Folk, Jazz, Etc: Folk musicians hope ministers will dance to a different tune over funding for arts

IT MAY have been Daniel Thorpe's big night at Glasgow City Halls as the young fiddler from Inverurie scooped the Radio Scotland Traditional Musician of the Year award, but culture minister Fiona Hyslop, who handed over the trophy, gained her own round of applause as she announced the publication of the Traditional Arts Working Group Report.

Perhaps not quite as vivifying as some of the jigs and reels we'd heard during the evening, but it was gratifying news nonetheless, with Hyslop pointing up one strand of the report which suggests that the Scottish Arts Council – or its long- and wearily-awaited reincarnation as Creative Scotland – should consider some form of one-to-one mentoring scheme between tradition-bearers and "apprentices".

There have been, of course, previous working parties on the traditional arts, associated with the Arts Council. What gives the current group's convener, musician and arts administrator Dave Francis, cause for optimism, even amid the current slough of economic despond, is the current report was commissioned by and for the Scottish Government itself.

"The fact that it was actually commissioned by the then Minister for Culture, Linda Fabiani, is an indicator in terms of esteem for the traditional arts," remarked Francis when I spoke to him before he and his wife, singer and fiddler Mairi Campbell, headed off for a tour of Germany as duo The Cast.

A main objective of the report, he says, was to identify ways within a constrained economic environment in which central and local government, as well as other agencies, can best support Scottish music, song and other traditional arts.

The report was commissioned, he adds, on the back of "a certain degree of disgruntlement" at cuts in the SAC's grants for 2009 which whipped the rug out from under the feet of organisations such as the Traditional Music and Song Association and the Scots Music Group, potentially eroding the grass-roots activity essential to a thriving folk music culture.

The SAC eventually managed to find extra funding for "strategic issues" in the traditional sector, but not before a lively rumpus saw irate musicians converging on Holyrood to make their feelings known.

The new report now being considered by the minister – a formal response is expected around June – delivers a broad range of recommendations, some of which are clearly longer-term visions than others. Among the more ambitious are the establishment of a national traditional arts archive – feasibly in a "high-profile, historic and iconic location", as well as a national traditional arts company "dedicated to performing at the highest possible standards".

Of more immediate import is the call for the emergent Creative Scotland to designate a "portfolio manager for the traditional arts", while there is much concerning education, including the aforementioned mentoring scheme and also the tradition's place on the curriculum.

When children's introduction to traditional music has been dependent largely on the enthusiasm of individual teachers, Francis agrees that there is a need to spark enthusiasm at the teacher training stage.

"There is a whole crowd of different subjects pressing at the gate, but traditional arts have a very strong central case because of their centrality in what it means to be Scottish," he says.

But at a time when even arts establishment heavies such as the Edinburgh International Festival and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra are steeling themselves for hefty budget cuts, how will folk arts, too often a Cinderella among funding priorities, fare? Francis remains optimistic and points to the unprecedented burgeoning of traditional music-making over the past couple of decades, as well as the continuing box-office success of Celtic Connections, which appears to buck the economic trend.

"I think the scene is robust and well enough embedded to survive the roll of the economic wheel," he says.

• For the full report, see www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/ArtsCultureSport/arts/traditionalarts/tradartsworkinggroup