A Thriving And Resilient Cultural Sector
Scotland’s arts and cultural offering is truly world class.
But if we don’t take action fast, access to the creative arts risks being the luxury of the wealthiest few.
Much-loved grassroots music venues are closing. Libraries are disappearing. Community projects can’t keep the lights on. Our creative thinkers, makers, artists and practitioners are struggling to make ends meet.
Our cultural sector and creative industry could be the backbone of a fairer society. Through arts and culture we can transform our communities, economy and climate, and build a better Scotland that everyone can enjoy.
We want to see transformative investment in our arts and culture, to support the next generation of future artists, makers and creative thinkers, and to make sure everyone has access to affordable arts and culture in Scotland.
We want to fix deep inequalities in the industry – improving access for underrepresented groups, whilst protecting our cultural institutions from the fake outrage of anti-equality forces in politics and the media.
We want to improve the rights of cultural workers – ensuring better pay, conditions and job security across the board, as well as protecting the creative rights of our artists from the hands of big tech and unregulated AI.
And we want to make sure that Scotland’s arts and cultural output reflects the true diversity of our country – platforming all the languages of Scotland and celebrating the work of New Scots.
- Bring forward a Culture Bill to make the legislative changes needed to deliver our ambitious programme to rebuild our cultural sector, including provision of ongoing and long term multi-year funding.
- Invest in our grassroots venues and community spaces by introducing a stadium tax – a £1 levy on tickets for all arts, cultural and music events over 2,500 capacity. We will legislate for local councils to have the powers to administer the levy and collect funds, and will consult on a redistribution mechanism to ensure smaller and rural councils do not lose out on crucial funds.
- Protect free access to Scotland’s museums and cultural assets, and review national funding to ensure a fair distribution across the country. We will establish an emergency fund to protect local sites from cuts, closures and reduced hours.
- Support greater community involvement in the management of Scotland’s historic and cultural sites, through the creation of community oversight boards, particularly in rural and island communities.
- Introduce new conditionality of public funding to Scotland’s museums and cultural assets so that, where appropriate, all recipients should commit to research, interpret, and share the histories of Scotland’s links to empire, colonialism, and historic slavery.
- Give every primary pupil the opportunity to learn and develop through expressive arts such as music, drama, visual art and dance.
- Recognise that libraries are considered an essential community service, and ensure that every community has access to a library – public, school, or mobile. We will ensure that local councils have consistent financial support to keep these community hubs open.
- Support the development and sustainability of festivals in Scotland’s rural and island communities, who face additional pressures from transport, accommodation and staffing needs, with a pilot Small Festivals Fund.
- Continue to support the development of both the Gaelic and Scots languages by completing the delivery of the Scottish Languages Act 2025 and ensure that Scots has equal status in law to Gaelic.
- Support the development of Sabhal Mòr Ostaig as the national centre for Gaelic language, education, and culture including by taking relevant action to ensure Sabhal Mòr Ostaig can be issued degree awarding powers.
- Deliver a national Gaelic and Scots youth development strategy, ensuring that any child or young person who wants to can access Scotland’s national languages.
- Improve pay and conditions for arts and cultural workers, including freelancers, by adding greater conditionality on public funding to ensure all workers receive the Real Living Wage.
- Demand urgent regulation of the use of generative artificial intelligence and copyright laws. We will use all available devolved powers to protect creators’ work from big tech’s plans for expanded data scraping.
- Support greater representation of people from minority ethnic backgrounds working in the arts, including by guaranteeing interviews and directly funding internship and apprenticeship schemes.
- Review items in the Scottish public collections with the aim to support the restitution and repatriation of looted or unethically acquired items.
- Support Scottish Broadcasting to deliver a more decentralised BBC in the current charter renewal process, and work with Ofcom to end the erosion of Scottish and local news.
- Ensure that new media platforms, such as social and online media, are held to minimum standards to tackle extremist and conspiracy content, and force more effective moderation by classifying them as publishers for the purposes of defamation law.
- Support our growing film and TV sector by establishing Screen Scotland as a standalone agency sharing backroom functions with Creative Scotland, and by redirecting all public spending on the screen sector currently delivered via other bodies such as Scottish Enterprise through this single agency.