 I welcome everybody to the 17th meeting of the Education and Culture Committee in 2014. I remind all those present, the electronic devices should be switched off at all times, particularly mobile phones as they do tend to interfere with the sound system. Our first item today is to consider four negative instruments that are listed on our agenda. Do members have any comments they wish to make on these four instruments? Nope, ok. I'll just put a question then, does the committee agree to make no recommendation to the Parliament on the instruments? I agree. I agree. Thank you very much. Our next item is to hold an evidence session on the aftermath of the fire at the Glasgow School of Art. The Macintosh building is, of course, one of Scotland's most important icons. I think it's safe to say that we were all very shocked when we saw the images that day of the building on fire and, certainly speaking of my very personal view, great fear about the entire building and, obviously, the contents of the building. So I know that there's been a lot of work to ensure the safety of the structure and, of course, to save the contents, particularly, of course, the students' work. The other important thing, of course, is that we are currently going through our assessment of the Historic Environment Scotland Bill, so by a strange coincidence it kind of fits into the work that we're doing on the bill, so I think that's also of some interest. Can I welcome to the committee this morning Professor Tomins, director at the school, Sam De Santis, president of the GSA Student Association, Diana Murray and Ronald McInnes from Historic Scotland. Welcome to all of you and thank you for attending today. I'm sure that it's appreciated very much by all committee members, given how busy I'm sure you all are at this particular time, can I kick off this morning's questions by asking you to give you a brief assessment of the current state of play, effectively the extent of the damage and the work that's currently under way to assess that damage and how you see the next few weeks and months progressing. Professor Innes, do you want to start us off? I'll talk you through, in a sense, the timeline, because that's the best way of catching up on the state of play, I think. Obviously the fire was on the 23rd of May and in the, we had the issue of the afternoon of the fire, so with the fire service in attendance and dealing with it as an actual fire scene, we set up the emergency critical incident management procedures at Glasgow School of Art from our perspective and that was largely to do with, in the first instance, the safety and security of staff and students. In the 24 hours that followed the fire, a great deal of our work was kind of assessing the situation and setting up the kind of work streams we needed to put in place in order to ensure the academic continuity of Glasgow School of Art as an HEI in its own right, the critical point in the academic year, but also to deal with issues associated with the Macintosh building, its contents had many different dimensions, obviously the contents of historical significance, the student work and all of the work associated with the administrative systems of Glasgow School of Art that live inside that building. So in the period from about the 24th of May through to the 30th of May, we closed Glasgow School of Art and closed it to students and to academic activity and that was an intensive week of bringing things out of the building under the direction of the fire and rescue services with the assistance and advice of Historic Scotland, particularly to do with the historical items and things that needed to come out in that period of time. On the 30th of May, we reopened Glasgow School of Art back for our academic activity and the building was handed over to building control so it was no longer under the direction of the fire and rescue services. In that period, many of the historical items were taken out and have been put into secure storage so the movable furniture that was still in the east wing and our archives and collections were taken out and have been put into secure storage. Some of the archive, the textiles archive in particular was water damaged but that's been sent off for specialist restorations, that's all happened in that one week period. Since that point, we've returned to a degree of academic normality, we've completed all the assessment processes associated with all the students and we opened our degree show last week on the 12th and 12th of June and this week we'll have graduation on Friday so we'll have completed all of the assessment, we'll have taken all the student work out, there's 102 fine art students who were directly affected by the fire, a good proportion of them lost all of their work or a majority of their work was very significantly damaged in the fire and we've set up all sorts of things for them associated with their degree show with support from the Scottish Government, we've put in place the Phoenix Bursaries which will be I think formally announced today in terms of Scottish Government contribution and that's going to be very, very significant in terms of supporting our students. Now our focus is very much on business continuity that has many dimensions, we have to deal with what happens in the next academic session in terms of finding locations for our students and staff, we've moved them into temporary decant at the moment, we've obviously got a very complex negotiation going on with our insurance and building control I think will complete their phase of the work at the end of June and then we're going to go into different phases of restoration, again obviously very much in consultation with Historic Scotland and other parties, so that's probably where we are as of today, so things are progressing. From Historic Scotland's point of view do you want to add anything at the moment or we'll get into the detail of it? Well I need to say that we work very closely with the Glasgow School of Art and with Thomas, we were able to be on the scene at the appropriate time and at the school's request to take responsibility for organising the salvage operation within the building largely because we have staff who are trained in and have qualifications in working in dangerous building so we were able to deploy them and the fire service were happy to let them in the building whereas they were not happy at all to let other volunteers in. So we were able to direct the salvage operations from within the building which was really helpful and to make sure along with the fire service there's as much of the building's fabric and the contents were salvaged I think without the fire service and their bravery much more of the building would have gone. So we're therefore now in a good position to be working with the school to look forward to the next stage of the work which of course now we have a little bit of time to reflect and think about the best way forward and as Tom says about the restoration project and how that should go forward so we're standing by to give as much advice and help as we can as the school has taken responsibility for its building. Thank you very much. We're going to get into a lot of the detail obviously. Members have got questions impact on the building obviously what's happening going forward and the impact on the students but I'm going to start with Mary Scanlon. Thank you very much and I think like all other members to put on record my credit to the fire and rescue service and as an onlooker at certainly the height of professionalism. I just really wanted to ask about the money and the restoration funds etc. There was an article in the Scotsman 26 May where an estimate of what to restore the building was stated at between 15 and 20 million and it would take four years to complete. Is that the sort of figure we're thinking about or is it too early to say? It's too early to say. We've obviously been in since that article came out and that article was somebody kind of suggesting from the outside what the cost might be. We've been in discussion obviously with the insurance company. We've been in discussion with in a sense a sort of team who've been kind of appointed as for the point of an emergency to kind of deal with the immediate securing of the building and so on. And the estimates are probably somewhere between 20 and 35 million pounds I think. We haven't actually had complete access to the building yet in order to kind of do that complete survey