Labour: We need emergency plan to save arts and culture

Arts and culture organisations need an emergency funding package or more venues and festivals will be lost, Scottish Labour has warned.

The call for more public money to be put into the sector comes after Edinburgh International Book Festival announced it would scale back its programme and begin redundancy talks with its 32 staff, blaming the cost of living crisis.

Last month the Edinburgh International Film Festival, the city’s Filmhouse and the historic Belmont cinema in Aberdeen tumbled into administration and Creative Scotland said a quarter of the 121 organisations it funded could be lost by the end of the year.

Scottish Labour culture spokeswoman Sarah Boyack said: “Culture organisations in Scotland are facing a perfect storm which threatens the very future of the sector but Culture Secretary Angus Robertson is completely missing in action.

“Before they even got a chance to recover from the pandemic, they have been hit hard by soaring bills and the chaos of the cost of living crisis.

“The SNP cannot stand idly making excuses while jobs, livelihoods, and vital cultural spaces are on the line. I am urging Angus Robertson to take action and I have written to him to set out just some of the things he could do right now to give the industry a lifeline.”

Scotland’s arts and culture on the edge amid a perfect storm of threats and risks

In Boyack’s letter to Robertson, she urges him to announce an immediate emergency funding package financed by a £1 million underspend from the constitution, culture and external affairs budget which was identified in the 2021/22 spring budget revision. She also urged Robertson to justify increased spending on international offices while Scotland’s culture budget is cut.

Edinburgh International Book Festival said on Friday that continuing hesitancy around Covid-19 and the cost of living crisis meant there would be about 100 fewer events in 2023. They hope to reduce costs by about 25% and have begun redundancy talks with the 32 full-time staff at the festival, which will mark its 40th anniversary next year.

Last month we told how organisations funded by Creative Scotland were struggling to stay open as energy bills rose and ticket sales fell.

Rebecca Atkinson-Lord, chief executive and artistic director of An Tobar and Mull Theatre on the Isle of Mull, said: “We told Creative Scotland we can’t continue unless we have an uplift in the new funding round at the start of the next financial year.”

Chief executive of Shetland Arts, Graeme Howell, said: “How we’re going to square the circle of increasing prices with people’s ability to spend money is really taxing.”