of the groups that we work with in the Scottish Borders are vulnerable in different ways and are all of marginalised communities. They need to know that we're not going to disappear after two weeks or six weeks. It's a really ingrained practice and it doesn't work without this and we now know this because we've seen the success. Is anyone else? This project has allowed us to show how it could be, what might be possible. It's allowed us to dream in a way that hasn't been possible recently. So it's really sad. Absolutely. I just also want to say that our communities want it to continue. We literally have children and vulnerable people that we are supporting and very mindfully looking at the expectations. Again, as we said, actively working with those organisations of how could they pull threads through, but it is not the same as having this longer term funding for the professional expertise to support the process. Mari, and then I'll come back to Morris and I think Ben. Just to say a bit, what needs to be is to continue because two years isn't a long term funding, a doctorate is a long term funding, two years is not a long term funding. In Aberdeen, we're leading the consortium of all the cultural organisations, the culture collective. What that's been about is about embedding that within community planning because, certainly in Aberdeen, culture tends to be recognised around economics and economic development and night's have economy and tourism and what we've been doing over the last two years is embedding that within community planning. So every project is linked to community planning and has a link to Lloyd. That takes time and when we've embedded that now, we've got the process. The projects are now being noticed across the board, not just in terms of economics but across the board. Two years is a short timeframe. If it gives us another two years, then we'll really make an impact. There's just a very quick supplementary, if any of our guests want to comment, that one of the advantages I know the third sector expressed in terms of the pandemic funding was there was a process that was more trusting in the way you spoke about Rachel that allowed funding to move quickly to organisations that had a strong reputation for delivery. I wondered in terms of the funding for the creator sector if there are lessons from the way that funding was provided and facilitated during the pandemic in the creator space as well. A crucial part of the particular funding that we're talking about, a culture collective that emergency funding, is the criteria such as no role should be less than six months and a certain amount, I think 50 per cent at least, should go on artist's phase. Things like that meant that we could be flexible but kept accountable and it meant that what we've done is improve the sector in the last two years and we cannot allow that to go backwards. On that as well, Ben, my experience of applying for Creator Scotland regular funding last year round was that the application ran to something like 30 odd pages. When they came to us with Covid funding, they asked us three questions. I hope that they've learned from that that you can get really good outcomes from organisations if you trust them and if you ask them the right questions and you get the outcomes that you're looking for but there's no need for big, huge, long applications from organisations that have been funding for a long, long time. I hope that lessons are learned from that because an awful lot of all our time has taken up filling it in forms unnecessarily for organisations that have been funded for a long time. The culture collective didn't look for projects, it looked for principles, so the opportunity to be trusted and then develop the projects alongside the community rather than us coming in with specific projects was really, really beneficial, was really refreshing. We've heard this morning about the impact of the cost of living, costs going up on organisations. I also want to explore a bit more about costs on users. According to the audience agency, 90 per cent of people are indicated that they're going to cut back on leisure and entertainment costs. One of the biggest groups in that is families with children under the age of 16. The committee heard last week from Professor Stevenson about the importance of getting to people at a young age in terms of accessing culture. Kate-Lyn said earlier about affordable childcare costs being a barrier. That's a challenge but there's a solution in there at the same time because the Government is also talking about more of a focus on childcare and childcare of school-aged children, not just preschool children. I wondered what the organisations do here. I know that there's a fashion paisley summer camps and what you do all year round in terms of that, whether there's an opportunity in that to provide affordable childcare that allows parents to access, but can we at the same time provide quality childcare that gives parents quality childcare but also gives what parents also want in terms of giving culture opportunities to children out with a school setting? I've got my right bias on here. I'm going to go to the table first this time, Robert. In responding to that, what's key for our practice is free at the point of delivery. In each community that we work with, we also appoint a co-ordinator who has the same language as the community that we're dealing with and we're aligned upon that co-ordinator to deal with issues of access. We then, through having the funding that we can then address access costs into that. It's always free at the point. If you want to get involved, you get involved. If there's obstacles to getting involved, which obviously there's limits to what we can provide, but we will do everything that we can in order to make that possible. I think that's how we've tried to address within some of the hardest hit communities by the cost of living crisis. People are really struggling. We also, like other people said, as part of our offer at times, we offer food. We do community meals and things like that as part of it. One of the difficulties with the instrumentalisation of culture and the arts is that you have to prove the little bits that you're doing here and there. However, by offering that kind of level of support in the context of participation in culture, people feel comfortable with that and can access that comfortably without any of the stigma and things that are involved. Like all the organisations around it, we're very conscious of the reality, particularly on poor and working class communities, of what is going on and finding creative ways to mediate that through the project so that we try to overcome those barriers. I think that if young people are taking part in a cultural activity, then for a period of time, that's a period that their parents may be around having to provide childcare for them. I'm not suggesting that the work that we do is providing childcare cheaply or in like that, but it is a solution for some people. We try to make everything as cheap as possible for the young people to take part. All the people will try to make sure that everybody has access so that if they're aware of people who can't afford access, then there are free places available as well. Talking about the audience at events, the harsh reality of that is that the cost of everything is increasing and that has had an impact on ticket prices as well. In our case, I haven't seen a negative impact from that. People are still coming out to events. It's taken a long time after Covid for people to be comfortable to come out to events, but now that they've