 Hei. Welcome to this, the 11th meeting of 2015 of the European External Relations Committee. Can I make the usual request that mobile phones be switched off or on silent, and we are going straight into the agenda this morning. Item 1 is for the committee to decide whether we can take agenda 4 in private. You can. Is that agreed? Thank you very much. In your future consideration? Yes, in any future consideration of the work programme. Agenda item 2 is a substantive issue in our committee this morning, which is the continuation of our inquiry on connecting Scotland. Today, we are looking at the cultural and sports aspects of our place in the world and what we give and what we get from the world on that. We have a number of representatives from across all of our organisations in Scotland to do, and what I will do is I will go round the table and let everybody introduce themselves. I'm Christina McKelvie, I'm the convener of the European and External Relations Committee. I'm the vice convener and my name's Hans Lamallick and I'm from MSP for Glasgow. I'm Willie Coffey, MSP for Kilmarnock and Durvin Valley. I'm Neil Murray, I'm the executive producer of the National Theatre of Scotland. I'm Roderick Campbell, MSP for North East 5. I'm Stu Filey, I'm the chief operating officer at Scottish Student Sport. I'm Adam Ingram, MSP for Carrick, Cymlatt and Ddwn Valley. I'm Mary Allison, I'm head of strategic planning at Sport Scotland. Lloyd Anderson, director of British Council Scotland. Stuart Turner, I'm the head of events Scotland. Janet Ought, chief executive creative Scotland. Jamie McGregor, MSP Island and Islands. Liam Sinclair, executive producer of Scottish Dance Theatre. Ann McTaggart, MSP for Glasgow area. Thank you very much indeed. I thank the witnesses who have come along to see and others who have given us written evidence. It's been very, very helpful. I have to say that this inquiry has generated a lot of interest across lots of sectors and we have much reading to do to understand the work that's going on. If you can see that we're in a sort of a round table type set up this morning and if we want to sort of create a bit of a free flow of movement this morning as far as conversation goes, but if you can just catch my eye and make sure that I can bring you in so that it's a bit, a wee bit structured but hopefully not too structured and you get to enjoy the actual interactions across the table. So if you can do that, that would be excellent. I've got a quick opening question this morning. I think maybe for you all and it's obviously Scotland in my opinion from what I see and certainly from my visit to Scotland in New York, is that all of our national companies and all of our organisations, whether it is Sport Scotland or National Theatre or Creative Scotland or the British Council, seem to be known around the world and certainly known for the work that it does. You just mentioned Black Watch or the Commonwealth Games or anything like that. People have a keen understanding of what Scotland has given to the world. I think maybe my open question is what other interesting events, programmes and projects are you involved in that you think not only maintains but sustains and pushes forward some of the connections that we've got around the world and how do we use that to tell our story? I'm looking at you, Neil. Last day in, first to speak. We were expecting you to come in the car away and dance in at your door. Sorry, apologies for that. Actually, I think sometimes it's not so much about the big one off event, it's about a consistency of presence and profile. The big one off events are fantastic and big festivals, you know, you're often there with great companies from around the world. But for us, for the National Theatre of Scotland, I think where we've managed to gain a reputation is through by consistently visiting and travelling. I did a paper for my board the day which I'll leave for this committee as well. And we've done 17 international tours in eight years. A lot of them in places like the USA. So, for example, we were just in Chicago for the fifth time. And it's that level of familiarity that you go there and an audience actually come there to see the National Theatre of Scotland because they've seen our work on two or three occasions previously. It's not always the same people, but you start to build a kind of grand swell, the press in those cities start to notice you. Particularly when you tour abroad, you tend to take your best work as well. I'm sure Liam and other people will acknowledge that. You don't take the shows that don't really work, you take the shows that work so they see the best of you. And I think it's, so for us it's been a consistency of, and that's quite hard and we're lucky. We're a bigger company than many of the companies in Scotland. We've had the benefit of Scottish Government International Touring Fund, which has been a fantastic help to us in achieving that profile. But I think if you do it as one-off visits, it tends not to have the same, every time it feels like the first time then. Whereas if you're going back, even if it's to not the same places, but they've heard, oh, they were in Washington the last year, they were in Chicago, they were in Sydney, wherever. It's not just a holiday tour, by the way, it is work, it's very hard work. So I think it's that consistency I would suggest is the key thing. It shows that that international element of the organisations that we fund, that bit of their work is really important. So it's something like 80% of the regularly funded organisations that Creative Scotland funds work internationally, and I'm not sure whether this is an accurate statistic, but I was told the other day that only 8% of Scottish business at this point exports internationally. So that's quite an interesting statistic. So the opportunity I think through cultural engagement in other countries could open up a real scope in terms of taking Scotland's brand, not just in terms of culture, but all that surrounds culture in places in Scotland, into different parts of the world. So we're just about to produce our creative industry strategy and we'll be very much focusing on that sense of place and global reach as one key strand within that strategy. Lloyd? I think that the number of points there, coming back to the Government's economic strategy, under internationalisation, there are two areas there. One is about influencing the world around Scotland, so it's about promoting Scotland abroad and bringing the issues that matter most to helping Scotland to flourish by promoting Scotland in the world. The other is about creating an environment within Scotland that supports a better understanding of international opportunities. I think that that international mindset at home is just as important as promoting Scotland abroad. We work in both areas. As you know, the British Council exists to create international opportunities for the people of the UK and other countries. We have over 200 officers in more than 100 countries and we're reaching about 24 million people face-to-face. At any time, there are an awful lot of programmes and events taking place. In the arts, there's been a focus on bilateral years, so at the moment there's a UK-Brazil bilateral programme which is running for five years called Transform. There's a bilateral programme with China, there's one with Mexico, so there are these, I think they're called seasons, year on year where there will be a particular effort made to encourage cultural exchange with another country. But I think we shouldn't forget about the international mindset at home as well and that's an area that we have a number of programmes such as Erasmus+, such as the Foreign Language Assistance, ISD Connecting Classrooms. All of those programmes are designed to get young Scots to be more international in their outlook and to think internationally as well. Last time we spoke, there was a bit of a drop in young people taking up Erasmus and some of the programmes. There was lots of young people coming to Scotland but not as many going out. There was a concerted effort to try and change that. Has that changed? It has. The take-up of Erasmus has increased a lot in the last year. Unfortunately, the take-up of connecting classrooms has gone down a bit, so we're having to do more work to try to get schools to take the international agenda more seriously. In 2014-15, we worked with about 940 organisations across Scotland, including 588 schools, 18 higher education institutions and 25 further education institutions. We are working with a large percentage of the schools, but the numbers have gone down, in fact, rather than gone up. As we know, the foreign language assistants are getting less of them coming to Scotland than we used to. The numbers of language assistants going out have stayed high, so it is the converse of the problem that you have with student flows. It is worth reflecting that it is quite normal for colleges and universities to operate in an international way. I was part of a student football team that had 12 different nationalities in it. That is quite normal, and it is hugely enriching for everybody. I trust that the committee will have received loftier reports from the institutions themselves as part of the process. My job is to try and tie that back to sport and activity. I have highlighted three themes in a brief submission, which we might talk about later. I think that there are two interesting axes to keep in mind. One is where we try to position Scotland. There are lots of activity happening at institutional level against their own priorities, and there is quite a lot of activity at a British level because of some of the structures that we work within. The question then is where do we place Scotland in all of that? To help to answer that question is then about how much we try to join up the different areas that are represented today, sport, education and culture. My sense is that there is a lot of good stuff going on, but not necessarily that that is either fully appreciated by everyone who is involved or necessarily tied together. I think that there is probably a bit of room there, but I hope that you have a sense from the brief submission of just what a lot of activity there is and some of the benefit of that work. The things that we will attempt to do on this committee is a bit of a mapping exercise to see if we can map what is happening and where, but I have to say where the volume of written evidence that we have got