Official Report 606KB pdf
Item 2 is on a different topic: our consideration of the Scottish Government’s resource spending review. I welcome to the committee Diana Murray, fellow, Royal Society of Edinburgh, and Robbie McGhee, chair, Arts Culture Health & Wellbeing Scotland. We will move straight to questions, due to time constraints. I ask that witnesses consider being concise, if possible.
Mr McGhee, you say in your submission that the barriers to realising the wider benefits of culture are not just financial and you call for a cultural shift to ensure that health practitioners, teachers and the wider public sector are aware of the benefits of “a cross-portfolio approach”. How can we bring about that culture shift?
Thank you for the invitation to speak to the committee. It is a big question, and it is about the idea of joint working and divisions within the Scottish Government working together collaboratively to reach shared objectives and outcomes. You gave a quote about health practitioners, the culture sector and the wider public sector, but the wider public also need to get a better understanding of how art, culture and health collaborations have a positive impact on people’s lives, particularly for people in hospital or people with mental health issues. It is important to try to get that collaborative working going across departments to see if there are ways to break down the traditional models of working and work in a new way that allows for more innovative—I do not know if that is the right word—approaches to try to reach more people.
From the conversations that I have had with them, I know that people in health are always very positive and want this work in their area. Whether they are in a hospital, in the community or wherever they are working, they can see the benefits of cultural interventions for their patients or participants, but it is quite difficult to get that in a more formulated structure that allows there to be parity of services across Scotland in different regions. A lot of it is centrally based at the moment, and what people can access is not equal geographically.
There are lots of challenges, but there are so many practical ways in which things could be done, such as setting up steering groups or working groups to look at how we can make cultural health a more equal area of practice and how collaborating and joint working can reach as many people as possible. It is not rocket science; it is just that there are quite traditional ways of working and people can be quite fixed in their patterns of working. That is true of everybody—in culture and in health—but there might be ways of breaking those traditional ways of working to get people to work together.
Sometimes, intermediary practical steps need to be taken at the policy and implementation levels, so that people in culture and health start talking to each other, meet and move this area of practice forward.
Ms Murray, you point to the
“well-established research base”
showing
“that participation in culture provides several wellbeing and social benefits, at individual, community and national level.”
Coming out of Covid, with the challenges that we are all facing, how ready are we to adopt that research and realise those benefits?
We are more than ready to go. The thing that is holding people back is the funding issue and knowing whether they have consistent funding or not. We have done quite a lot of stakeholder mapping. I am also the chair of Arts & Business Scotland, which has done quite a lot of stakeholder mapping to find out what the barriers are to people moving forward. Consistency of funding is one. If you have consistency of funding, you can then draw in other funding sources from trusts, foundations, businesses and so on. It is very difficult to do that without the knowledge that you will be there next year. That foundation is very important.
In the stakeholder mapping work, there are a lot of organisations, particularly community-based organisations, that are very keen to get going. What is holding them back is what we just heard about, which is how to go about it. They have programmes of work that they want to do and there is plenty of evidence that their work will be helpful in the health sector, community development, regeneration and all of those kinds of things, but the question is who they partner with and how they break down the barriers faced by the people whom they want to work with.
In addition to getting that consistency of funding, one of the most important things is to help people create networks and get the networking going at a local and national level so that we can understand where organisations and programmes already exist. Some extremely good projects that already exist can be most effective.
We move to questions from the committee, starting with Mr Golden.
I will start with a question for Robbie McGhee. The written evidence that you provided around the mapping of arts in health provision was very interesting. I am particularly interested in the suggestion that the provision is clustered around Glasgow, Edinburgh and the central belt. What are your thoughts on how that provision could be expanded beyond the central belt or whether there is activity going on that has perhaps not been included in the mapping exercise?
The mapping exercise included organisations that are funded through Creative Scotland, so it excluded quite a lot of organisations that get their funding from the national health service, local authorities or other funding bodies. I know that there is a huge amount of work going on outwith the central belt, but it has not been included in this mapping exercise.
On the broader point, the mapping exercise is valuable because what has been missing has been a benchmark. The exercise has been an opportunity to look at what is going on and to see, in practical terms, what is happening and where. That has been missing in Scotland, so it is very useful to have.
