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This paper examines the key issues that emerge in the understanding of traditional music as micro-enterprise in the rural creative economy of Argyll and Bute, Scotland. Using evidence from detailed ethnographic fieldwork, with musicians, festival organisers, tour operators, business owners and civil servants, this paper examines how issues such as geographical and social distance, internet connectivity, and cultural tourism are understood in relation to the musical life of Argyll and Bute. We advocate for greater ethnographic engagement with local communities in order to provide a more sophisticated, real-world understanding of rural cultural policy and the impact of current policies on local musicians. The paper therefore foregrounds ethnography as an important method in local, rural contexts such as Argyll and Bute, where typically, much of the creative economy is embedded in statistically invisible economic and cultural activity and portfolio employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1999, the Scottish Executive embarked upon a public consultation which engaged 1000 people and organisations around questions that included definitions of culture, the purpose and priorities of the proposed first Scottish national cultural strategy and the structures required to support its implementation. The consultation process revealed a strong and widely expressed desire for the Scottish Executive to lead and create a national cultural strategy, which would state clearly what culture meant to Scotland, the role it played throughout Scotland and on an international stage. There was a clear demand for structural change, an aspiration for change in education and a desire to be involved in celebrating and sharing Scotland's rich and diverse culture in all its aspects, to recognise Scotland's past and present culture as well as plan the future. Over the next decade, post-devolution, successive ministers and administrations embarked on a turbulent journey of policy setting, strategy development and structural change. They took action in some of the key areas identified in 1999, including those concerning Scotland's international image, the creative industries and Scotland's languages and education. The most recent statements on cultural policy are contained in the White Paper on Independence published in November 2013. This paper reviews the issues prevalent during the 1999 consultation and reflects on those that have been addressed, superseded and those that remain unresolved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the success of the European Union City/Capital of Culture programme as a model for culture-led regeneration by assessing the long-term cultural impacts of Glasgow's experience in 1990. These cultural impacts, seen as distinct from economic, physical and even social impacts, are measured using soft indicators such as media and personal discourses. Assessment of cultural impacts is seldom undertaken and often dismissed as purely anecdotal in comparison with the hard evidence offered by established economic and physical impact evaluations. Here, this view is challenged and an alternative approach is offered in an exposition of the research design and main findings of a qualitative longitudinal study into the development of narratives around Glasgow's image and identity during the period 1986–2003. From this research, it emerges that the effect of regeneration on local images and identities is the strongest and best-sustained legacy of Glasgow's reign as City of Culture 15 years on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the 1 July 2010 a new cultural development body for Scotland was established. However, by 2013 the organisation was embroiled in a public dispute with a number of the individuals and organisations it was established to support. This short paper considers this “crisis” as a discursive event [Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. 2009.Methods of critical discourse analysis. London: SAGE], and informed by a discourse analysis of various texts, it identifies the core narrative as being one in which a distiguishable body of “artists” and their supporters are resisting a dangerous ideological power-grab by “non-artist” bureaucrats. It proposes that this relies upon the well-worn discursive knot of the instrumental versus the intrinsic, which facilitates a continuing obscuration of the prevailing power relationships within the network of publicly subsidised culture in Scotland. In its discursive focus on the relationship between an imagined egalitarian “cultural community” and Creative Scotland (CS), the narrative of the dispute overlooks the extent to which both CS and the majority of organisations it funds are primarily tools of governance by which the Scottish Government seeks to strategically shape the production and dissemination of culture in Scotland. It concludes that many of those individual artists arguing for various degrees of change were thus unwittingly complicit in supporting a status quo that makes the change they desire unlikely while simultaneously limiting public input into what sort of culture merits subsidy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last two decades the status of popular music as both a cultural activity and creative industry has changed significantly in Scottish and UK cultural policy. The change is in line with a broader shift away from thinking of the arts as cultural activity in need of subsidy and towards treating them as part of the creative economy. The current cultural policy landscape pertaining to popular music is mapped out, drawing on interviews and an online survey with members of the Scottish Music Industry Association (SMIA) and complementary interviews with stakeholders from relevant government and arms-length funding and development bodies. The Scottish Government's (SG) White Paper on independence highlighted the creative industries as one of five growth sectors key to the Scottish economy, but for popular music – and in line with the global music industry – many working in the Scottish music industry face acute challenges. Given EU regulations (and the Scottish Government's preference to remain in the EU) and international agreements in areas like broadcasting and copyright, if they are to flourish many members of the SMIA will likely need to strengthen their relationships with the wider UK and global music industry, regardless of the outcome of the referendum on independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing cultural engagement is one of the Scottish Government's 50 national indicators, and “non-participation” is seen as a problem that should be addressed. However, what is not questioned is the extent to which this “problem” is an endogenous one that has taken shape within the policies that have been developed to tackle it. Utilising Bacchi's [(2009).Analysing policy: What's the problem represented to be?Frenchs Forest, NSW: Pearson] interpretive method for analysing and critiquing policy, this paper considers a range of Scottish cultural policy documents and the research that informed them in order to consider how the “problem” of non-participation is represented. It is argued that although the “problem” is represented in policy documents as the existence of barriers that create unequal access to culture, nested within this is a further, but less explicit difficulty, namely that the “problem” is the failure to engage with those cultural activities that receive state support. If the “problem” was understood as a need to provide equality of access toculturerather thanstate funded culture, then those who implement policy would be free to focuslesson maximising access to those organisations and activities which, for other valid reasons, the Government funds, but that the majority of the public are not interested in attending. They would be able to think creatively, instead, about how to facilitate the deepening of an already present cultural democracy. The creation of Creative Scotland offers the potential to disrupt the extant problem representation, but only if it can transition from being the funder of “legitimate” culture to becoming the facilitators of an environment in whichparticipantscontribute to the legitimation of culture through their choices and opinions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its inception, and particularly since Glasgow hosted the event in 1990, the European Capital of Culture (ECOC) has increasingly come to be viewed by host cities as a tool to regenerate, rebrand and reposition themselves in cultural and economic terms. In recent years this has resulted in a predictable set of conflicts over cultural ownership, social inclusion and economics/arts dichotomies. In this paper, the author argues that these problems lie at the core of the ECOC itself, in that it has multiple objectives which are not mutually reinforcing and often contradictory. Based on primary research undertaken in Cork between 2005 and 2008, this paper explores how the policy framework of the event created dissonances within the cultural sector. It then uses the ambivalent outcomes of Cork 2005 as a starting point to address some of the ways in which the ECOC could be mobilised as a cultural policy designed to encourage creative dialogue through dissent. