Time for Scottish Government to start arts and culture repairs - Brian Ferguson

Festive season is making anxiety and uncertainty for the Scottish arts and culture sector

After one of the darkest, dreariest December days I can recall in Edinburgh, it was a tonic to step inside a theatre again for one of the many festive season shows packing in the crowds in the city.

In the face of some stiff competition, Wicked, which opened at the Playhouse last week, has plenty of competition from other venues in the city, but has still managed to sell 130,000 tickets for its five-week run.

That figure is only a fraction of the total audience who will be filling venues across Scotland over the festive season for theatre, panto, music and dance events.

Laura Pick is currently starring in Wicked at the Edinbugh Playhouse. Picture: Matt Crockett

It is two years since theatres, concert venues, performers and crews had the rug cruelly pulled from underneath them just as they were emerging from Covid and were told to stay home after Christmas. Those dark days may appear to have been banished, judging by everything I’ve heard about audience numbers and responses.

But the festive jollity is masking anxiety and fear within arts organisations and events about what the future holds, thanks to total uncertainty about future funding.

Next week’s Scottish Budget is possibly the most crucial for Scottish culture in the devolution era. This will be the first Budget since Humza Yousaf pledged to “more than double” arts spending at his first SNP conference as First Minister – after more than a year of intense criticism of its treatment of arts and culture.

Suggesting that a promised additional £100 million will more than double spending does not square up with the fact that upwards of £170m a year is already allocated to culture.

Scottish culture secretary Angus Robertson. Picture: Jane Barlow/PA Wire

But £100m would at least start to tackle the impact of more than a decade of standstill funding and reverse a trend of annual real-term cuts.

The five-year pledges, repeated by culture secretary Angus Robertson, simply rang hollow ater the reinstatement of a 10 per cent cut in Creative Scotland’s budget after it was targeted last Christmas then reprieved – a depressing case of speaking louder than words.

The Government’s recent track record of non-delivery would suggest arts organisations are right to be as pessimistic as they tell me they are. If it clearly sets out how that £100m will be allocated between now and 2028, it will go a long way to repairing at least some of the damage it has inflicted.