The next step would be to develop a joint action plan with Creative Scotland and to try to consolidate what is happening, promote best practice and see how that can be more equally distributed across Scotland, so that there is parity of service. We are trying to get a more strategic approach to this area of work. There is now a huge evidence base, which is detailed in the paper, and there is a lot of work happening, but I worry that it is not always equally accessible. Access can depend on where someone lives or whether they have a great project in their area.
It is a spectrum of activity. Some people will need quite intensive support. There are organisations that have been working across Scotland for over 30 years that have a huge amount of experience, and there are people who go along to their voluntary drama or music group, which is just as valuable, and we should acknowledge how important that is in people’s lives. There is a huge spectrum of creative collaboration across Scotland, but what is missing is some strategic business plan or action plan to identify a vision and aims and objectives. That is where we want to get to over the next three years for this area of practice, as that would be really good.
As you have highlighted, there are almost two phases to this. The first phase is establishing what provision is out there and understanding where gaps might be. The second phase is attempting to ensure that, throughout Scotland, the provision is as consistent as we can possibly make it. What intervention would you like to see from the Scottish Government or Creative Scotland to allow both of those phases to be enacted?
The more radical intervention is to look at funding: not just Creative Scotland having resources to fund organisations, but funding from broader portfolios, including the health portfolio, to support organisations. There is a limited amount of funding. As I said, there are more established organisations that are delivering work, and, as in any area of work, if they had a flexible funding approach that gave them security for three to five years, that would secure more benefits for participants: the public, patients and people who are working with those organisations.
10:15Securing infrastructure and long-term funding for those organisations is a very important aspect, and there are also initiatives such as social prescribing, which is a huge developing area. Maybe there should be a special fund or an additional fund that looks at social prescribing across Scotland and funds organisations to deliver social prescribing. That would give a longer-term perspective on the quality of work and what is happening where. There should be a focus on particular areas such as social prescribing, but we also need to invest in the organisations that are less likely than mainstream cultural organisations to receive long-term funding.
Diana Murray, what are your thoughts on how we improve our understanding and mapping of the provision, as well as enhancing it?
We have done a lot already, as Robbie McGhee was saying. The exercise that Creative Scotland did was a very useful one and it would be useful to extend that to include organisations that are not funded by Creative Scotland because, as Robbie said, there is a lot going on. As I said, Arts & Business Scotland has done quite a lot of stakeholder mapping with its membership and those who are willing to partake in surveys, and that is a very good way of finding out what is going on. That is the first step.
I would like to draw a slight parallel with the work that we have done with businesses. Businesses are very pleased to help and get involved with culture, but usually a business case has to be made before an organisation will fund anything. It is not usually a case of philanthropy; often a hard business case is required. The same thing would apply if money from departments such as health was used. You cannot just expect someone to allocate an amount of money because it is a nice idea. Even if they can see the benefits, a proper business case has to be made.
We will have to work harder at networking and working with the health service and with other parts of Government to demonstrate to them the benefit of using arts and culture in their areas—that there is a business benefit and that it will enhance their work or save them money in other ways.
This is very difficult to quantify, but certainly a huge amount of mental health issues can be avoided and wellbeing can be encouraged by people joining local arts groups and being part of voluntary arts organisations and so on, for example. It is difficult to measure that and ask the health service to fund that, but by working together with the health service on the networking aspect we could partner places up and demonstrate that making a business case is possible.
Thank you. That was very interesting.
Thank you for your submissions. To expand a bit more on Mr Golden’s questions, I have a friend who is a retired doctor and he would have loved to have been able to do social prescribing. Some people may have the perception that, when you go to the doctor, you expect get pills or a bandage or something, and maybe there is a way go to make social prescribing more acceptable.
I am interested in the work that Robbie McGhee has done, or the organisations in the ACHWS network have done, to try to change that perception. Are there examples of other countries that are doing social prescribing? How do we change what happens in Scotland?
That is a great question. Public perception is key but it is often forgotten about in this area of work. It is such a new area, and I do not think that there is a wider public understanding about the role of culture and creative collaborations and how they can be very beneficial for mental health. In some ways, it is just intrinsic; people do such things and it helps, but it is not necessarily spelt out or as clear to the public as some people think.