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Together with “creativity”, the concept of “talent” has emerged within UK and global policy discussions as being central to unlocking economic success within the creative industries. At a crucial time of political and technological change, Scotland finds itself competing within a highly competitive global market to identify, attract and retain creative talent and strengthen its skills base. As such, developing “talent” is a key aspect of the Scottish Government's Strategy for the Creative Industries. However, while creativity has been interrogated across academic disciplines in recent years, talent remains under-theorised within the academy and lacks a clear definition across policy and industry. Taking the screen industries as its focus, this paper draws on empirical data derived from a series of knowledge exchange workshops funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh designed to initiate dialogue between academics, policy-makers and stakeholders within Scotland and beyond. In doing so, it scopes out some of the key ways in which screen “talent” is conceptualised by these groups and raises questions regarding how particular understandings may impact on policies designed to identify, attract and retain a diverse range of skilled workers within the sector. We argue that greater precision should be used in policy discourse to emphasise the importance of developing particular and discrete craft skills rather than privileging a workforce that is highly flexible and mobile. We also suggest that policy-makers and educators must acknowledge and encourage transparency regarding the precariousness of building a career within the screen industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Scottish devolution from the UK in 1999, there has been a sustained and growing commitment to Scottish traditional music, storytelling and dance – collectively defined in Scottish cultural policy as the “traditional arts”. The public policy discourse of traditional arts is at once politically related to a growing Scottish confidence and intimately bound into a personal and national politics of identity. Today, in this transitional time around the referendum on Scottish independence, the potential for Scottish traditional arts to make a substantial and more sustainable contribution to cultural life in Scotland is within reach. However, there are some underlying problems that need to be addressed by the community of policy-makers and artists. In this paper, I examine the commodification and professionalization of Scottish traditional arts in broad terms and then go on to use this as a means to understand the recent emergence of a national cultural policy of intrinsic worth for the traditional arts since 1993. I finally consider the possibilities and opportunities for a more robust cultural policy for the Scottish traditional arts post-referendum. In recognizing that traditional music has entered a new and self-conscious period of commodification today, we open the door for a debate about the ways in which traditional arts in contemporary society can be performed and supported in a more equitable national cultural policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the ideological change and discourse and on how relevant dialogues that occurred during Glasgow 1990 can today be seen as located at a key point in the intersection between globalization and cultural policy. The author will explore also the relationship between two specific aspects of globalization and cultural policy initiatives such as Glasgow 1990.

The Scottish Arts Council's 'Quality Framework' was launched in 2007 as a continuous improvement toolkit. It provides a flexible framework for arts organizations to evaluate the impact of funding decisions. Developing tools that allow organizations to demonstrate their impact provides robust information to further build the evidence base for the cultural sector. The second edition (2009) has been revised after evaluation and consultation with arts organizations and Scottish Arts Council staff. Taking this approach and gathering further evidence is an important step in the lead up to Creative Scotland (which is the newly established creative arts funding body within Scotland). Continuous improvement tools not only gather evidence but can improve work practices. The Quality Framework should be viewed in the context of the National Performance Framework, as gathering outcome evidence will also assist in the production of Local Authority Single Outcome Agreements. This review also looks at the Unified Quality Improvement Framework, an over-arching tool that will assist local authorities and other service providers to evaluate the quality of their culture and sport provision. Evidencing sector information such as arts activity will be an important part of this process. The Quality Framework is a tool to gather outcome-based evidence that will show how culture can contribute to a variety of policy objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European institutions collected indigenous Australian human remains from the late eighteenth century onwards, forming part of collections that contained the physical remains of people from all around the world, including Europe. Obtained for the purposes of studying so-called ‘racial’ difference, their removal was deeply embedded within a racist scientific paradigm that has long been abandoned but which played a large part in the oppressive treatment of Aboriginal people by the colonizing state. Evidence that remains were taken without consent, and against the wishes of the indigenous population, permeates the historical literature. Since the 1980s many indigenous groups have campaigned for the return of their remains from institutions around the world so that they can be reburied. This article considers the case of Edinburgh University, which amassed a large collection of human remains from around the world in the nineteenth century and, following campaigning from Aboriginal people, adopted a pro-repatriation policy in 1991. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article critiques official notions of creative industries with reference to definitions of both culture and creativity. The knowledge economy-based concept of creative industries, it is maintained, has no specific cultural content and ignores the distinctive attributes of both cultural creativity and cultural products. As such it overrides important public good arguments for state support of culture, subsuming the cultural sector and cultural objectives within an economic agenda to which it is ill-suited. We argue against this turn in public policy and for a cultural policy that views its object as all forms of cultural production, both industrial and artisan. Finally we question the longer term motives and consequences for cultural policy of the creative industries agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]