in so far is going to prove to be a very difficult piece of work to undertake. I think that there might be a worthwhile piece of work for us to see what is happening and where and in what frequency and in what intensity. It would be very important indeed. I have got Liam next. I want to pick up on Neil's point about consistency, because I think that that is something that we really noticed with our tour to India last year, which was built on a previous tour in 2012. We took a very deliberate choice to structure the tour to allow more space to explore partnerships while we were there, so not just to be about presenting work but to understand how the cultural infrastructure in the various cities and locations that we were touring to worked. That is already going to have a very deep impact on the company in terms of thinking about how those partnerships are taking forward. There is even talking about potential co-productions in some areas. I think that the profound sense that that has on the professionals that you are taking on these tours helps to develop the international at home that Lloyd is talking about, because the company's outlook has definitely shifted because of the extended tour that they had last year. In a way that I think when they returned from 2012, they felt that it was such a whirlwind, it was perhaps harder for them to really focus in on what it meant and what it could mean for the future. I think that understanding how really profound international engagement takes time at every stage of the process in terms of the planning and the commitment of resource to that, but then actually in the delivery so that you are not just shipping in your best shows and then shipping them out again that around that you can build these opportunities for engagement that then shapes strategically how you approach international working when you are back at base. That is interesting contribution. I have got Mary Stewart, who has not contributed yet, and I want to give you the opportunity. I think that on the back of what Liam has just said about how the legacy of something in that respect, and maybe come to you, Mary, to maybe talk a bit about the work that, in the past few years, Sports Scotland has been involved in. I think that the sport in an international context, obviously, the very obvious things are the staging of major event, the gaining, the collaboration, the staging of events that Stewart can talk to and then the links into sport-specific bodies that will collaborate in order to deliver that. I think that from our perspective, the interesting and possibly I think somewhat untapped area in sport is around the kind of more grass roots international collaborations, which are at the moment extensive but relatively ad hoc, so you will find, as Stewart has demonstrated with a lot of universities and also sports clubs, there are huge amounts of international exchange taking place there, but actually harnessing some of that into some well-supported, meaningful, structured programmes with an intent that maybe delivers a little bit more than they are getting out of it at the moment is an area that we haven't possibly built on to the extent that we could. I think the growing area around, it probably taps into a growing area around sport for change and sport for development where perhaps the sporting outcome isn't the essential outcome, but sport is a very major hook on which other forms of international collaboration can then take place. So sport in the context of development or in post-conflict areas where sport has been used as a tool for change and a tool for development and international collaboration around that I think is an area where we could definitely grow and contribute but also learn, there's definitely that scope for change. I think the kind of work that we've done in staging major events is relatively well developed, we've got a lot of experience in that area, but it's what we then build on around that for grass roots engagement. Do you think having Scotland House at the Commonwealth Games and having the themed days, because I was at two themed days, one was LGBT matters and the other one was about women and women in sport, but it wasn't just about women in sport, it was about women's issues around the world, it was about LGBT issues around the world, I think it was a day based on sort of a trade and development of business links. So is that a model that you think was very successful and could be replicated? I think those opportunities to have those international discussions with people when they're there and they're an easy audience to capture are important. I think some of the equalities issues that came through the games that were highly visible in terms of things like the Parasport activity, the Pride house, were really quite exciting for sport to be able to have those quite upfront debates about sport, about its strengths and some of its areas to be grown and developed. There are some legacies from that, so the European Lesbian and Gay Sports Association will be holding their convention in Glasgow next March, I'm sure that's partly because there was a really strong signal that that is welcome in Scotland and welcome in Glasgow. So yeah, I think those things do make a difference in terms of sending a message that we want to advance and develop these areas of sport and culture, I mean it was a much broader debate obviously than just sport, but sport provided that opportunity in that platform. Do you think that maybe some of the countries have maybe got some questionable human rights histories, let me put it diplomatically that way, did you think that message was heard because I know there's a lot of work done with the refugee council, the campaign to welcome the refugees with amnesty and some of the organisations in gender and zero tolerance and people like that, there was work, really close work done with really rights based organisations and that sense, do you think that some of those messages that we sent out were heard on other parts of the world where maybe there's maybe a bit of an intolerance to some of the things that we I wouldn't be able to evidence whether they had been heard or not, but I do think that they were visible and I think that they were noted and commented on and I think that awareness raising is definitely a start. I think that they have led to other forms of engagement, we ourselves have got a much closer relationship with equality-based organisations in Scotland as a consequence of that, so we have an Equalities Committee within Gender, Scottish Women's Convention, Bemis and the equality network and that's been enhanced by a major sporting event, creating a major signal about these things matter in sport and has actually opened I think doors in sport to organisations to genuinely feel that sport wants to have a dialogue there. I think the time is quite healthy for us to take that dialogue out beyond the one we're having in Scotland to look at how we then connect that to some of the agenda you're talking about internationally where those equalities and those rights are absolutely not as, you know, they're not part of either the culture or the way in which the country is run and I think sport can be a very helpful tool to open that discussion. So that takes us to you Stuart because you create these events and create the infrastructure and put on the shows, so tell us what your thoughts are. Well, I mean, I guess from our perspective that we're working to a national event strategy which fits in with the Government's economic strategy, the international framework cultural strategy, so Scotland the perfect stage is the national event strategy and we take a lead role rather than the lead role in delivering that, so actually a lot of the agencies around the table take lead roles in delivering parts of that as well. It's very much a Scotland strategy, not an event Scotland strategy, but one of the specific parts that we do in that is we have what we call an international programme which is around 30 to 40 events a year and those can vary from very big international events, so that could be a particularly, we led for Scotland on the Ryder Cup, for example, right down to relatively small international events, so if you think about, I'm going to pick a sporting event, think about something like Keltman, which is a 250 person extreme triathlon in Torriddon area, but that's a truly internet. I've done it three times. Have you? Excellent. It's a truly international event because of those 250 competitors, only four or five of them are Scottish, they all bring people with them and the television pictures from that event go out all around the world and they actually sell Scotland to the world, so I guess in terms of our internationalisation that there's probably three components really and each of them is very complex, but the first one would be international relations, we have to influence people who might want to bring events here or come to events here, so we need to have those international connections with sports right holders, with cultural organisations, with other countries who we can learn from, so there's that whole part about talking to people and you mentioned Scotland House, during the course of the Commonwealth Games we had 27 international sports federations came to it and you'll know there were only 17 sports in the Commonwealth Games, it was actually people that we invited to come over and have a look at what was happening, what a good job we were doing as Scotland across all aspects and actually interestingly a lot of them were very very interested in the cultural programme and the Scotland House activity and less interested in some ways in the sports activity because they've seen that before, they know how to do that bit. So that international relations is one, I think one of the key things that we do and I guess being part of Visit Scotland is really the bit that really works, this is that profile, it's getting the coverage, so once we've got these fantastic events in Scotland, it's actually making sure that they're projected internationally, whether that television coverage, whether it's online and that we're putting the right message around that, that there's a fit with what we want to say about Scotland and the whole strategy is predicated on sweating our assets, which is what Scotland is good at, what we have, our people, our natural environment, our heritage, our culture, it's actually sweating those internationally to say, let's tell people about