Strong social prescribing work is happening in Scotland with the development of the new community link workers. In NHS Lothian and other NHS boards in Scotland, the community link workers are working proactively, looking at the cultural activity that is happening in the local community and trying to get people who are hard to reach, housebound or not really engaging in their wider community to access that cultural activity.
I have been doing this job a long time and about 10 years ago I did a report with the Mental Health Foundation on the benefits of social prescribing. The report looked at people who were being prescribed antidepressants and how prescribing a cultural or creative engagement could work as an alternative. It was a very small study. It is interesting to note that, 10 years on, although sport referral is quite established in general practitioner practices and healthcare settings, cultural referral still has a long way to go to reach that stage.
England has built up quite a strong social prescribing model, which has had quite a lot of resources put into it. That is in its first year of development. It is interesting, in that the model involves referrals from primary healthcare to cultural activity of people who come to the surgery or see a healthcare professional.
The big elephant in the room is the resources—the funding. Let us say that the referral is of somebody who is quite vulnerable, a wee bit anxious or not confident about going to an activity. Does health have the time to do the research into provision, and does culture have the resources to provide that provision?
You can overthink this, because people can be quite resourceful and can go to an activity in their community and really benefit from it. You have to be careful with such work. You need to think about the whole picture and try to resource the activity properly and provide a pathway for the person that will be positive for them.
Some guidelines are being developed and written up by various projects across Scotland, and there is a new social prescribing network, which is mostly looking at the issue from a health perspective and considering how to refer patients and people who use health services to cultural activities. In Inverclyde, very strong cultural social prescribing is coming through primary health.
The area is developing, but it would be great if all the projects that are happening in Scotland could be pulled together. That would give you more of an understanding of what is happening and how to achieve parity of service so that the approach becomes more integrated into the NHS and healthcare and everybody can access it. That is where we are, so the question is how we integrate social prescribing more strategically into healthcare in Scotland. There is a model in England that is in its first year and which has strategically integrated social prescribing into NHS England.
Does Diana Murray have anything to add?
Not really. That all sounds very sensible to me. I come back to the networking point: bringing together the people who are doing this already encourages other people to just take the step and do it. There is nothing better than an example to persuade other people that this is a good way forward.
I recognise that in my constituency of Argyll and Bute. Word of mouth is very important, too. If someone sees a benefit, they might take someone else along who can also get the benefit. However, I am also very aware that one size does not fit all and that what works on one island might not work on another island. It is an interesting conundrum.
I will change topic slightly. Last night, I was at a meeting of the cross-party group on the creative economy, where we had some fantastic presentations from individuals and organisations from the gaming industry on the work that they are doing across different areas. I am not talking only about the likes of “Minecraft” because there was also a health perspective and an education perspective. I am interested to hear about what work Robbie McGhee has done with the gaming industry and what research Diana Murray has done in that area of our economy, which is also part of our culture?
It is a really exciting area. We ran an event—it was an online event, due to Covid—for young people on how culture and creativity can support young people’s mental health. Artlink Edinburgh did a presentation on the work that it is doing with young people around the idea of designing a game and a comic. It approached that in an innovative way.
It may be a bit obvious, but for me that is where there is a lot of interest in the gaming/cultural economy reaching younger people, who are often quite difficult to reach. There are also huge issues of self-harm and mental health with young people. Gaming could be a way of bringing young people in.
Within the arts in health context, that area of practice and working in that way are not particularly well established, but it is a developing area. In my experience, younger people are accessing arts in health through gaming—through “Minecraft”, which you mentioned, and all kinds of different things. It would be interesting to see that develop more. It is not a huge thing that we in the network have been working with, but it is developing. As I said, my experience came from the event that we ran for young people on mental health, and it was quite a big part of that event.
I have dropped a wee pebble there and you can do some more work on that.
Yes, I would love to do that.
I have less knowledge of the health benefits, although I can see them very clearly. One of the points that we made in our submission is that there needs to be investment in skills development and training right across the board. Of course, the creative industries have this in spades, but a lot can be delivered digitally across the rest of arts and culture. For example, a very successful memory programme was delivered in the Western Isles; it was a web-based programme so people could take part in it even though they were in dispersed communities.
