 Good morning and welcome to the 15th meeting of the Constitution, Europe, Excel, Affairs and Culture Committee in 2023. Our first agenda item is to take evidence on our culture and communities inquiry, which is focused on taking a place-based approach to culture. In the morning, we are delighted to be joined by Gemma Neville, director of creative lives, Sarah Lattle, policy officer, volunteer Scotland Alison Reeves, manager of Scotland, making music. Welcome to committee. We've heard throughout our inquiry about the importance of volunteers in developing sustaining culture in our communities. Particularly the submission from Creative Lives outlines the volunteer-led, locally-based creative groups really represent the true backbone of culture in our communities in Scotland, and yet it's one of the most overlooked parts of our cultural landscape. How do the panel think that the contribution of volunteers is developing culture in communities, and how could that be better supported? Since I've quoted perhaps Ms Neffel, you would go first. I'm firstly just welcome that we're having this conversation. As you say, it can be an overlooked part of the cultural ecosystem, so it's really welcome that the committee is having this inquiry. I'm here representing Creative Lives, formerly known as voluntary arts, and Creative Lives has been a charity working to champion all different types of volunteer community-led creative practice for over 30 years, and across five nations, the UK and the Republic of Ireland. I bring that comparative context as well. It's my belief that everyone is creative given the opportunity and self-confidence, so what we want to do at Creative Lives, and hopefully that's helpful to our conversation, is to address some of the systemic inequalities that can prevent us realising our full creative potential and to be a voice for positive change. I think that we're going to come to look at some of the evidence that's emerging about trends in active participation. It might be of use to just clarify what I mean by volunteering as well, the stink from participation. If we take an example like a choir, which I have found in every community, and by community I mean place and creative practice, and the people that are turning up to sing for the joy of singing often from professional or community or amateur backgrounds, they're doing so in a participatory sense. The volunteers are the ones that are setting up, running, keeping going, the choir, and they may also bring in paid support for tutoring and for recording and so on. I hope that that example helps to distinguish, because we run into muddy water if we start to have a false dichotomy with professional, amateur community arts. These things are all interrelated. You asked about what sort of assist for good connectivity. I think it's about civic space, a really reimagining of what the civic realm, the creative commons can be, so really utilising existing venues, but also our civic spaces, parks, cafes, pubs, as well as libraries in the school estate and so on. It's about active agency involvement. I can give you examples from all of your constituencies of the many voluntary arts groups that are there. You might not be fully aware of all of them because a lot of this is unseen or unheard. Given proper agency, community planning level and participatory democracy level, they have potential to add so much value social, economic as well as the human value of feeling good about ourselves and connecting to one another. Finally, I'd mentioned sustainability. You've heard very persuasive evidence from academics and culture practitioners before the session today about the value of in-depth quality interventions. My interest is in what happens before and after those sorts of interventions, so how do we ensure sustainable creative cultural ecology? That's really about ensuring the right enabling conditions are there for which central and local governments as well as the third sector have a role to play in creating pathways between different opportunities and making sure that access is affordable and available and different parts of the public realm all link up. We can come to examples later on if that's helpful, but I hope that that sets a bit of the scene as a starter. Thank you very much as well. I echo a lot of what Gem has said. I think the clarity around what the difference between participation and volunteering is incredibly helpful. I would completely agree that volunteering is about those people who are supporting and sustaining that activity for the benefit of those people who want to participate in culture. In terms of participation and the contribution of volunteering to culture in communities, we know that around about 5 per cent of volunteers are supporting culture and heritage in Scotland, so that's around about 61,000 people. It does a bit of a disservice to those volunteers who are supporting culture in communities because it goes so much broader than that. Just thinking about what Gem has mentioned around the places where volunteering takes place, a lot of those places will be run by committees, so groups of volunteers that aren't necessarily primarily motivated by culture, but they are giving their time to support an asset in their community that is a place where culture can take place. Just to go back to the figures, in the latest Scottish household survey, 30 per cent of Scotland's volunteers supported organisations in their communities, which is 370,000 people. That's a huge increase in year on year, so that's about a 5 per cent increase just on the year before that. We know that a lot more people in communities are volunteering to support activity in that community. In terms of the importance of volunteering for culture, I mean that Gem has mentioned that there are examples all over the country of where that takes place. It was actually struck when reading creative lives response in ours, so we had said that there was about 5,000 voluntary groups that support culture within Scotland and creative lives had a figure of 10,000, but I think that that probably speaks to the fact that so much of this activity is unseen. It's really quite tiny organisations that are supporting culture in communities. When you're thinking about that, that you've got people who are giving their time to support that type of activity, what we are really struck with at the moment in Volunteer Scotland is the impact of the pandemic and then subsequently going straight into the cost of living crisis. That's having an enormous impact on the voluntary sector, but particularly those really tiny organisations that are community-based, because you've got those groups of trustees that are trying to navigate all of those challenges, whilst also holding up their day jobs as well. There's a lot of challenges there, which I'm happy to unpick as we go through. Good morning. It's great to be here because I'm really interested to explain to you the size of the music making sector in Scotland, which is not professional, because we really notice that that is unseen and unnoticed and needs the recognition that it is there more than anything else. Making music is a membership association, so we only have an understanding of our own membership with statistics. We have 255 groups in membership in Scotland, which is about 14,000 people participating in groups. Our groups tend to be larger than some of the ones that we were just mentioning. Their average membership is about 55. They are orchestras, more formal choirs such as choral societies but also community choirs. They could be a ukulele band or a samba band as well. They are all constituted organisations and a lot of them are charities. All of them are run by volunteers as a committee. Some of them have paid admin staff, but very few, and about 80 per cent of them would employ a professional music director or music leader, but the rest of the people who are organising that activity are doing that on a voluntary basis. They are selling tickets at the doors and they are providing a safe space for the vulnerable people who need extra support in their groups. They are doing all that work to provide this massive sector. There are about over 50 orchestras that are in our membership in Scotland. If you compare that to the number of