It’s not often that I am persuaded by the speeches of politicians, but a recent talk by Cabinet Secretary for Culture & External Affairs in the Scottish Government, Fiona Hyslop, got me thinking.
Despite (or maybe because) being an economics graduate and starting my career in economic development, I have long felt that it is to our collective detriment to view public spending solely in terms of economic impact or in terms of the economic benefits it brings. This is particularly true when it comes to culture.
Culture Secretary Maria Millar has publicly asked the culture sector to help her make the arguments about the economic impact of culture and its contribution to economic growth. And there has been a lot of debate lately about her alleged lack of support for the cultural sector in the UK – most recently in online version of The Telegraph.
I was therefore particularly struck by Fiona Hyslop’s recent speech and just how different is the stance taken north of the border.
Here’s a quote
“The Scottish Government already accepts the case for the role of government in supporting the cultural sector. We actively support the case for public subsidy of the arts. We understand that culture and heritage have a value in and of themselves.”
She goes on to say
“Of course the culture and heritage sectors make an invaluable contribution to our economic life, but despite these challenging times, we do not measure the worth of culture and heritage solely in pounds and pence – we value culture and heritage precisely because they are so much more, because they are our heart, our soul, our essence. … culture’s economic value is not its primary purpose but a secondary benefit”.
This all needs to be seen within a context of next year’s referendum on Scottish independence but nevertheless I am struck by how true this is, and how we seem to have lost the sense of just how important culture is in the UK as a whole.
In the work we do for destinations helping them to identify and articulate what is unique, their culture is one of the main drivers. Culture in both its senses –history and shared experience AND artistic expression – are what makes a place special and different and very often gives it its appeal. And we know from research by the WTO and VisitBritain that heritage and culture are vital motivators in the decision to visit a particular place or country. Culture in that first sense just ‘is’, but it is its expression that benefits from public sector support, both to produce and to experience.
Fiona Hyslop goes on to talk about the importance of stories in communicating and representing our culture
“Because they bind and connect our past, our present and our future and tell the stories about where we’ve come from, who we are and help us reflect on who we could be… Scotland’s cultural life and heritage cannot be reduced to a single style or image; rather, they are a wealth of what we might describe as “stories” that take many different forms, as diverse as the land, peoples and places of this complex country.”
and
“The connections and threads between our past, our present and our future are flexible and fluid; we both take and create meaning when we look deep into the history of our nation, shaped by those who have settled here and those who have left for faraway shores; our connections with other countries, other peoples all linked by these threads connecting people, forms and ideas.”
There is an emotional power in these words, and whatever you may think of the politics of the Scottish National Party, seem to me to nail an important truth. They also reinforce why we have developed our Shared Story™ approach to the branding and marketing of destinations.
She also says
“Place is about more than physical structures and landscape. Places are where things happen. Places are where we listen to and play music, where we hear and write stories, where we look at and create paintings and sculptures, where we watch and produce films and where we dance. Places are where we take part.”
Culture is about those expressions and realisation of ideas in a specific location which give us a reason to visit. Some years back when I was working for Scottish Tourist Board as was we produced a TV advert which featured a short scene with poet Norman McCaig quoting from one of his poems (Celtic Cross) “only men’s minds could have unmapped into abstraction such a territory”. It was probably a conceit by our advertising agency reflecting the fact that this was exactly what we were doing with the advert. I’m sure that this meaning was largely lost on most of those who saw the 30 second ad; but I still feel that showing an old man with a face of great character, who happened to be one of Scotland’s best modern poets, reciting poetry, seated in one of Scotland’s beautiful old buildings, reinforced the message about Scotland being so much more than cliché and stereotype.
Culture makes us who we are. And that is surely of great interest to all who live in – and visit – a place.