Digital skills can offer a lot, and a lot of what we are talking about comes down to better training and better skills development. Making sure that we build in arts, culture and digital skills in education in schools at the level when the children are still young is very important because that will help people to take part in a lot of these activities.
Ms Murray, you said that it can be hard to measure the benefits of these interventions in terms of culture and health, although we all know that benefits are there. Does either of you want to say anything about evidence from other countries on that? I realise that work has been done very recently—Ms Murray mentioned England—but, more generally, is there any evidence from elsewhere that might be offered to help to make the business case that you describe about the benefits of prescribing cultural activities or closer working on budgets between cultural and health organisations?
10:30
I do not have any evidence that I can immediately think of; I do not know whether Robbie McGhee has.
A 2019 review by the World Health Organization looked at more than 3,000 studies and identified a major role for the arts in the prevention of ill health, the promotion of health and the management and treatment of illness across people’s life span. That was a major piece of work. The WHO did a presentation on it in Sweden, which was brilliant, because it was a world organisation doing all that work on arts in health.
We have good contact with Arts in Medicine in Nigeria. It started in Nigeria, but it is now a global organisation that delivers work across the world to support collaborations between health and culture. It looks often at health inequalities and how joint working can be shown. It funds projects for a year and then showcases globally what the collaborations between health promotion and health and culture have achieved in that year in order to illustrate how such collaborations can work.
A lot of research has been done, including by the all-party parliamentary group on arts, health and wellbeing. Its 2017 report, “Creative Health: The Arts for Health and Wellbeing”, is almost like a bible for us in health because it went into real detail and focused on the evidence base for our work.
In our written submission, I have listed the research that has been done on art, culture and health collaborations during Covid, the impact that the collaborations have had and how that work needs to be developed after Covid because of the pandemic’s impact on people’s mental health and the increase in isolation and loneliness. The role of culture in health with creative collaborations could be really beneficial as we try to recover from the pandemic. There is a lot of evidence out there that shows the benefits of creative collaborations on people’s health and wellbeing.
From what you have just described, the evidence is there. However, it has been pointed out by Diana Murray that, sometimes, it is a struggle to assemble evidence that makes a business case. What can be done to marshal the international evidence in a form that will convince health boards, Creative Scotland and everyone else about the need for closer working?
This might sound counterintuitive, but we have to put a financial value on that. It is quite hard to measure the preventative value or outcome—what are you preventing happening? If you can put a financial value on the cost savings to the health service from investing in the activities that we are talking about, it makes sense to the people who make the decisions about where the money goes in the health service and elsewhere. Although health professionals can see the value of this kind of activity, trying to argue that money should be allocated to it is a different thing altogether. I do not know how we do that, but it might be worth developing a model. One of the ways of doing it is to do some impact assessments. In our written submission, I mentioned at least one of those, relating to the events industry. I expect that Robbie McGhee has other examples, too.
Increasingly, the social prescribing model has an internationally recognised impact. It has international momentum and there is a lot of research around it. There is commonality around the world where people are trying to implement a social prescribing model.
Focusing on particular areas in medicine or health, we can see that there is a lot of research to support the development of work in areas such as recovery from mental illness after trauma, improving the experience of hospital inpatients, improving social connections between staff and residents in care homes and the benefits of cultural activity on people living with dementia. People can use the research that is particular to those areas when they are looking for resources from the NHS or broader funders that are outwith the cultural funders.
There is lots of evidence out there but, as you say, it is about how you relate it to your applications in order to get resources and funding to support the work. The evidence base is much better now than it used to be, and we have it all on our website. Our network has all the new evidence that comes out, which we put on our website so that it is accessible to everybody. As I said, there is a huge evidence base for the work. A lot of people now look out the areas of research that will support particular projects and particular areas of medicine.
I thank the witnesses for the fantastic submissions that they have sent us in advance, which are very much in tune with what we have been discussing.
On the one hand, we have the evidence from Creative Scotland that says that key parts of the cultural sector risk collapse after Covid. There has been a decade of cuts to local authorities, which has impacted on community culture massively, because it is not core funding.
