UHI Executive Office, Inverness, 27 March 2006

Colin Marr

COLIN MARR, the director of Eden Court Theatre, delivered the latest UHI Millennium Institute Lecture on “The Role of Arts and Culture in the Well Being and Future Economic Success of the Highlands”.

I must confess that when I first entered the room and saw a projected image of Eden Court Theatre above the lecture title, I was feeling pretty cynical about what lay ahead.

I was also struck by the irony of the venue, the shiny executive offices of UHI, who had organised this, the second forward thinking talk in their lecture series.

A University of the Highlands and Islands is far from being an established reality let alone a coherent, well organised institution of reputation and excellence. The lecture’s title, as Eden Court’s Director pointed out when he introduced it, read “more like a question” than a statement of fact.

Happily, my cynicism continued to be dispelled as Colin Marr gave a challenging and deeply perceptive lecture that went way beyond his job title and the interests of one theatre.

He articulated the hard issues facing the Arts in our region and acknowledged his “disappointment at how far we had come, [indeed] not far enough.”

The Eden Court refurbishment currently underway is only “a beginning” in terms of the region embracing the potential of all its creative industries. Local authorities cannot afford to tick a box marked culture at the end of 2007 and not make the Arts an integral part of their future vision and planning for the region.

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The challenge is for the arts to provide creative leadership and for local government to fully embrace the potential of creative industries

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Central to Marr’s discussion was the commitment expressed by First Minister Jack McConnell on St Andrews Day 2003, a fundamental change in how the Executive view the arts. As important as health and education to our nation, McConnell described “the development of our creative drive, our imagination [as] the next major enterprise for our society.”

Personally, I believe this address is an important and inspiring document regardless of party politics, and has relevance for everyone living in Scotland today. Most importantly because it identifies the “dispiriting” “lack of confidence” that holds back our economic development of ideas. This has wide ranging implications not just with regard to art and culture but to our quality of life, to which both are inextricably linked.

Marr outlined the changing state of the Arts in Scotland as a whole since the release of the Cultural Commission report and the Scottish Executive response to it. With this change in policy, and as a small nation, he identified the potential to lead the Western world in terms of our approach to the Arts as an economic force rather than a sector of “subsidy.”

We need to radically change the way we think of the Arts as industry. This industry is in need of the same level of support provided for business. Marr made the link between the arts, “well being and economic competitiveness”.

To attract talented employees to the area and develop existing talent we need to provide a quality of life that sustains a creative and dynamic workforce. He also identified the obstacles to people with talent and ideas settling here, quite rightly debunking the myth of “the famous Highland welcome.”

I completely agree. You need only turn to “letters to the editor” in the Courier on a regular basis to wonder if Inverness is stuck in some kind of ideaological time warp.

Intolerance in all forms – particularly racism – needs to be addressed if the Highlands are to experience economic growth and a sustainable creative future. There is no future without ideas, vision and the confidence to carry them to fruition.

Marr discussed education at length and the active role that the arts can take in learning, citing the success of the Feisean movement and Eden Court’s outreach education work. While learning skills is important, cultural activity also builds confidence and self esteem.

Marr engaged fully with the implications of his quotation from Eillot Eisner, Professor of Education and Art Stanford University: “A school’s mission is wider than learning how to make a living: it is a place where students can learn to make a life.”

He explored the ideas of “talent, technology and tolerance” and questioned whether we currently have the support systems in place in our region to launch modern and competitive industries from a Highland base.

Citing three of the most successful global businesses today, “Apple, Amazon and Google”, he questioned whether it would be possible for someone here to attract the necessary support to launch a creative business idea. We have a lot further to go in order to “help grow economy [creatively] from within.”

The past failure of arts organisations such as Balnain House, The Highland Festival and the recent opposition to “The Ironworks” music venue are all indicators that we do not yet have an environment conducive for creative industries to be taken seriously by local government, let alone to thrive.

He suggested the development of screen and broadcasting industries, particularly television, to take advantage of “more channels [and] less programming.” We currently have a situation where the “technology [of multiple channels is] ahead of content”, and there is an opportunity to develop an industry of the small screen.

He also cited apprentice schemes and the creative industries of “publishing and music” as areas ripe for development in the Highland region. (Conspicuous by their absence in this discussion were the visual arts.)

Marr successfully argued that the “Arts have much to teach business” in terms of “having long reaching vision” and a “capacity to see the bigger picture”. Through culture we learn tolerance and “come into contact with other ways of seeing our world”.

The culture and formal rigidity of the workplace does little to encourage individuals to “share their ideas” or for organisations in the Highlands to grow and adapt to change easily. As a region we “struggle to accept new ideas.”

Citing statistics and examples from his own organisation, he successfully described and quantified the benefits and “economic impact on the Highlands” of Eden Court Theatre. It is clear that the expenditure generated by audiences, visiting performers and crew together with the support of other employment in B&Bs, hotels and restaurants far outweighs the amount of funding given to the organisation in terms of economic benefit.

The Edinburgh International Festival and its continuing growth is a shining example of the economic benefits the arts can yield in supporting other employment and the local economy.

In conclusion, Marr’s prescription for development was to “plan a lot and invest a little more”, keeping pressure on the executive and local authority to make good their promises for cultural access and development. 2007 is the ideal time to focus attention on our cultural strengths and weaknesses and actively plan to make the arts a driving force in the future of the Highlands and Islands.

For me this lecture was surprisingly and refreshingly forthright. Unlike the banners that line our High Street proclaiming that culturally and as a city we’ve arrived, it acknowledged that we have much more to do to improve the quality of life in our region. The challenge is for the arts to provide creative leadership and for local government to fully embrace the potential of creative industries.

Some members of the audience felt the lecture was not particularly optimistic, but I would argue that there is a great deal of hope both in the shift in public policy toward the arts and in the challenges outlined by Eden Court’s director. Problems are not necessarily obstacles when you address them creatively. Now more than ever, creative imagination in planning is what is needed and necessary. It is an exciting time.

When asked at question time what the “next piece of cultural infrastructure should be”, he replied “solving the Gallery and Museum problem”. Bravo!

© Georgina Coburn, 2006