A Culture Strategy for Scotland: Action Plan

Chapter 4 – Empowering through Culture

E1: Support libraries to deliver free of charge services in the heart of communities across Scotland.

The Scottish Government will continue to work closely with the Library Sector, including our main libraries stakeholder, the Scottish Library and Information Council, to advocate for and develop the important and multifaceted role public libraries play in strengthening and empowering communities across Scotland. This includes libraries’ role as warm spaces and hubs for net zero, health and wellbeing, co-working spaces, and taking forward the ambitions of ‘Forward: Scotland’s Public Library Strategy’.

As well as general revenue funding to local authorities, we provide an annual £450,000 Public Library Improvement Fund to support new projects in libraries. The fund, which has been awarded annually since 2006, is administered by the Scottish Library and Information Council on behalf of the Scottish Government.

E2: Bring together local authorities, national and cultural organisations, via a Local and National Delivery Group, to identify, and commit to working together towards shared culture outcomes across Scotland, in line with the aims from the Ministerial meetings with Culture Conveners and the Culture Partners group.

Following the National Partnership for Culture recommendation that there should be increased links between local and national initiatives, we have established a Local and National Delivery Group, which provides an opportunity for the Scottish Government to work in partnership with local authorities, and local networks and COSLA to realise local outcomes across Scotland.

Our intention is that the group will advise on how local government interacts with national funding or how funding can be used most effectively. The group will also work collaboratively to align priorities and focus on practical steps around key mainstreaming areas discussed earlier in this Action Plan such as health and wellbeing, education, and net zero.

The Local and National Delivery Group will shortly produce their workplan for 2024, and will also consider how to bring in the best possible expertise and range of voices for input throughout the process.

E3: Understand local authority support for culture, in the context of the impact of, and recovery from, the Covid pandemic, to identify more effective models of collaboration, and delivery utilising data and knowledge from successful programmes.

The output of our consultation conversations with the sector set out clearly that there is a need to understand the current provision of culture in local authorities. Delivery of this action will involve working with Creative Scotland and Community Leisure UK, as well as other partners, who will undertake work to map local authority support for culture and help explore future models of collaboration between national and local bodies.

Community Leisure UK and Creative Scotland will be collaborating on this piece of work, which will look at culture and leisure services delivered by Scottish local authorities and arms-length external organisations across Scotland and will be completed by spring 2023. It will inform the framework for engagement on how the local and national initiatives work together. This will further strengthen our efforts to work better together in partnership with local authorities, developing a wider understanding on all aspects that contribute to a healthy cultural ecosystem at the local level.

This is directly linked to our ambitions as outlined in S2, Strengthening Culture, further highlighting our intention to work together to ensure that the appropriate data and intelligence is utilised to inform decision making at the policy level, as well as for the sector.

E4: Amplify the important role community-based cultural assets such as libraries, museums and galleries can play in strengthening and empowering communities, in line with the themes of existing and upcoming strategies.

We will work closely with the Scottish Library and Information Council, Museums Galleries Scotland, Historic Environment Scotland, and other stakeholders, to promote key messages from their strategies.

Forward: Scotland’s Public Library Strategy 2021-2025, published in August 2021 and developed by the Scottish Library and Information Council, builds on the successes of Ambition and Opportunity: Scotland’s public library strategy 2015-2020. The Scottish Government supports Forward, which articulates a national vision for libraries and explores libraries’ multifaceted role in ensuring a stronger post-pandemic future, delivering a wide range of benefits with tangible links to policy areas across government, while placing communities at the centre of its focus. Forward, clearly marks the direction of travel for Scotland’s public libraries; it builds on the collective desire for a sustainable future for public libraries, in line with the key ambitions set out in this action plan around a resilient Culture Sector, and a vibrant cultural landscape.

Our Past Our Future, Scotland’s revised Strategy for the Historic Environment sits alongside, and will work with, the Culture Strategy for Scotland, Scotland’s Museums and Galleries Strategy, and with other nationwide plans. A strategy steering group, comprising of key stakeholders and leaders drawn from diverse sectors across Scotland, will be responsible for oversight and reporting on the strategy’s delivery.

Similarly, the three strands of Museums Galleries Scotland’s strategy of Connection, Workforce and Resilience link closely with our ambitions in strengthening and empowering communities. We will work with Museums Galleries Scotland to explore these shared priorities in more depth.

E5: Continue the series of the joint meeting of the Culture Conveners and Scottish Government.

The Culture Conveners group is co-chaired by the Scottish Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, and is comprised of councillors from each local authority who have culture within their remit. The Culture Conveners group has recently begun meeting again for the first time in many years in response to a specific action in the Culture Strategy and we will continue to bring the group together.

During the Culture Conveners meetings so far, there has been a shared recognition of the importance and value of culture, both for itself and its place in communities, but also for the contribution it can make to wider policy outcomes. We will work closely with the Culture Conveners in the development of the Cultural Value Summit which will be held in April 2024.

E6: Develop a joint working agreement for Culture between the Convention Of Scottish Local Authorities and the Scottish Government.

The Verity House Agreement, sets out our vision for a more collaborative approach to delivering our shared priorities for the people of Scotland. Throughout our consultation with the sector, it was clear that there is a need to set out what the Verity House Agreement means for Culture. Therefore, we will develop a specific Culture Partnership Agreement between the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the Scottish Government to provide a formal framework for how we work in partnership.

Born out of the principles of the Verity House Agreement, the partnership agreement will articulate our joint endeavours and commitment to realising shared aspirations around the value of culture and its ability to deliver a range of positive outcomes in other areas, across Scotland’s communities.