Culture strategy for Scotland consultation: analysis of responses - summary

Introduction

Background to the consultation

This summary report presents analysis of responses to a consultation on “A Culture Strategy for Scotland”.

The Scottish Government has been working to develop a draft culture strategy over the past 18 months. It is based on feedback that was obtained from a wide range of audiences (including those working in cultural, arts and heritage and creative sectors, other stakeholders, and the general public) through a series of ‘culture conversations’ in 2017 and 2018. Through these events, the Scottish Government sought to understand, in relation to culture, what is important to the people of Scotland, what is working well, what changes are needed, and what kind of future they would like to see.

The draft strategy sets out a vision for culture, and a set of three ambitions, along with aims and actions in each case. The draft strategy document also provides some background, contextual information about culture in Scotland.

The consultation on the draft strategy opened on 27 June and closed on 19 September 2018. The consultation paper is available on the Scottish Government’s website at: /publications/culture-strategy-scotland-draft-consultation/.

Profile of respondents

In total, 216 responses were available for analysis^[1].

The majority of responses were received through the Scottish Government’s Citizen Space consultation hub. Where consent has been given to publish the response, it can be found at: https://consult.gov.scot/culture-tourism-and-major-events/culture-strategy/consultation/published_select_respondent.

Respondents were asked to identify whether they were responding as an individual or on behalf of a group or organisation. The majority of responses (146 responses) were submitted by groups or organisations. The remaining 70 responses were submitted by individual members of the public, with one of these on behalf of a discussion group held on Shetland.

Organisational respondents were allocated to one of nine categories by the analysis team and the Scottish Government.^[2]

A breakdown of the number of responses received by respondent type is set out in Table 1 below and a full list of organisational respondents can be found in Annex 1.

Table 1: Respondents by type

Individual respondents were the largest single group. They included a number of respondents who identified themselves as working, or having worked, in the culture sector. The views expressed by individual respondents were often very similar to those expressed by the organisations that responded to the consultation.

The largest group of organisational respondents were the culture organisations, groups or companies. These respondents ranged from organisations working across Scotland through to smaller community-based groups or businesses. They also included arts, cultural heritage or creative industries respondents as well as respondents working more widely across the culture sector.

Respondents came from across Scotland, from Shetland in the north to Dumfries and Galloway and the Scottish Borders in the south, and from Comhairle nan Eilean Siar in the west to Fife in the east.

Analysis and reporting

The remainder of this report presents a question-by-question summary analysis of the comments made. It focuses on answers to the closed questions asked and the more frequently-raised issues by respondents in their further comments.

A more detailed version of the analysis is presented in the Full Analysis Report.

The comment rate was often very high, particularly in the earlier questions where around 4 in 5 respondents tended to comment. Comments were sometimes very detailed and extensive.