National Partnership for Culture: work programme - 2021

Work programme 2021

The NPC provides advice and guidance to Scottish Ministers on key strategic issues affecting culture in Scotland. The Partnership has agreed the work programme that it will undertake during 2021 based on initial priority areas of focus, cross-cutting principles and with the recovery and renewal of the culture sector in Scotland at its heart:

• cross-cutting theme: promoting the recovery and renewal of the culture sector in light of the COVID-19 pandemic
• cross-cutting principles: (i) Improving joined-up government (ii) Supporting a Human Rights-based approach (iii) Increased equality, diversity and inclusion
• priority themes: (i) Wellbeing (particularly mental health) (ii) Fair work (iii) Culture in education (including skills) (iv) Measuring Change

The work programme, which has been approved by Ms Hyslop, will also respond to any emerging issues raised by the Cabinet Secretary for the Economy, Fair Work and Culture and will be supported by a series of workshops on each priority theme.

Each workshop will focus on agreeing the priority areas for action for each priority theme and propose short, medium and long term actions to address key issues. As well as NPC members and senior Scottish Government officials from relevant policy areas, representatives from Creative Scotland, Historic Environment Scotland and Museums Galleries Scotland will be invited to take part as well as key external experts from across sectors. Culture Counts and Built Environment Forum Scotland will also be invited to participate and to share outputs with members to enable sector review of draft agreed priorities and proposed actions from each workshop session. The Culture Strategy Team within the Scottish Government will continue to make any other connections necessary outwith the workshop series, across local and national government, to inform and support the work of the Partnership.

The recommendations from the workshops will be presented to the Cabinet Secretary and will be made publicly available on the NPC webpages and in their annual report.

Background

On 4 November 2020, the NPC discussed and agreed initial priority areas of focus and the cross-cutting principles that will shape its work over the next 12 months. They are:

Provide advice and guidance to Scottish Ministers on key strategic issues in the sector

These include (in addition to emerging issues identified by the Cabinet Secretary for Culture):

• wellbeing (particularly mental health)
• fair work
• culture in education (including skills)
• measuring change

Consider and advise on ways of promoting the recovery and renewal of the culture sector in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Routes to this may include one or more of the following:

Emergency sector funding

Providing inputs towards making emergency funding choices more strategic given broad consensus that the sector landscape will never be the same and that some organisations, jobs and assets will be lost

Sector conversation on recovery and renewal

Providing a platform or providing convening auspices for, a strategic sectoral conversation on recovery and renewal that can create the space and mandate for leaders across the sector (including national and local political leaders) to consider and agree what it wants the sector to look like in the next five to ten years (including considering infrastructure, workforce development and digital).

Sector funding models/policies

Making the case for different models/policies concerning arts funding. These could include Citizen’s Basic Income and other ideas mentioned in Culture Strategy and the Scottish Parliament Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Affairs Committee report on a Sustainable Arts Funding System which was debated in the Chamber on 03 November 2020, learning from international approaches and identifying other experts, academics and influencers who can contribute.

Cross-cutting principles

Improving joined-up government:

Encouraging the Scottish Government to take a genuinely strategic approach beyond the COVID-19 crisis into the longer-term. Cross-portfolio working is essential to delivering the aims and objectives of the Culture Strategy and the terms of reference for the Partnership makes clear its intent to ‘support more strategic and connected approaches across government, the sector and beyond, to ensure that its transformative potential for everyone can be realised’

Supporting a human rights-based approach:

• access to and participation in cultural life is a guiding principle of the Culture Strategy. The fulfilment of this right for individuals and communities – underpinning the Culture Strategy’s central premise that culture is valuable and valued in its own right – is therefore an important outcome in itself rather than solely a means to achieving other important social and economic outcomes. NPC inputs could inform implementation of Programme for Government commitments to develop a blueprint for human rights legislation, particularly on cultural rights.

Increased equality, diversity and inclusion in the sector:

• encouraging and challenging Scottish Government and Creative Scotland to deliver against its existing policy commitments in this area, including the aims and ambitions of the Culture Strategy, particularly where progress risks being off-track or where progress has been threatened by the pandemic