Grit Orchestra Thoughts August 2024

So I reposted the previous blog post from 7 years ago on Facebook. Partly because I felt my joke about the Gregorian Choir being named after some sect worshipping Greg Lawson (in the comments 7 years ago) never got the recognition it deserved…. But also because we have just played a Grit Orchestra concert and it somehow felt even better than ever – like it was moving forward as an ensemble and it is still something marvellous and to be valued even though it has been around for a while now. And it still has unexplored potential… Martyn wrote a piece for me to play on drum kit and pots and pans with him on small pipes and a string quartet in 1995 and to be frank when we played it initially neither I nor the string quartet were within a country mile of being able to play it in terms of skill level. Eventually we played that piece with McFall’s Chamber and after 10 years or so on occasion I managed to play it it correctly with James MacKintosh’s help ( so I was only playing kind of half the part Martyn originally wrote for me) and it took that long to get good enough to be able to play half of it correctly – even some of the time. It would be interesting to know how playing in the Grit Orchestra has made the various musicians in it – from these different backgrounds and traditions – grow and expand their skillsets and concepts of music making. Maybe for some of the other players it is more like what they normally do – but for the drummers it is this very rich combining of skills, approaches, styles and challenges. I definitely learn and grow a massive amount each time we play – partly from the music itself and partly from the other musicians. It is as if Martyn left behind a 30 or 40 year Scottish Music Continual Professional Development Programme for some of us to study …. plus Alex on sound and the rest …. And it feels we are only part way through it…. there is a lot still to go…. Whenever we meet the drum section talk about how the process – of trying to work out how to play tunes like Waltz for Hector and Aye? in a live setting – never actually ends . Each time you listen to the original track there are more layers to unpack, and more alternative ways to approach it revealed. In the rehearsal on Sunday we played the both of those the best we had so far – but still a long way to go…. Really quite amazing… All this also puts into perspective the fact that music funding is in such a state of disarray right now in our country. That just needs to be sorted because there is so much potential, so much still to be played and composed and discovered.

History of Scottish Music Funding – Intro

This is a side-project where I interviewed the last 3 Heads of Music at SAC/Creative Scotland.
See the three interviews with Matthew Rooke, Nod Knowles, and Ian Smith in seperate blog posts below, along with a text synopsis of each interview:

The last 30 years in the Scottish Music scene have been quite a rollercoaster. The recent hoohah over Creative Scotland funding coincided with the completion of a side project of mine which is laid out here.

I feel that the history of Scottish music funding is very specific – we got here for a bunch of specific reasons and the road was quite winding with some significant winners and losers along the way. I thought it may be important for younger musicians and interested people to know how we actually ended up here. I think it is fair to say no one planned it to happen this way!

Anyway rather than just chunter about my own opinions of this ( I will do a video at some point of my experiences of the last 30 years and my views on how things have gone) I thought it was important to document what has actually happened – at least 3 very knowledgeable versions of what actually happened by the 3 men who were Head of Music at SAC/CS from 1992 to 2016.

Each video has a text synopsis of what each interviewee talks about if you don’t want to listen to the whole thing.

One of the biggest moments was the change from SAC to Creative Scotland and the 3-4 years of limbo that caused.

The way funding is “done’ has also changed massively:

1) with a move to Portfolio funding (where separate artforms now don’t have their own budgets – everyone applies for the same pot),

2) where there has been an apparent retreat from the funders taking a strategic leadership role – by that I mean strategy when you view the world from an ArtForm/Sector/Genre perspective, and

3) an apparent move away from specialist knowledge and engagement with the complexity of the world out there and the different contexts and needs of different genres.

Whilst one can understand the reasons in favour of this shift ( there has been a move towards focussing on delivery of public access, diversity and vulnerable groups, and social equity), none of the 3 Heads of Music certainly feel these trends have been positive.

One other point to make is this. Despite all the genuine intentions about “equality of opportunity” that was front and centre for Nod and Matt – and that was equality of opportunity for artists and musicians from different genres living in Scotland – and the need to redress the balance etc laid out in these interviews, that intervention/re-balance agenda seems much less prominent in current music funding policy – and many things haven’t changed as much as maybe we think.

If you just focus on National Bodies and Regularly Funded Organisations – ie music organisations funded on more than an annual or project basis- ‘Classical’ Music still actually gets 95% of that type of state music funding (which is roughly £30 million a year).

Obviously there is another £13 million or so given out per year in open project and targeted funding, but Creative Scotland doesn’t even list what Artform the recipients are ( ie whether Dance, Music, Visual Art etc) let alone which musical genre – so it would be quite a research job to get an overall figure for all funding. That in itself – that not even Artform is listed in the list of Project/Open Funding Awards – shows how far the modern funding culture has moved away from thinking in terms of Artforms and Genres.

Anyway I hope someone finds these interviews useful. There were enjoyable and educational to do.