started doing that, I don't think that the ticket prices are a barrier for a lot of people. However, I am very aware that the ticket prices have risen, but then the cost of venues has risen, the cost of providing accommodation for artists has risen, all that kind of thing, and it's inevitable that there's going to be a knock-on effect on the price of tickets. It strikes me also that one of the things that we said in our submission about local authorities and how they support culture, in our case, certainly in rural areas, the only viable venue for the kind of work that we do with the fashion is a school. Now schools have been rented out for something like £5,000 for two days by some local authorities. One of our fashion is faced with a bill for £16,000 in the local authority to provide what they provide all year round after school on a Wednesday and for a week-long phase in the summer. There are massive costs there, and if local authorities were looking at their obligations in terms of helping to provide cultural activities for people, then one of the things they need to look at is the cost of schools. Steve mentioned this earlier on. The problem is that a lot of schools now are managed either by third sector organisations or arms length organisations from the local authorities and their accountability has been taken away from councillors. You approach councillors and say that the cost of your schools is ridiculous, by the way, and they say that it's not up to us, it's up to the organisation that's actually renting them out. So there are difficulties there that have to be overcome, but that's having a huge impact on certainly our work and I'm sure that we're not alone in that. There's a number of barriers, absolutely, from financial worries to mental health issues with poor transport links, which do leave people isolated and unable or less likely to participate in activities and events. Alongside that, people are feeling that it's relevant for them and when culture is done to them. Again, coming back to singing the praises of this programme and the work around this table and so many more, embedding artists within these communities helps to overcome these barriers, building these long, robust, meaningful relationships with communities, the cross-sector partnership working where we can bring in bits of resources, whether we talked about food, absolutely, we find we always have food, there's a need of food when we're running activities, we also have an access fund within our budgets, which covers lots of things but can also cover transport and travel costs and food where it's needed. We're committed to reduce ticket prices, to pay what you can, to loads and loads of free events to enable this access and it all takes funding to be able to do that. I'm looking, does anyone else want to come in? Yes, we can. The cultural sector could deliver that support for school children and probably does. I'd say what we'd want to look at is contracted provision, if it was contracted, long-term contracted provision to offer that support after school. For example, we do a whole range of informal youth work with young people throughout the week and every weekend, on-going year on year, but we have to fund raise for that. If that was contracted provision, it may not pay for the whole thing but we can match that with secured funding, so I think the answer is yes to your question. As I alluded to, the price of the ticket is not the barrier, it's actually everything else around transport and the other things that are being a barrier for folks. From our point of view, we would suggest that if you want to achieve cultural democracy, you need to look at gender justice, but if you're achieving gender justice, that's probably going to help you with cultural democracy and cultural participation. How do we build the capacity for participation? We would be interested in what does the four-day working week do for cultural participation? What does universal basic income do for that? What does affordable childcare do for that in terms of people's ability to invest in their community to be part of the cultural life of where they live? I think that that could be a massive benefit. I think that we would always be nervous about how much arts activity can be childcare. That's a bit of a problem for us, but we're interested in how those things can work together to just improve the lives of our citizens. I just have some thoughts off the top of my head about how that process would necessarily work based on some of our experiences with local authorities. What is the process? What would be the discussions? What are the channels to go down to have those proposals brought forward because of the inconsistency that I talked about in terms of cultural provision at local level? Whether that's arms-length organisations or some of the disconnects that we're finding in local councils between community learning and development, education and the arts. I've gone through the whole process in one area with almost no involvement with community learning and development, although they're across the street from where we normally meet. We're a third sector arts organisation with a partnership with the Cora Foundation in that particular area. We've also been involved in community action planning, looking at barriers and things to do with local transport and all of this kind of thing. Budgets being cut for other reasons there, looking at the sustainability agenda and so forth. I'm just not very clear on how we would start that conversation in some of the areas that we've been working in. Who would we approach? What are the mechanisms to have that discussion? If I can make an intervention on that, Steve, for us it's about cultural rights and the notion of cultural rights is actually broader than the cultural sector. It impacts on food, it impacts on housing, it impacts on everybody's way of life. Culture is what makes us human beings in the end and that's not limited to what happens in the culture houses. I think that's important to get that. In terms of how do you bring a joined up thing, I would advocate strongly for cultural rights. Across the world there's a recognition that cultural rights are key to the health of communities and the health of societies. Cities are beginning to adopt it. Scotland is one of the only countries that's not yet engaged in this process through the UCLG. There are cities like Barcelona, for example, in Rome, have adopted cultural rights and what they've crucially found there in terms of delivering cultural rights, the right for people to participate in cultural life, that it's gone across all the council. It's been a policy that's been adopted by the city council at a top level and then has gone down. It looks at how each department is functioning in the context of granting people their cultural rights. It brings together all those different departments and goes, okay, how does this come together? How do we deliver cultural rights? How do we ensure that our citizens across here are getting access to their fundamental human right, which is a right to a cultural right? I think that there is a need for that kind of initiative and I think that the Scottish Parliament adopting cultural rights gives us the opportunity to have that broader consensus. I think that there is a consensus around cultural rights, but how do you make that real? I think that it won't become real until it becomes a public duty and it won't become a public duty until that's incorporated into law. Idog拳 will bring in Dr Allen.