Editorial by Kenny Mathieson
Be Creative!
1 Jan 2012
THE YEAR of Creative Scotland 2012 gets underway on 1 January. Depending on how you look at it, though, the latest Scottish Government-sponsored extravaganza is an odd notion.
DOES it mean that we in Scotland need official permission to be creative, and cannot be so any other year? Does all the myriad creativity that has flowed from Scotland’s artists and crafts people up to this point somehow not count? Or is it actually our national arts funding body we are being asked to celebrate?
Artist Murray Robertson, Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop and Creative Scotland's Andrew Dixon examine the artists' map of creative Scotland at the Glasgow Print Studio
Okay, of course not. It’s easy to be cynical about these events, and sometimes with reason, but like the overlapping Year of Scotland’s Islands and the earlier Year of Highland Culture, good things will come out of it, work will be enabled that might not otherwise have happened, and the tourist spend will be totted up and trumpeted (and for the Highlands and Islands, tourist spend is a serious matter).
If we don’t lose sight of the fact that the promotion itself has little or nothing to do with creativity, but is simply a diverse series of means to financial ends (and with £6.5 million of National Lottery funding behind it, quite serious finance is going in), then there is no reason not to embrace it, especially if it happens to be pretty much the only game in town.
Creative Scotland, who are running the whole event, describe it as a “chance to showcase, celebrate and promote Scotland’s cultural and creative strengths”. There are opportunities to apply for investment and to take advantage of the promotional campaign on the Year of Creative Scotland 2012 website.
I was interested to read hill-walker and writer Cameron McNeish’s valedictory column in my local paper, the Strathspey & Badenoch Herald, last month. After 30 years, his column has fallen victim to financial reorganisation, and has been replaced by the the sponsored Active Outdoors section which began in the Inverness Courier and now runs across the various titles published by Scottish Provincial Press.
Apart from the fact that, as a keen hill-goer and cyclist myself, I enjoyed his idiosyncratic column, my interest lay in the fact that I had just received my own marching orders from the Inverness Courier, and for a similar reason. As a freelance Arts Correspondent for the paper, I had been contributing an ever-reducing amount to their Arts & Entertainments section since the late Jim Love appointed me to the role back in 2001.
However, it has now been decided that all such coverage will be handled by in-house staff. I have enjoyed my decade writing for the Courier, and bear no grudges, but it is a reminder that the financial squeeze on the arts doesn’t only hit practitioners.
Sadly, it is also another indication among many of an inexorably shrinking newspaper industry pummelled on all sides by plummeting circulation figures, disappearing advertising income and the onslaught of 24-hour television news and the internet. Having been part of that business for over a quarter-century, it saddens me to see what increasingly looks like its inevitable demise, certainly in its current form.
Northings is not immune to the current financial situation either, and I have taken the decision not to run reviews from Celtic Connections this year (an event which receives wide coverage in all media in any case), but to reserve the editorial budget for events within the region in the months ahead.
Few these days can pronounce confidently on the long (or even medium) term future, and change inevitably lies ahead, but we are cautiously optimistic that we will be around for a while yet. On that note, I would like to wish all of our colleagues in the arts, and in particular our contributors, website members and readers a very happy and prosperous 2012.
Oh, and don’t forget to be creative.
Kenny Mathieson
Editor
© Kenny Mathieson, 2012
Agreed on the need to open up the debate, and I’ve also corrected the Government gaff (it was the Executive when they started these promotions!).
Dear Kenny
good piece. The problem, as Gerry has indicated above, is that year long “festivals” don’t work for artists and audiences but tick boxes for governments (the “Executive”, Kenny, went two elections ago) and state sponsored agencies. As the Year of Highland Culture proved if you don’t follow up it is the land of cultural” so what” you inhabit. Things can be sen to b a success even when they have been a failure. You either strategise cultural provision and fund it accordingly or you engage in the Trotsky idea of permanent revolution i.e. one long festival forever. Either way will bear fruit. The Year of Creative Scotland is just another stunt in a long line of such things by a state which refuses to engage with the arts and culture of the people. One could conclude that they are actually terrified of it. God alone knows, if such an engagement were undertaken, we might just start to think! I also have been deleted by Scottish Provincial Press, so I sympathise with you there. We need to have this debate opened out because in the Highlands and Islands it’s a matter of life and death.
The United Nations has declared 2012 as The International Year of Co-operatives. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=OHS4Qj5oCpQ With almost 1 billion people worldwide members of co-operatives, could co-operatives be one of Scotlands greatest ever exports? see http://thefenwickweavers.coop/ and http://www.welcometolennoxtown.co.uk/co-operative_society.htm
I agree that follow-up is a major issue, and one only partly addressed by the fact that there has been a series of these events (and I don’t think they should be even be called festivals – promotions is closer), providing some element of continuation, if not necessarily continuity.
My main fear is that the solid foundations you speak of are precisely what is most likely to be lost in financial hard times, whether by swift cuts or gradual erosion, and that effect only fully emerges long-term. It would be good to hear what others think on these issues.
And a Happy New Year to you.
Happy New Year Kenny.
A very thought provoking piece for me.
In 2008 speaking at the International Events and Festivals Association’s European Conference which I attended in Iceland Key Note Speaker Dr Joe Goldblatt argued that Year Long Festivals were a mistake.
He explained in detail why the media and the public have no interest in anything that last for a whole year.
He stressed the importance of giving the customers attracted to these festivals in year one the change to promote them in years two and beyond. Returning tourists recommend things in person and on line,
He stressed that businesses need longer lead in times with these festivals and need to be given the opportunity to use their resources to develop repeat customers.
He spoke of countries like Japan which, having conducted reasearch, had completely turned their backs on them.
He spoke of organisers not having the chance to learn from and build on their mistakes,
As an educator he said that the need to call everything a success and protect reputations had resulted in important information about what could be learned at the debrief stage
not being shared.
The branding of years does provide a means by which some funding can be released,
However, pleasing as that is, we must look beyond that.
Now is the time to have a debate about what will happen in 2013 when this funding is not there.
According to Canadian Donald Getz – who studied why festivals fail in 2002, the definition of failure is when something simply fails to reappear.
Anyone can create memories if they are given pennies.
Any community group can create events if they are given pennies.
The case to “showcase” has no place to go any more,
We need to build on more solid foundations.
Happy New Year.