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Section Two
Local Cultural Entitlements and Cultural Planning
2.1 Part 1 of the draft Bill is about local cultural services and activities; how they are organised by local authorities and how people in their area enjoy and participate in them.
The situation now
2.2 There is a lot of local cultural activity now available across Scotland. Of that which is funded publicly, much is paid for by local authorities. They support the arts, literature, theatre, local cultural traditions, craft, community facilities, festivals, museums, local heritage, libraries, local archives, cultural enterprise support and a wide range of other services. They offer these services in response to the wishes of local people and to fulfil their existing statutory duty to make adequate provision for cultural activity for the inhabitants of their area.
Local cultural entitlements
2.3 We want to build on this success and encourage more people from different communities to enjoy and get involved in cultural activities in their area. We also want authorities to encourage participation in culture and to respond positively and imaginatively to community aspirations. To help this, the draft Bill improves the law about the local provision of cultural activities. Under the proposed legislation Ministers will issue guidance to local authorities about what will be known as 'local cultural entitlements'.
2.4 Local cultural entitlements will be specific types of cultural activity or services that authorities will seek to make available to each person in their area who wishes to access them. The authority will consult people in their area about what entitlements they would like to see provided. It will consider these views, decide what the local entitlements should be and inform people in their area about what they are and how they can access them. We will look to each authority to publish the entitlements it proposes for its area. This consultation and planning process should happen as part of the authority's cultural planning, which should ideally inform the strategic Community Planning process.
2.5 We have decided to call the new style of provision entitlements because we hope this will encourage more people to enjoy and participate in cultural activities. There is a general entitlement to adequate cultural services for the inhabitants of each local authority area. Local authorities will also seek to make available each of the activities and services they announce as entitlements, but entitlements will not represent a guarantee of access to any particular service.
2.6 In some parts of Scotland, authorities and local people are developing provision which uses the 'entitlements' approach. We want this to happen and be a success in each area, in a way that develops and enhances local provision. To help, civil servants, representatives of local authorities, representatives of national cultural organisations and others have been working together to think about entitlements and, in particular, how authorities can involve local people in planning them, what they might look like and how authorities can assess, evaluate and add to their success. The result of this work is the initial draft guidance we have published today, for consultation. The draft Bill proposes that authorities be required to 'have regard' to it. That means that, while they do not have to follow it exactly, authorities have to take account of it when deciding how to provide cultural activities in their area.
2.7 We also plan to develop a quality assurance framework document, as part of the guidance. This will be a tool to help local authorities review and improve their cultural provision. We are doing this because we want peoples' experiences of entitlements, and culture generally, to be consistently good across Scotland.
2.8 It will be up to local authorities to decide what the entitlements for their area should be. They may decide to make new facilities or services available. They might also provide entitlements through existing provision.
Cultural planning
2.9 As well as being about the provision of services, the draft Bill is also about the planning of culture and the way cultural activity has potential to help local authorities better pursue each of their functions, like in education, social services and economic development. In this local authorities normally work in partnership with a range of other bodies in their area, like health boards and the police, and often through Community Planning. But, as the main provider of cultural services, the authority takes the lead role.
2.10 Recent research 1 highlights instances where cultural activity - with its positive and enriching individual and community experiences - has been reported to benefit a range of public policy objectives, like crime reduction, improvements in health and improving the confidence and skills of the most disadvantaged children and young people. Because of this evidence, Ministers consider cultural activity as one of the ways to achieve their wider objectives, including those focussed on tackling poverty and disadvantage.
2.11 Local authorities do this too. A number are evolving innovative approaches to what has become known as 'cultural planning'. These are explored further in the draft guidance referred to in paragraph 2.6 above. This discusses the cultural planning process and how it can be creatively and successfully pursued.
2.12 To help this, the draft Bill proposes a new power for Ministers to collect information from local authorities about their planning of culture and the ways they consider using cultural activity across their responsibilities, how they use it and what evidence there is about the results achieved. As well as helping to guide authorities, this information will help us to observe part of the wider impact of culture and cultural activity, and will inform future policy making.
Consultation Questions
2.13 We would be particularly interested in your views on:
- Do you think that developing local cultural entitlements will help to increase participation in cultural activities?
- If you believe further or alternative measures are necessary, what are they?
- How do you think the Scottish Executive and local authorities can best utilise the influence and impact of cultural activity?
- Do you think the initial draft guidance under this Part of the Culture Bill is clear and helpful? Is there anything else it should contain?
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