고 yn y ffordd o b 어떻게 voidol sceyrnwyr, ond worth going out to everyone to talk about what they understand by the concept of one cultural need. The reason I'm starting with, perhaps with anyhoadh Cormac or anyone else who wants to join in, is that traditionally traditional arts have not featured as a priority historically in Scotland either in education policy or in culture policy. That's obviously changing now for the better. If people have mentioned it. My question on this list is whether the community should still have an unmet cultural need when it comes to if you like traditional Scottish culture and more generally is there a unmet need is will still need to try to fill other areas of the arts as well. Perhaps I will open the council up to Dan StephDIEn but then everyone else. elementos on page Mae'n cael ei ffars o'r bydd. Fae abadwch, te cobl pray, along the car and the river War we would after Wendor way when the days get on forever Dun y bank to Farginhall, with a bens, he played sig glad War manialas fae bens ffordd met yn wudolang li'n lad Now that sounds like an old song, but it's a brand new song that was written a couple of weeks ago by me. And it sounds like an old song because it's full of cultural memory There's about seven sort of markers there that would be appealing and make meaning for people from that particular area of Falkirk And I suppose in terms of unmet cultural need it's about recognising that localism, that local distinctiveness which ultimately we think attracts, gives people a local kind of cultural confidence and it's not about kind of nativism it's really about recognising what we have on our doorsteps and the strength and local diversity that that distinctiveness that difference gears us up, disarms us in a way that allows us to engage with cultures from elsewhere which would increasingly in communities all across Scotland finding ourselves incorporating other traditions into our own and that's something that we've done for generations I'll just read a little bit here, I'll sort of skip through a little bit but Alan Lomax talked about this idea of cultural equity that I talked about earlier on that all cultures need their fair share of the airtime this is slightly dated language but when country folk or tribal peoples hear or view their own traditions in the big media projected with the authority generally reserved for the output of large urban centres when they hear their traditions taught to their own children something magical occurs and we've seen that on the tracks they see that their expressive style is just as good as that of others and if they have equal communication facilities and opportunities they will continue it practical men often regard these expressive systems as doomed and valueless but wherever the principle of cultural equity comes into play the creative wellsprings begin to flow again even in this industrial age folk traditions can come vigorously back to life raise community morale and give birth to new forms if we give them time and room to grow in their own communities that's something I've always come back to in regards to the traditional arts because it is the poor relation in some respects we've taken a lot of things for granted in terms of our local ways of life even down to local language and I was struck by what Robert said in terms of having a local co-ordinator who has the language of the community that they're working with well I hate the language of the folk in Falkirk and I was speaking to them the whole time in Scots and it made a real difference in terms of engaging with folk as well so I think that's a really striking universal truth actually for communicating with people on their own terms so hi That was fair draw on the set of that Oh! Folk, Mich, you'll lose a head but art is a fine singer as well I don't know if he has a song but I can bring it in either in continuous prose or in song or music or whatever but I can open it up and convene with everyone else No pressure on my hand He could probably sing a verse of a song but I haven't done my warm-ups this morning I'm going to do it because I'm not going to let Steve up and down so this is a song which talks about the Irish sky where I come from written by Mary Ward and Orrin, Mary McPherson talks about the effect that particularly the ownership of land is had on the local culture so just one verse and then I'll maybe say something that's enough for that but I'll maybe send the words into the folk who are trying to record back to the question I would say that there is an unmet demand in what we do there are certainly communities out there who are interested in engaging with the traditional arts we can't support them all that's the reality of the situation at the moment so it's unmet in that sense that it's not that there's a lack of ability to support the organisations but just a lack of resources to be able to support everybody there are folk out there in our case who want to engage with Gallic culture and the traditional arts we run a couple of schemes on behalf of Great Scotland a small grant scheme for traditional arts which is always oversubscribed and we have another one specifically for Gallic arts and again it's oversubscribed and it's clear from those two schemes that there's much more demand out there than we're able to meet so that's separate from our own work but there's definitely a lot of interest in traditional arts and currently we're not able to support everything so in my previous session in this Parliament I was convener of the education schools committee when we did our inquiry into music tuition in schools which led to the policy commitment of no charging for music I was struck as my home area in North Lanarkshire they bring all the musicians together on a Friday night from symphony band, jazz band, rock band we have Gallic medium teaching we have a traditional music there and a pipe band as well I'm often struck by how that cross-pollination and the support that the other musicians have for music they might not always come in contact with which led to a huge amount of pride when the pipe band were featured busking in Gancentral station during tartan week but it was it absolutely galvanised the community behind that Alison mentioned that education do we not understand what is going on in education enough is it not shared in the communities as much as it possibly could be on reflections on that Rachel less about maybe traditional forms of art but the way that arts organisations are drawing from Scottish histories and heritages and using contemporary methods I think I said earlier that all the schools in the Scottish borders, all the children have iPads now but without necessarily the know-how of how to use them and organisations like alchemy film and arts are teaching them how to explore things like the reavers and the common writing really strong heritage in the Scottish borders but through contemporary methods of using their iPads everyone has the capacity to make films now and arts organisations are really leading the way in using historical points in local areas and engaging young people who maybe haven't engaged in these things or there's a risk of those heritages dying away but we are trying to reinvigorate interest through contemporary digital methods I'm not going to sing but we did run a musician in residence last year and established a new folk song for Hoik that was based on property relations and historical points but from the voice of a young woman in Hoik who actually just at the weekend sang to an audience of 200 people and made everyone weep we're working with young people in this way and really using creative methods to pull everything together also last year we ran a