professional orchestras that are significantly more, they are performing three or four times a year in their local communities. The way that many people in our communities are experiencing music and classical music in particular. The benefit that those volunteers are bringing to their communities is huge. As I have said, we are only representing a part of the sector. We do not have pipe bands in our membership, for example, or concert bands. There is another huge amount of that activity going on, which is hugely valuable. It is reliant on an existing infrastructure that is challenged and very delicate. It does not require a lot of funding to keep them running. In fact, only about 5 per cent of our member's income ever comes from funding—any type of funding—local authority created in Scotland. It is almost all from membership subscriptions and ticket sales and CD sales, but it needs its venues to be affordable, accessible and to be able to get to its venues. That is the delicate infrastructure that we are most concerned about at the moment, and that will be eroded if we do not take care. Thank you very much. I will move to questions from our members. I will move to Mr Bibby first, please. Thank you, convener. Good morning. You have all rightly talked about the impact that the cost of living crisis is having on the cultural sector and participation amongst the voluntary sector. Funding is important in supporting the cultural sector during the cost of living crisis. In some of the submissions, we have mentioned the need for greater revenue support, but I have just heard Ms Reeves talking about the level of funding that there is and the need to invest in facilities and make facilities affordable and accessible. Obviously, in Government, there is always a discussion about whether we should prioritise money to revenue funding or capital funding, but we have heard the importance of investing in community facilities and investing in cultural venues as well to make them affordable and accessible. The question is specifically for the voluntary sector, because you have different revenue costs compared to other organisations. Are we getting the balance right in terms of revenue and capital? Both budgets are being squeezed at the moment, but are we getting the balance right between where funding is going to achieve the aims that you are setting out in investing in those facilities but also keeping activities going through revenue support? I understand why there is the scrutiny of funding. It can over-dominate unhelpfully, because it is a trwism that lots of volunteer-led creative groups are largely self-sustaining. They are not dependent on funding, but what they need is enabling conditions. The things that might prevent flourishing groups are things such as reliable affordable transport, which has a disproportionate impact on older people and lone women if they cannot get out to the regularity of their group. We have a crisis of social isolation in this country, both loneliness and confidence. There are areas in which Government policy could better join up across strands. The notion of funding streams itself is a mistake to separate out so-called professional and community-led creative practice, because this is an ecology where things are inherently linked. When creative lives came into being 30 years ago, we talked about formal structures of umbrella bodies, guilds, associations and so on. Those things actually exist. We are here in front of making music today, which is one of the largest. However, most of us take part in creative expression through many fluid overlapping networks, which sometimes makes it quite hard to quantify some of the data, but it is all the more interesting because we have the opportunity to develop talent and to try different things and, crucially, to collaborate. Funding streams work best in areas in which there is the scope for collaboration, flexibility and not hierarchy. We recognise that some groups can be huge in their scale and reach. They have Scotland-wide amateur orchestras, just as they have very informal networks in places and by creative community who are getting together regularly to do their particular thing. It is all of that in the mix that can make it quite difficult to test the data, but we know that less than 10 per cent of the groups that we are regularly in touch with at Creative Lives have a venue and capital costs. They are much more likely to be making or wanting regular access to existing facilities in their community. Flexibility is what is really critical. We know that from things like our annual big conversation survey, as well as information about groups keeping in touch and getting back in touch post-pandemic face-to-face. Yes, absolutely. You mentioned the impact of the cost of living, and we have been publishing a quarterly bulletin on the impact of the cost of living crisis on volunteering as it emerges. One of the data sources that we have been using is the third sector tracker, which our colleagues at SCVO have published together with the Scottish Government. It has been very helpful. One of the things that is quite stark is the impact of the crisis on some of the things that Gemma was talking about. Increase in cost is also an increase in demand for services, but there is also a significant challenge around volunteering. Around about 30 per cent of organisations that responded to the latest version of the third sector tracker are struggling with volunteer shortages. There are two sides to that. There is the challenge that organisations do not have adequate resource to support volunteers. If we are thinking about where funding is best placed, there is definitely something around providing support to organisations to best engage volunteers, but there is also the issue that volunteers are not immune to the impact of the cost of living crisis themselves as individuals. We know that a lot of volunteers are still fairly fatigued after the pandemic. There is potentially a bit of a sense of apathy about living in a bit of a perma crisis and feeling what can my volunteering do to change things. I was struck when I was reading some of the other responses that Craig Nish Hall responded and said that one of the things that they have been trying to do to keep culture accessible to people is that a third of their events that they provide are free, but they are struggling to do that because they do not have the resource to keep doing that. I think that that speaks to another potential issue that, if we are talking about funding, it is really important to consider around the quality of access to culture. I completely appreciate that a lot of the voluntary arts groups are self-sustaining and are reliant on charging for some of their services, but I think that the challenge there is what about those people who just do not have the money to pay to access culture in their community? I think that there is a need there for funding to support that quality of access to culture. If we organisations such as Craig Nish Hall are struggling to continue to provide a third of their services for free, we could probably expand that across the rest of Scotland. If we have culture organisations that have typically been able to provide some resources for free, they do not own their own hall and the rent for that hall is increasing, and the people who usually access their cultural services cannot afford to pay more. There is a bit of a catch-22 there, and that is where funding is most needed at the moment. It might help if I explain what the finances look for a group like ours. Their greatest expense is venue hire, and most groups do not use arts venues. Over half of our members use churches and church hall spaces, so there is a significant challenge there at the moment as the Church of Scotland rationalised their estate. That is proving a challenge. About 20 per cent use schools and educational facilities. That proved a challenge post Covid, as some of the school estate took quite a long time to open up to external lets, which means that our members had to look for other venues—sometimes commercial ones. About 12 per cent use community or village halls, and we have heard about Craig Nisham and the challenges that are there. All of our members would tell you that their costs for