On the other hand, we have the evidence that you are giving us about the preventative impact of spending on culture. Jenni Minto talked about this week’s CPG meeting on culture in the business sector, and we have had the culture in communities evidence. That all aligns with your evidence today, and it tells us that it makes economic, financial and human sense to invest in social prescribing.
How do we do this? We are a committee that gives recommendations to the Government, but it feels as though social prescribing should be part of a fast-track Covid recovery. Young people with mental health issues cannot get that support, yet it could potentially get them back on track so that they do not have to miss years of progress in their lives.
We have the budget, so what are the triggers to lift the issue up? We all agree that preventative spending makes sense but, as Robbie McGhee has just observed, some of the research has been out there for more than a decade and Campbell Christie made his recommendations a decade ago. What is the trigger that would help us to come out of Covid and on to the right track? What would you recommend?
I thought about that and noted it down in my submission. It relates to securing funding for organisations that have been working in this area for a long time, so that they have their funding base and can develop programmes that are secure for three to five years. That sounds quite basic, but, historically, arts and culture have been the poor relatives in health. They do not necessarily fit into a clear equalities framework of different equalities priorities, so it is sometimes difficult for art, culture and health organisations to get longer-term support.
We must also increase the understanding of this area of work or practice among the wider public, beyond people knowing that it is good and it works. From that, we can get more momentum to ensure that the work is recognised and valued.
At the moment, I am working with a consultant in renal medicine, and the patients who she has been working with have had such a hard time during the past two years. Some of them have been vaccination resistant and it has all been very traumatic. We are trying to develop an arts programme for those patients post-Covid. I can see the value of that work—it is not a soft value; it is of fundamental value to patients, families and staff. I do not say that lightly. I know that you can make broad brush strokes about culture, but there is an intrinsic value in integrating this work into mainstream healthcare, so that there is an option for people to look at the person and the quality of their life within our care structures. A lot of people are thinking about that post-Covid.
It is not just about medical provision; it is also about the quality-of-life aspect of care, and culture can play a huge part in that. There might be a job to be done in articulating the value of this work to staff, patients and their families, to make it more integral in health, because it is quite bitty at the moment. Certain health boards are funding certain projects, and certain priorities are being funded. It would be a positive thing to have a national strategy to get health and culture working together to invest in this work so that, after Covid, it is an intrinsic part of both those areas. I do not know whether that is idealistic, but it would be positive if there were a way for health and culture to work together strategically, based on the work that is happening on the ground.
At the moment, great and brilliant work is happening in Scotland—I have seen a lot of it happen. The work that is happening here is so valuable and strong, but Scotland is not necessarily the best at promoting it and saying, “We are world leaders in this area of practice”. I wonder whether there is a way for culture and health to work collaboratively to make it more integrated in the health service.
That is a useful insight. Maybe there could be something like a kick-start fund to get things going. We could then think about the three-year funding that you talked about to enable longer-term investment and ensure that care and safeguarding issues are picked up so that we are not making people with mental health issues more vulnerable.
Diana, do you have any insight into how we could make this happen and kick off that approach?
Yes. I will look at it from a different angle. What Robbie McGhee says is all valid—this is not an either/or—but, from the other angle, we want to catch people before they get into the health system. There are fantastic community arts organisations and arts projects out there. Every time you talk to them, you hear that they are struggling for cash and need consistency of funding. Mostly, Creative Scotland and local authorities are aware of those organisations, but they need consistent funding. If they get a three-year funding commitment, they can work out projects, get funding for them and work with businesses or trusts and foundations or find ways of earning money, but they need that consistent funding.
I will give one example. I was on the panel that looked at the awards for the Scottish urban regeneration fund. As part of that, I went to see some fantastic projects, one of which was the Whale Arts project in Wester Hailes, which is a deprived area of Edinburgh. It does projects on a shoestring for young people, such as arts projects and plays. People were coming through the door all the time. Older people were coming in and doing creative crafting sessions, but the point was that they were talking to one another. It also had a shed in the garden where men came just to communicate with one another and drink cups of tea, although they were doing art projects at the same time.