residence where we explored the black histories of Hoik which are not told you can go into the cultural spaces and you can't see these things it takes black artists and people of colour to come to a place like Hoik and actually on earth these things based on lived experience and research and that's important as well I again want you to agree with Steve about the importance of that kind of local traditional culture to people's self confidence and their self worth and that extends into the migrant communities so for example we're doing a project at the moment that has a musician from Senegal we have a folk of our Fiddler as part of it we have an Irish musician a musician from Hong Kong a musician from Lancashire from a working class tradition in Lancashire and through that they're exploring their own traditions and respecting their own traditions I just want to say that in terms of Scotland looking towards being a place of welcome for migrant communities to take that respect for our own traditions and afford that dignity to those communities as well and that's key and that's not happening and for all those various reasons they're not being given the space and the opportunity and they have a lot to give and through that respect for their traditions as well and for them often in exile and often in exile from very difficult situations those traditions are incredibly important to their own wellbeing and in the way that they can feel part of being confident of living in Scotland It certainly feels like there's an unmet cultural need I think one of the ways in which allows us to understand what it might be is artists on the ground and their connections with communities and so again there's a real question about the representation of those artists and who those artists are and is our arts leadership actually representative of the people of Scotland like do we have that diversity and are we encouraging artists from diverse backgrounds to be able to pursue a career so we keep those connections going I would also say that there is a lack of data really intersectional data that's really looking at how people facing multiple inequalities might be experiencing barriers not just looking at one level of inequality and I think sometimes that's the fragility and that's really understanding where that need is Just a final if it's quick points but is there anything particularly that we haven't covered that anybody would like to say a few words about just before we close our first session Steve I suppose just tying together some of the things we've just been referring to in terms of validating local ways of life I had an experience earlier in the week in my hometown of Arbroath kind of talking to sort of S1 pupils and speaking to them about something that I grew up knowing all about the town you know that the Cargillys and the Swankies and the TV details were all the traditional Fisher names of the town and essentially my anecdotal evidence is that that knowledge is pretty much gone and that feeds into what we talk about in our submission about alienation and loss of meaning and I think that you know culture and particularly local cultures have a real role to play in that and again struck by what Robert says you know it's often very personal you know it's not we're not always bashing on about Scottish traditional culture we're talking about local cultures within Scotland and that can be from anywhere in the world ultimately which is a key principle for us any final thoughts just a final point that everyone participates in culture and if there's good cultural opportunities it's a real marker of a healthy community and culture is a real method for social change that all of this discussion isn't just about making artworks and sculptures and things like that all of those things are brilliant but including people in the cultural progress of their place is integral to everything I just want to make a case for socially engaged practice and while the there was a huge amount of strength that everybody's talked about about the culture collective one of the areas that we were unable to facilitate was really was the engagement of the communities in that and the getting the feedback from the communities and that link to to the communities so it was great in terms of and as an artist much appreciated that emphasis upon fair work for artists and things like that I think what we felt was at times what about bringing the communities how do we bring the communities themselves into this discussion how do we facilitate that and that's a complex task to do and I think there is a case to look at like Ireland with culture island which has set up a separate institution that is looking at socially engaged practice which is able to do that that kind of breadth of work and consultation around socially engaged practice not just from the artist's perspective or the organisation's perspective but also from the people who are engaging in the culture so I think there is a case for a separate body that looks at socially engaged practice and looks at it from all the different angles and then can bring a coherent view to that Any other final thoughts I think thank you very much for finished on time for when we thought we would be this morning so thank you to your all for your contributions it has been another really interesting session for us hearing from you all and the amazing work that you are doing in your community and thank you for the singing too I know we're not like props I don't know if I've crossed anybody this morning but it certainly was wonderful to hear you both so thank you very much and on that I'm going to suspend briefly for five minutes while we move on to our second panel thank you very much back to our session and our second agenda item is a panel with Catherine Wills Programme Lead Cultural Collective and Morvern Cunningham Creative Lead at the Culture Collective very warm welcome to you both we've had a really interesting panel this morning hearing about very positive comments on the culture collective so if I could just open with that what has been the difference in the approach of the culture collective that maybe had been missing from past projects Catherine do you want to go first thank you so much for having us it's lovely to be here and I think really nice to follow the evidence given by the seven culture collective projects this morning so just by way of context those seven are seven of 26 culture collective projects and Morvern and I along with two colleagues Matt and Larisa are freelancers we make up the programme lead team which is designed to support, to look after, to champion and to connect to those 26 projects and the artists and the groups that they work with to create what is the culture collective network and it's been a real joy and privilege to see the quality of that work, the care that all of those projects bring to their work and the way that they've all become completely different in response to their local environment but share this real kind of depth of thought and depth of care and commitment, long term commitment to their places and to the people that they're working with and I think in terms of what we've seen make a difference in terms of culture collective lots but not all of these projects existed before or organisations existed before but culture collective I think in every case has been a huge step change and there's really two reasons behind that the first is the funding model itself, the way that it was designed by Creative Scotland to prioritise as you heard earlier this morning kind of extended time and a real level of trust and flexibility