venue hire are increasing. We have not done an analysis of that, but the ones that we have spoken to about it are telling us that that is definitely happening or about to happen. A lot are having to think about a move because of the church hall change. We do not know whether that is going to result in there being less space for our groups to rehearse and perform in yet, because it might be that there are so many church halls that there is enough for everybody, even if the estate is rationalised. That is definitely something that they are thinking about. A large percentage of their income comes from their own members, and they are very reluctant to raise those subs and those fees for exactly the point that Sarah was making there, is that those people are finding their own incomes challenging. If you expect the funding to come through arts funding for our types of groups, that is not where it is coming from. It is not coming from Creative Scotland. A very small number of our groups apply to Creative Scotland, but it will be for music development activity. For example, Aberdeenshire Saxophone Orchestra had some funding to buy expensive, larger saxophones so that they could lend them to members who would not have been able to afford to buy them. The Glasgow School of Art has commissioned seven women composers to write some music for them to be performed this May. That is the type of funding that they would apply for. It is not running costs, so it is that infrastructure funding that really makes the difference to them. Having those publicly owned, accessible, financially available spaces is absolutely fundamental. Thank you. I have a couple of supplementaries that I will come back to you about Dr Allen and then Mr Winfeshen. I was interested in what you were saying about how a lot of this volunteering work is done by people who are already leading busy lives and jobs, and yet, at the same time, you also mentioned their social isolation and loneliness. Is there any way of addressing that issue and trying to bring in a wider, more diverse group of people into that type of volunteering and dealing with isolation and loneliness at the same time? I do not pretend that that is a simple problem to solve, but I am just interested in any observations that you have on that. Sarah Winder, if you could come in first on that. Yes, absolutely. We did some research in 2019 into the health and wellbeing benefits of volunteering, and there was quite conclusive evidence that volunteering helps to address social isolation and loneliness. The challenge that we have with volunteering is that those people who are likely to benefit most from volunteering do not participate in it, so there are challenges around accessibility of volunteering. That has just increased, I suppose, as a result of the cost of living crisis. One example would be about travel expenses. A lot of volunteers do not necessarily have the spare money at the moment to be able to pay for their travel expenses. About half of the organisations that are advertising for opportunities on our opportunities database do not provide travel expenses, because most of them cannot afford to do so. There is a challenge there in terms of making volunteering more accessible so that those groups who would benefit most from it are able to participate, but it comes back to the point that Mr Bibby is making about resource. There is a need to increase resource to provide supported volunteering opportunities so that those people who are most likely to experience social isolation and loneliness are able to participate more. I agree that the volunteering action plan that was published last year includes one of the central tenants of that. A lot of the actions around improving accessibility, but I feel like the will is there. However, when we are currently dealing with a cost of living crisis, which is just exacerbating a lot of those barriers, it makes it quite challenging. It is a good question that has some complexities to it. Firstly, the good news is that our own surveying shows that 67 per cent of people say that they are no longer reluctant to meet in person post-pandemic. The hesitancies are from new mothers and older people in the 450 people who responded to that. There is a diversity of cultural plural across Scotland, lots of which we do not see in here. However, loneliness and social isolation are clearly systemic. I have some examples of initiatives that we are doing in Scotland and elsewhere that address that. Structurally, it would be tremendously helpful if the Scottish and local Governments could link up their policies and practices under tackling social isolation and loneliness in the Equalities Division of the National Government with the cultural brief to see that those things are inherently connected. We have experience at a grass-level creative lives in distributing what we call microgrants. We are not a funder ourselves, but sometimes we will distribute small seed money in very modest amounts, most recently £300 to different groups. We did that on behalf of the Scottish Community Alliance Pockets and Prospects Fund, which is Government money. That went to groups to tackle some of the practical mundane things such as utilities, heat, light, rent and insurance. For example, RIGARTs in Greenock used that money to upscale their facilities so that they could be more inclusive of people with physical and cognitive disabilities. They sewed together for all nations in Paisley and Feshaw. They used that modest £300 to book taxes for refugee and asylum-seeking women to be able to come to the craft workshops that they were hosting. Just a tiny bit of money but I suppose the vote of confidence can go a long way. There is some interesting work happening commissioned by DCMS in England called the Know Your Neighbourhood scheme, based on the current popularity for 15-20 minute neighbourhoods. They are tasking creative lives and others to do some targeted interventions in economically deprived parts of England for voluntary arts groups to be proactive in welcoming and including people who are at risk of social isolation and loneliness. That work is just beginning and I think that it is really interesting for Scotland to follow that. We have also been partnering with a campaign called Pubs as a Hub and the campaign for real ale. This is again in England to reimagine pubs as creative spaces, both supporting that part of the economy and very much badging those as creative welcome spaces, particularly in the daytime. Those are spaces in urban and rural settings that could be made use as a venue. It would be great to see that in Scotland. We could make better use of libraries and some of that works under way with colleagues at Slick to see libraries as places that are not only welcome for creativity but are warm dry accessible spaces. I just wanted to follow up Sarah Lattone on your first two answers. Your first answer identified one particular organisation or community that had seen a 5 per cent increase in their volunteering, but then in your second answer you talked about the challenges of the cost of living and the impact that that has had on hampering volunteering. Are there any specifics from the example that you gave in your first answer that it would be worth considering as to why that particular example has seen an increase? It is not necessarily one organisation. The 5 per cent increase is in the number of volunteers in Scotland who are supporting community-based activity. It was quite unusual. Volunteer participation in Scotland has remained static at 26 per cent to 27 per cent, but we have seen a 5 per cent increase in community-based volunteering, which is really interesting. It is quite difficult to rely on the Scottish household survey results in terms of volunteer participation. We have just received the results for 2021, which were incredibly interesting and are helping us to see how volunteering participation is changing as we come out of the pandemic. However, we do not yet fully understand the impact of the cost of living crisis on volunteering, because we are not quite there yet with the facts and figures. We have an idea based on the existing evidence that we have that volunteers are—for the reasons that I mentioned earlier—struggles around recruiting new