that, let's get the profile out there. So a lot of what we might do with the homegrown events is actually help them internationalised by getting that profile, by working on international marketing and media. I think the third strand then is the people that come to those events and again a lot of these aren't necessarily events that were generated by bids from events Scotland, a lot of them are events that have existed for a long long time, but you look at something like the International Festival, they're bringing over international performers from all over the world, you have a fantastic experience here and then take that back into the sector. That happens across sports events where the mountain bike World Cup at the weekend, there are a lot of Scottish riders in it, but actually the vast majority of the riders are international Europe, South America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa. And then there's the officials, the judges, the media that all come internationally and then the audience and again we judge our international events to be those that are attracting 15, 20 per cent at least of their audience from outside of the UK. We also fish a lot in the rest of the UK market, but certainly those that we consider to be international will be having a significant percentage of the audience from outside of the UK. So we haven't got the statistics back from the mountain bike World Cup, but I'd be surprised if there weren't 15 to 20 per cent of the 10,000 people there over the weekend who came from outside of the UK. That's again projecting an image of this is a really well run event, Scotland's a very capable country, we do the food well, we do the organisation well, we do the transport well. It's really important in terms of those people's experience going back on what they say and they think about Scotland, their propensity to visit again. So actually that's an area, the international area is one that we work in all the time. Bike and Rural Championships at Fort Royham again at the Nevis range, so the backdrop is amazing. It's absolutely amazing yet. And I take it that's the commonwealth tartan you're wearing. It's what I say. It is the commonwealth tartan. Jamie McGregor. Thanks very much convener. I'm very interested by the people who have done tours lately, like the Scottish Dance Theatre and the Scottish National Theatre, particularly as to how the sort of contemporary and cutting edge modern dance intermingles with the more traditional dances, cultures of say India and China. And the other point more generally is I'd like to know what the barriers are to their organisations and are there political barriers? Again the tour we've just done, we had lots of opportunity to explore those connections both in terms of reactions to the presentation of the work so our work is contemporary dance and the audience was often coming from ranges of different sorts of groups and just publics who might be engaged in more classical forms of Indian dance, but around that we created as many opportunities as we could for discussion and debate to happen and that was where the real fascinating points of the tour took place because we really had there was opportunity for people who were trained in very strict classical Indian forms to say well actually how do you get to that expressive place where actually it's coming from the instinct in terms of the dancer's body and the dancer's expression rather than it must be done like this and only when you can do it like this can you then explore other forms which is a very concise way of explaining perhaps some of the tradition of an Indian classical dance. And that exchange was the fascinating point and there were lots of opportunities around that workshops with school groups and professionals to explore that. The political point is a real one particularly I would say in China all of our work had to pass through a censorship process. One of the works that we toured winter again has the use of fake blood in it quite repeatedly and nearly all of it had to be cut from the piece for it to be allowed to be presented in China and one of the other works that we had originally started talking to the promoter about touring a piece called Yamaha was actually ruled out completely for reasons we've never fully understood but sometimes it's very clear to understand what that censorship has been about in other times like so but I still think you have to navigate those political challenges in order to create those moments of engagement and again winter again although it wasn't presented in how we present it here it was still fascinating to understand the reactions to that piece of work when audiences got a chance to engage with it. Neil did you want to come here? Quite a lot of experience of working in China and working with China indeed as well and each time has been different but the first time we took David Griggs play for young people, the monster in the hole which toured to China and we had a real issue with that and that one of the characters in the show is clearly gay or he's certainly defined as being gay and there was a real issue with the authority about us presenting that to a young audience in China. We kind of stood our ground and what we said was if you say a title of the show that's your prerogative how you sir title we can't necessarily tell you how to do that although we do have an associate director who's Chinese who works for us who is brilliant so I literally sat with her and said tell me every time they change a word up there to what we're saying and there are quite a few but we held the ground on what we said so we did the text as written and it was really clear that when the translation was changed the audience completely knew and just laughed because they were like he's not saying that that's not what that word is and it actually in a sense it almost shows the weakness of censorship it kind of overrode it it became more of an issue because they tried to censor it that was the only time we had direct intervention we just told Densonane David Griggs play um as David Griggs play um which is the kind of his his contemporary follow-up to Macbeth effectively and the Chinese loved that because his fiercely political the show is really about Iraq and Afghanistan although it's really about Scotland England as well and we played it in Taiwan as well as in mainland China and the Taiwanese saw themselves as the Scots and the English as the Chinese the Chinese sort of the other way around so you get all these resonances that you never quite realise are going to be there and we also told that show to Russia just when the Russia Ukraine situation was kicking off so that was also that's that sense of when large country trying to deal with a smaller neighbour was really prevalent and finally and probably the most um gone back to what Liam said I think that sense of not just taking work there but actually working and collaborating we have a show called Dragon which is a co-production with Tianjin Children's Theatre Company from China and that's actually playing the international festival in Edinburgh this year some good seats still available um and we use Chinese artists in that show and that's been really fantastic so two of the performers are Chinese the associate director is Chinese and then the issues become much more about how much you pay them because we're paying much more than they would in in China it becomes about logistics then but what they bring creatively to the project is extraordinary I mean they transformed that project for us um so each time it's different and I think as Liam said earlier there's there are huge challenges but it's incredibly invigorating as well and you learn more you learn more about your shows as well you come back with a different sense of what that show is and that sense of what you often think as being local is in fact what hugely international and probably for us Black Watch is the best example of that which you know a show about a very small group of people from a part of Scotland which which just translates everywhere Scottish Government is working very closely with British Council in China to open up those opportunities in in respect of touring and co-production I think it's I'm right in saying that there are something like between 300 and 400 new venues in China that have been built over the last 12 months alone and China is is actively looking at how it can populate those venues with content so there's real opportunity for Scotland I think in terms of working closely in connection with China to to to get our companies and artists out right across China Lloyd did you want to come in here um well there's a couple of points I wanted to pick up on actually on the duncene in in Russia so there was um you know I'd mentioned before about there being these seasons or years of cultural exchange so that had been programmed before the Ukraine crisis um and uh it was sort of tough decisions after Ukraine whether to carry on with that cultural year I think it's it's good that we did because it kept doors open and duncene was a was a hit in in Moscow and uh and and I think that was an important channel to to keep open despite the conflict that we had at the political level between the countries um just coming back to a couple of points one one was um uh Liam's about you know you have the the big events and the big um uh overseas tours and projects but um uh getting artistic exchange or or collaboration to to happen on the back of that is very important as is skills transfer as well so for the British Council I mean in a way we're using these these um these cultural offerings as a way of building international relations and I think it's the the longer term relationship and trust that you build on the back of such tours that that that matters a lot um the other thing I think is about where you do things because um there's a lot of countries in the world and you can do a lot of stuff uh everywhere uh so how you you uh concentrate resources um I mean the Scottish Government's published this international framework which tends to so concentrate on the Scottish diaspora Europe uh a few emerging economies and um a couple of developing countries um so so deciding where you're going to concentrate effort matters with with Creative Scotland we have a strategic partnership and for the last three years we've been concentrating effort on Brazil, India and South Africa and we've seen you know the result of that being a lot of artistic exchange and