Independent Review of Creative Scotland

Recommendations

Theme 1: Creative Scotland’s purpose, functions and structure

1. Creative Scotland’s remit offers broad flexibility in the delivery of its functions; however, its interpretation of the remit has sometimes constrained its execution of these functions. The Board and Executive should reassess their understanding in light of evolving sector needs.

2. The Scottish Government should work with national bodies to ensure alignment of public sector support for the creative industries and develop a refreshed Creative Industries Framework Agreement.

3. Creative Scotland should expand its intelligence gathering and, working with others, provide advocacy and development for the whole sector, ensuring representation goes beyond funded individuals and organisations.

4. The roles of advocacy, development, funding and influencing should remain unified within a single national body which has stewardship of the promotion of the arts, culture and creativity. Creative Scotland should review its internal structure to ensure its four roles are appropriately resourced and executed.

5. Creative Scotland should work with others to provide economies of scale and improve outcomes.

Theme 2: Governance and leadership within Creative Scotland

6. As a national body, Creative Scotland must clearly articulate its remit through a long-term strategy, as well as plans, policies and procedures. It should set out more clearly in an annual plan how it intends to deliver on its aims and support the Scottish Government’s priorities, regularly reporting on performance.

7. Creative Scotland should ensure it has a clearly articulated long-term vision that is aligned with, and informed by, partners from across the sector.

8. Creative Scotland should improve its governance arrangements, focusing on transparency, strategic challenge and performance oversight. Given the scale of transformation required, the time commitment for Board members should be increased.

9. Creative Scotland should regularly review the skillsets of the Board to ensure it is diverse, reflective of the ongoing changes in the sector and contains adequate governance experience.

10. Given the need for change and transformation, the leadership of the organisation must demonstrate greater ambition, aspiration and appetite for risk.

11. Creative Scotland should develop its workforce plan for the next three to five years, ensuring diversity of representation amongst staff.

12. Creative Scotland should build a regional approach into its governance structure to enhance its regional relationships, develop local intelligence, support co-design and deepen understanding of regional needs.

13. Given the high profile of Screen Scotland, nationally and internationally, it should be supported to have a clearer sense of identity and the ability to act and market itself more independently within the umbrella of the national body. There should be clear delegation to the Screen Committee for delivery of its strategy, with this set out in its terms of reference to enable Screen Scotland to operate at the pace required.

Theme 3: Creative Scotland’s performance

14. The Board and its committees must regularly scrutinise performance against the key activities in the annual plan and in relation to internal performance.

15. Creative Scotland needs to develop a plan that sets out key elements of transformation that will enable the organisation to improve and meet the needs of the sector.

16. Staff engagement should be prioritised to enhance performance and embrace opportunities for closer working and greater two-way learning between Screen Scotland and the rest of Creative Scotland. This would improve cohesion and impact.

17. Creative Scotland should streamline the reporting and monitoring required of funded individuals and organisations to enable more focus on outcomes and on demonstrating impact.

18. As fair work is a key priority of Creative Scotland, its compliance should be more effectively monitored across funded organisations.

19. The website should be improved to enhance public access and improve transparency. There is scope to make more data, information and decisions publicly available.

20. Communication should be strengthened internally and externally. Decisions, and the rationale for them, should be shared internally prior to public announcements. There should be improved communication processes to ensure consistency of delivery.

Theme 4: Creative Scotland’s finances and distribution of funds

21. The Scottish Government should consider its rationale for directly funding parts of the arts, culture and creativity sector, and whether there would be greater synergies that could be realised by a different approach.

22. While Creative Scotland has discretion to tailor funding, the Scottish Government should consider specificity associated with its grants to increase the ability for the organisation to respond to the sector’s needs and to strengthen the arm’s length principle. Creative Scotland should increase the use of these flexibilities to ensure funds are available to suit the needs of the sector.

23. Creative Scotland should work towards establishing a dedicated capital fund, supported by a strategic assessment of infrastructure needs across the sector.

24. Creative Scotland needs to revise and digitise all funding application processes to make them more proportionate and streamlined, reducing bureaucracy for both applicants and assessors and making it clear who determines funding.

25. Creative Scotland should develop short-, medium- and long-term financial plans to support strategic decision-making. The financial plans should set out planned investment to enable future funding decisions to reflect changes in the sector as well as areas for development and growth. They should also set out planned use of reserves.

26. Creative Scotland should develop analytical capacity to (a) demonstrate the economic and wider societal benefits of funding the arts, culture and creativity, (b) demonstrate achievement of strategic plans and priorities, (c) enhance its sector-wide advocacy, and (d) clearly articulate how its investment contributes to future financial sustainability for individuals and organisations.

27. Creative Scotland should ensure its national funding is informed by local intelligence to ensure joined up decision-making for greatest impact across the breadth of Scotland.

28. Screen Scotland should review the process of allocating funding to reduce delays in the system.

Theme 5: Collaboration, relationships and partnerships

29. Creative Scotland should review the options for reintroducing relationship-based roles.

30. The Scottish Government should consider whether Creative Scotland should become a statutory partner or consultee in planning legislation.

31. Creative Scotland should clearly articulate its role in relation to other national bodies working across the cultural landscape, proactively working with them and the Scottish Government to influence collaboration, strengthen impact, reduce the risk of gaps or duplication and ensure prioritisation to better support long-term sector needs including a strong talent pipeline.

32. Creative Scotland should review the networks it facilitates, in conjunction with representatives from the sector, to make sure that the appropriate partners are involved to ensure local intelligence and sector-wide representation feed into decision-making and delivery.

33. Creative Scotland should foster a constructive relationship with the Scottish Government sponsorship team, to inform decisions by the Scottish Ministers around priorities and subsequent funding.

34. The Scottish Government should review how the culture portfolio functions within government, and how that impacts the remit across other government departments.

35. Through building relationships and using its intelligence Creative Scotland should strengthen its influence on local, Scottish and UK governments.

36. The benefits of international collaboration are so significant that the national body should explore options to do more in this space. Working with other bodies, Creative Scotland could better demonstrate the value of international activity, including both international touring and bringing international artists to Scotland.