volunteers, but volunteers are struggling. It is interesting that community-based volunteering has increased, which is kind of bucking the trend and bucking the available evidence that we have around the impact of the cost of living crisis. That is probably largely a result of the pandemic and people becoming more community-focused. That is really important when we are talking about cultural activity that is taking place in communities, because there is a strong likelihood that some of that 5 per cent is in organisations that are focused on culture. That is definitely a bit of a silver lining of the cloud of the cost of living crisis and the pandemic, because people have become more participative in their communities and they are helping out a lot more. I do not know if that helps to answer your question. I am thinking in my head about the word volunteer. I think that a lot of the people that we would count as volunteers in making music member groups would not count themselves as volunteers, so they are taking part in their choir singing and they would organise the rota for the tea or they would be the one who organises the ticket sales at the door. They do not count themselves as volunteers, but we do. That is really important when you think about inclusion. What is the driver for somebody to volunteer? If the driver is their own participation in their own leisure activity, that is a bigger driver than maybe going on to a volunteer Scotland website and volunteering their time to another type of activity. However, it is just as crucial to that infrastructure as that other type of volunteer who might be a board member or not otherwise be taking part in the activity. We know all the benefits that volunteering has for communities and we need to remember to count those people who are participatory volunteers as well as those who might do that in a more formal way. When we ask our groups if they can count the volunteering hours, they sometimes have to shake their heads and think twice about that because they do not always count it. It is a huge amount of time that they spend of their own time. I think that that is an interesting point. Certainly the household survey is relying on people who are identifying as volunteers and maybe a whole keeper from a church who opens it up for a dance lesson would not consider themselves volunteers in those areas, so it is really interesting. Mr Bibby, did you want to come back in? Just to follow up on the point about the concern that was raised about the churches of Scotland closures. I am picking up concerns among the congregations but also community groups that use those churches. I do not know if that is a concern that is shared by other volunteer groups across Scotland as well, but there seems to be quite a looming problem. Whether that can be replicated in other areas, I am not sure that you are from my own experience, but I wonder if you could expand on that. I think that Jeb my would have a better perspective on the whole of the sector, but music making and the way that we, our members take part in it, needs a certain size of a space as well as a type of a space. Churches and church halls are absolutely ideal for that. Also, their acoustic tends to be excellent, and sometimes when we see in communities there is not, for example, a new community hub built that those spaces are not so good for music making. We have a particular concern about that because, as I said, over half of our groups are using churches and church halls. I will tell you a bit about Inverury. In Inverury, we have a concert band, an orchestra, a choral society, a saxophone orchestra and that is in a town of 14,000 people. In Aberdeenshire, the church is considering closing half of the 45 church buildings in that area. I think that half of those groups that I mentioned are using church buildings. As I said, we are not quite sure if there are too many buildings for the amount of activity where we are yet to see that, but members are telling us that they are either having to move or that they are going to have another group coming in to use that church building within the next couple of years so that people are having to budge up. I agree with Alison, and I think that it is broader than just the Church of Scotland. We are talking about all faith-based buildings here. Many are underutilised or have disproportionate running costs to make them affordable and safe and accessible. I will go back to the original premise of your question about linking people to two groups and finding out what is available. Voluntary arts groups are part of the solution here in that they mobilise a lot in their local communities. We saw that a lot during Covid. They pivoted to becoming welcoming safe spaces that were not just the value of creative expression, but the regularity of meet-ups is really important. Knowing that you can be somewhere and expected somewhere regularly is hugely beneficial. All sorts of data shows that. We need to be normalising that in the same way that sport does. As points have been made by other witnesses to your committee, there is so much that we could learn about how the infrastructure of voluntary community and professional sports infrastructure links and could be replicated in many ways with culture. Where this is happening well is often in regeneration targets. I could quote you examples where there has been investment in buildings such as what we are talking about with faith-based buildings, where it has been part of the regeneration process, but it is not happening day-to-day because culture is not around the community planning table. I completely agree that the idea that a lot of church buildings across the country are potentially going to be closing is a particular concern for a lot of organisations. What you will likely find in a lot of those communities is that the community will take on the management of that building, because that is what happens a lot of the time. We have the commitment to community wealth building in the Scottish Government. We have the review of the community empowerment act. There is a push for a lot of those assets to move into community ownership, which is great, but what you then find is that a lot of volunteers who have been telling us in our consultation for the community wealth building consultation that we have just submitted to this week is that they struggle with the capacity to take on that level of liability for an asset, so there is a need for that additional support. In fact, what we have actually seen is that there is a level of cynicism around community wealth building, because one volunteer—and it is stuck in my head—said that he feels like assets are being offloaded on to communities, but they just have to put up with it. If they want to keep that asset, they need to put in the time to keep that asset open. I think that we might find the same with a lot of the closures with churches is that the community will step up, because they do not want to lose that particular space. It is important for their cultural activity, but there is a question around whether it is voluntary if somebody feels that they have to take it on for the benefit of the community. It goes back to all the points that we were making earlier on around the cost of living crisis, the challenges of owning big, quite draught-day church halls and the energy costs associated with that. There is a resource issue there and a support challenge there for those volunteers that are supporting community-based assets. I am not going to go into too much detail on that, but I know that there is a debate in the chamber this afternoon around the Charities Bill. One of the concerns that we have raised within Volunteer Scotland is that some of the criteria in the Charities Bill also makes it quite challenging for diversity of trustees, which is a real problem, if we are looking at—we are wanting community-based assets to be truly owned by the full demographic of the community so that they can all participate. There are those kinds of issues as well. Thank you very much. I was looking at the creative live submission. It was very struck by opening pages of that, which talked about the sense of optimism. Despite the challenges that we have spoken about, which are very real and obviously very