new ideas particularly with Brazil. Neil did you want to come back again Jamie? I mean there are a number of a big issue for us and we have an ethical policy the problem with ethical policy is that countries change their ethics very quickly and what when you have fixed something up is absolutely your hands are absolutely clean by the time it comes to doing it you have quite a big question Mark over should we be doing this and we we genuinely look at it case by case but I also wanted to say the help of of British Council in in in Russia particularly was was enormous and their determination on was that we should come and that we should do this show because this show particularly actually said something about the situation was huge and and also when we're in China we've had massive help from both British Council and Scottish Government officials who help steer you through some of the more tricky protocol often it's particularly in China protocol issues so that that sense of making getting those connections right before you go out there is huge for us. Jamie did you want to come back in? Well I've actually just on the question of ethics I'd like to raise another subject if that's possible how does the Scottish student sports sort of transfer to its members a way of getting over the revulsion which young especially footballers must feel at what appears to be the the sort of culture of corruption going through FIFA? Well yeah very hot of the press. I think everyone would join if I can infer from your question would join in the that revulsion that you speak of about what happens in football at global level but I think in truth it feels so distant to you know almost everybody that plays football to the point that it's not particularly an issue on the ground I think one of the marvellous things about sport actually but particularly student sport is this melting pot that I referred to earlier it's just normal for everybody to to run along together different nationalities we've got a very strong approach to some of the minority issues that Mary talked about earlier on and therefore people just respond to the environment that they find themselves in which is a very different one I hope to to what people might experience at FIFA. To answer your point in a more technical way our job principally is to transfer the good guidance that we would get from sport Scotland or from the particular national governing bodies of sport and translate that to a student audience and I hope you'd find that the Scottish FA have a much stronger line on these issues than their international counterparts may have. I think from our perspective we obviously work with the international federations quite a lot in football times it was more UEFA that recently been for the Euro 2020 matches rather than FIFA and undoubtedly there are all sorts of things that happen all the time. I mean the approach to sport and culture is quite different in that sport in theory is very much a process driven it's very structured internationally there's a very clear path in which you're supposed to do things some of the international federations stick rigorously to that and some of them don't some of them change the rules as you go along for perfectly valid reasons some of them change them to suit their own interests so again you know you can look at things like the IRB's decision around removing the sevens from from from Scotland actually probably on balance you could see why they would do that it's you know two in an olympic territory broadcast territories etc however in terms of the process it was completely an earthly flawed because they didn't say that these were any of the criteria on which they were judging it so they made a bad decision based on their own process and their own criteria. I think that that part of what we need to do in international influence is we need to know the governing bodies well we need to know whether there people we want them to trust us but we need to know whether the people we can trust so we have very very good relationships with some of the international federations others it becomes more tricky people move and then you've got to get to know a whole load of new people what really helps us in that is when we've got Scottish and British people on those governing bodies and UK sport have a programme of international influence which tries to get people into those organisations I think our our issue in Scotland is that that we have a couple of scots who are on in key roles in international sports federations who've really got there by their own efforts and I think that they're actually looking at Scotland's international influence whether it's every sport having three or four people five or six people who are in key positions in world sport actually would really really help us internationally because those people have influence over over other sports bodies so that's that's one of the things that I think would help us actually tackle that corruption side of things because we can have a positive influence from a moral point of view I think within to compare that to the cultural side the cultural side is so much more organic that you can actually much more choose the approach you're taking if there's somebody you don't want to work with there's plenty of other people you can work with which is which is where I think the two the two fields are very very different in terms of how you do it although what you're trying to do might be very similar. Jamie did you want to come back? No it's just what I was trying to get at I mean I think there's been covered in fact was was just the ethos of sportsmanship and honesty which runs from grassroot sport and children you know students being brought up to think that way and then having that whole you know horizon shattered by by what they see is this culture of corruption which appears to have been running for a long time and it's not only in football it's in other things too at the head of things and that's money from our organisations which is going to be used for the wrong reasons which could have been used to to help grassroot sport and that's what I feel is very very strongly about that but I just that was what I was trying to make. How do you explain that to a young person? I think it's just covered in large part but I think one of the things that we could possibly make more of is the good governance of sport that we do have in Scotland. It's absolutely part of all of our investment process that there is strong ethical anti-corruption anti-betting compliance with the doping legislation. I mean we will not invest in a governing body of sport unless we are absolutely solid about the governance of that sport. I think that as Stuart pointed out there's a lot of merit in some of those individuals having been through those processes of modernising their sports of developing policies that are strongly ethical of actually being able to share and showcase some of that with the rest of the world where they are trying to develop sports in cultures where potentially some of those are just how they do business and we're trying to actually I guess we have a lot to offer in terms of supporting other countries to do business in sport better. I think that there's a lot we can export there and we haven't been able to do that to the same extent potentially as we could have done had we had more Scottish voices on some of those international and better international relationships at a grassroots and a sports development perspective. I think that we have strong international connections to do with the way events are managed and things are represented there but in terms of grassroots sports development how you build clubs, grow clubs, govern those clubs there's a lot that Scotland could showcase. I think that that culture is Scottish culture, sort of fairness and sportsmanship. It's very important to transfer to the rest of the world. I think that there's a lot that we could help support there. Thanks convener. Dr Anderson and Stuart Turner have already touched on this but to enable others to speak on it, it's about going back to the Scottish Government's international framework and their international engagement. Can I ask how they would work or how they work with the Scottish Government to deliver the international engagement priorities and how much of a priority is it for your organisation that you do that? Lloyd. We have a regular dialogue with the Scottish Government so in the production of the country plans that the moment they're refreshing the India and Pakistan and there's one for the Americas we've consulted them quite closely about what it is we've got happening in those countries, what links there are, what we're trying to promote. So I think there's a constant dialogue with the Scottish Government about prioritisation and the content of the country plans. In terms of, if you like a kind of a Venn diagram, we're too, the overlapping bit, for the British Council I would say our priorities are the emerging economies and then also fragile states and developing countries. So if the Scottish Government's looking at the diaspora in Europe and emerging economies, the bit that overlaps is more the emerging economies than it is the other parts, but we both recognise that and we talk about an alignment of purpose in those countries where there's a sort of commonality of interest. Obviously they're the big countries, it's Brazil, Russia, India, China, Mexico and so on, so the large growing economies are a common interest between us. We have an advisory committee and the Scottish Government has a seat on the advisory committee and so there is a constant dialogue about what's happening where it's happening, where we need to concentrate effort. Neil? Yes, obviously as a National Theatre of Scotland we're funded directly by the Scottish Government so we have a lot of dialogue particularly with David Sears and his colleagues who are incredibly helpful and supportive and what we, I suppose our key thing is that any partnership has to be driven artistically, you can't put a square peg in a round hole, you can't make a partnership work either with a country or with a, if the match isn't there, so the driving force for us is always the show we're working on, whether that's a co-production within international company or has taken our work out, but we are very, we take cognisance of where those priority countries are so we have visited Brazil, Russia, China in the last few years, North America is a big partner for us and