Reclaiming our Individual Creativity - the disaster that is Creative Scotland.

Tanya and Stefan from my play Wormwood, about Chernobyl

It came like a bolt from the blue last week, while I was on a Zoom meeting with three fellow arts practitioners. Creative Scotland announced that they were closing the Open Fund, with almost immediate effect. That's the fund to which individual artists, writers etc can apply for a modicum of funding to support new and often experimental projects. Creative Scotland is the body set up to administer funds for the arts in Scotland, replacing the old Scottish Arts Council (a classic case of 'if it ain't broke, why are you fixing it?') The old Arts Council was smallish, responsive and largely responsible. It was also mostly run by arts practitioners, rather than highly paid arts administrators. 

Whether or not the closure of the Open Fund is aimed at prompting the government to come up with more cash, it is just one more example of the way in which support for the arts in Scotland (and to a great extent in England as well) has become focussed on larger groups, production companies, or those facilitating participation, rather than individual creators: artists, writers and other practitioners. There seems to be no acknowledgment that the creative arts are worth supporting for their own sake, and not as some hypothetical means to a fashionable end: wellbeing, community cohesion, inclusion and all the other buzz words and phrases demanded of applicants. Laudable aims for sure, but the fact that CS saw fit to cancel the only fund open to individual practitioners should tell us how little we’re valued.

Under the old SAC I was the recipient of a couple of awards as a young writer – small but very welcome sums that allowed me to work on particular writing projects. Before applying, I could and did contact the Literature Officer, a serious, mature writer who was incredibly helpful in allowing me to assess the focus and aims of my own work. Later, I sat on the literature committee myself, and saw just how effectively that committee – composed entirely of fellow practitioners - made what was essentially a small sum of money go a very long way in supporting individuals to develop their careers, without ever feeling that something extraneous to their creative practice was demanded of them in return. In short, they were never expected to be unqualified but cheap therapists. Committee members like myself did come cheap, because we felt that we were giving something back to an organisation that had supported us. We were paid expenses and had a great spread of interests from popular to literary, from urban to rural.  I sometimes saw myself as the 'rugged populist', willing to defend applicants from the less esoteric end of the arts spectrum.

Creativity was valued in and of itself. Not as a means to an end. 

The Literature Officer could also interact with applicants as a bridge between committee and applicant, telling them why a proposal might have been rejected, advising them about possible future applications.The sums of money were tiny in the grand scheme of things, but a struggling writer, probably doing another job or two to keep the wolf from the door, can make a little money go a very long way. I know I did. In fact I still do.

All that changed with CS and in the process we lost something precious. Badly done, Scottish government. The old SAC wasn’t perfect, and some wrong decisions were made. I remember them well. But it was a damn sight better than what we’re stuck with now. I applied to CS for one small grant to assist with a complicated book project over the ensuing years, at the request of my publisher. The whole process was a nightmare of unanswerable questions about timescales and budgets for a research and writing process that simply doesn’t work like that. I almost gave up, would certainly have done so if my then publisher hadn’t prompted me to keep going. 

I would never do it again. 

The Open Fund has had other problems. Earlier this year, it emerged that a huge sum of £84,555 had been awarded to a theatre director from the Open Fund for development of a show called Rein which - as it turned out - involved not just 'simulated sex' but the real thing. In her statement, the director said that the project was going to be an artistic film exploring themes of sexuality set in the Scottish landscape. 'The sexual elements were an integral part of the project's artistic vision. They would have challenged regressive and exploitative attitudes towards women and queer people.'All of which makes the addition of the Scottish landscape to the proposal seem like a particularly cynical box ticking exercise. 

Following public outcry, most of the money was taken back, but the subsequent stooshie, to use a good Scots word, involved mind boggling discussions about genital contact (presumably and uncomfortably in a Scottish landscape) and whether STI tests were 'industry standard'. Just what industry were they talking about? And if it's the one that instantly springs to mind, why the hell were they applying for public money? 

Call me a curmudgeon but I can't see any of my professional writer colleagues on any of those old Scottish Arts Council committees touching any such project with the proverbial bargepole. And frankly, they would have been right. I don't hold with censorship, but if you want to embark on such a project, why not find other sources of funding. It shouldn't be too difficult. 

Finally, I can see just how much practitioners at the start of their careers are let down by CS. But later career artists and writers like myself are also unsupported and I don't mean financially. I’ve had many conversations with fellow artists and writers about this. You hit a certain age and you suddenly become the unwilling recipient of patronising ‘wellbeing’ projects aimed at fending off your ‘loneliness’, even though you’re still a seasoned professional who might be looking for useful discussion about your work as much as, or even more than, financial support. 

Certainly, in its current incarnation, CS isn’t fit for purpose. It spends a vast amount of money on  salaries such as the Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, earning £48 - £52K, with the Literature Officer considerably less at £25,000 per year. This again should tell you something about the value Scotland puts on its literature.* Not a lot. Perhaps our government should start again, and build something where the practitioners themselves are central to the system. And where people who seem to have a modicum of understanding and experience are in charge of steering through our current choppy creative waters, without falling over so far backwards in an effort to be seen as inclusive that their brains fall out. Not holding my breath, though. Are you?

* Just checked online. The Lit Officer is a part time position. (Why?) So yet again, salaries of which full time practitioners could only dream. 

