A ludicrous lion statue and why public cash for the arts is just money down the drain

IT is home to one of Scotland’s most striking medieval buildings and was lauded by Robinson Crusoe author Daniel Defoe as a ‘very agreeable place’.

Now visitors to Elgin who tire of the 13th-century cathedral can feast their eyes on a surprising addition to its cultural heritage.

In the historic town centre now stands a bizarre monument depicting a lion with a fish’s tail, carrying a cane and wearing a monocle and top hat. Known as the Dandy Lion, the supposedly ‘quirky’ piece is part of a project that received funding of £120,000 from Moray Council, with the apparent aim of highlighting aspects of the town’s past.

But Fochabers Lhanbryde councillor Sean Morton – pulling no punches – has described the 10ft artwork in the town centre as ‘cultural vomit in Technicolor’.

Sculptor Vik Quickly was unperturbed by this frank review of her work, insisting that ‘it does not really bother me – I enjoy the fact people are talking about it’.

Moray Council only abandoned calls for an 18 per cent council tax hike after John Swinney threatened town halls with severe financial penalties as Finance Secretary.

Had the council tax increase been agreed, perhaps there would have been many more examples of ‘cultural vomit’ littering the streets of its towns and villages.

The row is all the more surprising at a time of scarce public funds, with local government warning on a near-daily basis of looming budgetary apocalypse.

It also raises an important question about the role of the state in subsidising the arts.

Government arts subsidies in the UK are a relatively recent development – before the Second World War the arts flourished without them.

According to Professor Philip Booth, of the Institute of Economic Affairs, such subsidies can ‘crowd out private funding, as comparisons with the US seem to suggest’.

He points out Britain was historically ‘a magnet for the arts and, to a greater degree than probably anywhere else in the world, the arts were provided to a wide audience’.

The equation, he says, was simple – ‘no audience, no funding’.

The arts world is forever complaining about savage cuts – apparently oblivious to belttightening, often on a far greater scale, in the private sector.

And yet amid all the shroudwaving, its administrators continue to siphon public cash into the Dandy Lion, or a series of other dubious endeavours. Often these are also politicised in nature, or at least advance highly contentious agendas.

In one astonishing example, thousands of pounds of public money was given to an artist researching gay-friendly fairy tales.

Eilidh MacAskill wanted performers to stage school plays to help youngsters wrestling with their ‘gender identity’. The 36-year-old even suggested artists should get involved in sex education lessons.

The cash allowed Glasgowbased Miss MacAskill to study ways of addressing gay and transgender issues with children through live performance – ‘without raising the spectre of paedophilia’.

Barmy

One of her missions in the Gendersaurus Rex project was to create ‘less bland’ artwork for children by ‘questioning or queering [sic] the classic narrative structure of “Once Upon A Time” romantic love between a prince and a princess’.

The project was condemned as ‘brainwashing’ and perhaps all too predictably there is no official report of Miss MacAskill’s research, which was completed after a period of ‘12 to 18 months’.

Miss MacAskill also wants a ban on ‘heteronormative [promoting heterosexuality as ‘normal’], moralistic, tacitly or overtly sexist, romantic stories for children’.

Barmy stuff, of course, and in fact a kind of extremism – one that many would find beyond the pale.

Miss MacAskill’s £6,000 grant was awarded by Imaginate, an arts body given more than £1million of National Lottery funding for projects. The cash was received via Creative Scotland, a costly SNP quango that has presided over all manner of similar absurdities.

Creative Scotland’s chief executive, Jane Archer, has a salary of between £115,000£120,000, up from £110,000£115,000 in 2014-15. Her deputy, Iain Munro, has to get by on £85,000-£90,000, while the ‘director of communications’, Kenneth Fowler, earns up to £75,000 a year.

In fairness, this is an organisation that is keen to spread the wealth to as many downright batty schemes as humanly possible – after all, the taxpayer is picking up the tab.

Creative Scotland was also behind an award of almost £20,000 for a book containing a transsexual love story aimed at children as young as 14.

The Scottish Book Trust distributed the work – Secrets and Confessions – in secondary schools and public places, including libraries, to ‘reflect the experience’ of gay people and transsexuals.

The charity was given £19,500 by Creative Scotland to produce 150,000 copies of the book, which contains a story called The Confession by author and playwright Jo Clifford. In it, Jo – formerly John – Clifford, a 59-year-old ex-bus conductor, describes her experiences of trying to start a relationship with a woman as a young man confused about gender identity.

In 2009, hundreds of people staged protests in Glasgow against a ‘blasphemous’ play by Clifford, which portrayed Christ as a man who wants to become a woman.

That play was another form of extremism that should have seen Clifford blacklisted permanently from receiving any more state-funded handouts.

Another beneficiary of the quango’s largesse was an acrobat who donated her eggs to help a friend – and was given £10,000 to stage a show about the experience.

Aerial artist Sarah Hebe Holmes was awarded the cash after deciding to revisit her decade-old decision in a 25minute performance.

In another notorious example, Ellie Harrison was awarded £15,000 from Creative Scotland to spend the year in Glasgow, even though she already lived in the city.

The experimental artist triggered an angry backlash after calling her project The Glasgow Effect, a term that refers to its poor health record, and promoting it with an image of chips.

Miss Harrison, a lecturer at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, part of the University of Dundee, was accused of being a middle-class tourist and sneering at the residents of Scotland’s largest city.

In another scheme, Creative Scotland also paid out £300 a day so an artist could work in a funeral parlour.

Expenses

It advertised earlier this year for a lucky artist who would receive £6,000 plus expenses for a 20-day residency at a funeral home, helping those who deal with the dead to ‘explore their own journey’.

The organisation also pledged £1million towards a 121ft roadside statue in Dumfriesshire, twice the height of the Angel of the North in Gateshead, and £1,150 for a hula-dancing trip to Tonga.

Even in the realm of the arts, Creative Scotland has proved as unpopular as some of the schemes it has funded.

In 2012, 100 artists – including crime author Ian Rankin and the then national poet or ‘Makar’ Liz Lochhead – wrote an open letter attacking the organisation. They condemned ‘ill-conceived decision-making, unclear language, lack of empathy and regard for Scottish culture’.

Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop, who was sacked from her previous job running the state education system, had hailed the quango’s launch in 2010 as a ‘momentous change’ for Scotland’s artistic reputation.

Ironically, she was a ‘brand development manager’ for Standard Life before politics – so should have known all about managing reputations effectively.

Miss Hyslop’s legacy, along with failing schools, will be an arts sector that is slowly turning into a bad joke – with the last laugh, as always, on the taxpayer.