Scotsman Bulletin Thursday 28 March
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00:00 [MUSIC]
00:07 >> Hello, welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Bulletin for Thursday.
00:10 I'm Alan Young, I'm Deputy Editor of the Scotsman.
00:12 I'm joined today by our Arch Correspondent, Brian Ferguson,
00:14 to take a look at some of the headlines.
00:16 Hi, Brian.
00:16 >> Good morning.
00:17 >> Let's have a look at the front page first off.
00:21 We lead today on the big story in Holyrood,
00:25 which is the third attempt to introduce an assisted dying law.
00:31 The bill has been lodged by Lib Dem MSP, Lee MacArthur, today.
00:38 And on the back of that, or ahead of that, rather,
00:41 there's a new poll out today that finds 78% of the public in Scotland
00:48 now support the move that is obviously highly controversial.
00:52 And we'll be writing a lot more about that in the coming weeks and months.
00:56 We put you on the front page there.
00:58 The soft launch, I guess, of this year's Edinburgh military tattoo.
01:04 We have the King's Easter message there as well.
01:08 And in the wing column, you may be able to see Joseph Anderson,
01:13 our health reporter, has been looking into this cyber hack on
01:18 NHS Dumfries and Galloway, the hackers yesterday issuing a demand and
01:23 warning that they may release patient data, very worrying.
01:29 Indeed, what I want to talk to you about, though, Brian,
01:32 is a story we've got inside today and writing high on our website at the moment.
01:37 And that is the iWrite Festival in Glasgow,
01:41 a very well known festival which has lost its funding.
01:46 Bring us up to date firstly with the story.
01:49 Yeah, so Glasgow has some of the basically gold standard festivals
01:55 in the first half of the year.
01:58 We've just had the film festival Celtic Connects at the start of the year
02:03 and the international comedy festival was ongoing.
02:05 But the next big one, it was meant to be iWrite.
02:08 It's a really highly regarded celebration of books and literature.
02:12 It's been running for nearly 20 years.
02:14 Next year will be, if it happens again, the 20th anniversary.
02:19 But like a lot of events and festivals,
02:23 they are basically reliant on securing annual funding from Creative Scotland,
02:32 like so many others around the country.
02:35 It's only certain events have secure three year funding,
02:39 but a lot of people just have to go in every year.
02:43 This particular one is run by the city.
02:45 It's not really independently run.
02:48 But like a lot of Celtic Connects,
02:53 they're not a good example of one that is effectively run by the city of Glasgow.
02:57 But this particular one does seem to have been reliant on securing Creative Scotland funding,
03:04 which does appear to be a mistake, basically,
03:08 because it has been well rehearsed.
03:11 There's huge pressures on Creative Scotland to fund things.
03:15 Through what's called an open fund, there are two main categories.
03:21 Really, individuals can apply for funding,
03:23 but organisations can also apply for funding.
03:26 And they've got, I think, rough budgets, about 10 million annually.
03:32 And obviously, a bigger proportion of their budget is allocated for long term funding.
03:38 So later in the year, I mean, there are
03:41 something like almost 100 million pounds worth of applications
03:44 that they have got and are assessing at the moment for long term funding.
03:48 But there are some of these annual events that get annual funding at the moment
03:54 have gone into the mix for next year and beyond.
03:59 But the ones who don't have it at the moment, like I write,
04:02 basically are heavily reliant on securing annual funding.
04:06 The funny thing about this is,
04:08 I just wrote the other day about a festival which had been turned down
04:13 for funding three times in the space of a year,
04:15 the Llama Muir Music Festival in East Lothian.
04:18 They actually got a two year deal agreed with Creative Scotland,
04:23 which has allowed them to press ahead.
04:26 But basically, they only got that after launching a huge campaign to try and
04:30 secure, effectively, a rethink on a U-turn from Creative Scotland.
04:34 So, you know, they had to get some really big names behind them.
04:37 There was a lot of lobbying of politicians of every party.