serious, there seems to be an uptick in optimism around volunteering hours that are an average number of hours that have gone up in the past couple of years. I wondered whether that was shared by Sarah Latter and Alison Reeves in the sense of perhaps an increase in optimism. What reasons, beyond the pandemic and the kind of sense of community togetherness that you have spoken about, might there be for this slightly rosier view? I start with Sarah Latter. Yes, equally when I read that, I was really pleased to see that because it is quite easy to get bogged down in the challenges. It goes to the point that I made earlier on. We were really struck when we saw the Scottish household survey results that showed an increase in community-based volunteering. I would imagine what we are probably seeing is that the pandemic—this is a bit of a legacy of the pandemic, as I said earlier about silver lining to the cloud—of people feeling much more connected in their communities and because they spent so much time there during the pandemic. You probably find that the cost of living crisis is relying more on other people in their communities and relying on how much it costs to go to the cinema nowadays. If you have a community-based group that is providing some entertainment that costs a lot less, maybe they will stay in their community and take part in that instead. That probably is an element of people feeling much hunkering down and sticking within their communities as a result of the kind of challenges that they are facing. Interestingly, our membership has not changed since—and during the pandemic, we have not seen a change in the number of groups in Scotland. Our members maybe have a slightly smaller membership than they used to, but not all of them—some of them have a massive increase in membership. It is really phenomenal to note that, because for two years those groups were not allowed to sing together at all. They still managed to keep everybody connected and being with members of the group by singing on Zoom and singing outside and playing in community spaces, in parks and all kinds of incredible things that they did. That was so valued by the members of those groups and the people in their communities that that is what has kept them connected to those groups. I think that the understanding that it was more than just being a member of a music group that kept them connected as well. We saw groups chapping on each other's doors, taking each other's food, and there was a really excellent BBC journalist's piece about a concert band—sorry, brass band, I remember watching—where the gentleman was crying because he missed his friends so much and they managed to stay connected. I think that those things are hugely valuable to the people around those groups and that is what has kept them going. People want that now and it is an inexpensive activity. As was said there, the groups will be charging between £2 and £6 a session for that at the most if they are not free activities, which is considerably less than even going to the swimming pool now. It is an inexpensive and very loved activity by the people in those communities and, yes, absolutely, do not see a drop away in that. Gemma Neville, do you want to add anything to your submission? Yes, our active participation creatively remains local generally. We might travel into a city centre to attend a concert where we take part in a hyper-local space and that has built soft resilience skills in communities most recently. However, I would add a note of caution to some of that optimism that we have departed from. There is some collective fatigue or burnout from people running groups. There is an issue about an ageing demographic. There are some skills development issues. There remains a digital divide in Scotland. It can be tricky to find out what is available locally. The Mental Health Foundation tells us that last year, over three quarters of adults in Scotland reported being lonely at some point. Over half of them said that something that would have helped would have been finding out what was available to them locally in terms of a regular meet-up. It remains quite challenging sometimes to find out what is there. What we would like to do creative lives is to work with local authorities to address some of the capacity challenges that they have currently got. We know that there has been a decimation of local arts development officers in local authorities. We have the spinning out into cultural trusts, which has its own opportunities and challenges. By working with local authorities to map what is in their area in terms of the voluntary arts, how can signposting be better, how can some of that skills development be done, and where would microgrants have a role to play? That is something that we would like to offer to local authorities. It has been done already. We have a pilot in Calverdale in Yorkshire in England, so we know that it works. I have one other question that is about unmet cultural need. In Creative Scotland's submission to us, it said that there are cultural practices that do not necessarily take place traditionally in theatres or music venues. In their view, Creative Scotland's role was to provide the infrastructure and get out the way, as they were, and allow the local artists or performers to take over. Do you have any observations on that from a volunteer perspective on how we allow that unmet cultural need to develop and enhance it? Most of our role in working with our members is supporting the volunteer committees to do that role well. We provide that service for our members, including good governance, looking after finances, applying for orchestra tax relief, gift aid and infrastructure things that those committee members need to do. We do that for our members, who are only 255 groups in Scotland, and they have to pay for that service. That is the type of thing that all volunteers leading that type of activity would really benefit from, and our members are very grateful for our service. However, as I said, we provide it for a fee and not for everybody. If that is the type of support that those volunteers need, they are having a lot of them are charities, so they are having to submit returns to the charities regulator. That is the type of thing that they do find challenging, and it will put people off sitting on a committee, as well as shorten the length of time that they are likely to sit on a committee if those things get complicated. There is no type of professional development support that there is for professional arts, for volunteer-led arts activities, apart from if you are a member of making music or if you can use creative lives services, but a lot do not have access or do not choose to take that up. Back to first principles, I believe that all of us are inherently creative, given the opportunity and confidence to do so. Some of us might want to develop a talent individually or even weave in between professional practice and community voluntary practice. I would reframe your question about need as about better connecting valuing sustainable practice. What are we not seeing and what are we not hearing in our diversities of culture? And what gets funded and what doesn't and why? When I say that voluntary groups rarely are dependent upon or want to be dependent upon short-term funding streams, volunteering and setting up groups is not free and they need support from infrastructure bodies like ourselves, for skills development and linking to other groups and opportunities locally, nationally and internationally. I also think that conceptually we need to think about how do we make paid interventions sustainable. When we talk about artists and residents, for example, and really valuable contributions that have been made to communities through the likes of culture collective and some of the regeneration work that has been going on in local authorities, what about the residents and those who were there all along and what happens after the interventions leave and the various barriers short and long-term that we have discussed previously are all part of that need question that you are asking, I think. I completely agree. I mean, particularly, Alison was talking there about capacity building for volunteers, particularly in those governance roles, I