The year-long shutdown that has seen Scottish culture being forced to reinvent itself
Despite all the damage done to the arts scene over the past year, there is cause for optimism as audiences and visitors tell venues that they are desperate to come back – albeit with some social distancing, says Brian Ferguson
For Daniel Gillespie and his bandmates in the group Skerryvore, 2020 was shaping up to be the most memorable in its 15-year history.
This time last year, they had sold more than 3,000 tickets for an anniversary concert at Inveraray Castle, were in the midst of their biggest-ever world tour and had already sold out their home festival on the Hebridean island of Tiree.
Exactly a year ago, life for Gillespie, accordionist with the group, suddenly turned upside down with the announcement of immediate restrictions on live events across Scotland.
He recalls: “You’re always aware of risk and so many elements that are outwith of your control. However, I don't think anyone within the industry could have prepared for the past year and the challenges that have been created. Those early months of the pandemic were certainly the times of greatest concern and shock.
"However, once we had accepted the situation we very quickly wanted to focus our minds and energy on projects and ideas that perhaps we wouldn't have been able to do if out on tour or hosting a major festival. We planned and delivered our first live stream from the Clydeside Distillery in Glasgow. We managed to engage over 5,000 people in 22 countries worldwide, which was a huge boost not only financially, but also mentally as it re-connected us with the stage, our followers and the hope that live music can't be stopped, no matter the challenges presented.”
Adrian Turpin, artistic director of the Wigtown Book Festival, recalls: "We were lucky. Our festival wasn't until the autumn. We had time to plan and plan again for the various scenarios we might face. We made the decision early it was more important than ever to communicate during lockdown, so we began regular Wigtown Wednesdays, laying the grounds for a substantial festival. “Now here we are again. Another March staring into the crystal ball while running spreadsheets. I believe we’ll have some kind of physical festival this autumn. And I'm more optimistic than some colleagues in the arts that audience confidence will return quickly.
"At the moment, the pivot to digital is still essentially a defensive manoeuvre. But soon - I hope - we will start to see it as simply another powerful tool in our toolbox, one that we learnt to use in adversity - which is where a lot of the best learning takes place."
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe was the biggest cultural event to fall victim to the pandemic.
Karen Koren, founder and joint artistic director, with her daughter Katy, of longrunning promoters and producers Gilded Balloon, which was running a year-round venue on Rose Street when the restrictions were introduced. She said: “I remember thinking that it would only last a month or so and that surely it wasn’t that serious! We’d confirmed 60 per cent of our Fringe programme for the Fringe and had been feeling very positive about the coming festival.
"I’d been recovering from my cancer treatment a year earlier and was sent a letter from the NHS informing me that I had to shield – that’s when it started to get more serious!
"We realised that the Fringe was not going to go ahead as planned. As soon as we could we furloughed all our full time staff, but by September we had to make half our staff redundant and by October we gave up the lease on the Rose Theatre.
"It's been a lot to deal with and we have both struggled with anxiety and motivation throughout. As two incredibly social people, the limitations on seeing friends, colleagues and family has been the hardest thing.”
James Mackenzie-blackman, chief executive of Eden Court, in Inverness, one of Scotland’s biggest cultural centres, quickly offered its use as a humantarian aid hub for the Highlands.
Although it was able to eventually reopen in October, the plug had to be pulled on a planned programme for the start of this year due to the new lockdown rules enforced over the festive season. It has had £2 million in emergency government funding avoid the prospect of insolvency.
Mr Mackenzie-blackman says: “We desperately need to start earning income and we are desperate to employ artists and companies to showcase their work for audiences. We anticipate social distancing may remain in place for some time in Scotland. That has a profound impact on our business model.
“Our most loyal audiences and visitors tell us they are desperate to come back. Those who attended less frequently will need active marketing that we are open, safe, and we want to welcome them through our doors.
“The emergency public money will, of course, at some point have to stop. It is at this moment many organisations will be at the greatest risk because they’ll be totally reliant on the public’s willingness to walk back through their doors.”