in terms of the restoration because the building is still being secured as it were by building control. So that seems like kind of quite a high degree of variance in the estimate but I think that's the kind of reality of the situation that we're in. That would be including fees in VAT. I do note that and I know it's a bit of an unfair question at this point in time. I also note that you're hoping for offers of practical assistance as well as financial. We've been looking at the Historic Environment Scotland Bill and we're all very aware around this table of the demands for funding on Historic Scotland. So could I just cast the net wider and ask if you're confident over the time period. Obviously you want to get back to business as soon as possible. Are you confident that this money will come forward? Can I just say I note the Scottish Government is funding up to five million. In our briefing paper today there's no mention of the Westminster funding but I am aware that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the Chancellor of the Exchequer have said they could make contributions in millions if that is necessary and I've got the words here at the moment. We don't know the practical extent of the damage but it's just to say that offers of help and assistance you've had so far are you confident that if it is 35 million that that money will be forthcoming in order for you to get back to business as soon as practically possible? I think we've recently come, I'd say recently confident because there is unknowns in that because we have an insurance policy on the building so the building is well insured. The insurance will cover certain things it won't cover other things so there's particular things it might not cover and obviously this is an extremely complex insurance case so that will unfold over time. We're obviously going to be fundraising and we've had that very generous offer from the Scottish Government and other offers which have kind of been discussed at the moment with the Westminster Government. We will have to raise funds so we will be setting up a kind of fundraising campaign so I think if all of those things come together we will be able to cover the cost of that restoration. Do you have comfort and confidence at this time? I'm an optimistic person so I'm reasonably comfortable with that. That's fine, thank you. Gordon? Just about the fund that you launched, the Macintosh building fire fund you had the initial target of £1 million I believe. Are you able to highlight where you are in relation to pledges? There was a report in the BBC that the restoration fund has already drawn millions of pounds in pledges. How accurate was that and where do you think you are? The original fund we marked up at £1 million but bear in mind I think we marked that up on the Saturday after the fire so it was simply because we'd had all of these pledges coming through. We were running a critical incident, we marked up £1 million but that's before we'd actually sat down and kind of worked it out. We're going to formally launch the fund on Thursday this week, sorry on Wednesday this week and we're looking to raise probably between £10 million and £20 million. It depends on what we'll actually be needing in order to kind of be reasonably comfortable with the situation. In terms of pledges so far, it's too early to say I've got an understanding of what's coming in terms of we've had some very generous contributions from individuals one or two pledges from trusts and organisations but it's a little bit too early to say exactly what that is but I think again we'll be reasonably comfortable that if we work that well and effectively then we'll be able to raise the funding. Has there been any other institutions that have raised similar fundraising efforts in order to support you? There was a press report that Edinburgh College of Art was considering doing something along those lines. One in terms of raising funding. There's lots of examples of organisations that have had put in place development trusts to raise funding for things both in the kind of academic environment but also in the kind of cultural landscape as well so I think there's lots of precedence for raising that level of funding. Sorry, not much. Is that a level of funding but to support your fundraising? Oh yeah, no, there's been huge support from other institutions and some of it's come from individuals, some of it's come from groups in terms of Edinburgh College of Art, the other art schools groups of students have been fundraising and they've been sending their funds through in order to support what's going on. So no, there's been a huge amount of that going on and we've had several thousand individual contributions to the fundraising from individuals or groups of individuals and so on. So because of that reaction, you're confident you will achieve the £10 million minimum then? Yeah, I think so. I think probably the reality is and again it's this is new to me because I've never run an academic organisation going through at this moment but we do have a professional team in place for doing this. My understanding is that in a situation like this you'll get lots of office support from individuals and small groups in order to hit some of the higher targets in terms of funding. We'll be looking for funding from trusts and organisations in a different kind of way so I think that's what will unfold as the fundraising campaign develops. Thanks so much. Thanks for that. Can I just break this down? Just so I'm clear on it, you expect to raise well, we don't know how much at the moment but you expect to raise it from it seems like at least three, roughly three sources. One is the insurance settlement. One is the money coming from either the government governments and government bodies and a third is public donations, subscriptions. Is that accurate? Public and from trusts and other supporting bodies. That's in principle how we will fund the restoration. I know you don't know how much, you haven't announced yet how much you're looking for in terms of the public subscription and the trust funds. In terms of the government's funding, both the UK and the Scottish government and public bodies funding is that clear how much funding you're getting from these bodies? Is it clear? Yes. We're very clear on the funding support that we're getting from the Scottish government for the phoenix bursaries. That's one particular element. I wasn't talking about bursaries, I'm talking about the restoration. In terms of the restoration, the Scottish government have said that they will match fund up to £5 million funding to support the restoration. I haven't had the detailed discussion with the Scottish government as to exactly what the bandwidth of that funding is and how that will be constructed because we haven't got to that point about the post-recovery process, as it were, but that's a discussion which we will be having reasonably shortly, I think. In terms of the UK government, Mary quite rightly said that there had been some comment at the time. I don't know if there's any more detail on that from the UK government. There's no more detail from the UK government at the moment about that. Have you sought detail? We've been having discussions with the UK government, but there's nothing I can articulate here. Fair enough. We don't know the precise extent of the damage or what the cost will be, so can't put a figure on it, but we'll make contribution in the millions if necessary, so they're waiting for the detail that we've got. Yes, no, no, I accept that. I'm just trying to clarify. What exactly is Historic Scotland's role in funding in terms of the restoration? Or is there a role for Historic Scotland in terms of funding? Yes, it certainly would be likely to be. If we're talking about the building restoration, the building has just gone undergone a major conservation programme, which the Scottish Government contributed to, purely in terms of building grants, over a million pounds, and that was part of an £8.5 million conservation project co-funded with the HLF, Heritage Lottery Fund and others. The scenario here I think will be that the damage part of the building will be consolidated. That's a process that's ongoing. The restoration will be scoped, and that's part of an existing contract with a firm of architects who have been appointed to do that, and then that will go out to tender and be costed. So, at that point, we'll know the extent to the amount of