Chamber and committees

You mentioned your supported organisations. I do not want you to name any of them or give away any confidences, but what size of organisations are you talking about? Are you talking about bigger organisations? Are you helping individuals who have had creative funding in the past?

I am going to have to call things to a halt. I know that Mr Bibby had questions around fair work, so I suggest that the committee pursues those in writing—I think that he particularly wanted to speak to Caroline Sewel on the matter.

You have put a smile on my face, too, Caroline, because I was the convener of the committee that did the report and the inquiry into music tuition, so it was lovely to hear your comments—I just wanted to put that on the record.

We will suspend for a very short comfort break and to allow for a change of witnesses.

I am conscious that we are talking a lot about areas that might not be familiar to people who are watching, so I want to clarify a couple of things before we move on.

When we talk about the percentage for the arts scheme, we are referring to the use of 1 per cent of the Scottish budget for the arts. That commitment was raised in the session 5 culture committee—the Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Relations Committee—and was mentioned in its legacy paper, but we have not done detailed work on that this session. The percentage for the arts has also been raised by Culture Counts in relation to sources other than the budget—for example, it has talked about a capital contribution that is based on major developments, such as house building, and that would be delivered in the local area.

We talked about the visitor levy, which is now available to councils to apply. The City of Edinburgh Council has been the first to do so and has applied it to hotels, B and Bs and other accommodation in the city. Edinburgh has laid out that a percentage of that revenue would go to culture, but not the full amount.

The ticket levy proposal, which is mainly from the Music Venue Trust, is a UK campaign. The levy would be on stadium tickets and other areas.

We are tight for time, but we have a couple of questions left.

There has been a lot of discussion about a wellbeing society and the role that culture will play in that—that has been a recurring theme in the committee’s work, certainly in this session—but also about getting people in the right rooms to have those discussions. Given that it is such an important principle, has much progress been made, as far as you can see, in embedding wellbeing in the other portfolio areas?

Good morning, and a warm welcome to the 20th meeting in 2024 of the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee. Our first agenda item is to continue to take evidence as part of our pre-budget scrutiny on funding for culture.

We have two evidence sessions this morning. For our first session, we are joined by Lori Anderson, who is the director of Culture Counts; Lyndsey Jackson, who is the deputy chief executive of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society; Liam Sinclair, who is the executive director of Dundee Rep and Scottish Dance Theatre; and Caroline Sewell, who is a regional organiser with the Musicians Union. I will begin with a couple of questions and then move to questions from the committee.

In our pre-budget report last year, the committee said that

“there was an urgent need for the Scottish Government to restore the confidence of the culture sector.”

In your view, to what extent has confidence been restored? I will start with Lori.

We have exhausted our questions, so I thank our witnesses very much for attending. Our next evidence session as part of our pre-budget scrutiny will be on 3 October, when the cabinet secretary will appear before the committee.

I do not think that anyone else wishes to respond. Do you have a supplementary?

We need to finish the meeting by twenty past 11, so please be concise in your comments. I am sorry, but, because it is a Thursday morning, this committee does not have any flexibility.

Lucy Casot wants to come in, but we will hear from Anne Lyden first.

I want to dig a bit deeper into what you have all referred to as the ecosystem in which you work. You have described some of that as competition, rather than describing working together and collaboration. I am thinking about the impact that the decisions that Creative Scotland makes on culture funding nationally have on the wider ecosystem. Thankfully, it did not happen, but there was a possibility that the Aye Write festival would not go ahead. Is there a boost from festivals to other cultural organisations? Do you see visitor numbers increase during festivals? Is there an on-going impact of, for example, a decision not to fund a festival that is perhaps not fully appreciated at the time?