interestingly where we're trying to shift our gaze a bit more to Europe which also I think coinciding with a slight shift within the Government's priority countries, it's very hard actually for, surprisingly hard for English language theatre to play in mainland Europe because Europeans are brilliant and just translated it very quickly. As soon as a good Scottish play happens they'll translate it, the agent will sell the rights and translate it into their own tongue or even worse they'll do it brilliantly in English which is completely galling and very infuriating but brilliant on their part, but we are, so we have, we've worked in Poland and Russia already but we're certainly starting to look at Germany, France as well, but so it's something that we're absolutely aware of but it's never, pressure's never applied on us to say take the work there but we're aware of where those key partnerships are for the Government and where we can we try and align those two things together but I hope David Sears would agree with me on this because he's so brilliant at saying this but the art is the thing that drives the partnership in the first instance. Liam. I mean so our direct funding relationship in terms of core funding is with Creative Scotland as a regular funding, a regular funded organisation but in terms of international work and we have a very close relationship with colleagues in government and international and that manifests itself in lots of different ways so when we came back from India they were refreshing the India plan and we were able to feed down very direct kind of experiences into the consultation on that. We're in the final stages of pulling together a tour to Mexico as part of the theme year, the British Council theme year and then there's kind of interesting ways that connections weave together so that's part of the theme year and we're getting British Council support through a foundation in Mexico but the piece we're touring is a Made in Scotland piece so we've actually secured some Onward Touring fund through the Made in Scotland fund which is the Edinburgh festivals expo fund that's given to the festival fringe so it's kind of often a bit strands of activity that's woven together but I agree with Neil, there's got to be an artistic premise to what you're doing and with Mexico this autumn what we're trying to explore is touring existing work but again using that as an opportunity to explore potential co-production for the future so working with a really well established and respected classical musical ensemble in Mexico City, Sepro Music, to explore producing a piece together where they would be bringing the live music element and we bring the dance element. I think the committee should investigate that piece of work in Mexico. Creative Scotland was fully engaged in the development of the Scottish Government's international revised refreshed international framework. When we published our plan last year our 10-year plan of our fifth ambition so we've got five ambitions in that the fifth one is centered on international and it says we want Scotland to be a distinctive creative nation connected to the world and in the Scottish Government's framework it talks about our economic educational cultural and heritage strengths are celebrated and globally recognised supporting positive international reputation so a direct correlation there. There's a focus on innovation and knowledge exchange developing through that framework and that fits very well with the strategy that we're developing in terms of international. It also fits very well with our new relationship with the Scottish funding council where we're thinking about creative industries, innovation hubs and what that might mean in a Scotland context so I think that there will be more that will come through in that space that joins up very neatly with the approach that's being driven through the international framework. Does that answer your question, Sam? Thanks, convener. Could I return to a question that Jamie posed at the outset about barriers that your organisations face in terms of your international engagement or the effectiveness of that engagement? Could you distill and give us one example of what are the key barriers that you're facing and the second part of the question is I'm amazed that actually nobody has really focused in on funding for any of these activities so far in terms of how well funded are they? Where do the funds come from? Are you totally dependent on the public sector or how well have you engaged with Scottish companies in terms of funding this international engagement? I mean there are some rich companies out there with very Scottish products I'm thinking of likes of whisky and the like. How well are you doing in terms of actually attracting funding from the private sector as well? Sorry about that. With the barriers question, I mean I think that there are a couple of things and I guess I've already alluded to one of them in terms of the cultural sector is that when we were looking at events and bringing events in or supporting events to push their messages out that the channels in culture are less well defined and I think one of the things that would be really good from an events perspective and I know we do some of this work is actually to try and from a Scottish perspective we could actually create some of those channels so actually having and it's happened around there the festival before but actually creating an international ministers of culture summit you know some kind of international culture summit because the idea is just to say well actually where can we create that now I know there's been some of that's happened previously and we've certainly done it in individual genres it's happened but it's less structured it's more organic would be my observation others may have different views on that I think the other barrier if I go to sport and again this this is in danger of being political but it's just an observation is that in terms of bidding for international sports events for the majority of sports we have to go through a British or UK governing body now that's not necessary a problem we have very good relationships with them but actually they have a remit for the whole of the UK and they may choose to put an event in Wales or London or elsewhere in the UK rather than in Scotland and there your access to the international markets very very structured in in sport so Scottish cycling can't bid for an international event it has to be British cycling that can be a barrier we work very hard on relationship management so that it isn't a barrier so we work really closely with those with those British federations but undoubtedly it means that sometimes you have to just eat your share of the cake rather than getting the whole of the cake so those would be a couple of barriers in terms of the funding I think that that's almost how long is a piece of string in you know could you deal with more public funding I think from a perspective from our perspective the events that we support we're approximately about 20 to 25 percent of funding across the piece of those so that there's always other funders sometimes that'll be other public sector agencies so there's another things we'd co-fund with Creative Scotland for example or with local authorities but but actually if you go across a piece the commercial income and private sector income is usually more than 50 percent of the income into those events so you look at the as I say mountain bike world cup at the weekend just using that because it's a current example it's about 70 percent of commercial and private sector incomes or sponsored income or ticket sales which I think you know given the benefits that it brings to Scotland there's actually a pretty good mix of of what's there so whilst in no way would I say we don't need more money it's probably around specific projects and specific big events that come in rather than rather than on the on-going portfolio it's actually it's both yourself and creative scotland how many cities do you actually engage with who have 20 agreements around the world in terms of promoting scotland and one of the examples I want to give you is the glasgos twin city in urenburg in Germany where they have a burn supper every year and it's an event that's totally sold out and it attracts a lot of private money for that event and I'm wondering whether we do that in other twin cities as well or would you be interested in developing that concept to have that developed to other cities as well to have similar types of events which very clearly promote Scotland it's a very specific burn supper event and I think the fact that we take haggis from Scotland to urenburg every year as well so would you be interested in promoting that in other cities and would you be willing to speak to cities about the twin partners, twin partners? We are interested and we do that in partnership with cities and towns in Scotland so Creative Scotland has a relationship with all of the 32 local authorities in Scotland and through that we would have conversation with twin cities and other places in other parts of the world. If I'm very honest I think we've had a formal arrangement around the MOU with the British Council in the way that we've worked internationally. I've been very keen since I began my role at Creative Scotland that we think hard in terms of what else we might do internationally so we've committed to producing an international strategy this year which will line up with the Scottish Government's international approach and within that clearly we need to think about what we can do to connect with people from Scotland elsewhere in a more meaningful way. I attended the Chinese Burns nice in Edinburgh in fact which was albeit here but a fantastic example of how Scotland was working in a really integrated way with people from China so I think there's lots of opportunity through those kinds of things. Where you're proposing to do or are you still in the negotiation and talks stage at the moment? We're still in the process. Creative Scotland's role is a funder and a development agency and it's really important I think that we work through and with the organisations that we fund and the places that we fund in Scotland so we would want to have conversations with 32 local authorities across Scotland in terms of where they might want to connect with as well as pull together the knowledge that we hold as an organisation in terms of where the opportunities are. I also probably