Altered states:
Cultural policy in
Wales and Scotland

The Maritime Museum, Aberdeen
This Spring we expect the Assembly to establish a Design Commission for Wales, part of a wider process through which Environment Minister Sue Essex is promoting quality in design, reforming the planning system, and advancing Welsh government's commitment to sustainable development. Linked initiatives include the publication of a Technical Advice Note on Design, and a revised Planning Policy: Wales.

In Scotland, government has likewise acted to promote good building and design and has been working on guidance for planners in the public and the private sectors. Here, however, architecture, conservation and design have been approached, not as a specialist issue, but as part of a greater whole, the country's National Cultural Strategy. It may be that in Wales, we have begun to learn from this approach. We need to do so if, as Siarlys Evans argues in the January 2002 edition of About Wales, we are to discover a new sense of the "vital relationship between old and new in our building" and to regard architecture and design as something with "historical essence and continuous life", making places where "art and landscape speak for themselves".

The signs are, in launching its cultural strategy, Creative future, that the Assembly has endorsed the broader definition of "culture" that Scotland has embedded in its policy from the beginning.

The late Donald Dewar launched the Scottish National Cultural Strategy in 1999. Its definition of "culture" is broad and inclusive; following UNESCO (and structuralist ideas about societies and their reflections) it is defined as

"the whole complex of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features that characterise a society or group. It includes not only the arts and letters, but also modes of life, the fundamental rights of human beings, value systems, traditions and beliefs."

This is a concept and a vision that, reflecting pride in heritage and identity, enables the Executive to place culture at the heart of the work of government. Culture is found everywhere, not just in theatres, galleries or museums, but in landscape, in histories, in the pub, the club and the home.
This may be a totalising perspective, but it is not totalitarian.

It has the benefit of integration, of a democratic dynamism that enables everyone to be a maker and a participant, and in which culture is placed at the centre of the community and its daily life. It is a vision that values cultural treasures and traditions, at the same time as it celebrates creativity, openness and diversity.

It places government's engagement with architecture, design and the historic environment at the centre of policy-making. Thinking of culture in this way also gives added depth to concepts of sustainability, enabling this to embrace the social and the historical in a way that enriches the notion of the sustainable community, and the nostrum of "sense of place".

From the Civic Trust's perspective of an agenda that combines a sustainable approach to communities and the historic environment with a concern for creative new building and innovative approaches to design, there is much to commend in a view of culture that celebrates both the modern and the old, sees history "as a facet of national culture and the means to its transmission", and gives key roles to the education system and conservation agencies. Culture and its history embrace the landscape of country, town and city. Thus strategies for culture and for architecture stand on common ground. Architecture is both a manifestation of cultural life, past, present and future, and a key delivery mechanism for policies aimed at social improvement, modernisation, and the celebration of Scotland to the world.

This confident approach to national culture is reflected in Scotland's new Policy for architecture, and, at a more humdrum level, in a distinctive approach to planning for good design.

The Policy for architecture is an outcome of consultation on a framework document published in 1999. It is bold in its commitment to architecture and design in national life, and in its proposals for action.

The achievement of creativity and quality in the built environment is linked to social and economic betterment, and to the maintenance and continuity of the heritage.

Commitment to design is seen as a collective responsibility, involving everyone in the commissioning and making of buildings, through engaging communities and partners at all levels. Proposals include the development of a national architecture centre, the fostering of the understanding of architecture through the school curriculum and the National Grid for Learning, the encouragement of lifelong learners to explore design issues, and the sponsoring of European Heritage Days to enlarge access to places of architectural interest. There will be an ambitious attempt to engage and support community groups and amenity societies.

Meanwhile, Designing places has been launched by transport and planning ministers to set out Scotland's aspirations for future design. It takes a very different approach to the National Assembly's elaborate draft TAN on Design, being intended to be inspirational as much as prescriptive.

Written by urban designer Robert Cowan, it sets out a stall for good design as part of "a confident, compassionate and competitive Scotland", linking design to social, economic and environmental goals, seeing design as a process in time, and setting out opportunities for successful design in a manner accessible to non-"professionals.

By contrast, policies for architecture, design and the heritage have, until now, emerged from the Assembly in a shape isolated from the deeper cultural fabric. They have lacked a sheet anchor in the sort of broad approach to culture that the Scottish Executive has adopted. Aspirations for a Design Commission have been welcome but limited, focusing on procurement and training issues. Progress has been made through planning policy, but in a way that has not yet related design successfully to broader issues of national life and culture, nor addressed the educational and community agendas that could empower citizens to demand good design in all the places where we live and work.

Jenny Randerson's Creative future marks a sea-change. It adopts a holistic definition of culture that resembles that of the Scottish Executive. "I believe passionately," she says, "that our cultural life cannot be parcelled up separately from the rest of living. Rather it infuses everything... We must seek to extract new cultural value from all that we do - whether building a school or hospital or planning our towns and cities."

Culture is now to be an overarching theme for the Welsh Assembly Government, a cross-cutting initiative that will be a test of its capacity for "joined-up thinking." This is an ambition in which language, landscape, and the built environment are to be recognised alongside the arts, media and sport, and in which there will be an interesting and welcome focus on design in education for children and lifelong learners.

If this means a break from a compartmentalised approach to culture and design and a new confidence in debating and presenting issues of history and identity it is timely. For if architecture and design are seen as distinct from other aspects of culture, we will continue in a climate in which the press encourages antipathy to major public projects, and where the creation of places and buildings of humanity and purpose in which to live and work and play is seen as something that can be an outcome of planning policy alone, rather than a wider vision of a better Wales, and a confident Wales in the world.

As yet, however, theory and practice in Creative future remain to be fully welded together. It is more of an audit of activities than a document that integrates hitherto discrete initiatives, at least as far as the historic and built environments are concerned.

In particular, Cadw is not identified amongst the Assembly supported bodies that are to carry forward the cultural strategy (the National Museum, the National Library, and so on), nor is it listed amongst the organisations that might sit alongside Cymru'n Creu, the Assembly's cultural forum, despite the fact that note is taken of its responsibility for the historic environment and achievements such as the Landscapes Register.

Neither does the document fully articulate the relationship between cultural policy and sustainability, in a way that suggests government in Wales has fully grasped the opportunity to champion architecture and design as integral to its mission for Wales.

If, as Paul Vanner has argued, we are to democratise the design process, and empower people and communities; if we are to fuse a reawakening national self-consciousness with a renewed cultural confidence; if we are to offer to children and lifelong learners the power to participate in the democratic process of building a future Wales, we need a policy for culture that fully embraces landscape, architecture and design and relates these to a holistic vision of cultural growth, economic and social development, and environmental stewardship.

Nonetheless a good start has been made on this journey; there is a commitment in the strategy to the gathering of evidence and the development of new partnerships, that augurs well for the future.

Matthew Griffiths

References

Paul Vanner, “Democratising design”, About Wales, January 2001.

Scottish Executive, National cultural strategy (1999)

Scottish Executive, A policy for architecture for Scotland (2001)

Scottish Executive, Designing places: blueprint for Scotland (2001)

Welsh Assembly Government, Creative future: a culture strategy for Wales (2002)