Gillespie admits his biggest concern is for the future of the Tiree Music Festival. He said: "Not only do we carry the responsibility of 2,000 ticket holders from around the world, we also have a local community that is the heart of the festival and one we must protect.
"Our decision to cancel the 2021 festival was easy in that respect as until we can guarantee the safety of the islanders and attendees we believe the festival must wait. The huge challenge we now face is survival without any income until July 2022.”
Ms Koren admits nothing is certain yet about the 2021 Fringe.
Politics is the language of priorities. There is an infinite list of worthy demands so priorities determine all.
Within these parameters most politics are conducted and when there is no overall control of government, negotiated. This week, a huge chance was missed for Scotland to make a powerful statement about priorities.
By courtesy of the Scottish budget, the pay of care workers will increase by the princely sum of 20 pence per hour taking them to £9.50. Think of how many claps equate to 20p. There was an alternative, in the spirit of the times and of common decency. Labour, through Jackie Baillie, proposed £12 an hour as a condition of supporting the SNP’S budget.
Any chance of this even being negotiated around, was scuppered with the annual pantomime of the Greens “winning” concessions which weren’t concessions at all. The carers went to the back of the queue.
Long before Holyrood existed, Scotland frequently exercised the power to do things more progressively in health and social care than the rest of the UK. Here was an opportunity – with vastly increased powers and budget – to show such moral leadership and political creativity can still prevail.
Patrick Harvie, the Greens’ coat-tails hanger in chief, claimed the Scottish Government cannot set wages in the private sector, never having heard of the National Care Home Contract which effectively gives that power in recognition of 84 per cent of care costs coming from the public purse.
Very recently, a committee chaired by Derek Feeley reported on the future of social care in Scotland and recommended a National Care Service with the same status as the NHS. It was a well-argued report to which the pay and status of care workers is fundamental. Disregarding it so promptly in this budget is not encouraging. Kate Forbes, the Finance Secretary, said it
would cost £400 million to meet Labour’s demand and this was unaffordable. But then, politics is the language of priorities.
It is also worth noting that “undervalued and under-appreciated” local authorities had another harsh settlement. Cosla say pay increases will have to be met from existing services, which is a direct blow to their own role in providing care, mainly in people’s homes.
There is, as frequently demonstrated, huge headroom within the Scottish budget. Making a big statement about care would cost money but what is the point of politics if not, occasionally, to make big statements to secure irreversible change?
Anyway, the Feeley Report debunks the cost arguments and asserts that investment in care should be regarded as a generator of economic benefit rather than a cost to be borne.
It also makes this timely point: “The social care workforce in Scotland is so notably disadvantaged because it is highly gendered. The sector is about 83 per cent female. Were it 83 per cent male, it simply would not be marginalised and undervalued as it is.”
The care sector struggles to recruit yet demands are only increasing. Will 20p an hour attract a single individual? If not, why has the can been kicked down the road to a point where recruitment will be even more challenging?
Also there are obvious areas for savings. One under-reported aspect of the pandemic was the speed at which hospital patients were discharged into care homes. The policy was catastrophic but the point was made – bed-blocking is avoidable. The Feeley Report put the annual cost at £134 million.
We got nearer the truth (Patrick Harvie please note) when Ms Forbes gave evidence to Holyrood’s budget committee and was challenged by the Labour MSP, Daniel Johnson. A big uplift for carers, she said, would have a “knock-on effect” on pay negotiations for public sector workers.
That takes us back decades to the reactionary use of differentials as justification for not doing the right thing by one group of low-paid workers in case another takes advantage. I prefer the view of the GMB union’s Rhea Wolfson who, in response to Mr Harvie’s pleadings, said: “MSPS have the power to make revolutionary change. Don’t let them convince you otherwise.” Fat chance of that.
Ianswered the video call with a sinking feeling of dread. It was my aunt, confirming they’d accepted the offer on their house.
