MSP calls for national company

A Highland MSP has called for the establishment of a new ‘national company’ to co-ordinate strategy and funding for traditional arts organisations in the wake of Scottish Arts Council cuts. This week in an article in The Scotsman, Rob Gibson, SNP MSP for the Highlands and Islands, was critical of the strategic funding review begun by the Scottish Arts Council in 2006 which has led to the loss of flexible funding for 43 organisations, including the Scots Language Centre.

Mr Gibson was quite critical of the existing funding arrangements. He said that the late Scottish Executive had decided to give direct funding to those national arts companies which supported ballet, opera and national orchestras but that the traditional arts had been left with only “scant means”.

In his article Mr Gibson urged a fundamental rethink of the way in which Scotland’s traditional culture – whether language, music or dance – was supported and welcomed the government audit into the Scots language as a step in the right direction. Gibson argued that there was a need for a ‘national company’, which he described as the missing link in the chain, to co-ordinate promotion, education, information and advocacy of Scotland’s indigenous culture. After all, he concluded, if we don’t support the traditional culture ourselves, no one else will.