think, is incredibly important. Organisations are very fortunate that if they can get that from bodies like yourselves, you've got your TSI network as well, which is incredibly important in this space as well. It goes back to another point that I made earlier on about the quality of participation and the quality of access for volunteering in those types of roles. If we are thinking about the capacity to be in a governance role in particular, that can be quite challenging, it can be quite daunting for a lot of people, so there's something there about building the capacity of volunteers. I was quite struck. It was great to see that there was a page in the culture strategy around volunteering, which was wonderful. I'm interested in their best practice guide for volunteering, which has been promised within that and the fact that it will be aligned with the volunteer charter as well, because that's very rightly said that volunteering is unpaid, but it's not free. There are resources required to support volunteering and the volunteer charter sets out the principles for appropriate and sustainable volunteering. I think that what's missing within that is around the building capacity and acknowledging that where you have volunteers, they're driven by their passion for that particular cultural activity more often than not. They're not necessarily driven by the fact that I have those skills in my professional life and I'm going to bring those to this role. There's something about joining those dots and helping people to do those things like their Oscar returns if they're a registered charity and that type of thing, which can be quite challenging. I would hope to see Creative Scotland taking on more of a role in acknowledging the capacity that's required for volunteers to support community-based cultural activity. Thank you, convener. I'd like to ask about capacity to attract funding, particularly writing comprehensive bids for smaller organisations could prove more challenging and also link to that what different metrics are funding funders looking for and how does that land as well? I'm currently filling in a Creative Scotland application form for the open fund. It's the first time I've done it in the new portal system that they have established, which technically is working brilliantly. It's really long and it's very complicated and they necessarily have to do that because they are accountable for that spend but I have to write 450 words on my risk management strategy. You can see the challenge for groups. That is a difficult thing to do. I've been filling in funding applications for my entire career but if you are singing in a choir and you want to apply for money for a commission, that's a big challenge. What you used to have was a local authority pot of arts funding and an arts officer that would help you apply for that. I filled in that as well this week for my school's parent council application to the community grants fund and it was two pages of A4 and free form. I could write what I liked. I wrote two sentences in one of the boxes and we got £4,000. It was that easy and the amount of work that I'm having to put in for the Creative Scotland fund is significantly more for the same amount of money. Creative Scotland has been very clear with us that it would always accept applications from volunteer-led music groups and they would be treated exactly the same way as they would treat professional applications and they really want those applications but the fact is that it's extremely difficult to make those applications. It depends who the funder is but those quick, easy-to-access pots of money that local authorities used to hold are experience entirely gone. The microgrants that Creative Lives can offer, for example, are the types of funding that our groups would be much better placed to apply for. Creative Lives isn't a funder but we have distributed historically some funds and, yes, some light touch flexible funding can go a long way indeed. We also have guidance on all different developmental support for groups but the most popular one at the moment is called Cash for Culture. It's a researched publication that Creative Scotland has helped us to promote. That's example by example case studies of different ways that cash has been generated, not just through funding applications, so again lots of collaborations, lots of reimagination about how income can be generated. I think back to principles. Those things should be open access so for a long time I think so-called amateur groups had chips on their shoulder about being seen as hobbyists or somehow lesser artists. Of course some of the quality in voluntary run groups is of extremely high quality and for some it's more about the participatory experiences, all of that and everything in between. It's really welcome that those hierarchies have gone and we do now have access because I think it'd be a mistake if we think about voluntary participation as always being small scale. Sometimes it's vast actually and it can be national, regional and hyper local there's all of that in the mix. I just think how you were saying there about the fact that it can be large and one of the examples that we referenced in our response was Pitonbymarts festival. I'm from Fife and I've been to Pitonbymarts festival and it is a site to behold. It is a huge event and it is almost entirely run by volunteers. I think they have a part-time office manager sometimes but most of it is led by volunteers so you're quite right and that's one of the largest arts festivals in Scotland if not the largest actually potentially. Again it goes back to the capacity building support so we work quite closely with impact funding partners who I know they distribute quite a lot of funding for the Scottish Government including the volunteering support fund. They host regular networking events for people who have given funding for volunteering so that they can share best practice and that kind of thing and I know that a lot of their funding recipients find that incredibly beneficial so there's something there about funders being more open to and aware of some of the challenges that those who are accessing or trying to access funding might be experiencing and then providing more putting more support in place at the point at when they're they're applying I think that would be incredibly useful. Mr Ruskell sorry Sarah you mentioned earlier a TSI network can you explain what that is please? Yeah so the TSI network that's the third sector interface network so every local authority has a third sector interface to support the local voluntary sector and volunteering within Scotland. One of the services that TSI's are funded by the Government and they're usually provided some funding by their local authority as well so they provide support with volunteering but they also provide support with things like applying for funding, finding funding, all sorts of things as well as like capacity building support. They work quite closely I think with sort of community learning and development teams within local government who also provide that kind of capacity building support as well. Mr Ruskell. Yeah thanks very much. Yeah there's a couple of things that were mentioned this morning that I just wanted to come back on. One's about I think Gemma you were talking about that we need to normalise the support for cultural organisations in the way that we do sports is that to pick that up correct. I just wanted to kind of get your perspectives on what you mean by that because I guess when I look at how sport is supported within my own communities I'm seeing you know Allio's sport leisure trust going out doing club sport development. I'm seeing engagement within schools to encourage young people to get into sports clubs and to try out new sports. Like is there a corollary there or is it something different within culture and music and other sectors? What's the thing that's missing because as organisations you're trying to provide I guess some of that support and development on a national basis and through the TSI network but what's the kind of the missing bit there that would give it the sort of equivalence of development and support that sport has? I think it's a mindset shift in part about normalising the many benefits