grant that is being sought. You mentioned the Heritage Lottery Fund and the recent work that has been undertaken. Is it likely or possible that they'll be either from the Heritage Lottery or some other Lottery Fund money from that source to assist? I don't like to speak for the Heritage Lottery Fund, but it's certainly a possibility. Colin. Thank you, convener. I wanted to explore a little bit about the support that's being given and the impact of that. I was interested that Diana Mari mentioned that Historic Scotland had experiences in dangerous buildings, and maybe you could elaborate a little on that just for my information. Historic Scotland's got 345 properties, most of which have not got roofs on them, so teams of staff have to be... teams who deal with those buildings have to be qualified in how to deal with buildings that have got wall heads that are likely to be loose and dealing with scaffolding and how to deal on what effectively are building sites to make sure that those buildings without roofs don't fall down to be simple about it, so they do have a lot of experience in this kind of thing. How many staff are actually involved in support at the moment? I saw a figure originally of 35. I don't know what it's standing at at the moment. Well, that's obviously been scaled down. The 35 staff were people who responded over the first week, so we had teams of people from the various teams from the conservation staff who were going in and providing the manpower to assist with removing the items from the building, securing the building in terms of helping the fire service to allocate where they should be going was the most important in terms of the building structure and recording the building in the state that it was in, so we had a full 3D scanning imaging done of the building, the laser scanning, which of course is a partnership with the Glasgow School of Art anyway, so we had all that on site. We had the Royal Commission's survey team there to make sure that the building was recorded from exactly the same positions as had been recorded in earlier surveys so that we could do compare and contrast, and a lot of that work was quite important in determining how the building should be, what should be saved and what should be removed, and random laps you want to say something about that, working with the building control people. We did work very closely with Glasgow School of Art, building control, loss adjusters, and I also should mention the national collections, the museums and galleries of Scotland, the national records of Scotland, all of these people were involved in a coordinated, intelligent, salvage operation, so there was the context of the building, and there was also the surviving structure, if you like, that had to be made safe, consolidated, and we were involved in that both in an advisory way and it physically involved in removing some of the damaged material for conservation, so that's part of the building fabric, which will stay with us and then go back during the building's restoration. Maybe too soon, but do you think you're going to have staff full-time applied to this project, or what will your involvement be over the next few years as this restoration goes ahead? I think we would expect to, as it were, pass the damaged part of the building back into the possession of the school, but we certainly won't be giving up at that point. Will we continue to advise in close partnership with whatever management structure the school decides is appropriate for taking the project forward? I guess my concern is to understand what sort of resources historic Scotland or its successor body are going to have to commit to ensure this project goes through. I think we'll be committing the kind of resources that we would commit to any event like this where we would be providing advice, help we're appropriating kind, especially advice. If there's an application, well, there will have to be an application for restoration through the listing building process, which will go through the local authority and with Historic Scotland's advice, and that we obviously conditions attach to that like there would be in any normal listing building consent case. So we'll be reverting into our normal role, which would be the same anywhere. Although it will take up a lot of resource, there won't be any special resource allocated to this that we wouldn't allocate to other buildings in Scotland, which is our job. Of course all these things come back to budget and perhaps you could indicate whether you're able to absorb these costs within your budget. We've been tracking the costs that we expended during the emergency situation. You never want to be in a situation where you say, we can't do this because it's going to cost too much money, especially in something like this. So we responded, but we did track the costs and we're calculating that at the moment. We'll be having discussions with Scottish Government Culture and Heritage Department about whether those can be reimbursed from any of these funds or whether we will have to absorb them, but we're early days on that at the moment. As things progress, then the funding will come in the route that you've been exploring just now. I would expect that most of Historic Scotland's contribution will be, as I said, as business as usual, our normal business. Obviously we will look to be assisting through our grants programme and through the normal heritage management programme. Obviously for Historic Scotland we're going through a very important merger at the moment, which is obviously having a considerable impact internally. Will there be any impact on the resources or efficiencies from that merger as a result of this? Does it change the make-up of the merged body in any way? Is there any impact? Well, I think there's a couple of things, but we would kind of be doing these anyway. I think the first one is that we will all be sitting down and looking at our lessons learned. How can we make sure that if incidents like this happen, did we respond in the best way? Could we respond in a better way? We were going to hold a workshop anyway with the other national collections on incident preparedness planning, so that will take on a new focus when we do that later in the year, because we'll have this as an example. I think the other thing that the new board may well want to look at is how funding and grants are allocated in future, and maybe this would be an example that we can look at of where the new body might have a role or not have a role, but that would be for the new board to decide, but I can't otherwise think of a direct difference because the whole point about the new body is that the existing functions will be taken forward. So, nothing will not happen in the future that can happen now. One last small question, which I see that national collections have also committed resources, and I wondered what the extent of that was. National collections were also heroic in their response. Everybody, of course, was on standby on the Friday afternoon when it all happened. We were all aware of it. The national collections were all on standby to send conservators and experts along, and, indeed, many were called over. The National Records of Scotland sent their head archivist to help with the removal of the archives. Tom asked me if we could do anything about the conservation of the students' work, so the national galleries were able to send someone who has expert in modern art works across to give a hand there. The Museums and Gallery of Scotland coordinated experts from right across their contacts and ICON, which is the conservation organisation, were also on standby ready to respond. So, a lot of people were there and able to help in the first instance, and, indeed, are still there and willing to assist in the future. I know Museums and Gallery of Scotland, for example, Joanna, has been helping a lot to co-ordinate some of the response and I think has been helping in terms of advising on what sort of project manager you might put in place to co-ordinate the conservation work. Glasgow Museums, Glasgow Life, has been involved in terms of assessing the conservation work on the collections, and it is, of course, one of the recognised collections under the Museums and Gallery of Scotland scheme, so it is an extremely important national and international collection, as well as the building being of architectural significance both nationally and internationally, so the eyes of the world