exist at two separate levels so the kind of level you're talking about there which is almost event specific. A lot of the events have those connections and again we would advise, help and if we could we would facilitate those and then there are those that we would have as an organisation so we have a formal MOU with New Zealand Government around exchanging events best practice and we've even had a staff exchange with them and we have less formal agreements with Denmark, with Finland and with the state of Victoria and Australia again which is around us exchanging intelligence particularly where we're not direct competitors, where we would exchange intelligence around events, around measurement and various other things that are in there. So some of those exist at if you like at our level with our direct relationships, others I think are much more appropriate for the events themselves and it's more a facilitation role for us. Lloyd. Just to come back to Mr Ingram's question in terms of barriers I guess the British Council in country is there to try to reduce those barriers so for Scottish National Theatre or whoever we're trying to make life easier in country and help them. So for us I'd say the barrier is money. It's the amount of money we've got to enable more activity to take place. There is a barrier the other way which is about visas and last week I think I was in the FT or Telegraph was a story about Georgian theatre company that was invited to the Manchester festival. They can't come because they were all refused visas because they didn't have the financial means to independently support themselves. So that's a problem. I suppose language can be another barrier. We've got more evidence from students that they will tend to even go to somewhere where they speak English, America or Canada or Australia or they will go somewhere close. So Europe which means that it is difficult to get people to go to the far east or parts of East Asia and so on. So I think language and visas are barriers but for us the main barrier is probably having the money. In terms of the money that we have our budget is about 800 million a year of which about 20% is a grant from the foreign office and the rest of it is earned through teaching English, running exams or managing contracts for others. So actually the grant in aid from the foreign office is now a pretty small portion of the terms. I suppose for us that the barriers tend to be about scheduling. Often an offer will come very quickly when you simply can't accommodate it. So it's a timing issue often. There's an issue of resource for us which is that we can't take up all the offers we want to do. Not necessarily financial resource but more staffing resource. If we have a big show in Scotland that's where we're going to deploy our key people rather than suddenly pull them off to be in the USA or China. Although we do have access to a large pool of freelance people but we still need our key people and we tend to try and make a show if it's internationally a key priority for us so we want the best people working on that. Funding is an issue but strangely not necessarily our own funding because our policy tends to be that in the end we're the National Theatre of Scotland and we tend to try and concentrate our funds on making work in Scotland so if our work travels we try and make itself supporting and that's usually through the fees that we raise from the festivals or or theatres that we're visiting with some help certainly from the Scottish Government International Touring Fund which is a fund for the five national companies of £350,000 a year which they try and distribute equally but we always try and get the lion's share but sometimes we do sometimes we don't it depends on how much we have out but primarily we're funding it through so it's whether as Lloyd said often whether it's whether the British Council in that country is helping the partner we're going to because often the big thing that often stops shows it's not it's not the weekly fee for the actors for the act it's a project like the James plays that we did in Edinburgh last year that were planned into tour internationally in 2016 which is a huge undertaking that's more than 40 people on the road so it's 40 flights it's 40 hotels a night it's that's in a sense that's bigger than the fee for them and we don't even see that money that's an end of what we call that an end of the line thing that's them to deal with we just say we need really good hotels for 40 people thank you very much or 40 flights for people so that those are the kind of barriers in terms of of also trying to raise many ourselves to help in a sense to help our partnerships in the usa we have what's called a 501c3 board so we have a there's a national theatre of scotland america ink board incorporated board which means that we can both raise we can accept fees and raise sponsorship without tax in the usa and initially we did it really as a as a as a functionary to help us get there so we our fees weren't penalised as we've done more and more work and it goes back to what we started with in a sense that consistency of visit visited we built up a network of key supporters in the usa who were from we have a board with somebody from a main whisky company is on somebody from a finance company with an american name are on it and they in america they have an expression for theatre boards which is get no give get or get off that's what you meant to do you give money you get money or you get off the board it's a very different way because there's that subsidy issue doesn't it doesn't exist really for them so that's a change of culture for us to be working with american board where there's an expectation on them to raise money and it's you know it's starting slowly but it's building and i think it's going to be a key aspect of future international work for us and just finally the question of like burn suppers and things it's interesting whenever we wherever we go in the world no matter how contemporary we might think and cutting edge we think our show is they want us to do a burn supper always so we've done them in fantastic places um we have a show called the stranger and doing a prudencia hard which is a show that we do in a pub um and we did that in Santa Monica and on the saturday night which coincided with burns like they said can you not do the show but do a burn supper so we did a burn show it's been suffering 80 degree temperature in the santa monica in january so we're always looking for opportunities to do that stew one thing to echo and then a slightly different point um wanted to underline what stewart was saying about the scottish versus british element which i think is quite important certainly within sport um and it does ask questions then of how we try to influence and it's whether we're trying to influence britain first um before we go wider than that but i think the main barrier besides is really one of coordination and um you know sitting as we do between education and sport if we're really going to have an impact in this arena then it's about aligning to lots of different sets of priorities what the steer is from the scottish government how that plays out through the funding council where sport scotland might fit in and also recognising that each of our member institutions has their own priorities around recruitment of students for example and international bits of research so that's potentially quite complex but the good news is if we can make sense of that and if the all the stars align then we're actually in a uniquely useful place i think to do some really meaningful work and it's work that often maybe hasn't been done yet so i think that's an exciting opportunity so i suppose my question or my challenge is whether out with a discussion like this today whether we've got the right mechanism to really bring sport culture and education together so that we can collaborate to best effect so does that exist others may answer that better than i can do do we want one if it if it doesn't yet exist janet and fully endorse the fact that i think there could be better coordination um and better shared access to knowledge and networks than perhaps we're currently initiating and maybe it's up to us as national agencies to uh take the lead in in in terms of generating um closer working just on the barriers front um the other two points that i would make one is around digital um i think a lot of uh arts organisations and creative industries companies are now exploiting digital in a really meaningful way through opening up to international opportunities and markets the infrastructure in scotland is still not strong enough to be able to accommodate that especially when you think about large file sizes for film or music where the common practice now is for for creative people to work together uh on a digital platform um in many different parts of the world and collaborate we're not quite able to do that everywhere in scotland just yet and we need to work on that on the um and digital is really important and increasing area for creative scotland we get about 150 000 visitors every month onto our website which is a significant number of people in terms of our twitter usage it's about 60 000 20 000 of those are international people we think um so real opportunities to build on there in terms of funding um point i would make is is yes we are stretched um as you would expect me to say um but there's a there's a specific point around the way that we're funded as an organisation in that a significant proportion of our funding comes from the national lottery so therefore it's constrained in terms of what we can use it for it has to benefit the people of scotland um it's quite difficult to deploy that in terms of international working so we don't have a lot of spare resource to be able to support the development that could happen for scotland internationally um i think my view is that is and my experience of working not just in scotland but beyond is that a little bit more resource into international working can unlock a great deal uh because the fee levels that companies get i'm sure colleagues will back me up internationally are often higher than are able to be um brought in through uk working uh so there is added value in terms of any um little bit of extra money that goes into international working that could play in quite significantly in terms of overall economic economic gain Adam does that answer your questions yes so suddenly a range of issues