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.

History of Scottish Music Funding Part 2

Nod Knowles was Head of Music at the SAC after Matthew Rooke and was in post from 1998 - 2005.

In this interview Nod discusses:

  • How Scottish Arts Council (SAC) had become independent of Arts Council of Great Britain in the mid- 90s, and how that new independence was changed further by the devolution vote in 1997. So the cultural climate was changing, culture - except for media and broadcasting - was a devolved power AND an area where the new devolved government had real interest.
  • How when he took over Traditional music was still only receiving funding via a Combined Arts budget and a small amount from the music budget, despite being very high quality and at the absolute centre of the musical identity of the country.
  • How the muusic budget was still tied  up with National Bodies and the status quo, of which well above 95% went to “classical" music,  but how new Lottery money allowed new ideas to be tried and lanched - albeit within the "everyone and all art forms apply for the same pot with outcomes defined by access and public impact" culture that was the future for arts funding.
  • How he "had the best of it" because while he was Head of Music, all the Heads of Artforms formed the bulk of senior management at SAC and so sat at the top table, had their own seperate budgets and were given a reasonable amount of of free reign to be strategic and fulfil a leadership role albeit within a set of clear constraints and targets.
  • How he knew he was perceived as a “jazzer” initially  and had to work to show that he was interested in all musical forms - which he was - and interested in "equity of opportunity' with a philosophy of "it's all music".
  • How the Traditional scene had good leadership and moved from having various factions to recognising that a) they had a common interest in working together and b) that attacking classical music or opera for their funding levels wasn't a productive strategy.  
  • How the theory of what he wanted to do (ie of "equity of opportunity" ) and actually delivering it in practice were 2 very different things. So shifting the balance of where funding went had to be a slow process- starting with directing more towards Traditional music.

Nod cited as achievements he was proud of:

  • Adding in rock/pop/indie as musical genrse that deserved to receive state funding.
  • Setting up the What's Going Audit with Youth Music and the MU and it's role in stimulating the YMI. He also fills in some interesting stories on how the YMI was rolled out.
  • Setting up Showcase Scotland - based on his experience of running similar events at the Bath Festival. 
  • Creating and runninhg the Tune-Up touring scheme

Areas of frustration for him were:

• How the jazz scene didn't have the same quality of leadership and many people tended to work in isolation.

• How at the end of his tenure he called a meeting of the Jazz sector which later became the SJF and the reasons why Jazz found it difficult to organise as a sector following the model of the Traditional Music Forum.

• He talked about the way funding organisations in the UK have gone - including SAC/Creative Scotland since he left - and how the trends in funding haven't been positive wrt 1) a move from specialism to generalism within funding bodies 2) the loss of Artforms having their own budgets and 3) How artform specialists are no longer in the top tier of management and 4) How funding agencies have retreated from a leadership role wrt looking at the needs of seperate artforms and genres - "we don't give out grants we receive applications", 5) How funding agencies have become less "arms length" and more prone to making knee-jerk reactions to the latest political directives 6) How the emphasis on spending more on grants than admin has made it harder for funders to spend time out in the field engaging with their sector.

• He talked about the justification for merging all the separate art form budgets being the accusation that art form departments were in "silos" and competing with each other - whereas he felt they worked better with their own budgets and strategies but also that the different art forms during his tenure worked well together in a collegiate way sharing their expertise.

Nod, like Matt, described his 7 years at the SAC as "one of the best times in my entire life" and talked several times on how the English Arts funding sector failed to learn lessons from pioneering work in Scotland.