and the conservation world are upon the work and the response, so a huge response. Thank you. Given that, as you've just finished, you have the eyes of the world are upon you, which is quite a responsibility for everybody involved. You mentioned that, you know, lessons would need to be learned. Again, it's very early days, but what steps do either Historic Scotland and or the school itself intend to put in place in order to prevent such a thing reoccurring? Well, from the point of view of the school itself, in terms of the actual accident, the incident itself, that's still under investigation by the police and the fire service, so they still haven't reported back on that. We have a good sense of actually what happened, but there's certain details with that, which are kind of still unknown, and we will obviously have to kind of reflect on what happened with that particular incident. In terms of the moving back into the building, and it's obviously our intent to return to the Macintosh building as soon as we can, that building will come back as a working art school. It will be in a historically significant building, a beautiful building. As we go through the restoration process and as we bring that building back on stream, there is probably a lot we need to learn in terms of the systems that we need to put into that building and so on. So, well, those are the sort of things that we're going to be looking at very, very carefully from the context of the art school. In the background, there's the generic lessons of an organisation, the Scale of Glasgow School of Art, going through a critical incident of this nature, which is kind of a significant, in terms of organisationally, a significant learning opportunity. And to comment there on the lessons learned for Historic Scotland. Well, as I mentioned, we will be reviewing incident preparedness planning, which we do periodically, and this will provide us with the detail of what actually happens, because you can do these things in theory, but when you actually go into the incident, and I can tell you when I went in the thing that... I've been doing incident preparedness planning as being responsible for a collection of many years, but it's only when you go into it and you smell it and you see it and it looks like a bonfire that it suddenly hits home what you have to deal with. So I think that kind of thing will help in terms of how we approach these things. One of the things we perhaps should mention is that Historic Scotland and the Royal Commission have been working together over many years to put in place an in-cab system for the fire service, with the fire service. So they have all the A-listed buildings, plans of all the A-listed buildings and photographs, which they can use in the cab as they go to a fire, and they actually had it in this one, although they knew this building quite well. And it was interesting to see that actually working. So the fire service knew it was a really important building. They probably knew it anyway, being in Glasgow, but it really important building. They had plans of it. They knew which were the important things to save and how to fight the fire. Quite different from the way they would deal with a fire in any other sort of building. So we're really pleased that we've got that system in place. And I know, Randall, you've been working on fire systems, fire suppression in other A-listed buildings and how we advise on that. This is a subject that we've been researching for many, many years. And in fact, as Diana has said, we pioneered with Strathclyde fire brigade the idea of in-cab information that's delivered on the way to a fire. And that's been rolled out across Scotland. So that's been a successful thing. This is because fire is such a danger. Of course, we see fires a lot and we lose a building every month to fire. So all of our work has been around preparedness, reflecting on situations that have happened and preventing fires. So we have issued a lot of guidance in this area. We're also prepared to speak to owners of buildings, to advise them in detail on how they can best prevent fires. So in terms of our attitude to fires, we are always only alert, if you like. When we see, when we've had a major incident, we're bound to reflect on that and we're bound to look for any learning points that we can for the way in which we've reacted to it. I think it was on the date itself or certainly the following day after the fire. There was a statement, I think, by the fire service which said that the estimate was that roughly 90% of the building had been saved and about 70% of the contents. Have we got an update on that? Are those figures accurate or can we get a more accurate, updated figure? In terms of the building structure, I don't know how you make the judgment whether it's 85% or 90%. But it might be that more of the building structure might be 80% to 90% is intact. It depends how you define intact. I think I defer to Australia Scotland on that. Particularly now that the extent of the damage on the very top of the building is a little bit clearer to see, I think. In terms of contents, that figure of 70% might be reasonably accurate. I should imagine if you kind of averaged that out across all of the interiors that sit within that building, the archives and so on. It's probably 70%. And when we think about the other kind of elements within it, the studios and the student work and so on, probably more student work than went than 70%. That's the 30%. But 70% is probably the right figure, I would say. I wouldn't know about the structural thing whether you defined that as 90%. Looking at it, when you visit the site now, you see that the profile of the building is more or less intact, the external structure of the building. It's astonishing that that's the case and it's all down to the way in which the fire was fought. Some elements of the building have been, of the upper part of the building have been removed, but that's really for safe storage, conservation and replacement. So I would say the figure is as accurate as it could be. The building looks certainly intact. Thank you. I appreciate the difficulty of trying to estimate these things, but an estimate was given, so therefore, clear. Thank you, convener. I think we all echo Mary Scanlon's comments about the fire service and I think it's a credit to the School of Art that there were no injuries and everyone made their way out of this safely and was to be very thankful given the tragedy of losing the building. It could have been far, far worse. I just want to get a feel of how the students are at the moment and how you're feeling about what's been put in place in terms of the degree show and the support that's there for you at the moment. Thank you. Given the events on the Friday, it was a very busy day on Garnett Hill. It was very shocking to see. I think that following week, all the students, particularly the family, the students appreciated the need for distance and space, so everyone was still reeling from that point. I think it was clear to see the amount of work being done by staff, the fire service, my team and the students association, that the students felt, I was in contact with quite a lot of them over the course of that preceding week, felt supported through and if they needed to, they had the counselling service available from Hope Street from the first thing on a Saturday following. That remained open throughout the weekend and over the course of the following week and still remains open to students that need it. I think once we reached maybe the Thursday or the week point the following Friday, the question started coming through sensibly of assessment and graduation and degree show. The realisation of very quickly was that there was obviously going to be no degree show. I think the decision was made correctly and quite quickly that the schools of architecture and design should proceed with a degree show. I think finite students felt that that was needed. I think it would have dragged the students down, had designer architecture felt it inappropriate to display their final year students' work. Alistair Payne, the acting head of fine art, was very quick with the fine art team with the need to have a physical presence on the day of the 12th and the 13th and the degree show that we're now in. So to pull together very quickly the showcase, the single image for each student showcase plus the publication that was made, was actually standing there on