there that we might wish to explore i think i'm going to go to rod who wants to explore some other issues in fact uh convener i was uh my questions were largely on budget and largely answered but could i just pose one question um for the people here today in terms of whether there is a conflict at times between domestic and international engagement and if so how are those resolved certainly from an events perspective and again i'm speaking from an events perspective the two are totally symbiotic because actually if if you don't have Scottish people at an event enjoying it if you don't have Scottish suppliers Scottish food and drink and you haven't developed that part of it the quality of experience for any visitors and the quality of your broadcast that goes out is lessened so so actually part of our job is to make sure that the you know we work with the smaller events we help them grow and develop and we work with the industry so that the quality is there so that actually when you are projecting outwards or bringing people inwards that the the two things meet in the middle and actually people have that the experience you want them to have because it's very much about people's experience with events you know they go to an event because they want the experience and the experience has to be quality so i think for us we have to have both um so i don't think it really conflicts um that i guess the part of it is is then always comes back to resourcing is where do you cut the cake um but but i think that within within the resources you have you have to you have to develop both sides and they they work virtuously to help each other i mean sometimes international and domestic is one and the same thing so the edinburgh international festivals and all these other festivals taking place in edinburgh and beyond bring fantastic international work to scotland for Scottish audiences and impact on the economy significantly here um and other examples of course of the st magnus festival um upon awkney um which which is a terrific um international exposition um and the work that organisations like cryptic do in glasgo working internationally uh as a producing art has um fit into that into that into that into that theme new i think it's a really good question especially for for organisations who are producing work and making work as to where you where you where you spend your time where you put your resource and i mean certainly when we first started we were we were slightly taken aback by the international interest in our work and we got a bit giddy about it and thought well it's very it's all very well being in sydney but we really need to be in sutherland this week or or whatever and people started to notice it and said how come that you're in new yw but you're not in cacodio you know and that was correct it was a really good early lesson for us um and in fact i think in our third year we simply said we are not going to tour internationally this year because it's is taken it's pulling too much of our resource we've kind of slightly calmed down now and um i think we we've got the balance right in terms of what we see international work doing for the company's reputation for its finances for for the experience it gives our teams as well and you know they come back kind of very much match fit i suppose in terms of what we do um and picking up janett's point the great if you what if you can make international touring work and it's a bit of a jigsaw puzzle in terms of the funding where it comes from and indeed you know at nts we've we've had support from creative scotland as well from the made in scotland fund for some of our shows but if you can get that jigsaw puzzle right scotland tends to benefit from it in that if if the money if the fees are right it enables you to remount to show that you could certainly not have done just to do in scotland so that when we do the james plays i shouldn't be saying this because nothing's been announced yet it's never mind um by but as now i know but by doing them internationally by no can you turn that tv off right um by doing them internationally and enables us to do them in scotland again it's one feeds the other and that's the key thing for us is that the two things work works in biotically i hope um so it's it's about a balance but i think it's a it's a good point because i think there can be a temptation to think how exciting and it's like oh hang on a minute who's actually whose money is is paying for us it's the scottish taxpayers money that's where the work should be focused but that spin-off is fantastic and indeed feeds back in we hope to to scotland okay welly thanks very much can you start by picking up the point janet mentioned there he mentioned the whole digital agenda which is um raised at this committee quite often um how to how to see a consistency of approach within europe in relation to the digital agenda not just for jobs but to increase opportunity throughout the european union and there must be issues for you particularly the cultural organizations i think particularly when you're taking when you're touring it's not just about people in props i suppose these days it's about so it's about multimedia and all sorts of assets so so there's very much in awareness at this committee of how important the digital agenda is for a number of aspects but i wanted to say a wee word about the burn supper thing that's been mentioned several times and i'm sure you'll know that you don't have to wait until january to have a burn supper some associates of mine had a burn supper in july in 1986 i call that's 29 years ago to celebrate what you'll all know is the comaric edition of burns which was published in comaric in 1976 so it's lovely to hear that there's such a wide interest in robert burns it's just lovely lovely to hear that and it would be lovely to hear if there were more stories about that about the whole robert burns experience from taking across the world not just in january it's for the whole year but the main point i want to take to raise convener was about what there are friends particularly in the cultural organisations how you engage with the institutions of europe if at all if you look at the european commissions 10 point plan for renewal or whatever in europe you don't see culture in there at all doesn't feature and neither is sport it's not mentioned and i think it should be i think it should be centre stage up front so my question to you is do you get an opportunity to try to influence colleagues in europe to influence the political dimension in europe or is that beyond your your ability to do that and if so how would you how would you like to go about it how could you do it better loid we're just on that last point um uh the culture budget and the commission has always been small because of the principle of subsidiarity so um i think it's always felt to have been an area that had to be devolved to the national level and therefore there is now a creative europe desk which which janets houses in creative scotland the creative europe has allocated just under two billion pounds between 2014 and 2020 at the moment i think it's clear that scotland isn't getting its fair share of that we've got some staff now at creative scotland who are part of that UK wide creative europe desk to look at providing advice and guidance and support to Scottish organisations in order to help support effort to be able to get into those funds creative scotland is also part of a number of different networks across europe and globally so so we belong to ifica um which is the association that brings arts councils together um and uh ispa and ietm which is a european network um we've got two members of staff who are actually presidents of european networks so um both in the field of education uh so that's Joan Parr so she liases with um uh policymakers and strategists across european field of education um and ian smith who's ahead of music is also the president of european wide organisation Liam have you got something to add to that yeah we've we've just come to the end of a project called retnet which was linking um a series of um reputation dance companies throughout europe together with the kind of explicitly aim of exchanging practice and understanding and a future potential and we found it incredibly valuable we didn't raise the funds here but um it's that european model where it was raised from another country and we were scotland was one of the partnership countries um but it worked on on all ends the levels of the company it wasn't just about the artistic directors and executive staff exchanging the technical directors or managers exchanged uh massive marketing and exploring um i suppose there's a very in terms of contemporary dance there's a very well established touring network throughout the main houses in europe but it perhaps has less opportunity around it for some of that really interesting exchange that those same companies that tour that circuit have found when they go to the developing countries the developing economies so the kind of rationale behind it was well how can we come together and use that as a force for kind of cracking it open a bit more so that it's not just you know drop into paris one night do a show move on to berlin um and just if i could return a little bit to the point around resource and kind of conflict between national work and international work i think there is a there is a thing around schedules they never neatly overlap we're always having to re juggle and actually what i think we've learned and are still learning is that you get better at the juggle the more you understand about the the way that that culture works and the better you can understand that culture is to do with long-term planning horizons long-term engagement so the plea around if there is ever additional resource investment in that to facilitate long-term relationship building and long-term planning will give that added value i think tenfold because it the deeper the understanding the deeper you can kind of resolve those um not conflicts but those the way that it doesn't neatly stack together and at the first pass mary um in the sport area it's been interesting because our connections have largely been through health policy in europe um rather than cultural policy so we've had quite a lot of opportunity to engage with and influence around dg health and um a lot of that activity has been about harmonising public health messages about minimum levels of physical activity the importance