Chamber and committees

That point is well made.

Thank you, all. I think that we now have a picture of each of your organisations, which is very helpful. That said, we are tight for time, so please be succinct in your answers. We want to cover as many topics as we can.

I now invite questions from my colleague Mark Ruskell.

I will ask a couple of questions, and reflect on our previous evidence sessions. I do not know whether you were able to watch it, but, the week before last, we had a session with local authorities and some arm’s-length external organisations that are providing local authority-level support for culture. Interestingly enough—if I remember correctly—we spent a long time talking about metrics. How smooth do you think that that process is? Are there any geographic gaps? Are different approaches being taken by different authorities? After all, we have heard this morning, particularly from Steve Byrne, about the disconnect between what local authorities and the Culture Collective have been doing in our communities.

On our second panel are Kathryn Welch, programme lead, Culture Collective, and Morvern Cunningham, creative lead, Culture Collective. A warm welcome to you both. We had an interesting session this morning in which we heard very positive comments from the panel about the Culture Collective. What has been different about the Culture Collective’s approach that maybe was missing from past projects?

In the previous session of Parliament, the Education and Skills Committee, of which I was the convener, undertook an inquiry into music tuition in schools, and it led to the policy commitment of not charging for music.

In my home area of North Lanarkshire, all the musicians, from the symphony band, the jazz band and the rock band, are brought together on a Friday night. We have Gaelic-medium teaching and traditional music, and a pipe band, there, too. I am often struck by the cross-pollination that happens and the support of other musicians for music that they might not always come into contact with; indeed, it led to people having a huge amount of pride when the pipe band was featured busking in Grand Central station during tartan week. That absolutely galvanised the community.

Alasdair Allan mentioned education. Do we perhaps not understand enough about what is going on in education? Is this sort of thing not being shared in the communities as much as it possibly could be? Perhaps we could have some reflections on that, starting with Rachael Disbury.

Okay. I call Maurice Golden.

Murray Dawson and Steve Byrne want to say something. If anyone else wants to come in, they should indicate that.

Thank you.

Robert Rae, my opening question was about getting a reflection on your experience of what works to support communities and what the barriers are.

I remember taking my son to a taiko drumming event in a community centre in a very challenging area of my constituency. The local kids were all drawn to the noise, but the community learning and development officer had the sense not to shoo them away and instead invited them in to see what was happening. It was an incredible experience, and it absolutely illustrates the point about why these things need to be right at the centre of communities.

Finally, I wonder whether you can reflect on the democratisation of people’s access and so on. We have talked a lot about social prescribing, but is there more that we can do to empower people? Should they have, say, a social prescription for culture, the right to a cultural voucher of some kind or something else that would empower everyone by giving them the choice of how they wanted to use that offer to do whatever cultural thing they wanted to do locally?

Thank you very much for all your contributions—I see that we have finished on time. This has been another interesting evidence session, and it has been good to hear from you all about the amazing work that you are doing in your communities.

Thank you for the singing, too. I know that we are not allowed props, so I do not know whether we have crossed any barriers, but it was wonderful to hear both of the witnesses sing.

On that note, I briefly suspend the meeting for five minutes, after which we will move on to our second panel.