for the projects themselves and it was funny when we first started with culture collective and it took calls from the coordinators or from the projects saying something's a bit different to what we expected or we've tried something and it didn't work so we've got a really great idea but it's not what we wrote down originally, is that alright and it's been brilliant throughout to be able to say that's not alright, that's the point that's what we're trying to create here is this model that grows and changes and adapts and goes where the need is and goes where the interest is and learns from both what's happening within the network I think the second reason that culture collective has been a step change for many is this commitment to looking after artists, treating them well and creating sustainable opportunities for artists and for freelancers not least more than I but now a network of something like 500 creative practitioners across Scotland who've been employed by culture collective projects so what we've found as someone mentioned this morning 50% of funding was restricted or asked to be paid directly to artists in terms of artist fees and salaries and the requirement was that the vast majority of contracts should be a minimum of six months in length I think it's always worth noting that they're not really long term contracts six months isn't very long but in a inherently chronically underpaid and insecure sector it's made a huge difference people are now being paid Scottish Artist Union rates they have stability within their career and within their work and what we've seen is that that has an impact both ethically in terms of bringing in a much broader diversity of artists artists that are genuinely representative of the communities that they're working in but also just in terms of effectiveness you know if you pay artists well if you allow them to focus on the work that they're doing if you don't spread them so thinly and work all hours then what we've seen is that that allows them to do a better job it's not rocket science and we're really benefiting from the expertise of people with a much broader range of lived experience that they bring to their work we've got some brilliant work going on with single parents, with young parents which is totally informed by the fact that we can employ artists who have caring responsibilities and that they can be looked after within their projects in terms of how culture collective has enabled that step change Morphin, do you have anything to add? Thank you, convener I mean we've heard from the panel this morning about the flexibility the freedom, the ability to be responsive the trust flexibility in long term although albeit the two years not being as long as it could be long term financial support and I think there's something there about building relationships and about the work that those projects are already doing in their communities to build those long term relationships I suppose just to kind of add to Catherine's comments I was maybe just going to think a little bit about our role within that so it was kind of a freelance team who worked part-time very much focusing on facilitating the network and I feel that that network has been a real addition on positivity because all of those projects and more culture collective are working in participatory settings are doing fantastic work in their communities but there's a real power I think of a network of an ability to exchange knowledge and ideas to direct conversation and direction and to have these kind of national conversations across the network has been really valuable and it's been a real privilege to be working with fantastic organisations and doing that Thank you, I've moved to questions from the committee Mr Raskol first I suppose there are lots of questions in my mind just about how you sustain now what has been created and how you develop and take those partnerships that have been established to the various projects and make them sustainable for the long term so it seems that culture collective has ceded all of this work in communities but had you then build that network for the long term to have partners around that network to feed into it recognise its long term value and move beyond that great period of creativity and innovation which lasted an age of six months or two years but then ultimately the need is there and the benefit is there and the commitment is there to communities and the expectation I suppose has been raised as well so where do you go next? At the moment we have a contract for this month and are hoping to get that extended to October or November which is probably when our contracts as a programme lead team will finish At the moment in terms of my role as creative lead and focusing a lot on supporting particularly the creative practitioners within the network which as Catherine mentioned are in the hundreds one thing I've been focusing on is how we can give the practitioners the tools in order to reap the benefit of peer support because there is a very short term for Sable Future when we are not going to be there to be able to facilitate queries and support and how we can create that within those projects I was going to mention around networks it's interesting that there's a national network but there's also been an ability to create small informal networks with each of the projects and the practitioners within them so often practitioners are working in isolation and I think it's been a real benefit for practitioners to be able to work with their peers in their place but then also at a wider level as an example of some of the work that I've done I've been working with Lindsay Dunbar with Coaching for Creatives in order to equip the practitioners with skills such as action listening sets and listening circles and we're in the process with our colleague the engagement coordinator Matt Hickman who will work with some of those peer groups and specific peer groups within the network who can then hopefully continue to support one another as the project comes to an end Thank you I think that as Moven says we're in this strange situation where as the project's talked about they're in the same situation where we're trying to build a sustainable network that can exist beyond our contracts beyond the known lifetime of culture collective whilst at the same time knowing that there's never going to be enough and that this isn't a short term shouldn't be a short term initiative so we're feeding two masters at once of trying to do the best we can with the time that we have and recognising that more time is the solution to this and that those two things are almost incompatible trying to wind down in a healthy and sustainable way isn't what we want to be doing but it's the best that we can work with with the resources that we know we have so thinking really about what next we have to start talking more about how we support this kind of work over the long term and it was fascinating to hear Arthur talk earlier about the support for the facial movement over 40 years and it just, it really gives you a sense of how much can be achieved with that kind of long term funding and that there is still work to do of course and that will continue to be needed but we've had two years, we will have had two and a half years by October that came from Covid emergency money but this isn't a Covid emergency need you know long term our communities need and deserve culture, our artists need and deserve sustainable jobs we as citizens deserve to benefit from all of that so really I think the need is the topic of this inquiry is thinking about how we prioritise