04:41 And that has been successful.
04:42 But, yeah, I didn't really know, little did I know,
04:46 there was going to be bad news coming down the line for I Write.
04:49 And basically...
04:51 Do we think a similar campaign may be coming for the I Write Festival?
04:57 We know it attracted the interest this morning of the former First Minister.
05:03 Yeah, I mean, I had to laugh, you know,
05:05 because Creative Scotland has been saying for more than 18 months now
05:09 that there are huge problems with the funding landscape in Scotland.
05:14 They've been banging the drum as much as they can,
05:17 given that they're a government agency,
05:19 to try and persuade the government to put more money into the system,
05:22 because a lot of the problems are that anyone running a festival event or
05:25 organisation has had or is currently grappling with hugely escalating costs.
05:32 They're having trouble finding staff and paying them at the levels that people
05:35 are looking for, that there's increasing demands on them to meet,
05:41 you know, to meet new...
05:43 Grapple with climate change, for example.
05:46 And again, another thing that Creative Scotland is really assessing people on
05:50 is their commitments on equalities and diversity is a huge priority
05:54 for the government and Creative Scotland.
05:57 So, I mean, you know, I just, I fear that there's going to be a lot more of these
06:02 coming, but we cannot get into a situation where, you know,
06:05 there are multiple campaigns being launched every time there's a,
06:10 you know, what appears to be a baffling decision made.
06:12 You know, it's a complete nonsense of a way to run arts funding in Scotland.
06:18 And, you know, I mean, that's really a lot of the problems go back to the fact
06:22 that, you know, Creative Scotland were warning about a perfect storm for Scottish
06:27 culture in the autumn of 2022.
06:30 The government's response at the time when Nicola Sturgeon was first minister,
06:34 you know, two months later was to impose a cut on Creative Scotland.
06:38 They reversed that decision the following spring.
06:40 There was a huge campaign from artists and writers and companies.
06:45 But then lo and behold, last autumn, they reinstated that cut.
06:49 That's had a huge knock on impact on not only Creative Scotland's ability to fund
06:54 organisations, but also, you know, really has eroded confidence within the arts
06:59 industry and basically very few organisations or festivals or events are
07:05 able to properly plan ahead because literally nobody has any guaranteed
07:09 funding from the spring of next year.
07:13 You're only a handful of organisations that I know have actually got that.
07:17 And like I say, a lot of people are in for three year funding, which they're
07:21 supposed to find out about in October.
07:22 The last I heard from the Scottish government, they were saying that they
07:26 might not actually be able to tell Creative Scotland what their own budget is
07:29 until December. How that's going to work out?
07:32 I have no idea.
07:33 But, you know, organisations could potentially be told, you know, that they're
07:39 losing their long term funding with a few months notice.
07:42 And what's happened with iWriters, you know, Glasgow Life, who run this event,
07:47 have been told fairly recently, look, we just can't fund you for this year.
07:51 So they've had to pull the plug because they've just not got a budget within the
07:56 city, which I mean, I do think has a flaw.
07:58 I can't understand how Glasgow as a city can't find any funding for this event.
08:04 Just seems to me to be crackers.
08:06 But also it's equally mad that Creative Scotland has not been able to
08:11 prioritise an event that, you know, most of Scotland's leading authors have
08:15 appeared at. It's hugely popular within the city.
08:19 You know, it's of the same standard as all the other major festivals that it does
08:26 support in Glasgow. So I just don't I don't understand what's going wrong here.
08:30 Thanks. Thanks for talking us through that.
08:32 Brian, we have not heard the end of this.
08:34 I'm sure that is the case.
08:37 Please keep an eye on scottsman.com.
08:38 We'll have all the very latest news and analysis.
08:42 If you can, do subscribe and you will not miss a thing.
08:44 And if you're out and about today, please do pick up a copy of the paper from me and from Brian.
08:50 It's bye for now.
08:51 (Music)