Chamber and committees

I am interested to hear how you think the dial has shifted since Covid and what some of the challenges and opportunities are. Looking around some of the communities that are close to me, I notice that high streets look very different now and shop spaces are opening up. During Covid, there was more discussion about the value of green space and we started to think about how streets could look different and how civic spaces could be opened up. I guess that there were some opportunities there, but cultural organisations are also facing into some headwinds. It would be interesting to get your views on how the post-Covid world looks a little bit different and the implications of that.

You are referring to pop-up shops, pop-up facilities and creative opportunities.

Yes—and the need for agency.

My last question concerns 20-minute neighbourhoods. That concept was mentioned in a number of the submissions, and it was interesting to hear about some of the work on it in England. In Scotland, it is still very much seen as a planning concept—it is in the national planning framework—but do you have examples of cultural organisations in Scotland that have actively planned around 20-minute neighbourhoods? I am thinking in particular of high streets starting to close down and people starting to rethink spaces. As major retailers shut down post Covid, they left big spaces that people are thinking about how to fill creatively.

I want to come back on a couple of things that have been mentioned. Jemma Neville said that we need to normalise support for cultural organisations, as we have done for sporting organisations. Have I picked that up correctly? Can I get your perspectives on what that means? When I look at how sport is supported in my community, I see arm’s-length external organisations and sport and leisure trusts doing club sport development, and I see engagement in schools to encourage young people to get into sports clubs and try out new sports.

Is there a corollary, or are culture and music different? What is missing? Your organisations are trying to provide some of that support and development on a national basis, and the TSI Scotland Network provides similar support, but what is the missing bit that would give culture and music development and support that are equivalent to what sport has?

Do you want to come in, Sarah?

[Inaudible.]—Deveron Arts previously.

That is great—thank you.

Thank you—that was useful.

Jemma Neville talked about “fluid and overlapping networks”. That brings us back to the point about how we define a cultural organisation. When I walk into organisations that might be working on climate change and transition, I see that they are full of creative people who are making things and doing incredible creative projects. Those organisations are probably not creative cultural organisations, but they are creating culture. How do we map that out? There seems to be a lot of overlap. Should we think more about a creative sector than a cultural one?

What about the infrastructure that we need to develop that? There are some big figures in there, but it is a nascent technology and we do not have much in the way of infrastructure at the moment. What infrastructure do we need to put in place between now and 2030?

I am interested to know where the work with stakeholders on developing a vision for hydrogen and the hydrogen industry is now. It is quite clear to me that there is a prioritisation of the use of hydrogen in the energy strategy. There is a hydrogen ladder. My reading of the strategy is that the future will be less about using hydrogen to heat showers in the morning and much more about decarbonising hard-to-abate sectors in industry. On the back of the energy strategy, how are you developing a stakeholder vision for what the hydrogen economy will look like in 2030 and 2045?