Culture

PROPER INVESTMENT IN PEOPLE AND PLACES THAT MAKE CULTURE

PUT CULTURE AT THE HEART OF A GREEN RECOVERY

SUPPORT A DIVERSE AND INCLUSIVE CULTURAL SECTOR

The Scottish Greens will support diversity and inclusivity within our cultural sector.

We will:

• Create a cultural leadership scheme to ensure that people from diverse backgrounds are heard at an early stage across Scottish Government cultural policy making.
• Support the introduction of  a mandatory quota for recruitment of artists from minority ethnic backgrounds for organisations in receipt of public funding.
• Support calls to remove barriers for people with disabilities to play, learn, compose and perform music, and to create drama training pathways for people with learning disabilities.
• Create an Innovative and Accessible Culture Fund to support artists’ upskilling in the use of technologies to produce more accessible work.

NURTURE OUR GROWING SCOTTISH SCREEN SECTOR

The growing Scottish screen sector is a valuable cultural asset that should utilise and benefit talent and communities in Scotland.

We will:

• Mandate studios supported or owned by the Government, such as Kelvin Hall, to insist on an appropriate percentage of their workforce coming from the local area, and to make their studio facilities available for training and skills development for people across Scotland.
• Strengthen Screen Scotland’s funding criteria to ensure that larger productions in particular support the sustainability of the Scottish film and television workforce through training programmes and apprenticeships.
• Create a standalone Scottish Screen Agency with a Board made up of at least 50% industry professionals, rotating on a 3-year basis similar to equivalent agencies across Europe.
• Tackle the ‘lift and shift’ problem by tightening the definition of what makes a Scottish production, including what counts as a ‘substantive base’.

THE SCOTTISH GREENS WILL ALSO

Support the mobility of Scottish artists

• Push for a free cultural work permit that gives artists visa-free travel throughout the EU, minimising the harm from Brexit on their livelihoods and artistic development.
• Create an Office for Cultural Exchange to facilitate European and international touring, festivals and residencies.

Tackle disinformation

• Develop a comprehensive strategy for tackling disinformation and raising media literacy, including public information campaigns and integration across the Curriculum for Excellence, particularly in Personal and Social Education.
• Establish an independent office to coordinate efforts to tackle disinformation, either through extending the remit of the Scottish Information Commissioner or creating a separate commissioner’s office.

Revive local media

• Establish an interest-free loan fund to assist the buyout of local titles by their workforce or community on a cooperative or Community Interest Company model.
• Develop a match-funding scheme to help small businesses and charities advertise in their local media.

Protect the rights and revenue of artists

• Push for a fairer deal on streaming so that musicians and writers receive a greater share of the royalties from their music than record labels, streaming platforms and big tech companies.

Value arts education

• Give every primary pupil the opportunity to learn and develop through expressive arts such as music, drama, visual art and dance as both a participant and an audience member.
• Ensure that the experiences offered to children and young people are diverse in terms of content as well as artists represented, including diversity of ethnicity, class and disability

Support Scottish language diversity

• Support cultural ventures in all the languages of Scotland.
• Encourage the use of Gaelic, Scots and Doric as well as the languages of those from minority ethnic backgrounds.
• Improve the provision of Gaelic language at home and in secondary, higher and further education.