Response to DCMS call for evidence:

Exploring the current balance across society lotteries, The National Lottery and competing gambling products in raising funds for good causes and maintaining player protection.

Submission date: 4 March 2015

Contact:

Kenneth Fowler

Director of Communications

07970 557 960

1. Introduction

Creative Scotland is the national body that supports the development of arts, screen and creative industries across all parts of Scotland.

We enable people and organisations in Scotland to work in, and experience, the arts and creative sectors. We do this by helping others to create culture through developing great ideas and bringing them to life.

“We want a Scotland where everyone actively values and celebrates arts and creativity as the heartbeat for our lives and the world in which we live; which continually extends its creative imagination and ways of doing things; and where the arts, screen and creative industries are confident, connected and thriving.”Unlocking Potential, Embracing Ambition, a shared plan for the arts, screen and creative industries, 2014.

We aim to achieve this vision through four key functions:

  • Funding support for individuals and organisations working in the arts, screen and creative industries.
  • Advocacy on behalf of these sectors, both nationally and internationally.
  • Development support for these sectors so that they can continue to grow and thrive.
  • Influencing others to understand the value that the arts, screen and creative industries deliver.

Creative Scotland’s overall budget for 2014/15 is £93m, which we receive from the Scottish Government (60%) and The National Lottery (40%)and out lottery funding is used to support work in the arts and screen sectors.

We distribute this funding to these sectors through three funding routes: Regular Funding over three years for organisations; Open Project Funding for individuals and organisations for programmes of work for up to two years; Targeted Funding to support specific sectors, projects and initiatives (including Film & TV production).

In April 2014 we published our Strategic Plan, Unlocking Potential, Embracing Ambition, which presents a shared vision for the arts, screen and creative industries for the next 10 years.

Alongside each year’s Annual Plan we also publish Companion Pieces that give an overview of current sector development needs and opportunities across the arts, screen and creative industries.

2. Creative Scotland and The National Lottery

The National Lottery forms a vital part of funding support for arts and screen in Scotland as well as for other areas of public life such as sport, heritage and community development projects.

Since its inception in 1994, more than £470m of National Lottery funds have been distributed to the arts, film and culture sectors through the Scottish Arts Council, Scottish Screen and, since 2010, through Creative Scotland.

Currently, more than a third of Creative Scotland’s annual budget comes from The National Lottery (£34m in 2014/15) and we are one of four National Lottery distributors in Scotland, alongside SportScotland, The Big Lottery and the Heritage Lottery Fund, drawing on income from the millions of people who play The National Lottery every week.

National Lottery funds complement the significant core funding that we channel to the arts ans creen sectors from the Scottish Government (£53m in 2014/15).

A host of cultural organisations, individual artists and creative people do fantastic work with funds from The National Lottery – work that expands imaginations, pushes artistic boundaries, develops creative skills and makes a positive difference to all our lives.

Just some examples where National Lottery funding makes a difference to arts and screen in Scotland include:

  • The Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games Culture Programme:The Glasgow 2014 cultural programme was the largest, most ambitious, programme of arts and culture events ever put together in Scotland and was supported, through Creative Scotland, with £9.75m of funding from The National Lottery. The programme consisted of more than 2000 different events and projects across all parts of Scotland. This included those on a national scale such as Generation (a celebration of 25 years of contemporary visual art in Scotland; Big Big Sing (a participatory initiative to get people singing across the country); and Get Scotland Dancing (a participatory initiative enabling thousands of people to dance) balanced with more intimate cultural experiences such as King Creosote and Virginia Heath’s film and music collaboration From Scotland With Love; Hanna Tuulikki’s sound and visual art event on the Hebridean island of Canna, Away With the Birds; and Tam Dean Burn’s Books on a Bike tour bringing to life the works of children’s author Julia Donaldson for kids across Scotland. The cultural programme reached almost 2 million people across all parts of Scotland and across a wide range of communities. This would not have been possible without funding from The National Lottery.
  • Open Project Funding for individual artists and organisations: Creative Scotland’sOpen Project Funding offers a rolling programme of funding for individual creative practitioners and organisations – who can apply for between £1,000 to £100,000 for a programme of work of up to 2 years. The programme has a budget of around £1m per month and is supported, in the major part, by funds from The National Lottery. This funding supports a range of creative work, such as helping individual artists to develop their practice, assisting theatre touring and providing support forfestivals. As such, this support is vital to creating a rich depth and breadth of cultural provision across Scotland and the future work of individual artists. Information on the most recent awards from this fund can be foundhere.
  • Supporting Film production in Scotland:Creative Scotland’s support for Screen is currently in the region of £9m annually.This includes direct support for film and TV production through a £4m Film & TV Fund, which is funded entirely from The National Lottery. This means that the bulk of publicly funded film production in Scotland is supported by The National Lottery. Recent productions include Sunshine on Leith, Starred Up, ’71, Filth and the BAFTA Scotland award winning For Those in Peril as well as international productions such as Under the Skin, Skyfall and the TV production Outlander.
  • Regular Funding for organisations: Creative Scotland’s programme of Regular Fundingsupports a range and breadth of creative organisations making a vital contribution to the current health and future development of the arts and culture in Scotland.This portfolio enables more organisations than ever before in Scotland to benefit from stable, three-year funding.The portfolio consists of 119 organisations demonstrating creative excellence, potential and ambition, with significant reach throughout Scotland and across many areas of practice. While supported predominately through funding received from the Scottish Government, a proportion of support for these regularly funded organisations comes from The National Lottery.
  • Funding for Capital development: Since 1995, Creative Scotland (previously the Scottish Arts Council) has awarded more than £160m of National Lottery funding to capital and public art projects. These funding awards have supported important elements of the cultural infrastructure across Scotland, ensuring that more people, in more parts of Scotland, continue to access excellent artistic and cultural experiences. Just a few examples of where National Lottery funding has supported capital development projects include the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness, Orkney; Eden Court theatre, cinema and arts centre in Inverness; thePicture House cinema, Campbeltown in Argyll & Bute; and Platform in Easterhouse, Glasgow. All of these, in different ways, have been transformative to the provision of creative experiences for local communities and visitors alike.