culture in communities we recognise that as not just a nice add-on for the culture sector for so long it's been the participatory bit or the community bit it's really cute, it's really sweet it's really nice, sometimes add-ons for more national or more renowned projects and for me I think the long term success of culture collective would be to start to shift that conversation so that we see this as the heart of the culture sector in many ways for lots of people this is what their cultural life looks like and enabling that participation across Scotland feels like it'll take more than two and a half years and absolutely deserves that time too I'm interested to what extent then over that two year process where there's perhaps a different conversation within local communities now and particularly around funding and where there's a galvanisation around discussions about transient visitor levy or 1% for culture or I don't know funding from other sources is that sort of embedding itself into future partnerships future funding sources or is it still quite embryonic because I guess now the momentum that you built up has to go somewhere and if it fundamentally is about funding and commitment over time then what are the kind of areas that the community and peer-to-peer network are trying to push on that conversation on at local level around how things get supported going forward I'm just thinking a little bit about the fact that this was seeded from Covid recovery funding and how I think Ben mentioned earlier about lessons from the pandemic and how there's been more of a focus and a shift on this kind of participatory work in communities because of the fantastic response from community-based organisations during the pandemic when cultural institutions and other third sector organisations closed their doors and were unable to move the Titanic in any way and actually it's these organisations that are embedded in their communities of the real knowledge of the need of their communities and that flexibility that we're talking about that ability to respond to those community-based organisations in Edinburgh that pivoted to food banks while institutions closed their doors and it feels that this is a really prescient time for this inquiry to be taking place to look at some of those lessons that have come from that and again there was some conversation earlier around seeing the economic value of culture versus the health and wellbeing and the social value that was being deeply embedded in equity within the cultural sector where one form of culture Bums on Seats as I like to call it is kind of put on a pedestal above other forms of culture and I think that as Catherine's kind of suggested already what if we had community engagement and participatory practice at the heart of what we're doing in the cultural sector in Scotland what if on a last note like one of the things the team the programme lead team has had the ability to experiment as well and try to allow new ideas and one of the things that we like to kind of embed is a concept of how we would like it to be so how would we like it to be to create a goal of an aspirational goal and to work towards it and culture collective has allowed us to do that in all forms of access and support so I would like it to be that we have cultural participation and community engagement at the heart of the cultural sector I think for me we've seen certainly in communities we've seen a shifting demand I've written need and demand but actually I mean demand that sense of I want more of this this has been great can I keep coming so I think that's why we've seen the shift is about often from how do we engage to how do we keep meeting this need that question is shifting which is really exciting and comes as people were saying earlier with an obligation to now we've made an offer how do we honour that and do justice to that I think in terms of the question about where money comes from I was really struck by Rachel saying earlier that she spends 60 or 70% of her time fundraising and it's horrifying and really common I think that that's the case so certainly those organisations will be really aware of where they might possibly get money from for their projects it takes off a huge amount of brain space and time and energy and heartbreak and I think that's the reason that culture collective has been so brilliant is that it's funded at scale and it's sort of a tricky thing to say because it feels greedy to say it's brilliant because this is a significant investment but it's something that we take really seriously because I think what it's enabled projects to do is to shift the question from how can I do this work cheaply with the dregs of money that I've been able to get hold of and for so long community work in particular has existed with dregs of funding and people work miracles with practically no money but where it's invested in properly it allows the question to shift to what's most needed here how can we be most effective and most brilliant here and to work with real ambition and how could this be as brilliant as possible as opposed to how can we do this really cheaply because that's all we've got so thinking about the future projects will be scrapping around for every possible funding source that they can find and that in itself is actively taken away from the potential of how people could be serving their communities as well as possible Thanks, convener we heard in the earlier panel Robert Ray who said that the impact of the funding cut would be catastrophic and I just wonder from your perspective what if any would be the legacy effects beyond the end of the funding For me the thing that we're really trying to focus on in terms of legacy is building a network that exists sustainably without our support as a culture sector as I'm sure lots of sectors exist on word of mouth and who you know and who's got jobs going and who you can ask for advice and particularly actually working locally often has been in the past a really lonely gig it feels like you're the only person for whom you've ever held a session and no-one's turned up or the only person for whom anything's ever gone wrong and actually building a network of peers where people can it's almost making friends there's somebody that you can ring and say this is really tough have you been through this what was it like, what did you do and the openness that comes with that to say are we really screwed that up so here's how you might do that differently and learn from that we see a huge impact in terms of enabling everybody to progress further and faster than they might do on their own so we've been working really hard as Marvin's mentioned to embed that network so that people genuinely know each other it's a brilliant resource of participatory artists of people who are committed to working in a community-engaged way feel like they've got peers colleagues, advocates allies, people that they can ask for work and for me I think that feels feels like a real possibility from Culture Collective and something that I think would and will continue to bear fruit particularly for the artists who are often most disadvantaged in terms of that word of mouth network I mean I also think that I mean I would love to see cultural policy being influenced by Culture Collective I mean obviously it can agree out of Scotland's culture strategy but I think that there's a real wealth of knowledge within the organisations and also within the hundreds of freelance practitioners that are part of the collective currently I think that there is a real possibility of influence there's not a possibility to create, I mean