Summary
Frank McAveety is the kind of politician who invites ready stereotyping. The boy from the black arts of local government; the minister who puts the G in gallus. When he arrived on the scene as Scotland's fourth arts minister in four years, one of the capital's New Town cultural mafia opined: "I suppose I'll have to learn to drink lager now." A small amount of homework would have advised him that what wets the minister's thrapple socially is Irn-Bru and industrial-strength tea.
When we met last week to talk through the rationale of announcing a year-long cultural review on the back of a five-month wait since the first minister's St Andrew's Day speech on cultural rights, he said he was very well aware that in the more rarefied social climes "they think I'm a boorish, Glaswegian populist". It doesn't seem to have affected his sleep pattern. But nobody should discount his experiences at Glasgow City Council, in terms of what he believes tomorrow's creative Scotland might look like. He cites the merger of that city's cultural and leisure services administration as evidence of strengthening opportunities and confidence through collaboration and cross-cutting partnerships. That strength was bought at the price of many fresh bloodstains on the council walls.See the full content of this document
Extract
Children From the Backwoods Also Deserve Cultural Delights
The new commission, chaired by James Boyle, has no predetermined script, but the clearest possible steer that cultural institutions will have to be "less precious and more practical". Scotland's artistic graveyard is already littered with the corpses of failed attempts at shotgun marr...
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