of activity to health um and the role of sport within that they've also as part of that health overview taken a view on anti-doping um and the relationship between european policy and uh wada the the world anti-doping agency and some of the essential checking of governance i guess of those issues as well does that always work at work well recently because unusually um the UK representative was um from scotland um and liaised the challenges come where we are presented with the opportunity to present a UK perspective um and actually the way that we've adopted that has been devolved in each country so the sport england perspective may be quite different from the sport scotland perspective because of different policy environments around health or sport so that sometimes presents us with some challenges of coming to a coherent EU that we feed into that EU mechanism but there's been a lot of work done as as you know as Stuart said with international federations in sport there's been a lot of work done between the four home countries of the UK to come to agreed positions that we can put into that mix slightly different policy takes a lot of the european policy has been quite concerned with aging and the demographics of aging and the impact that has on physical activity and health and sport and access whereas in the UK we tend to have quite a strong focus on young people and opportunities and equality i'm very interested in this and about how your counterparts in Europe particularly on the cultural side and whether they have much more of a proactive or direct engagement with the institutions of Europe to get in there get a seat at the table we get to get funding streams and be represented in something like the commission's 10 point plan for Europe i just don't understand why that agenda isn't there up front and in your face it's not and it should be so it's difficult to engage with European institutions and we find that too so i'm just going to wonder what your take on it is and whether your counterparts across Europe do it or don't i was fortunate to be part of the international culture summit which took place in this building in fact last august and that's one of the issues that came up is why isn't culture part of that main charter effectively and indeed the un it is neither so i know that one of the recommendations taken away from that was to try and drive that forward so i'll undertake to try and find where that's got in terms of i mean our own experience with those kind of european streams of funding is that they're incredibly complex these to be a scheme called the kaleidoscope fund that was probably the most complicated funding stream ever you would spend literally months and you needed three partners from three different countries one of whom god knows it was incredibly complex um and it almost felt it almost felt it was there to put you off doing it so i think it's put it's actually stopped people doing it um i know there's a different scheme now which is a little simpler but it's still very complicated and it's we've i have to say we've never really we we did engage with it once with a company from germany and a company from canada and we weren't successful um but we will continue to look at it but i think i think you're right i think in terms of why isn't culture and and indeed at that summit one of the issues came out going back to mary's point was was was that linking of culture and health both both both physical and mental health particularly in terms of what culture does and how culture can be a massive asset in in breaking down some of some of those things so um i share your um your concern that it isn't higher up the up that agenda as i'll try and find out from colleagues who are at the culture summit whether it's that's moved forward at all that would be helpful we will have the cabinet secretary with us so we can maybe ask some of these questions as well but i'm hearing from the sector it's very important we are just about out of time absolutely we are past the time that we should have had but um jamey's very very anxious to get in and is we final last supplementary all right thank you the point i was trying was actually i agree with willy coffees sentiments about the difficulties of engaging with european institutions and just you mentioned the funding of two billion which may be may be available through creative europe what would scotland share be of that what should it be uh that that's i suppose is my last question well it's application driven from organizations based across europe so it's not divided up in terms of countries specifically um the funding is for cultural and creative sectors and then there's a media sub programme which invests in film television new media and games so it's quite wide ranging it's it's partnership driven so uh you wouldn't apply by yourself you'd apply with partners from across europe um so it's difficult to answer the specific question what would what should scotland share be what we've done has calculated a rough proportion um of of what we're getting against our demographic compared to other uk countries and and it's disproportionately low at the moment so clearly there's an opportunity to find ways of opening the door to enabling those partnerships to be made so that scotland can generate um confidence and and and and perhaps we need to do some some some workshops and training to help people be able to make the applications um that might be successful uh so that we can punch through a bit more powerfully into that programme it's but it is just under two billion euros so so it is a significant amount of money to to play for we have the cabinet secretary for infrastructure here at the last meeting before we break for for summer recess um looking at um european structural funds because it's something within this committee that we've kept a very very strong strong eye on and and we know that and for instance in research and innovation and science we punch above our way you know on some of those indicators as far as you know securing funding and maybe that's maybe have a wee chat with some of your science and innovation people that seem to know how to navigate this system neil says it's it's complex um the forms can be quite cumbersome and laborious so i think we need to think about how we can use our collective results in in the most effective way uh and and and and and try to support um the efforts of organisations whose focus really should be on making great work um is there a way that collectively we can we can think about how to draw in european resource um in a in a better way than than perhaps it's currently working it's familiar with a number of organisations who do exactly that for the education sector and that so like scvo and you know the the west of scotland colleges partnership they do this type of stuff so it's not as if there's a there's not a model there but um it's been a a holder of an esf funded project many years ago i feel your pain um i think that actually concludes our evidence today from from our guests around the table we're really grateful for the very interesting and creative and ways that you have helped us to understand how your sector you know communicates with with the rest of the world and what that brings us and what we we can give back we're really grateful for your written evidence we're grateful for your oral evidence and if there's anything else you think would help us in our understanding of all of this please keep in touch and and let us know what what's happening um and i think maybe you know if mexico's a goer that's only a that's only a joke invariably we do all of these things via video conference so but thank you very very much and i'll briefly suspend just to allow our witnesses to to leave the seats thank you okay um welcome back to the european external relations committee we're moving on to agenda item three which for us today is the brussel's bulletin you've got the brussel's bulletin contained within your papers um is there any questions clarifications rod well obviously just about in relation to t-tip obviously things have moved on the plenary session didn't take place um i'm not quite sure entirely why but although i heard there were a huge number of amendments so um so it's a kind of work in progress as far as t-tip's concerned i believe it's been postponed until september yeah anything else billy convener page uh oh they're not numbered it's a health and sport item that's in the second last page members will notice there that the commission didn't decided not to update the alcohol strategy and that's led to 20 organisations resigning from that particular body i would like to find out a wee bit more information about what's happened there that sounds like a fairly serious thing to have occurred and that would be of some concern i think to committee members in the scottish parliament i think okay yeah rod just in terms of the energy union i see that uh maros secovich is due here in the united kingdom on the 13th of july i don't know whether i can find out whether he's proposing to have any discussions with um any member of the scottish government during that visit secovich any other comments and questions nope happy to share the belter brussel's bulletin with other relevant committees maybe highlighting some of the points that were just raised on energy and um alcohol issue to the health committee and energy to the energy committee specifically highlighting those days jimmy do they go to all committees but the brussel's bulletin go to all the committee do we ever get any feedback sorry do we ever get any feedback um i don't think so although the raptor the raptor usually on whatever that committee is takes forward those those issues and some of those raptors are members of this committee are you volunteering volunteering for what to act to take the message and bring what you mean from other committees no all right okay now i just wondered if anything of interest would come at unit back from that chair is it fair to say that normally if a committee does find something of interest they pursue that themselves they have and then what we get is when we do the the the european update of the european strategy and we get the feedback from all the committees you can then see the areas where they have picked up and then did some work on okay thank you very much okay okay moving on to gender item four which is the item we agree to take in private so i'll briefly suspend to allow us to go into private thank you