Robert mentioned the possibility of groups emerging from this network I think that there's also a possibility of guidance and best practice when it comes to be working in participatory ways I think that there's it feels like there's so much knowledge that could be harnessed right now that potentially could get lost or dissipate again as I say in the near future Thanks for that. Setting funding aside for a second in your submission you mentioned the importance and impact of the Culture Collective and I wonder how that could be replicated throughout Scotland and particularly in areas that aren't served by the existing organisations If funding wasn't an issue how would that model look like and I guess where are the gaps at the moment for example I mean I think there was always an intention at one point I believe for the network to expand and to take on other project members as I've mentioned there's also great organisations out there doing participatory work who are not part of Culture Collective so I suppose yet in that scenario I would like to see the network continue to grow and to become more diverse and representative of Scotland as a nation and its many cultures and to continue to sustain practitioners to be able to both enjoy going into places and learning about them and researching them for them and working as in serving those communities but also for those practitioners who are getting an opportunity they've ever had through Culture Collective to be working and making an air and a living in their place I think the really nice thing that always feels really exciting is where we see people's roles within Culture Collective evolved the longer they're involved so there's multiple examples of people who were first for example referred by a GP to take part in an activity who've gone on to lead that activity there are community groups that were brought together in training and lead in their own activity there are artists who were commissioned to be part of a Culture Collective project who are now coming together as collectives of freelancers to apply for funding to lead their own work and that feels like a long term shift to keep providing that pathway not just for artists not just for organisations, for individuals and for communities to all to shape what at least the way that they're able to be part of their provision and also to keep dipping in and out of it as they want as well because not everybody wants to lead everything and sometimes it's nice just to turn up and have a good time Thanks. Time for another little one Very small one Policy makers love metrics particularly when it's associated with funding I just wondered how you could sell what you do in that sort of space I can start so we've been really clear from the beginning with Culture Collective projects that we ask for metrics on... I want to say we actually I should be really clear that reporting from projects goes to Creative Scotland Creative Scotland write the report templates they decide what metrics are collected and one thing that they have done which I think has worked brilliantly is to only ask for metrics on employment of artists so we can tell you exactly how many artists were employed we can tell you exactly what proportion of that budget has been given to artists but throughout we've intentionally stepped away from asking projects to report on how many people came to your session to get away from reporting on a scale of 1 to 10 how's your health and wellbeing today as opposed to a month ago those kind of metrics have been really harmful I think people will be aware of that and it's been transformational to shift the conversation from how many people came to your session to how are those sessions going and what are people getting out of them which people are coming to those sessions that maybe haven't been able to come in the past so you're right metrics are always powerful aren't they but the collection of them can be really harmful so I suppose the question back is how do we shape policy through storytelling and how do we recognise what metrics can do but also what they can't Find some unique metrics or something I don't know I think there is as Catherine mentioned a real danger of trying to squeeze cultural organisations working in a participatory way to provide these health and wellbeing metrics and then compete against hospital beds and I know that there's a real issue with that and also if you're going to go by economic metrics then that's why there's a disparity within the cultural sector currently of gauging the impact and importance of these organisations and the work that they do Thank you Mr Bibby We've heard from yourself this morning about the benefits of the cultural collective, the guidance and the best practice that can be shared the knowledge that can be shared We've also heard about the challenges in relation to funding, Covid recovery I was just wondering if you've taken into account the benefits and also the challenges that we've seen over the past few years would it be a benefit to revisit the cultural strategy of 2020 given so much has happened in that of being in period both positive and also challenges to take into account of the positive work but also the difficulties there I believe that work might be under way at the moment in terms of the action plan so there's a refresh I'm really looking at those outcomes around strengthening culture and empowering culture I think that the cultural strategy for Scotland is a great document It's a shame that it's timing coincided with the onset of the pandemic but as I said culture collective didn't grow out of the pandemic and Covid recovery funded it it grew out of the cultural strategy and it's a testament to that document Ben, did you want to come to the discussions at this point? I wonder if I could ask a couple of questions reflecting on our previous sessions I don't know if you've been able to to watch but we before last we did a session with local authorities and some of allios that are providing that cultural local authorities at the level support we spent a long time talking about metrics interestingly I remember from that but I was interested in how smooth you think that process is and whether there are geographic gaps and whether there's different approaches given that we had this morning particularly from Steve Burner a disconnect between the local authorities and what the cultural collective has been doing in our communities I think that disconnect is often the word I think that the reason for that and obviously it varies hugely depending where you are and who you know and who's in your local authority doing what work often I think those local authorities and allios feel like such huge faceless corporate organisations that it's really hard just to get a handle on who's there and how might we form a human relationship to make some good stuff happen I think that's where we've seen that these smaller organisations they are more nimble but they're also just much more human they're able to forge personal relationships with people to use those relationships to build provision that works and I think what we heard earlier was that often just those big faceless organisations it's not that they're not filled with great people but it can be really hard just to get to who those people are and certainly I think they're less able to work in that nimble, flexible way to be so effective within communities that's just part of the nature of how they're built that said I think in some areas there have been really positive relationships with local authorities in Inverclyde Culture Collective, one of the partners