Friday just three weeks on to see that pulled together within such a time was impressive. I think the students really, obviously extremely disappointed that they have one image to represent four years worth of work, but I think it was a great gesture and I think they actually benefited, have benefited greatly from having a physical kind of object to come through and also the phoenix bursaries that's coming through over announced later today the details of which will be known to students later in the week. I think they're still waiting for specifics and they have questions as they should do, but they know that I've been so heavily involved and I'm kind of confident that they have a lot of good things coming to them and that the process of the bursary and the residency scheme will actually benefit the students greatly given what happened. Being on the ground throughout that week I was actually kind of amazed and extremely proud to be, I mean being the students association we're supported by the school but we're independent of almost as a kind of critical friend position. Being so on the ground during that week immensely proud of everybody involved in the process and the delicate nature and the respect to staff and students, particularly the work was impressive, good to see. Sorry, where are you going? My service was very respectful to the students at work as well actually. Is that the same as the rest of the content? In terms of the documentation of the visual images is that something that the students would normally have done through the process of the creation of their artwork? Because I was really intrigued that that was available to everyone at the time. Throughout the development heading into a degree show the constant message, I graduated from fine art photography only two years ago so the memory of the degree show pressure is still very fresh but it's document, you document you document and you document your show. So a lot of students do have photographic images of their final installations in terms of how that kind of relates to assessment and kind of evidence of the work produced is extremely difficult for me once one student's work is completely lost you can't base anybody else's assessment of what the studio space was. Some students didn't document it was installation, it was performance it was video works it's very difficult. In terms of the documentation of the spaces after the event every studio space was well documented by the fine art team for the spaces we could get into. So the students I think if they really wanted to understand what their studios were like we couldn't see those images I think it would be good. Ysgrifennaeth, you mentioned the issue of how the school goes forward in terms of capacity and where students are going to be placed and things. Is adversity intended to support the current student cohort or is it going to be ongoing in terms of the new students who may not be able to study within that building anymore but what are the impacts in capacity? The virtual scheme is very much directed on this particular group of 102 fine art students who will be graduating on Friday. The key thing is they obviously will graduate on Friday they receive their degree certificate and they will have their degree from Glasgow University but what they have lost is they've lost the body of work which is critical in their professional networking and their professional life as professional artists and they've lost the degree show moment they've had their showcase moment where all of their work is on display and that has kind of for some students that's a where they actually sell some of their work but the key thing is that's where they make their professional context in terms of galleries we have a huge number of galleries from the UK, from Europe, internationally in terms of their professional networking that's a critical moment for them so the bursaries will provide them with the opportunity to spend some time creating new work and probably be about three to four months we've had numerous offers from other institutions the other Scottish art colleges Duncan and Johnston, ECA, Greys institutions in the UK institutions in Europe, America, Japan and so on who we have relationships with we can't accommodate these students on Garnet Hill but they will provide they've offered to provide studio space and sort of some tutorial to support this won't be a kind of academic program it's more of a kind of residency scheme for those students so the bursaries will be paying a small stipend to the students but also covering some of their costs in kind of engaging in that activity they might be taking up studio space in the kind of professional sector in Glasgow as well and then at the beginning of next year in March we'll be able to have an exhibition of their work which will be the kind of equivalent to the degree show moment but that will have clear water between that and the graduating students of 2015 the students who will be coming into programme or continuing their programmes in September, you're right they won't have the opportunity to be in the Macintosh building and we're at the moment looking at a whole variety of different sites in Glasgow for decant so that is it'll take us at least 12 to 18 months back into the east wing of the Macintosh building it'll take us potentially 36 months possibly 48 months to get into the west wing so we'll gradually bring that back on stream but we'll be looking after the build to those students who kind of continue or coming into programme through finding suitable accommodation thank you can I just, I mean obviously I've seen the Scottish Government press release which was issued this morning on the Phoenix bursary scheme which states there'll be up to £3.5 million in student aid provided by the Scottish Government which is very welcome I wonder if you could just maybe go into some detail given your knowledge of what's happening we've only just seen obviously the release but it does say that the money alongside the nations to the school will go towards funding short-term living costs, academic supervision another item such as provision of studio space can you give us some detail about what the expectation is or what an individual student who's lost some or all of their work could expect from this scheme OK, we've got the actual financial breakdown per student but the expectation is that each student would receive the opportunity to effectively take a residency I think it's for 15 weeks and they will receive a financial stipend during that time to pay their living costs it could be that returning home so if they're a student from Edinburgh they might go back to Edinburgh but they might then choose to use studios within ECA as an example because they've been offered to us so the students will be provided with that living stipend they will have their travel costs wherever it is they might be working paid for and they will have money for some kind of consumables and materials to reconstruct the work physically there will also be a small amount of money assigned to some kind of professional support from a kind of professional advisor or some kind of tutoring system too within their kind of host institution I think it's something like 25 to 30 hours of time so that's effectively the package for each student but each student will be and the students don't know this detail in this sense actually so kind of giving away more than I should perhaps they let's hope you know we wonder if they're tuned into the select committee but they will be bidding for that so they'll be making a professional application and we're kind of taking the model from we're borrowing models from other places like the residency scheme that Creative Scotland operates as kind of models and frameworks for dealing with that because these students will be they're graduates now and they will be this is about them in their professional life and providing them with a a platform upon which to rebuild that you said there was a 102 students affected 102 students who are in that final year cohort 102 students in the final year cohort is there any breakdown you could give us about how many are impacted by the fire and the extent to the impact are there any students of that 102 who are completely unaffected by it and are there any who have lost absolutely everything it's interesting because it's obviously something that's been vexing our minds we've been going through the last three and a half weeks