Something to celebrate usually, but we were both a bit tearful as this truly was the end of an era and, for me, a wake-up call of my own financial shortcomings as a (and I hate this word and all its ‘snowflake’ connotations) millennial.
The so-called war between baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) and millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) has been a much discussed, meme-ed narrative, which at the heart lies a truth.
Millennials are the first generation to not enjoy higher living standards than their parents. In fact, a recent study shows that those in their 20s and 30s are barely earning more than “Gen X-ers” (those born between 1965 and 1980) were at the same age.
I have seen accounts of people of my age or younger lamenting their shock and upset on social media, that the life their parents have is not one they can look forward to in later years.
While I accepted this early on – I graduated in 2008 and started my career with the backdrop of years of austerity that resulted in one redundancy and forced freelance work – I also carried with me the belief that I too would be able to create the family home that my aunt and uncle had for our wider family.
This is a house that has seen milestone birthdays, both parents and us kids, a wedding proposal, multiple parties and a dining room full of friends and family over countless Christmases. It is where my gran spent her last few months surrounded by family, and the garden is where my aunt’s best friend’s ashes are scattered.
It is this lifetime of little joys and sorrows that had me convince myself that, when they did sell, I’d be able to buy the house and carry on our family story within its stone walls. And why not? They were at
least five years younger than me when they bought the house almost 40 years ago.
But sadly, despite being an older millennial, I still fall into the stats. Yahoo Finance reports that houses cost millennials 14 times more than baby boomers, and that average property prices have risen twice as fast as wages in the UK over the past four decades, according to a new analysis of official figures. This means that the average home is now more than eight times higher than average wages.
And none of this takes into account the effects of the pandemic and what will inevitably result in a rise in unemployment, pay stagnation, fewer job opportunities and higher taxes. A recent Financial Times article stated that the pandemic and its subsequent lockdowns will have a toll on first-time buyers, with a managing partner at Knight Frank Finance estimating that, as a result of the shutdown, lenders will issue 150,000 fewer mortgages to first-time buyers in 2020 than they otherwise might have done.
Right now though, we are seeing a property boom with property sales on the up and home prices are also rising. Recent figures from ESPC show the speed of sales and prices, including data that shows between September and November
last year, the volume of property sales in Edinburgh, the Lothians, Fife and the Borders went up by nearly a third compared to the same time in 2019.
People are not only buying quickly, they’re spending more too as the average amount paid above the Home Report valuation also went up from 2019. All these factors combined won’t make it any easier for a generation that already haven’t had a smooth route into homeownership.
While buying a home is not impossible for my generation, purchasing an affordable family home, like many that we grew up in, is something only reachable by very, very few of us.
Most will have to rent while saving for a property and, as a widely reported Resolution Foundation study recently highlighted, millennials will likely spend over £40,000 more on rent than their parents by the age of 30.
To put that into perspective, baby boomers typically spent around £9,000 on rent before reaching age 30, whereas millennials will likely spend an average of £53,000 on rent over the same period. While interest rates were much higher for boomers, this had the positive impact of meaning any savings they had would make money – the same can’t be said of any money in the bank for today’s younger generation.
This is indeed if we can save, with philanthropist James Drake pointing out that graduate salaries have fallen compared with inflation in recent years and UK wage growth hasn’t exceeded inflation since 2010.
Being in their late 60s, I completely understand the need of my aunt and uncle to downsize. With kids who have left years previously, continuing to maintain a large, fourbedroom late-victorian villa with about an acre of gardens, is something I can see getting more difficult for them. But this move still came as a shock to us all, especially as they had tried to sell before and had a change of heart.
It is a testament to my aunt and uncle that them leaving has been met with despair from a wide range of friends and family. Theirs is a house that always had an open door, a friendly welcome and a feeling of warmth to it that I am glad the soon-to-be owners have picked up on.
This is sure to continue in their new, much smaller home (they might be pushing 70 but can still throw a mean party) but it has left me realising that, while my hopes of home ownership have not been snuffed out completely, they too have had to downsize.