creative participation intrinsically and instrumentally it has so many individual and collective benefits and we take that as a given now I think in physical exercise we we've got a case to make in terms of creative participation we now have a lot of evidence about the many benefits to mental health benefits listening isolation increasing lung levity some of that stuff's now coming out over decades of research and it's also the comparative sport thinks relevant when it comes to community planning because often there is a seat at the table for sport and not for art and that goes to the heart of reimagining civic space the school of state green spaces or parks or high streets as well in cities and towns and I think it's also about opportunity so sport and physical activity is integrated into our schooling experience in many communities the provision of for example musical instruments is very limited and that has a knock-on effect in our lifelong participation and also with further education and evening classes all of that stuff provides opportunities and connections pathways into the into the voluntary arts and we lose that our apparel an example might be we work with the music education partnership group and they are currently piloting a programme called we make music schools and it's designed to be like active schools but for music and so the school would get work towards different levels of awards and some of the activities that they could do to get their award would be providing instrumental tuition in the school for the children but it could also be connecting with music organisations who come into the school to deliver using YMI funding to run their own projects but also connecting with community music activity so if there was a pipe band in the area having them come into the school and work with the children so that's called we make music schools and it's being funded I believe by the government at the moment as a pilot but that's kind of good to give you an example of how in a school environment you could make build a programme like active schools that would work for music or arts as well and sort of the benefits of that knock right on for lifelong music making activity because we know that if people are not coming out of the school believing that they have the that making music or even singing is something that they can do then obviously they're not going to continue doing that as adults so that can build on but that's a good example. I mean I've not got a huge amount to add to be honest but I think it's it sort of was struck when you were talking about active schools mean active schools the amount of volunteers that are support active schools is extraordinary it's it's and it's so well embedded and then I was reflecting on the fact that we had the situation with Systema who provide big noise so they lost their funding from a number of local authorities in earlier in the year and we're really really it looked like some of their their sort of their music making projects were going to close their doors and luckily the government were able to step in so I think that when you're talking about a culture shift it's recognising the importance of cultural activity particularly in deprived communities that is really important for them to be able to access those and we're talking about I've got loads of evidence about the benefits of volunteering for wellbeing and what I've been really struck when preparing for this was that there's such a there's so much comparison that can be made in terms of the the benefits of wellbeing between cultural activity and volunteering and one example that's sprung to mind that would be really really nice to share so I've been speaking recently with an organisation called Playlist for Life which I don't know if you've heard of Playlist for Life and they provide this lovely model which is about helping people with dementia diagnosis to develop their playlist which is and it's recognising the link between music and memory and the really vital importance of that and it helps it actually helps to bring people back to themselves for a short amount of time potentially and it can sort of slow the progression of things like dementia so I think it's just recognising that right throughout life the arts and culture have a really enormous impact on on people and it's about as you're saying Gemma it's about normalising that to the extent that where in schools you get your every child gets P even if they don't take it as I remember from when I was at school that I didn't want to take P but I was still made to do it but with music and arts that's not something that you have to you have to do and I think that that's a real it's a bit of a shame he thinks that was that was useful the other thing that kind of struck me was again Gemma you were talking about fluid and overlapping networks and I suppose it comes back to that point about how do we define what is a cultural organisation because I guess again I see organisations that are maybe working in the sort of climate change transition space but you walk into the organisation and it's full of creative people who are doing making and are you know doing incredible creative projects but they're probably not a creative cultural organisation and yet they're creating culture so I'm just sort of thinking about how how do we map this stuff out because it does seem to be a lot of overlap and it's really about a creative sector maybe more than a cultural sector I don't know 100% agree I think mapping is a perennial challenge creative lives we're not a membership body and we don't define what is or isn't creative contractivity I think that's a self-defining thing and for many people it will be about something as fluid as gardening or cookery and if that's important to people and they can make use of our developmental support that's grand and I think that when the climate emergency effects is all and there's going to be many creative responses and challenges to how we tackle that together taking part in creative activity as a civic experience about shaping the decisions that affect you I mean that that links into social, economic and cultural rights and all of that stuff is intrinsic interlinked so we're talking about education about about housing and all manner of things that link into to cultural rights as well yeah that need for agency I suppose that was my last question then just around 20 minute neighbourhoods because it was mentioned a number of the submissions and it was interesting to hear about you know some of the kind of work in England on that I mean here it's very much seen as a still a planning concept that's in the national planning framework but do you have examples of where cultural organisations have been actively planning in Scotland around 20 minute neighbourhoods particularly with you know high streets starting to close down people starting to rethink spaces as you know major retailers have shut down post Covid and now there's like this big space which people are thinking about how they creatively fill we actually we actually worked with culture counts on submitting to the national planning framework redraft so we were really pleased that actually culture spaces for culture and creativity are in the national planning framework so it is recognised in there that that is one of the things that makes a successful and healthy neighbourhood is having these spaces available so I think it's important that that is in there and that we we all know that it's in there and the concept of 15 20 minute neighbourhoods is possibly less useful to some of the activity that we are our members are taking part in because it's a larger scale activity but the idea that within a community there's an easy to access large enough appropriate space for not just music activity but dance activity or drama activity or performing arts activity needs to be understood more than just you know what can happen on high streets for example it's an interest I think it's a Japanese concept where there's the 15 minute neighbourhood and then there's the 45 minute neighbourhood as well so it's where do you where could you travel where are those services that are for a larger group of people situated and I think that's important to recognise as well so you can't obviously