there's 102 students in that cohort some of the students have lost absolutely everything their studios have completely gone and all their work was in the studios that's probably about 35% I believe we've lost absolutely everything and that's four years work so we're getting ready for their degree show so all of their valuable items were located in that studio space for about one moment so everything has gone apart from the digital records they might have there's another perhaps 20-25% who've got significantly damaged fire damaged work so the work was taken out this is where the fire crews took work out actually out of those spaces but it's kind of significantly damaged the other studios students have got their work is some of its kind of water damaged because even in the east wing there was a lot of water sketchbooks are kind of water damaged they've been frozen as we speak the majority, well the rest of it's smoke damaged and it's kind of had a significant smoke penetration so the key thing about that is some of the work still exists for those damaged students who don't have damaged work but they've lost their kind of degree show moments their professional networking moment and although some of them have physically have intact work it's difficult for them to kind of exhibit that work until it's kind of been through a restoration conservation process so in answer to your question across that 102 students there's a kind of bandwidth all the way from 30% with absolutely nothing a group in the middle who've got significantly damaged and then the other who've in a sense their professional networking moment has been damaged and their work is damaged in that context and difficult for them to exhibit Well the members of the question are right in Neil Bibby in one second I have one final question Neil if you don't mind specifically the group who have effectively it's going to sound terrible but lost nothing but lost nothing in the physical sense their work is intact but as you say their moment in the sun if you like has been affected their networking opportunity has been affected it could have an impact on their professional career going forward Are they as equally entitled to apply for the bursary in support as those who've had to work damaged They'll have the opportunity to apply the way they frame their application might well be different because their needs in terms of creating a new platform of work and exhibiting it and so on might be different from those who've lost everything but it is open to 102 I mean when you actually dig into the nitty gritty of this you were thinking about it bearing in mind that we were planning this 24 hours out from the instant whilst there's lots of other things going on became very apparent very early on about how difficult it was actually in reality to kind of make the judgement in black and white terms oh you are affected oh you're not when the totality of 102 have been inside this building on the Friday afternoon obviously I'm not sure about the timings of events but in terms of the students being awarded their degrees had the final marks for students being collated prior to the fire or had that been done? Not for the final because the final marks they were just running up to the point where they were closing for the assessment process that everything was going to get frozen at five o'clock on that Friday afternoon and that's when all the work was going to be inside the degree show spaces and then the assessment teams would be going in on the Monday following from the fire so that critical moment hadn't actually been completed at that particular point on the Friday afternoon Have students been awarded some students been awarded in terms of an estimate of their previous work in terms of the students have all been we've completely gone through the assessment process and they've all been awarded their degrees and their marks and obviously that was a reasonably complex thing to do but we were able to do that because obviously generally speaking on an individual basis students quite often have mitigating circumstances with this particular incident we had kind of collective mitigating circumstances and when we were dealing with an individual student with mitigating circumstances we very systematically go through the nature of those circumstances we very systematically go through all of our assessment records running up to that point of mitigation if you like and we can make a judgment and in this particular incident we've just had to make we've had to kind of explore that in a great deal of detail for a large cohort of students but actually we feel very very confident about the judgments that have been made and that's largely down to the kind of frameworks within which assessments take place A percentage of students affected is there a percentage that is there a percentage that you were able to fully mark along the work that had been done and a percentage that you had to rely on an estimate of? Well actually right down to the nitty gritty of this when we were normally doing that assessment our assessment teams walk around the degree show spaces and they're assessing a collective body of work in a kind of exhibition format we weren't able to do that for any of the 102 students because all of that work was set up in the studios of the Mackintosh building the Mackintosh building usually has first year, second year third year, fourth year students in it during the academic year but this particular point when the fire struck it had been first second and third year work was not in the building it had been totally given over to all of the final year students in fine art who were setting up as a big exhibition space so none of the none of the students were able to benefit from that final phase in the assessment so there had to be mitigation for all of the students at that kind of final moment but as I say we had we've got very robust assessment records and systems and structures in place for dealing with mitigation We've talked about the support from the Scottish Government and the UK Government in terms of the role of the city council I think they've offered the assistance in terms of areas for graduations etc Would you like to comment on the role of the city council? Fantastic support from Glasgow city council right from the very very beginning particularly from George and Gordon in city council Gordon Matheson was there on the on the Saturday within 24 hours we had to phone Gordon up and say we really need help and it's not help in the next hour it's help in the next 10 minutes and it's been absolutely instrumental in terms of the recovery effort both for the student work and the exhibitions but it's been critical in terms of the work that we've been doing with Historic Scotland in terms of bringing valuable items out of the building so that's been hugely helpful to us and the support from city council has been ongoing as we've been looking for potential places to take the students in September as points of de-camp so extremely helpful at that point of view as well and there's many other people within the city of Glasgow that have been extremely helpful and supportive the other universities and other institutions again likewise on the Saturday morning were there very very helpful security teams from Strathclyde University, Glasgow University within there to help us secure the building again which was a kind of key issue because we've effectively got a building with incredibly valuable items within it and very complex operations going on on the ground in Garnett Hill where we needed beyond the security that we have on hand at Glasgow School of Art for our normal operations so now we're very very appreciative of all that help Clearly academic excellence and student welfare are core objectives of the Glasgow School of Art but I wonder going forward if this is going to take four years in total of our restoration project how is that going to impact on the wider activities of the GSA, things like enterprises and exhibitions will there be a wider impact? There will be a wider impact. We have GSA Enterprises which is a separate sort of limited company in its own right which runs all of the tours so we have 20,000 visitors to Glasgow School of Art who go on organised tours of the Macintosh building and there's obviously a retail element to that as well and that's a kind of significant well it's a small but it's a very significant part of Glasgow School of Art's activities