Now it's over to you...

Here at Stramash we’ve been taking a few days off, after what proved to be a boisterous Bank Holiday weekend. In the space of a single week the whole question of how we support the arts in Scotland has suddenly moved centre stage and we’re already starting to see results in terms of a change of tone from Creative Scotland.

It’s safe to say that the speed at which events moved last week probably came as a surprise to many people, myself included. I had originally intended to spread my first three posts over the space of several weeks, but as the conversation gathered pace it felt like it was important to get them into print quickly.

My first three posts examined the current crisis from a factual, a philosophical and a critical perspective, and it feels like I’ve said everything that I want to say on the subject for the moment. I still have some future posts up my sleeve, but my intention now is to sit back a bit and see how things develop over the next few weeks before responding again.

That certainly doesn’t mean to say that Stramash will be resting on its laurels though. I’ve always been adamant that the purpose of this blog was to inspire debate and discussion and that’s what I’d like to focus on now.

My plan is to start turning Stramash Arts into an open resource to help facilitate debate amongst Scotland’s artistic community. This weekend I’ll be taking several steps aimed at furthering that goal.

I’ve already added an Events section to the site in order to help publicise any public gatherings that I think are relevant to the debate. If you’re planning an event or meeting and you’d like help in publicising it then please feel free to email me the details (including web links and any images that you’d like us to use).

Over the course of the weekend I’ll also be adding a links section to help direct people to a variety of organizations and representative bodies that are taking an active involvement in the debate. Again, if you’d like your organization to be included then please email me.

The most important thing of all though is that I’d like to offer Stramash Arts up as a platform for exchanging views and information. To that end I’d like to start publishing contributions and public statements from a wide variety of participants.

It’s important to emphasise that I’m inviting everyone to contribute their views to this debate (after all it would scarcely be a debate if there wasn’t a variety of views). It would be too simplistic to pretend that everyone in the country is totally against these changes and I’d really like to open things up to the whole range of viewpoints.

I hope that by doing this we will be able to generate a far-reaching and nuanced debate that looks critically at the future of the arts in Scotland.

What policies would you like to see Creative Scotland and the Scottish Government promoting?

Where would you like the arts in Scotland to be in 10 years time?

What are the most important issues that artists are facing at the moment?

In order to kick things off I’d like to direct your attention to an Open Letter to Creative Scotland that I received in the last few days from the Scottish Contemporary Art Network.

We hope to bring you plenty more such viewpoints in the weeks to come. In the meantime don’t forget that you can continue helping to spread the message by inviting people to join our Facebook and Twitter pages.

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