Not subsidy, but investment

Aonghas MacNeacail

The Arts should be part of the national infrastructure, like education, health and roads, and funded accordingly. So argues poet and writer AONGHAS MacNEACAIL as he casts an eye over the current furore surrounding funding the arts and cultural policy.

ANYONE WHO HAS read the Scottish daily broadsheets recently will have found it hard to avoid a sense of the Scottish arts community engaged in its own wee civil war. Quite how the stooshie arose in the first place has become a bit obscure by now: a bit like sailing a small boat in an expanse of choppy water, squalls around making visibility something of a moveable snack.
 

What’s clear is that certain trigger words – ‘Scottish Opera, for example – as well as variants on ‘funding’, ‘spending’ and ‘overspending’ – though not, apparently ‘underfunding’ – seem to have an explosive effect on the otherwise equable temperament of a spread of individuals, some active in the arts, as practitioners or administrators, others seemingly just happy to grind their own particular axes on a conveniently spinning subject.
 

The most coherent (usually), and on the surface most justifiable, objections have risen from contributors involved in the “traditional” arts (quotation marks intended not to belittle the sector, but acknowledging that, while rooted in the tradition, it’s currently a source of much exciting innovation.) Bill Macaskill, in particular, drew our attention to the disgraceful failure of various potential funders to help secure a future for Balnain House, a magnificent source, resource and social centre, which gave traditional music a locus from which to energise the Highland area and a focus for the wider world to observe the effects of that energy at work.
 

Where I think Bill, among others, is mistaken is in blaming Scottish Opera for Balnain’s failure to secure funding. The opera company may seem to be receiving a disproportionate amount, but the two realities that must be taken on board are, firstly, that opera is expensive - more so than Scottish politicians seem willing to accept as yet - and secondly, that traditional music, after many years of neglect, is only beginning to receive the recognition it deserves: and there’s a long way to go yet. But a culturally healthy and confident Scotland will see that both opera and traditional music, as well as theatre and all the other art forms, are adequately funded, not just to continue but to develop and grow.

The saga of arts funding in Scotland has been a depressing story for some time now. Theatre companies like Wildcat had the plug pulled on them, essentially because their message was judged unfashionable: the late John McGrath had previously been squeezed out of 7:84, the company he founded, for similar reasons. A number of theatre companies, including 7:84, have been advised their revenue funding is under threat, again. Scottish Ballet has had its troubles. And Scottish Opera regularly tilts from cash crisis to cash crisis. So, it might be asked, what’s new?
 

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