Evidence suggests that Lottery funding distributed through Creative Scotland constitutes, on average, 15% of overall project costs but is invaluable in helping leverage additional funding from other sources.

This further demonstrates why it’s essential, if arts and culture is to continue to flourish in Scotland, that the conditions are ensured for The National Lottery to continue to generate funds for good causes, such as arts and culture, in the future.

3. Our response to the call for evidence

Creative Scotland welcomes this call for evidence as a further, valuable contribution to our continued efforts to deliver economic sustainability to the sectors that we support.

We also welcome the opportunity to underline the importance of The National Lottery to the ability of those working in the arts and screen sectorsto continue to produce work of local, national and international significance and resonance - work that makes a positive difference to the lives of people and communities across Scotland.

Our submission focuses specifically on questions 6 and 7 in the call for evidence, namely:

6. How far should The National Lottery be protected from, or enabled to meet, competition.

As we have demonstrated above; The National Lottery makes a significant and highly valued contribution to funding for the arts, screen and creative industries in Scotland and, since its inception in 1994, has become an integral part of the culture funding landscape, contributing more than £470m through the Scottish Arts Council, Scottish Screen and now Creative Scotland.

In a time of uncertain economic conditions, where public funding is under both intense scrutiny and pressure, the continued stability of National Lottery funding becomes even more critical.

We welcome the UK Government’s assertion that it is “determined to maintain the continued success of The National Lottery” and would fully support any initiative that protects the levels of success that the National Lottery has demonstrated from any erosion by other branded lotteries or from other gambling products.

For example, we would welcome better clarity, for players and the broader public, to help understand the distinction between The National Lottery and other ‘society lotteries’ both in terms of branding and in terms of the level of contribution they make to good causes and public life.

7. Does the emergence of lottery-like betting products and betting on lotteries (in permitted circumstances) create risks or opportunities that need to be addressed?

As a significant contributor to funding for arts and screen in Scotland, any threat to the sustained level of National Lottery support for good causes must be seen as a risk.

Scottish Government funding for arts and culture, both through Creative Scotland and through other channels (such as direct funding for National Companies - Scottish Ballet, Scottish Opera, the National Theatre of Scotland, the National Galleries, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra) has been maintained in Scotland, despite challenging economic circumstances and the Government’s support for culture remains strong.

However, several key strands of Creative Scotland’s funding support, as highlighted above, rely on National Lottery funds and, if these funds are put at risk then consequently so is the ability for these strands to continue.

Any significant reduction in support from the National Lottery would have a direct, negative impact on Creative Scotland’s ability to fund as many individuals, projects and organisations across the arts and screen sectors and across as many parts of Scotland.

Creative Scotland sees the emergence of other lottery-like betting products as a potential threat to the long term stability of cultural funding in Scotland primarily as a result of the erosion of the National Lottery player base; lack of clear distinction between the National Lottery and other lottery-like products; and increased competition resulting in less funding being available for good causes.

Again, we would support any UK or Scottish Government initiative that helps to address these potential threats.

In the meantime, through our own communications and promotions channels, website, events and external relations, we continue to showcase the artists, projects and organisations that we fund.

We ensure that all recipients of National Lottery funding through Creative Scotland recognise this in their own communications and promotional materials.

We also work collaboratively with the National Lottery Promotions Unit and other Lottery distributors to communicate to the public and stakeholders the value that National Lottery funding delivers for the people of Scotland and we intend doing more of this in the future.

We also continue to recognise the invaluable contribution that The National Lottery makes to the health of the arts and screen sectors in Scotland and the benefits they deliver to everyone that lives here. Creative Scotland will work hard to ensure that this continues.

ENDS

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National and Society Lotteries – Call for Evidence – Creative Scotland Submission March 2015