that's obviously going to be very affected and it affects all sorts of things because the tours are run by students we pay the students to do the tours so it's an income stream for the students as well so we're looking very carefully at what we can do to deal with that I think the impact will be particularly for the 12 months on that activity because once we can particularly get back into the east wing of the Macintosh building then we'll be able to resurrect at least some of those tours on the story of the restoration again working with Historic Scotland because that will be a significant interest to visitors so there's that element which will be affected there are many other aspects of GSA in terms of exhibitions which will be affected because there's one of the key exhibition spaces at the Macintosh Museum which we again won't have access to but again that's something where we might all be working with the City Council with the McClellan Galleries and so on and using other exhibition spaces and again there's many organisations where they're I think one of the really key things for us is that Glasgow School of Art does actually have very ambitious plans for development from this point we were looking at developing a whole variety of different things from the platform we have at Glasgow School of Art and we have to be very, very determined to see through those ambitious developments alongside the work we have to put into the Macintosh building so as much as we can we don't want to be deflected from the ambitions of the school it's an international art school that is based in Glasgow, based in Scotland and has an extremely high profile internationally and we can't be deflected from that we have to really, really push forward with the plans we've got for the school Cymru, did you have a question yet? Sorry, I thought you were indicating, sorry, Clare Adamson Pleased to hear what was being said so sorry Mentioned that there'll be many lessons learned about the whole process and what was done and I was very glad to hear you say that the fire service was very respectful of the students' work as well as the other parts of the building because my understanding is that they actually adopted evacuation techniques that they would normally use for people in this situation for actually getting things into the McClellan galleries and I'm sure all these bits of information will be used in the future My question is obviously with all the documentaries that have been done about the Macintosh building it's probably one of the most heavily documented and accessible buildings that we have in Scotland but what I would like to ask is will there be lessons learned about the vulnerability of other areas and how we might pre-document those should there be such a an incident again in some of our other less well documented historic buildings? I think that's a very good point one of the lessons is make a record in case of such a calamity on this scale what we can do now with digital technology is incredible, you have a minute record of every part of a building you're absolutely right the Macintosh building was very very well documented measured and drawn and so there is a record there is a record of exactly how it looked and exactly how it was in general terms it's I suppose you would say it's an extraordinary building made of ordinary materials so it won't be it won't be impossible to recoup the design using the as it were the original materials that were used to create the building but yes I agree the lesson is record document and against the possibility of loss I think one of the things that's been happening in the school of art is that the collections have been there has been a programme to digitise and Museums of Gallery Scotland have extended the programme grant to continue the digitisation obviously a digital record is not the same as the original but at least it is a record digitisation both of buildings in terms of 3D imaging and of collections in terms of digitising items is quite slow and expensive and it's an almost impossible thing to get grants for because it's seen as a routine I think this will be something where we could perhaps put some emphasis on how important recording is how important digitisation is because it does give you that at least the record if not the original and one of the things about salvaging so much of the what looked like things that were past saving is the fact that you can then do some music analysis on them as to what wood was used how were things constructed what were the dimensions of it so you can record through photography and laser scanning a lot but you can't actually record the key details so I think one of the things that will come out of the salvage operation is some of that detail which will allow an authentic or as authentic as possible reconstruction as opposed to a pastiche I think that's really important because people want to go and see a building or see a painting they don't want to see just a reproduction they want to have something in it that gives them authenticity and I think that will be crucial for the future and indeed for continuing tours people will want to see what's been salvaged and what did you learn and how was it done and all this kind of thing in terms of lessons learned obviously we need to wait and see what kind of the outcome of any kind of investigation is but in terms of generally in terms of historic buildings and the risk of fire what are the expectations on the gardens of historic buildings in terms of fire risk assessments before you ask that but we just have to supplement you effectively between I'm interested in the same thing earlier that you will lose one per month to fire one what per month one historic Scotland property we wouldn't have any luck assumed it wasn't that a historic building I think not necessarily we would say a traditional building or a historic building so a building built before 1919 or a listed building just in time what are the protocols in terms of fire risk assessments and ensuring we protect our historic buildings from the risk of fire is there any extra things that should be done how regularly is that done will you be reviewing any sort of protocols that you have well we certainly we keep all of these protocols under review and certainly for our own properties we carried out a major review about six or seven years ago we have but every case is different fire prevention is not a one size fits all strategy so what we would ask building owners historic buildings and others in fact is to assess their own property and as I said before we're very happy to advise on that we've got a lot of published we're also happy to advise it's something that needs to be kept under review there are all sorts of measures you have compartmentalisation fire suppression system so it really depends on the asset that you're trying to protect the best way of protecting it check Sam what is the process of keeping students informed and up to date about what's happening are there proper lines of communication now in place? The message coming from us was to stay very much in tune with the internal virtual learning environment which has regular updates for students to log into plus the website I think that was for the week the importance is not to to ensure there is one channel of communication for students and that I wasn't saying something to students that was incorrect I had much left the school to take a lead on that the response from students was that it was absolutely thorough it was almost every day if not every other day there was a comprehensive update of where the situation was at at the moment now that it's kind of the dust has settled in a sense there's more communication students are back on Garnet Hill people are enjoying the event people are talking and we are constantly being fed kind of updates being the head of the Students Association and obviously I sit on the Board of Governors I get updates, regular meetings with Tom to make sure that I'm as up to speed and as accurate as I can be and I can relay that out to the students so far from the people of particularly the fourth year cohort there's been no complaints about the level of communication that's been coming out The group we're talking about effectively would now be had this not happened would have finished a degree show would be waiting to be awarded a degree and would now be scattering not just around the country but probably around the world I assume many