SNP's culture cuts risk damaging so much - Alex Cole-Hamilton

TV presenter and comedian Sue Perkins hands out flyers for her stand-up show 'Sue Perkins: A Piece of Work in Progress' outside the Pleasance

I was 13 years old and remember, in one scene, having to perform both sides of the same conversation because the kid opposite had come down with norovirus on the bus journey down and had to leave the stage to be sick. The performance was met with lukewarm acclaim, but it was free and an experience. I suppose it represented part of the rich tapestry that made up Edinburgh’s cultural offering that August.

The Capital seems eerily quiet without the bustle of the festivals. I miss it. I miss the street performers and the food vans, I even miss the banter of the people handing out the flyers.

When you look at the numbers it’s no wonder the place seems quiet. Around 3 million tickets were sold these past four weeks - that’s a crowd to rival major events throughout the world, and yet Edinburgh does this every single year and with a deteriorating fraction of Government funding.

Years of economic mismanagement by the SNP means times are hard for the public purse, but there can be no excuse for the damage the Scottish Government are about to inflict upon the cultural sector through brutal cuts.

Individual artists, musicians, producers and writers are among those now worrying about how they can make a living after a key fund was closed indefinitely. It comes after the Scottish Government has withheld millions of pounds of funding for Scotland’s chief culture body, Creative Scotland.

Over the past two years, Creative Scotland and everyone who looks to it for essential funding have repeatedly been messed around. Money has been repeatedly promised and then snatched away, leaving people feeling betrayed. It’s clear that SNP ministers regard the arts as a soft target when it comes to raiding budgets to fill holes created by their own mismanagement of the economy.

It’s short-sighted because culture and the arts provide an annual boost of nearly £5 billion to our economy and sustain around 80,000 jobs. They represent one of our most successful international exports and are a magnet for tourism.

Despite this, the funding body states that Scotland’s culture sector has been left, “operating on a one-year budget horizon for too long, which severely constrains its ability to plan for the long term, and impacts job security, sector confidence, and creative output.”

That reality matters so much to our ability to offer world-beating cultural events in the future. Many artists will tell you that Creative Scotland isn’t always an easy body to deal with but, like it or not, it is effectively the primary incubator for new artistic talent and cultural ventures in this country.

By choking off funding in this way, the SNP Government is presiding over the quiet death of our ability to grow talent.

Chipping away at our international reputation for culture will impact on so many other aspects of our economy. The International Festival have signalled it could leave them on life support.

The arts bring people together. Edinburgh’s International Festival began in 1947, as a cultural exchange to heal the rifts and fissures of war. It matters so much, not just to Scotland but to international understanding and exchange.

Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP for Edinburgh Western​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​