How Not To Be A Writer - Part Nine: Poland

 

Aunty Wanda

I'd visited Poland when I was a student, but working there was different. I had to surrender my passport to the police. An odd feeling - that you couldn't just leave if you wanted to - even though with British Council sponsorship I had a certain amount of protection. 

The country was still under soviet sway, although slowly but surely things were changing. This was the late 1970s and communist rule wouldn't end until 1989, so there was a long way to go. But everything 'felt' subversive - especially art and theatre. There was a constant undercurrent of what can best be described as defiant dissatisfaction. 

In 1970s Poland, the Roman Catholic church was particularly subversive and so were many of the people I met whenever I visited my father's cousin Teresa Kossak in Warsaw. They knew what they were risking. They had lived through it all before, again and again. If you want to read more about what had happened to my father's family before and during WW2, you can read about it in my book The Last Lancer. I wrote this quite recently, but I had spent half a lifetime researching it, and much of the material came from my father, from Teresa and Wanda and her husband Karol, people who were still living with the aftermath of those times.

My students were a lovely bunch: three classes of around 30 each. I had to attempt to teach them 'English conversation.' There were two hurdles to this. One was the size of each class. Foreign language conversation classes are usually smaller. The other was a certain uncharacteristic reticence, not normally found among voluble Poles. I soon discovered, however, courtesy of a couple of older and more confident class members, that this was mostly the result of the teaching methods they were used to. It took them a while to adjust to a lecturer who expected them to participate. Once I had given them enough encouragement, asking them what they were interested in, we got along just fine. 

I was given an apartment of my own in central Wroclaw overlooking a pretty square where a flower seller sat. It was comfortable and warm, although the old German 'Junkers' boiler in the bathroom would occasionally throw a wobbly and indulge in a small explosion that covered the bathroom with soot. This had been Breslau before the war, until all borders shifted. I suffered with a certain low key illness for some of that year - something that I was told happened to all visiting lecturers. Afterwards, I wondered if it was down to the boiler emitting just enough carbon monoxide to make us all a bit sick, but not enough to finish us off. A worrying thought. 

I quickly learned that if I didn't keep all my kitchen surfaces scrupulously clean, little processions of red ants would come in and hoover up my crumbs. One day I bought a bunch of sweet violets from the flower seller and put them in a glass beside my bed. I woke in the morning to a procession of ants, making their stately way up to the flowers and down the other side. They were inoffensive creatures, and my students told me that the apartments that had ants tended not to have cockroaches. I saw this as a bonus, and it proved to be true, at least where my apartment was concerned. 

Winters in Wroclaw were a bit milder than in Warsaw. I visited my relatives there for Christmas, but not before I was persuaded to sing White Christmas for about 90 students, my three classes all joined together. In Warsaw, I had to dig out my Finnish woolly underwear and sheepskin coat.  

I was zloty rich and had some sterling too. In fact I've never been so cash rich since. I had a drawer full of notes that had to be spent because I was never going to be able to bring them home or exchange them if I did. There were special shops where you could spend sterling or dollars and buy imported goods. These were frequented not just by visitors like myself, but by Communist Party members, some animals being more equal than others. 

I was always looking for ways to spend my zloties. I remember finding gorgeous long red leather boots, a lovely, stylish, wool gaberdine raincoat, chocolate plums, flavoured vodka. I lived on rye bread with caraway seeds, plum butter or blueberry jam and soft white cheese or smoked mountain cheese as well as big apples, irregularly shaped, with specks on them, but sweet and delicious. 

The communist regime had distribution problems. This meant that a huge consignment of some random item would arrive, but instead of being distributed around the country, they would go to one city only. If you saw a queue, you joined it and asked what you were queueing for later on. Shortages and empty shelves were frequent and commonplace. You didn't so much go food shopping as foraging. That was OK when you were young and single and had recourse to sterling - not much fun if you were trying to feed a family on low wages.

I was lonelier than in Finland, mainly because my students, friendly as they were, were younger, whereas my Finnish students had all been the same age or older, and had been very keen to entertain me. It was good to escape to Warsaw occasionally, to visit my relatives who had survived the war. I went to Krakow and saw the sights there. At the same time, I was trying to keep up a long distance and (as it turned out) extremely unwise romantic relationship back home in Scotland. We ran up huge phone bills. On one occasion, I heard a Polish voice on the line saying 'Good evening, English girl'. As the British Council had warned us, my phone was routinely tapped. I said nothing subversive, but I sometimes wonder what on earth they made of those conversations. 

I went home to Scotland in February, when the university had a break, and flew back with a suitcase full of toilet rolls, the Polish variety being rather worse than our old Izal, if anyone remembers that. Polish loo paper back then was grey-brown, elasticated, and still had sharp bits of tree attached to it. The customs officer who checked my case grinned and waved me through. 

Meanwhile, in my free time, of which I had quite a lot, I wrote. People ask me, as they have always asked me 'Are you still writing' and I want to shout at them 'YES, OF COURSE I'M BLOODY WRITING. IT'S WHAT I DO, YOU WALLY.' But I don't, of course. Too nice for my own good, me.

So even though I was 'being' a lecturer, I wrote.

I wrote plays for radio, poems about Poland, and the occasional freelance article. I planned a novel. And I began to think about the possibility of a stage play about Poland, about the sense of subversion and unease about what might come next. It would be called Heroes and Others. It would be, as it turned out, the worst theatrical experience of my life.