Shortcut to a smarter future through a youthful culture
By Ruth Wishart for The Herald (Glasgow)


I don't know what they gave Jack McConnell for breakfast yesterday, but he should eat more of it. By lunchtime on St Andrew's Day he was in the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow offering a very different kind of mouth music from what we have come to expect from an administration whose style has often been managerial rather than visionary.

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Here's what Jack must do if he is serious about the arts
By GEORGE KEREVAN for The Scotsman

I SPENT the weekend at a riveting conference in Ullapool discussing - what else is there? - the state of Scottish culture, with the likes of Wendy Alexander, MSP, and the psephologist Professor John Curtice.

It was held in one of Scotland’s best small hotels, The Ceilidh Place, run by the ever-attentive Jean Urquhart. Not that you will find The Ceilidh Place being promoted by VisitScotland. For Jean eschews television sets in the bedrooms, asserting that folk come to her hotel for the dramatic sweep of the sea lochs, the engrossing chat and the beautiful traditional music. They neither want nor need MTV or CNN. But our tourist mentors in VisitScotland decree a gogglebox in every room, or they won’t recognise that you merit publicity.

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Blurred vision leaves a confused picture
From The Scotsman

IT WASN’T a great start to the week for Frank McAveety. On Monday, the tourism, culture and sport minister found himself under the glare of BBC Scotland Newsnight lights trying to explain what his boss, the First Minister, Jack McConnell, really had been talking about in a St Andrew’s Day speech the previous evening when he outlined "a vision and an ideal for arts and culture". Er, well ... and it went downhill from there.

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Oh dear! Not what we wanted to hear, but clearly food for thought:

Scots favour traditional music over opera for public funds

By PHIL MILLER for The Herlad


TRADITIONAL music and theatre are more worthy of public subsidy than opera, classical music and ballet, according to a poll for The Herald.

The results will be a particular blow for opera because it is in a funding crisis. Out of five art forms, opera and ballet polled lowest, with only 2% of respondents wanting to see money spent on them above the others.

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Pursuit of excellence key to the future
By PHILL MILLER, Arts Correspondent The Herald


THE national companies of Scotland are historically venerable, often praised, and sometimes derided.
The nation's two orchestras, its opera and ballet company and new national theatre take up much of the funding of the Scottish Arts Council and are caught at the centre of the debate over arts funding.

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More articles based on the Herald Arts poll.

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The same thought occurred to me:

Ill-conceived poll on arts funding
Letter in The Herald

SOME three-quarters of a century after Dr Gallup established a "scientific" basis for opinion polling, it is sad to see a newspaper of The Herald's habitual integrity forgetting the simple truth that if you ask ill-conceived questions you get daft and useless answers (Scots favour traditional music over opera for public funds, January 21).

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Crucial role for the arts
Editorial Comment from The Herald


OVER the past two days, The Herald has provided a unique look at attitudes towards the arts in Scotland. Surveys have shown which forms command most affection and what the public believes are the main purposes of arts spending.

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Scots reject funding art for art’s sake
By PHIL MILLER, Arts Correspondent of The Herald


EIGHT out of 10 Scots believe public funding of culture should be of practical benefit rather than just for the sake of art, according to a poll for The Herald.

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See it as wise investment, not subsidy
Letters from the Herald


Having written librettos for two fine Scottish composers, Alasdair Nicolson and William Sweeney, neither (yet) performed by Scottish Opera, and having heard my words interpreted by such wonderful exponents of traditional song as Karen Matheson and Alyth MacCormack, I find the saga of apparent controversy over funding for music in Scotland quite dispiriting.

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