of them will still be leaving Glasgow at this stage or within the next few weeks other processes in place to ensure that they're still kept up to date about what's going to happen and what they can do and the application processes and the timings of all that The graduation ceremony is actually this coming Friday, the morning cohort is the fine art group The announcements for the Phoenix burst were very considered in getting that before graduation so that those students that do disperse won't disperse having not received the application and the guideline so that's coming hopefully it would be Thursday morning they should get the information on that ready for graduation because we were aware that many people friends and family turn up they book holidays for the Saturday they graduate, they disappear for 2-3 weeks that 2-3 weeks will be a crucial period for getting that kind of application process in I'll be working closely with the people assigned I'm actually working on the Phoenix bursary so communication through me and through the team in place will be key but I'm confident From the schools point of view Professor, are you confident that you have all the structures in place now, not only to keep in touch with this particular group of students but the I don't like using the phrase, the dust is settled but you've got it in my mind now Sam, so I avoid it but effectively now we're in this we've had a little bit of time to think about it you now have the structures in place to take the whole project forward you know what's happening, you know what's going to happen in terms of reopening after the summer holidays is that now in place? Yeah, technically we were in critical instant management mode for a period of 10 days and we've now handed that back into the executive group of Glasgow School of Art and we now have that as a kind of business continuity exercise now for us and we've got the structures and work streams in place to deal with that That's right, I've got two very final questions unless MD else has got anything to ask of this stage. One is on the restoration process Diana, which you just mentioned and you touched upon what will replace or what will happen in terms of the restoration and there is always a fear when a building and there's always a tension between preserving restoring and dignification of very important older properties where is the balance going to be struck in terms of bringing the library and other parts of the building that have been damaged whereas how will that decision be taken? Historic Scotland will give advice we won't be taking the decision the decision is the Glasgow School of Arts decision the trustees presumably but I think there are various options to be taken as to what stage restoration you put back and how well what sort of detail you put in place I think it would be I think it's essential because of its reputation that the library and the the associated parts of the building that are quintessentially Macintosh are restored to as best we can because of its international and national reputation it's really important that that is properly restored because that's what people will be expecting to see and it may well be that there are items that can be put back in to assist with that authenticity but there are decisions to be taken no building including this one survives without change and even the library has been changed over the years since Macintosh built it so the question is whether you go back to the complete original whether you go back to as it was when the fire started so these are decisions that will have to be made is to what it's got to stand by to give our expertise and advice on that and obviously the funding will have to be raised and worked out and how that will go we have a lot of expertise we can offer in terms of research and understanding and earlier records of the building but it will be up to the trustees to lead on that and for the school to lead on that and we will offer as much support as required Professor Innes, what is the school's view of how much you restore how much you want to get back to the original as it was originally built or as Dan Dan I just said at the point at which the fire occurred the damage parts of the building which will not be restored they will be renewed replaced well obviously the certain parts of the building have been damaged but they will be restored so there's nothing effectively that's being lost it's still there it's a question of restoring the key elements within the building so we're determined to restore those elements it's going to be complex because we have to there's a complex set of trade-offs between the academic institution that always was the art school inside that building the historical significance of that building and we're inside a beautiful building and the funding and the funding as I've articulated at the beginning we have a significant platform of funding we know that we have to fundraise above that platform and with the fundraising campaign we have to articulate extremely clearly what is it we're raising the funding for go back to the point our intent the restoration intent is to bring that back as a Mackintosh masterpiece and that probably will mean that so much of that is embodied in the material and the construction but inevitably as we go through the material and the construction we have to be extremely mindful of issues of fire safety and fire security and all the rest of it so there will be some complex trade-offs but I think we have absolute restoration intent to bring back the masterpiece and bring it back a working art school within it I would be expected nothing less with regard to some of the more obvious that the library is the most obvious example but obviously there are other parts of the building which have been damaged or destroyed internally which are not so critical in terms of the integrity of Mackintosh's design and just wonder whether is it your intent to restore everything or not in a sense it's all critical to Mackintosh's intent it's just that libraries when we think about the building the thing that comes to the foreground of our thinking I think even the way other things are detailed in that building they're all part of the holistic whole of the Mackintosh building but again it's going to be a very very complex set of trade-offs as we kind of work through that you know that network of related variables as it were I just wanted to add a bit if you don't mind it's the the significance of the building is very thorough and deep rooted it's not just an appearance of Mackintosh if you like I think Thomas already said this to some extent we have the design of the building the design of the spaces within the building and the materials and construction this is all part of the overall significance of the building so I think when you see Mackintosh use steelwork in a particular way ordinary everyday materials but kind of bend them to his artistic will this is really what we this is where the significance lies along with everything else that the building contains just one final question obviously the school of art has a lot of famous graduates over the years and I'm sure you've already been contacted by some of them has there been any opportunity to see whether they would be willing to the very least throw their names behind the appeals for public funds absolutely I think that when it's revealed on Thursday you will be intrigued by some of the people who have now thrown their hat into the ring intrigued is an interesting word we certainly wait with interest on Thursday can I thank you all for attending today the committee obviously like I think probably everybody in Scotland was extremely upset and devastated by the fire when it occurred we are delighted and relieved that so much of it has been saved by the excellent work of the fire service and of course the work of your own staff, the students and other volunteers and of course the work of Historic Scotland and the experts from Arkham and others we hope that everything goes as smoothly as possible and the funding is in place as quickly as possible particularly for the students and the bursaries that they will receive so that they can get on with their lives and their artistic work so we wish them well and I'm sure the committee will be very keen on being kept up to date with the progress as you go forward over the next few months and I'm sure over the next few years so thank you very much I'll close the meeting