and actually when I was going to say one of the partners, one of the people involved in that project works in Inverclyde libraries and she's just been such a brilliant ally such a brilliant way into using that resource for communities and it's because of the way that they work as a person and I think finding that finding that kind of human connection and saying how can we figure this stuff out together is really difficult with local authorities Just to pick up on that I suppose just a point out as well that of the 26 projects within Culture Collective it is worth mentioning some of the mark and of collaborative between multiple organisations that are really different from some organisations that are just kind of lone projects as it were so that's just worth pointing out and it would be great to see greater local government getting involved in these Culture Collective projects and maybe partnering again in the future would be nice Can I just come back from that I think there's something really important throughout about how and where we value expertise so more of an IRL really has to be to provide this kind of national level support for local projects because from the beginning brief has been or the way that we've approached the brief is to recognise that the real knowledge and the real expertise lies in the communities and everybody else's job going up the way from there is to support that and to enable it not to try and guide it or tell it what to do and I'd really like to see that echoed more broadly and more genuinely across cultural conversations so it would be fantastic to have lots of local authorities involved it would be fantastic to have people working at a national level involved the more the merrier but I think throughout trying to focus on that perspective of unless you are in that community and working directly with that community your job is to support that work and to enable it and to say yes and to make stuff happen for those people rather than to try and lead it and just the reshaping of where that expertise lies is part of Culture Collective and that I would really like to see continued and in terms of the overall approach to culture and participation the household service is obviously something that's held up as a the information we have about what culture people are participating in the way that it is but is the work that the Culture Collective has done in the communities feeding into that process or is a lot of it under the radar if you like of what we understand I would imagine it not I would imagine it not There's a really nice thing where lots of the projects working in a public sense in communities will describe so the example I'm thinking of is Evolve in Seed Hill where the project is working at the level of almost a play park in the flats that surround it and they do a series of open public events for the people who live in those flats that overlook the park and there's a lovely thing and anybody that's worked in communities will recognise it where people look out of their windows and see what's going on and that might be it the first time but then the next week or the next month quite often the next thing is to bring their kids down and to shove their kids forward or to sit on a bench at the side is another one and those sorts of engagements definitely don't appear in the household survey and they're often the very that's the foundation to feeling confident enough to maybe on the third or fourth or fifth time to actually step forward and get involved and to say actually I think some of this might be for me as well and I think that really kind of shows up the limitations of those sorts of metrics I think any artist who's worked in communities will be very accustomed to looking out at who's walked past four times in the last hour of walking the dog or who's sitting on a bench or who's pushing their kids forward that is the kind of often the foundation to getting involved yourself I remember taking my own son to Tycho drumming event in a community centre in a very challenging area my own constituency and the local kids of course were all drawn by the noise but the community and the development officer had the sense to not show them away but invite them in to see what was happening it was an incredible experience and I think that's absolutely the point of it being right in the centre of these communities just a final reflection on in terms of the democratisation of people's access and things we've talked a lot about social prescribing but do you think there's something more that we could be doing to empower people with a social prescription to culture or a right to cultural voucher of some kind something that would empower everyone to have an opportunity to choose how they wanted to use that part of the offer to choose what they wanted to do locally and culturally I'm slightly sceptical but I'm always keen to whatever it takes essentially absolutely give it a go I think there's a risk of losing the joy sometimes and that those of us who take part in cultural and creative activity you don't think oh I need to go there because it's good for my mental health you think I'm going to go there because I had a whale of a time last week because my mate's there and because that's what I do so there's something about normalising the joy of taking part and it being a really warm invitation to come and have a brilliant time and along the way you'll get to meet your neighbours along the way you'll feel great about yourself along the way you might find that there's other people who live next door to you who collectively want to take on a local issue and start championing that those things come and they do come we see them come all the time but there's a risk I think in starting from there in that you lose the bit that makes it magic which has come because you'll really enjoy it I've had a whale of a time 10 years now a music charity and their motor was always well it's youth work we're doing but I still nobody knows that you know it's all about coming play some guitar and coming make some films and things and I think that's the approach is that it doesn't need to be sort of about mental health it needs to be just about a right to something then you wanted in the final question thanks convener it's been interesting to hear reflections on how these projects through their proactive initiative have created interest and engagement and that's obviously had a huge benefit for those involved we heard some interesting evidence last week about how the pressures on people's time due to the cost of living and the challenges that presents to households can be a barrier and I just wondered from your experience and the 26 projects whether there was anything that you wanted to convey to us about the the challenge of enabling people to have the time to participate in culture locally was that something about enabling a little bit already about aspirational goals and how we would like it to be and there's something about what you've seen here today and in the panel earlier that this work is already happening it's already happening locally and it's happening in organisations and it's happening on the ground it takes time to build up these relationships and to build up trust and respect amongst a range of stakeholders including community members and participants and just recognising that we've invested this much time and investment so far in this let's keep it going, let's not let it stop that's exhausted questions from the committee this morning again, thank you very much for a really informative session and on that note I close this meeting to the public