Yesterday saw the launch of Creative Scotland's first three year plan, "Investing in Scotland's creative future". The document is available on our website http://www.creativescotland.com/corporate-plan and articulates some ambitious goals.

The vision is ;

“That Scotland is recognised as a leading creative nation – one that attracts, develops and retains talent, where the arts and the creative industries are supported and celebrated and their economic contribution fully captured, a nation where the arts and creativity play a central part in the lives, education and well-being of our population.

Creative Scotland’s goals for 2020 are:

Scotland having the highest levels of participation in the arts in the UK with creativity reaching into every home, 

Scotland being viewed as a place of choice to live, learn and work as an artist,

A cultural economy that exceeds the UK average and contributes to sustainable economic growth,

Scotland’s individual places and communities proudly celebrating and sharing their unique strengths, identities and contributions to a creative nation,

Scotland recognised as an international leader in the arts for children and young people, giving every child in Scotland access to the arts,

2000 alumni from the Creative Scotland artists’ residencies programme acting as champions and ambassadors for a creative Scotland,

A thriving and sustainable film and TV sector with a digital network and the BBC expanding its role in Scotland with culture embedded in national public service broadcasting

World class cultural facilities being delivered through a 10 year capital plan

Culture becoming the calling card for Scotland internationally – welcoming the world’s artists and audiences to Scotland.”

Furthermore the corporate plan states that :

Creative Scotland’s objectives are:

·                      To invest in talent

·                      To invest in quality artistic production

·                      To invest in audiences, access and participation

·                      To invest in the cultural economy

·                      To invest in places and their contribution to a creative Scotland

Three cross-cutting themes will underpin all of our objectives:

·                      Education and a commitment to a generational change in cultural opportunity

·                      International partnership to reflect Scotland’s global outlook

·                      Equalities in all areas of our work

Clearly there will be huge challenges ahead to achieve these goals but the ambition is sound.

If we move away from lofty ambition and refocus a bit closer to the ground for a moment or two let’s look at some of the initiatives and developments that we are currently engaged with and what these ambitions look like in the context of our education work;

• The delivery of the Education, Arts, Culture and Creativity action plan

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Education/Schools/curriculum/ACE/expactionplan

This is available on the Scottish Government website. It is very wide ranging and I will leave you to read the details but the important points for me are that it has been signed off by the Education and Culture Ministers, it is a strong partnership with LTS and the governance of the plan involves the major, national learning organisations. This work is really helping to raise the profile and value of creativity and the arts in learning. Within this document you will see references to other initiatives. For example:

• The development of a children and young peoples art strategy (contact David McDonald). This will have an age range of 0-25 years old.
• The development of Creative Learning Networks in every local authority (there are currently 25 but we are aiming for 32 this year) (contact Petrea Cooney)
• The development of the Creative Portal managed from within LTS http://www.creativityportal.org.uk/ . This has been developed to support creative learning and teaching. On the portal you will find details of the education offer of funded arts organisations , case studies and links to current relevant research. Again this is a partnership project with LTS (contact Stephen Bullock at LTS)
• The CoCreate projects, exploring how arts organisations can work with technology and learning professionals to deliver CfE
• Developing a national strategic approach to the training of artists wishing to work in participatory settings. This is in Partnership with Paul Hamlyn Foundation and is just starting the implementation phase. (contact Chrissie Ruckley).
• YMI will continue for 2011-12 (contact David McDonald)
• There will be Cashback cultural projects in 2011-12