Cutting funds is not the answer

GORDON MACLEAN, the director of An Tobar, the Tobermory Arts Centre on Mull, sounds off on the current threat to the Highland Festival’s funding from Highland Council, and demands more support for the arts at all levels.

I HAVE JUST read the editorial in the Arts Journal about Highland Council proposing cutting their funding for the Highland Festival.

This seems strange to me given that the recent review recommended that the Festival should concentrate its activity in Inverness. I was invited to contribute to one of the focus group meetings about the Festival and I completely agreed with that idea – it made sense to have a major festival of international standing in the Highland capital rather than something spread out over the whole area which made it impossible to create the sense of momentum that a big festival needs.

I understand that the latest idea is to try and copy Canada’s Celtic Colours Festival, which goes back to the idea of the festival covering the whole of the Highlands.

From my position out in the wilds of Mull, I feel that the local promoters’ scene across the Highlands has really grown in strength over the last few years, and that they don’t particularly need the idea of a Highland wide festival.

I remember in the early days of the Festival that there was quite a bit of animosity about the Festival “parachuting events into places they weren’t wanted” or annoyance at local events that were happening anyway being used in the Highland Festival programme.

Sometimes it seems that you can’t win, but a lot of the dissent was probably a result of the fact that most Highland promoters achieve amazing programmes on shoestring budgets and are very sensitive to the needs of their local audience – the idea of a big festival swallowing them whole must have been worrying, especially as, so often, initiatives from on high can be driven by fickle motives that change every couple of years.

However, the Highland Festival proved there was a need for something on a bigger scale while also being sensitive to the needs of the smaller promoters.

There is already lots happening on the ground – it’s possible to live in the Highlands and take in a few world class events in any month of the year. These local organisations need more support, but not at the expense of a showcase like the Highland Festival, which I would see as a flagship for all the Highland promoters.

The Highland Festival can bring internationally renowned artists to this area at a level that small promoters can’t afford. Most of us still have the scenery built in as part of the contract – it can’t be huge fees that make artists and musicians want to tour the north of Scotland.

The Highland Festival also gives an organisation like An Tobar in Tobermory a big event to create new work for. Some of our most successful projects would have been a lot less likely to happen without Highland Festival support – Savourna Stevenson and Davy Spillane performing Calman The Dove for the Columba anniversary, for example, and more recent commissions by Corrina Hewat (Photons In Vapour) and Michael Marra (Silence).

It’s all very well to be looking ahead to 2007, but in the meantime we should be continuing to grow our existing arts organisations. Local councillors should address the concept of partnership a bit more seriously – there seems to be an attitude around that the Scottish Arts Council should fund all the arts, but it is surely part of our local Council’s remit to assist cultural development.

Are we still trying to prove the obvious – that creative activity makes for a healthier community, more diverse, more vibrant and with the energy and self esteem that comes from the creative arts to help drive economic development?

The arts have a positive effect on all of us but the level of support for the arts, an area that cannot and should not be entirely commercially driven, is simply not enough. Even the proposed National Theatre (a potentially exciting development) is to be funded from the crumbs left over in the Scottish Executive budget.

Let’s see more support for all the small promoters and arts organisations that really make things happen and less on reviews, surveys and case studies which usually tell us what we already know – people working in the arts give real value for money.

To conclude – I think the Highlands and Islands need a major arts festival and it should be in the Highland capital. Supporting local events at the expense of the Highland Festival would be a real backward step. Inverness now has Balnain House and art.tm looking at each other across the river with CLOSED signs in their windows, and now we may to lose the  Highland Festival as well. This makes NO SENSE.

© Gordon Maclean, 2003