10:45That approach is replicated all over Scotland, although it is different in different areas. As I said, in the Western Isles, I came across a web-based project that people could take part in from their own homes. Those projects are mostly known to Creative Scotland. If we can get the funding consistently into good community arts projects, there will be a preventative effect in relation to mental health, socialisation and a number of other things, including dementia, by allowing people to stay in their home but take part in activities. Those areas have been badly hit by the pandemic, because local authority and central funding have been very stretched.
That is where I would focus from a preventative point of view. However, the outcomes are difficult to measure there, because they are preventative outcomes rather than direct outcomes.
In a way, we probably need both, because prevention is as critical as supporting people once they have had a crisis or incident.
I draw colleagues’ attention to a good report that was published this week that highlights the work of the Whale Arts project. It is about mapping cultural dispersal by the Edinburgh festivals. A point was made earlier about spreading investment so that it is not just in Edinburgh and Glasgow but, even within Edinburgh and Glasgow, the social barriers to accessing culture are huge.
We very much need to pick up the evidence that we have just heard, convener.
I am thinking about some of the points that the witnesses have made and particularly about some of the creativity that we see in communities, the way that projects are set up and their history and diversity. Does that make it difficult to mainstream a particular model that can be taken to every health board across the country to show what such projects deliver, how to employ consistent monitoring and evaluation and how to develop assessments of the financial savings?
Is there a difficulty in trying to interface a grass-roots movement and grass-roots projects with some of the harder objectives and systems that the NHS, health and social care partnerships or community planning partnerships have? How do we get that creativity in communities interfacing with those who actually have the money in a way that can deliver the objectives in a consistent way?
I ask Robbie McGhee to start off from the perspective of his projects and how they have managed to negotiate that.
There is a broad spectrum of organisations in communities. If you were to map a health board area, there will probably be an organisation that has been in existence for a relatively long time and that would probably fit into the long-term funding model in that area. Then there are other more grass-roots organisations, as you say. There is a strong movement in Scotland of supporting voluntary community organisations in this area of practice.
There is a political aspect, in the sense that those organisations are proud of their community and voluntary status—that is the perspective that they come from. You can have a tapestry of all the organisations in a health board area and then design an arts strategy within the health board that draws on all the resources in the community that the members of the community could benefit from and work with. If you were to map the cultural organisations and activity in each health board, you would find a lot of resources that the health board could draw on. Then, as you say, there is the piece of work in designing the strategy around the financial benefits of using that resource in the community.
The most important thing is the benefit to patients in hospitals, residents in care homes and the members of the community who are housebound and not accessing any community services. We have examples of all those things that work brilliantly in different parts of Scotland. If there was a way that we could work with health boards to design a strategy that draws on that resource, that would be really positive. However, you are right that there is work to do in mapping, co-ordinating and facilitating that. Having worked in the area a lot, I am a firm believer that doing stuff practically is good rather than trying to design the perfect scenario. The best approaches generally come from the organisations.
You can take that to health boards or funding bodies to show what exists already and that there is no necessity to reinvent anything. It is all there, but it needs to be joined up. There needs to be longer-term funding for organisations and a fund to support organisations that come in for project funding. There could be a development so that organisations get project funding and that can lead to permanent funding in three or four years once they are more developed. That kind of structure could work well. The organisations, artists, community workers and volunteers are all out there; it is just about how to co-ordinate that.
Is there a need for that consistency? You mentioned Inverclyde as an exemplar, but does there need to be guidance on the issue to all health boards or is it the responsibility of community planning partnerships? Should there be an expectation on authorities to do that mapping work and evolve the approach?
It is difficult, because health boards have different priorities and areas of interest. There was a kind of directive in public health for new builds, where a percentage of the capital had to be put into art. However, something that is so directive and prescriptive can have a negative impact. We need to find a balance where health boards want to do it because they can see the benefits to their communities. Generally, that is what health boards want. It is about designing a strategy over a three to five-year period and trying to engage with all the health boards across Scotland so that they buy into the strategy and agree to look at how their cultural strategies can be implemented. We can provide examples of best practice or work that is happening in health boards across Scotland, if there is a need to join that up.
