Brian Monteith: Scotland’s artists need freedom of UK stage

When it comes to the debate about how an independent Scotland might fare there is, understandably, a tendency to focus on the economic prospects for Scots and Scotland. We all want to know how we, our families and our wider community will make ends meet – will it be better, will it be tougher, and will it be worth it?

There is, however, much more to independence than mere number-crunching. There are the questions regarding how our close familial and societal links will survive and evolve, what is now being termed our social union; there are questions over our strategic place as a nation, our defence posture, including involvement with Nato – and membership of the European Union and the price that would be asked of us.

There is another issue that has just begun to raise its head: how will Scotland’s culture fare in an independent Scotland? Will it be to our advantage to stand alone like Ireland or Norway, or will there be greater opportunity to be part of a larger whole, to remain British and all that that entails?

The issue entered stage left over the weekend when it was reported that a number of artists were less than enthused by the prospect of independence, enough for one successful opera singer to announce she would move to Canada rather than stay in Scotland. She is not the first artist to raise doubts about the cultural value of taking Scotland out of the United Kingdom; others such as composer James MacMillan have suggested it would be a backward step.

I have no doubt that independence could create new opportunities for artists in all cultural spheres, but it will also close many opportunities off. The question must be, for all the doors of cultural opportunity that will open how many will be slammed firmly shut?

In a small country such as Scotland, with just over five million people, is there not more opportunity for our artists being equals within a nation of some sixty million, and is the recognition that comes from finding achievement on such a large stage not more fulfilling and rewarding?

Is that not why so many of our artists, writers and arts professionals go to London?

Nationalists like to suggest that there will be no limits to success following independence, but the Scottish artistic community has already learned to take politicians’ words with a pinch of salt. The simple but unpalatable truth is that politicians have paid lip service to the arts community in Scotland time and again and independence offers them nothing but more false dawns.

When Scottish actors, musicians, dancers and singers graduate from Glasgow’s Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama should they be thought of as betraying their nation or “emigrating” if they choose to start their careers in Opera North, the Nottingham Playhouse or Saddlers Wells? If not, why then are they to be denied a vote in the forthcoming referendum? They have a legitimate right to tread the boards on any British stage they successfully audition for – and going south is often the only way to find work as Scotland’s market is just too small for all of them – but the SNP proposes their British passport could be ripped from them without them being granted the right of a say.

When Scottish contemporary artists are nominated for the Turner Prize it is to find “a British artist under 50 for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work in the 12 months preceding” and Scots have shone impressively well – whatever one thinks of the merit of such awards in the visual arts world. Take Scotland out of Britain and you take Scottish artists out of such British institutions.

Scottish cultural activities that seek to give our home-grown talent an opportunity will suddenly find themselves competing for money from a new independent government with so many other calls upon it – such as building the embassies where the British Council supports Scottish culture from.

Take the Edinburgh Television Festival held every August bank holiday weekend where British media luvvies, mostly from London, descend on the capital to network and escape the metropolis. Can we honestly expect the BBC to pay for expenses on a beano to Scotland when we have stopped paying the licence fee?

The Edinburgh International Film Festival is the world’s oldest, and a considerably more august affair than its TV cousin, and yet it too relies on funding from British institutions that would have to question their continued support.

Likewise the joint and travelling drama productions that criss-cross Britain’s theatre would come under serious pressure putting even greater strain on the Scottish public purse.

Trite though it may be, the same must go for Scots in any of the television programmes that entertain the masses and we take for granted; Scots in Scotland will just no longer matter for Scotland will be outside the boundary of the BBC, only Scots that happen to be in the rest of the United Kingdom will make increasingly rare appearances. We shall become spectators when once we were participants.

Britain’s Got Talent might not be a cultural high point but it gave us Susan Boyle – after 2014 Scotland could be outside Britain and its talent ignored. Having that larger stage to perform on makes all the difference and a Scotland’s Got Talent just would not draw the viewers in the same way as Scots entering Britain’s Got Talent or the X-Factor does.

It would be daft to deny that an independent Scotland would not offer opportunity to its artists, we only need to look at other small nations to see how they fare, but it would also be naïve to deny that having a larger stage to grace inspires artists to greater achievements and that being British gives them – as it gives our sportsmen and our entrepreneurs – greater opportunities that would otherwise be denied to them.

If we have the confidence that Scots can sing, dance, play, direct, paint, sculpt, write and compose as well as the next Briton, then why limit ourselves to a smaller audience? Nationalism is a limiting straitjacket and for our artists is a danger they must confront.

• Brian Monteith is Policy Director of ThinkScotland.org