have a performance space for every community within 20 minutes walk but you could have one within you know 45 minute travel and when that's a real challenge at the moment when for example Howden Park Art Centre in Livingston is threatened with closure and we lost Falkirk Town Hall last year which was really problematic so it's not just about those small neighbourhoods it's about those larger ones as well. There's also an issue isn't there about where you live and how relevant 15-20 minutes is. I mean I live ruraly now and I would be within fields of the beach frankly if I was looking at that radius and I think for rural communities I have to think much more about the mentioned affordable and reliable transport earlier didn't we but the point here is joined up experiences to lead to a meaningful life so why can't your library card also get you on to the bus and access into the swimming pool and the theatre and why are we not just connecting all of these things I think it could be so much simpler than it is wherever you live in in Scotland. In terms of examples a couple that spring to mind are the work that's being done on Dumfries and the historic High Street and the Steeple Quarter there and the Stove Network have been really instrumental in galvanising the local communities plural there. Also Devran Arts in Huntley so they have this brand the town is the venue and so I would encourage you to look at those examples of really. Actually Devran Arts previously but yeah excellent yeah I could I could tell you other examples that are similar again I would say great yeah okay thanks so much I wonder if I could pick up on another area that's come up frequently in an evidence session around the idea of social prescribing do you see that in action at the moment do you think there's opportunities and more that could be done in those areas Alison do you want to come in so we definitely see opportunities we have a lot of resources and support for our members who want to start thinking about it and what I notice at the moment is that the community links officers who would be absolutely fundamental in this process are only just getting started in those roles they're having their first they just had their first ever conference I think maybe last week so they're really only getting to grips with what that means and the community links officers are going to be absolutely fundamental to making this work because they need to understand and have a really complex knowledge of all of the possible leisure and activities in their areas and you know when that network is stronger then we can start beginning to talk to them about how they can find that out about music groups in the area we have got to find a group tool which is which anyone can use but so they're going to be really crucial in that role because the idea of course is that that community links officer if they heard a patient say to them oh it used to be in a choir I really loved it could then simply point them to our services to our groups we don't think that we would need additional support to welcome most of the people that would come through to our groups from social prescribing we think that if there was the support there from the community links officer to give enough information to the group who were receiving that person that would probably be enough so we're not particularly concerned about needing extra financial resources but it really needs those community links officers to have a complex understanding of the whole offer and not just look straight for for example arts and health projects or professional arts organisations to know that volunteer led arts activity is a great place for people social prescribing. Yeah absolutely so it's a social prescribing I think is a really interesting concept and it's something that we've been thinking about in terms of volunteering and prescribing volunteering activity given the the health and wellbeing benefits of that. One of the consideration I mean it's not a concern it's a consideration is the fact that if somebody is being prescribed that and they maybe have additional support needs then it's important that those organisations that are taking that person on as a volunteer have the capacity to respond to those support needs so it's about making it that it goes back to the point around inclusive volunteering I think and it probably marries across to inclusive cultural participation as well just in terms of accessibility is vital and often with accessibility additional resources required to make the necessary changes to support that but yeah social prescribing I think that there's some real there's definitely some real opportunities there but it goes it goes back to Alison's point about the need for the community link workers to understand the the sort of the the complexity and nowhere best to refer to. I'm wary about social prescribing and I'm placing too many expectations on the voluntary community centre to sec sector to pick up shortfalls in our NHS in crisis and I think I think there's many GPs that have concerns about it as well. There are good examples of where it works but there does need to be proper hosting support for groups and not to see creative cultural groups as providing somehow a quick fix because I think that's misunderstanding the very nature of these groups. Your peers at the all parliamentary party group on arts, cultural health and wellbeing at Westminster they've done some work in collecting information about and the many many benefits of of taking part in creative cultural activity but also where social prescribing isn't isn't working and so let's not make blanket assumptions on that one I think. I'm just reflect in my own area we have literature, social, mental health so the one venue that is open free to access crafting music lessons art classes you know knitting all those things is around the mental health cafe and the premises that they have taken on which is an old cinema in our area so it's interesting to see maybe how a charity that isn't an arts charity could actually help and support you going forward so certainly interesting comments. Dr Allan. That point is interesting I mean we've talked about this in the committee quite a lot about the concept of social prescribing I suppose based on what your last comments were you seem to be saying that and it makes sense that social prescribing works if you're pointing people in the direction of something that they're already good at or interested in so I mean if somebody goes to the doctor and says that they might be suffering from isolation but they're good at singing then you point them in the direct I mean I'm putting words in your mouth but is that what you're saying that you can't just direct people or go off and do something cultural you have to find out what people are interested in and direct them to something that they're actually likely to want to do now that's not a simple thing to do but is that kind of what you're saying? Yes and the places in which that conversation happens are really important because I don't think any of us like to be given labels you know in a medical eye sense and told all you need to have art done to you or this will you know this make you better I'm oversimplifying for effect and as much as it's not the job of voluntary arts groups to be picking up these shortfalls better signposting could happen and that's part of the mapping shortfall that exists at the moment in terms of finding out what's available and support to groups to be more welcoming inclusive because often by the very nature it's a group of like-minded people who want to share their particular passion and they need to track new members but they don't always know how to go about doing so. Any further questions for members? Can I thank you all both for your contributions today which very helped me to inquire but also your written submissions which you know we're we're well received by all the members of the committee and so thank you once again we've still got quite a few evidence sessions going in this inquiry and I'm sure we'll have some reflections when our report comes out so we'll be able to take part in that that launch when it happens so thank you again this morning and we now move into private session with the committee thank you