Defeating the Dead Hand of Planning

MICHAEL RUSSELL argues that it is time to take a more adventurous approach to large-scale ambition in our cultural and physical landscape.

GREAT VIEWS are not uncommon in Scotland, but one of the most dramatic is that which can be had from the so called “new” road in Cowal between Glendaruel and Tighnabruaich. At the cusp of the hill a viewpoint allows passers-by to pause and look down the Kyles of Bute towards the Ayrshire Coast in one direction, and towards Arran and Ireland in the other.

An equally remarkable, and slightly similar, vista can be experienced from cliffs at the north end of the island of Lanzarote. Across a small stretch of sea lies La Graciosa Island, and beyond it a handful of even smaller outcroppings.

The difference between the two spectacles is, however more than a matter of geography. In Argyll a painted notice-board gives some simple information, and a metal plaque delineates the high points in view. There is a single, rickety wooden bench, perched on slabs beside a tarmac surface. An occasional bunch of be-ribboned flowers marks the fact that this is an increasingly popular spot for the scattering of ashes.

However in Lanzarote one of the island’s most inspirational architects has created a remarkable structure overlooking the “rio”, or little river, as the channel is known. It is a glass and concrete building created inside a bubble within the volcanic rock. There one can not only dine but also stroll out onto a soaring balcony – glass in hand – to stare in stunned amazement at the sight below. Elegant, intelligent and inspiring, it expresses the best of Lanzarote.

It will require some joined up government, and the courage to not only accept, but welcome, the unexpected, the unconventional, the ambitious and the risky

The Mirador del Rio is a wonderful achievement, yet the architect in question, Lanzarote’s own Ceasar Manrique, not only made that place, but many other island attractions as well, including a restaurant at the very top of the island’s main volcano, a charming and intimate cactus garden created inside an old quarry and a concert hall and park alongside, inside and above ancient water filled caves.

Manrique, recognising the damage that modern mass tourism could do to his birthplace, wanted at the outset of the boom to raise standards and establish high-quality cultural draws. He succeeded, although he did not manage to banish entirely concrete hotels and greasy burger bars.

I live by the side of the sea loch directly opposite that viewpoint on the Tighnabruaich road. Every time I drive past it, I think to myself how magnificent it would be if something like the Mirdor del Rio was built there. It could be sunk into the rock below the tarmac and from it a glass wall would reveal – in massive frame – the superb view.

But the problem in Scotland is not that we have no Manrique’s capable of such imaginative interventions. The problem is that we have planning laws and conservation bodies which exist only to lay the deadest of dead hands on any and every unusual and exciting idea.

Just as it has proved impossible for Sandy Stoddart to even begin to plan the execution of his vision for a massive recumbent figure from Ossianic legend carved into an Argyll mountain side, so it would be an exercise in frustration and despair for any individual to dream like Manrique and then try and turn those dreams into a modern day Scottish or Highland reality. There are whole armies of jobs-worths who could and would devote their entire lives to stopping them.

But the disease of over government and interfering bureaucracy works against cultural tourism – and culture – in much smaller ways too. Take the experience of Don McNeil and Jean Bell, of Fyne Studios in Newton, near Strachur.

With splendid irony they now refer to their workplace as “The Hidden Gallery”, making a virtue out of the fact that Argyll and Bute Planning Department have done their best to put them out of business over several years, first by trying to enforce regulations which were designed for shop premises, not a small house with an adjoining studio which has half a dozen visitors a week, and then when that failed by a continuing campaign to forbid them even a temporary sign at their road end.

But notice boards are, to misquote the catechism, only the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual problem. Put bluntly, today’s official Scotland cares little for culture and does even less to sustain it.

Of course the Scottish Executive, visitscotland and the Scottish Arts Council make much of wishing to encourage cultural tourism. But the reality is very different, particularly at the grass roots where local authorities – and Argyll and Bute is not unique – cannot see further than its own red tape and regularly run the risk of closing down some of the very small enterprises which are essential for cultural survival and tourist growth.

Accordingly making cultural tourism a reality will require more than strategy documents and warm words. It will require some joined up government, and the courage to not only accept, but welcome, the unexpected, the unconventional, the ambitious and the risky. To welcome, help and encourage, in other words, both the Manrique’s and the McNeils who as artists will display all those uncomfortable traits and many others.

So the relaxation of planning restrictions – much overdue in most of rural Scotland given the continuing depopulation of the remoter parts – support for existing ventures and the seeding of resources to allow some major new projects (like the Eden Project in Cornwall) to emerge will be necessary parts of the process.

Of course it is now too late for any such project to arise and be completed during the Highland Year of Culture in 2007, though it would be a great legacy for that year if , for example, the Stoddart figure were to get the go-ahead at that time, or if some breath-taking innovation was to secure local, national and international backing.

Yet the first step must be to secure the climate and the context in which such things can happen and so far those changes are not even on the cultural, or the political, agenda.

Michael Russell is a writer and commentator who lives in Argyll.

© Michael Russell, 2006