By David Francis
If you’d like to have a go at a game of ‘Buzzword Bingo’ this blog might not be a bad place to begin. We’ll start with the current government’s aim of ‘creating a more successful country, with opportunities for all of Scotland to flourish, through sustainable economic growth’. You can almost see the curl on Gordon Brewer’s lip already, and you yourself may want to coin an observation involving Maw and her apple pie.

By David Francis

If you’d like to have a go at a game of ‘Buzzword Bingo’ this blog might not be a bad place to begin.  We’ll start with the current government’s aim of ‘creating a more successful country, with opportunities for all of Scotland to flourish, through sustainable economic growth’.   You can almost see the curl on Gordon Brewer’s lip already, and you yourself may want to coin an observation involving Maw and her apple pie.

These aims are not just grand ideas, though.  Their pursuit has real outcomes in the world, and they matter.  In the course of pursuing their aims governments have to know whether they are succeeding in delivering their plans, and they need a more reliable measurement than the extent of Mr Brewer’s sneer.

How does the Scottish Government attempt this task?  Around those high level aims it has constructed a National Performance Framework.  If you imagine that framework as a building, then the key aims are emblazoned on a flag flying from the roof. What they call ‘National Outcomes’ – things like ‘our children have the best start in life and are ready to succeed’ – occupy the top floor, supported by a structure of ‘National Indicators’, the whole thing resting on foundations of values like ‘greener’ and ‘healthier’, and cemented together with a bucket-load of objectives and targets.   There’s a snazzy diagram here that sets it all out.

So what does that have to do with us?  For some time there has been a growing demand that the Performance Framework should include some commitment to culture alongside education, health, equalities and the rest.  Despite the right to participate in cultural activity being enshrined in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, despite a former First Minister characterising culture as ‘our next great enterprise’ in an influential speech a decade ago, and despite the presence of a Culture Minister in the cabinet, culture has up till now been the ragged child circling the policy table in the hope of finding a seat, and a share of the provender.

However, if you look down that list of recently revised National Indicators you’ll see that for the first time it now includes the line ‘increase cultural engagement’.   As Scottish arts doyenne, Anne Bonnar put it ‘the incorporation of the cultural indicator in a set which includes matters of life, death, education and the internet marks the coming of age of culture within the policy framework of the devolved government of Scotland.’

What that means in practice is that we can hold national and local government to account for their performance in helping all of us to get access to the making and appreciation of creative work.  It also means that it puts a duty on government to develop and maintain the infrastructure for cultural activity.  Furthermore it makes it a little easier to help government to see that cultural engagement is a valuable means of meeting targets and outcomes in other policy areas, especially health and well-being.

The Traditional Music Forum is part of the campaign called Culture Counts, which pressed strongly for culture to be included in the National Performance Framework.  We wanted it to be on the top floor of National Outcomes, but that is a battle for another day.  However, its inclusion in the National Indicators is still a welcome and important development, because from our point of view ‘increase cultural engagement’ means ‘increase engagement with the culture of the traditional arts’.   As we work to develop awareness of the critical place of traditional music, song, dance and story in our wider culture, and to encourage people to engage with it imaginatively and creatively, that little line in among all the other buzzwords may prove to be a very useful ally.