Research

Creative Scotland is seeking to address the inconsistency in rates of pay for freelancers across its funding programmes.

Although it does not set rates of pay itself, Scotland's arts funding body said it wants to ensure that industry-standard rates are equitably and consistently applied.

Alastair Evans, Interim Director, Strategy at Creative Scotland said: “Creative Scotland is committed, through any activities we support, to ensure that artists and professionals working in the creative sector are paid fairly with appropriate terms and conditions and employment opportunities.”

Research to identify key priorities for change is being carried out by consultancy practice Culture Radar and Edinburgh’s Queen Margaret University.

They are currently seeking 'sector representatives' who have either made or been included in Creative Scotland funding applications, to contribute online to rates of pay consultations between 27 February - 2 March 2023. 

Evans added: “We encourage as many people as possible working across the industry to contribute to this important piece of work.

“This research will help to create the conditions for more meaningful and sustainable opportunities to work across, and progress through, the sector.”

A project collating the diversity of arts and humanities research infrastructure in the UK is underway.

The Mapping the Arts and Humanities Project is being conducted by the School of Advanced Study, a postgraduate institution of the University of London.

It plans to capture the institutes, centres and networks supporting arts and humanities research across the country, to produce an interactive tool that will allow researchers to connect with potential collaborators outside of their existing networks.

The project teams also hopes the interactive tool will be used by policymakers to locate where policy-relevant expertise is concentrated, and external organisations to identify academic partners.

Dean of the School of Advanced Study and Chair of the Mapping the Arts and Humanities project board, Professor Jo Fox, said that despite having access to more information than ever before, research networks in the arts and humanities can still be hard to find.

“Our new map will provide a consolidated source of information that will help us all to find and connect with research activity more easily, and boost visibility for research infrastructure across the country.”

The project team have already collected hundreds of pieces of research infrastructure across the country but say they “have only just scratched the surface”. 

The final map is expected to launch in November this year, with the project team planning to share interim findings and insights from the mapping process on the project’s blog.