There are a lot of networks. There is the social prescribing network and the community arts network. There are different networks across Scotland that could be brought into that conversation to try to make it as inclusive as possible so that it becomes dynamic and positive. You can see from the case studies that I listed in my written submission that there is so much diversity in the work of museums and galleries, specific arts in health organisations and community organisations that would not necessarily label themselves as arts in health organisations but that are having a positive impact on health in their communities. There are also health organisations that are delivering culture as part of their work. There is a broad range of organisations engaging in this work.
I see a fuzziness between the boundaries of what projects are doing. They might be delivering objectives in different areas.
I ask Diana Murray for her reflections on that.
A strategic approach is probably helpful. It is important that we are not too prescriptive about it, as Robbie McGhee says, because the thing about culture—indeed, heritage comes into this to an extent—is that it can offer support to the health agenda in all sorts of ways. If we start being prescriptive, it probably will not be very effective and will take up a huge amount of resource that could be used elsewhere.
As Robbie McGhee says, there is a lot out there already that just needs to be harnessed in the right direction. I agree that a strategy is a good idea, but I go back to my networking point. The more that we can get people to network, the better. There are networks out there where the benefits of such activity can be promoted and developed, and examples shown. There is nothing better than showing people an example so that they say, “We could do that and reap the benefits.” That is a good way to do it.
The question is about how to do that. Organisations such as Creative Scotland, Historic Environment Scotland, Arts & Business Scotland and Robbie McGhee’s organisation could use their experience to put something like that in place and make it more Scotland-wide. There is a lot of experience there. Frankly, a lot of it is just about bringing together all the work and showing the benefit of it.
That is particularly true with areas such as monitoring and evaluation of projects, and trying to share the understanding of how to do that.
I have a final question, which is a bigger one. The Government has a wellbeing economy bill slated to be introduced in this session of Parliament. Do you have any thoughts about that higher level of governance in Scotland and what could be in that bill to support the sort of initiatives that we are talking about? Is it about having the right kind of indicator? Is it about having a commissioner who can look at the needs of future generations? What would be useful to have at a legislative level to help to drive progress in the area and ensure that we do not forget about this work but prioritise it?
Do not worry if you do not have an answer, because there is time for you to feed into the Government consultations, but I am interested to know whether you have any top lines.
That goes a bit far from our remit at the moment. I am conscious that this committee might not even consider that bill. If you do not mind, I will ask the witnesses to follow up in writing with an answer to that if they want to do so.
I am conscious of time, so I will move on to Mr Cameron.
I would like to ask about public service reform. One of Scottish Government’s suggestions in its review framework document is that it will
“examine discrete opportunities for longer-term, large-scale public service reform”.
Clearly, there is a funding element to that and to how we fund culture, but there is an organisational element to that, too. Does either of you have any observations on the funding structures, the organisational structures, the role of local authorities and the agencies that work in the culture sector?
Robbie McGhee, I noticed that you talk in your submission about a more radical change
“of core funding to cultural organisations from ... outside of the culture portfolio”
and of a project-funding approach. Could you develop that point, please?
That is an interesting issue because our work crosses over health and culture. If the funding model looks at indicators in health outcomes, as well as at an increase in people’s self-esteem, confidence and wellbeing, and those indicators are being achieved through the cultural intervention, I wonder whether, outwith the cultural portfolio, there would be opportunities for public health resources to fund cultural organisations that are delivering on those health outcomes. I suppose that the radical idea is that the contribution that culture makes to the outcomes of the national performance framework could be recognised by providing fixed-term funding to organisations that work across the health and cultural fields.
11:00On the current structure of funding, Creative Scotland has been very supportive of our network. It has provided funding for the first year and is providing funding for the second year. We have a good relationship with it in terms of the advice and support that it provides.
Historically, there has not been a focus on arts and health as a strategic area of development in Creative Scotland. That seems to be changing now, which is really positive, because that aspect has never quite fitted into a particular area in Creative Scotland. If Creative Scotland is to have a strategic focus on culture and health—from the conversations that I have had, it will be focusing more on that area—that is definitely a positive thing.
There are no core-funded arts and health organisations in Scotland. That is very unusual when compared with England, where about 10 to 15 per cent of the organisations who receive core funding are arts and health organisations. Therefore, our infrastructure and capacity to develop as a sector is already limited.
Another point is that some NHS boards are funding cultural organisations, which is really positive. We need to look at how that works and at how that is achieved. There are other parts of the NHS that are funding cultural activity purely for the health outcome benefit. Articulating and sharing that approach across other organisations, and making how that works more understandable, would be beneficial.
For me, in very simple terms, the funding structure should be one in which organisations that have been working in that area for a long time, and that have the expertise and knowledge, get fixed core funding. At the same time, organisations that are developing and looking to come into that area of work, and specialised projects around social prescribing and so on, could be funded through a shorter-term funding process, with a trajectory that would allow them to apply for core funding as they develop. If possible—in an ideal scenario—that would be accessible through public health, not just through Creative Scotland. As you mentioned in your question, funding should be accessible through different areas of public spending. That way, you would be able to apply for funding for a cultural project not just to a cultural funder but to other areas of public funding.
We acknowledge that culture is a major part of all sorts of things in this country, including tourism and the Scottish identity. Today, we are talking specifically about its contribution to the health of the nation, yet the amount of money that has been identified for cultural work is tiny compared with the rest of Government funding. I am quite sure that the funding will not be increased. We need to recognise that, and that the current amount of money goes a very long way already.
We have major funding organisations. Sometimes, one feels that they do not necessarily work together. Obviously, we have Creative Scotland, but we also have Historic Environment Scotland and the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Sometimes, we find that organisations have to apply to all three bodies, making different applications with a different emphasis.
In the cultural sector, we are used to having everything project funded, so we are constantly trying to think of new projects because some of the funders will not fund repeat projects, even if they are really good.
All that needs to be looked at. That is probably outwith the committee’s remit, but I think that there are issues in that regard. It is often the case that organisations—big and small—rely on project funding at the expense of having core funding that would allow them to develop.
With my Arts & Business Scotland hat on, I should mention that we are encouraging businesses to invest much more in culture. At the moment, we are getting around a 1:2 return on investment from businesses investing in culture with match funding from Culture and Business Fund Scotland, which is provided by Government.
This year, there has been an enormous take-up by businesses wanting to be involved with culture, partly because of their new feelings about environmental, social and governance issues, and because staff wellbeing and staff working with a purpose is much more important these days. They find that being involved with culture is good for the wellbeing of their staff, so it is not just in the health sectors that we have been talking about where staff have been suffering from wellbeing issues but in businesses.
We could easily double the amount that we give out from Culture and Business Fund Scotland and get more than double the amount back from business at the moment. I think that that whole area needs to be looked at again—that would not necessarily be directly on the narrow area of health and wellbeing that we are looking at but perhaps on the broad area of culture spend.
Spend and funding in this area are plainly of immense importance, but I want to set that aside for the moment. Do you have any comments in terms of the landscape of, and the Government agencies working in, the cultural sector? What reform might you want to see in relation to the Scottish Government’s suggestions about public service reform?
I will start with Diana Murray, to be followed by Robbie McGhee.
I agree with the aim of trying to get culture threaded through all Government departments. In terms of the siloisation of Government, things are much better than they used to be, but the issue still exists. As well as in relation to health and social issues, education is another area in which you would think that such an approach was well established but things are not as good as they could be.
There is a whole international aspect to this, too. Our cultural activities are very important.
I am sorry—I am thinking off the top of my head because that is not an area that I have prepared for. Those are just things that I could think of immediately.
I have worked for Creative Scotland, a local authority and a health board. I think that all of them are doing brilliant work, but they sometimes operate in their own bubbles. I know that it would not be straightforward, but if there is a way of public services somehow working more collaboratively to reach shared outcomes in relation to culture—I know that there is collaboration and that there are models for doing that—and for there to be more collaborative working between public sector funders to reach shared targets, I think that that would be a positive thing.
Any approach to try to make them more collaborative on culture could be quite simple or it could be quite radical and innovative. Often, local authorities, health boards and national funding bodies are all reaching for the same targets in relation to people’s mental health and wellbeing in their communities, but they can operate in isolation. I do not know what the answer is, but if there was a way in which they could work more collaboratively, that would be a very positive thing.
Thank you both very much.
I think that that has exhausted questions from the committee this morning. I thank you very much for your attendance and also for your very helpful submissions, which have been referenced by many colleagues.
Meeting closed at 11:09.