Across all the competing agendas and views that make up current debate on the future of Scotland’s arts, there is overriding unanimity on at least one thing: the vital importance of involving young people in cultural participation. First Minister Jack McConnell, in his landmark 2003 St Andrew’s Day speech outlining the Scottish Executive's vision for Scotland’s arts, endorsed this consensus when he stated that, ‘A generation of young people growing up with access to cultural activities will be a generation with a greater chance of self-fulfilment and success than that of those before them.’ More recently, the Cultural Commission set up as a result of McConnell’s speech reported among its interim findings that, ‘The idea of new partnerships across the cultural sectors to produce better services for the young citizen is a universal objective.’

There is fairly wide agreement, too, that Scottish organisations and companies are already doing a pretty effective job in this respect – and sometimes an exceptional one. At the level of schools provision, indeed, according to the Commission, ‘It has been remarked that there is already a proliferation of cultural resource in Scotland open to all school children.’

Outwith the statutory sector, countrywide bodies such as the National Youth Orchestras of Scotland and Scottish Youth Theatre enjoy an enviable reputation for artistic excellence, educational quality, social outreach and as breeding-grounds for future professionals. At a more localised level, projects such as West Lothian Youth Theatre and Castlemilk Youth Complex have been widely hailed as groundbreaking models of best practice. The Fèisean network of Gaelic arts teaching festivals in the Highlands and islands is renowned worldwide for its success in reconnecting young people with their traditional culture, while Scottish Youth Dance, or YDance, is developing a pioneering series of interactive CD-ROMs for schools use, combining classroom dance exercises with national curriculum content. The growth in youth arts has also been accompanied by a significant expansion of professional training and development for those employed in the field, from in-service packages for schools to tertiary-level youth-work courses.

No arts worker in the world would be likely to downplay the importance of youth provision, but in Scotland the priority has an added local piquancy thanks to the lingering legacy of Britain’s class system, and the resulting perception among large sectors of the Scottish population that culture is ‘not for the likes of us’. Another, related historical factor is the ‘cultural cringe’ which Scots have long been conditioned to feel regarding their national traditions, especially those aspects, such as Scottish music, which have been subject to the worst excesses of Anglocentric caricature.

 More recently, the bracing winds of utilitarianism have been blowing across the youth arts field, in terms of both national and local government policy. The effect on youth arts has, if anything, been even more pronounced than in most cultural sectors, given the obvious overlap with other governmental priorities like social inclusion and reduction of youth crime. At the same time, the connection between these objectives and well designed, well delivered arts activities is anything but tenuous, and supported by overwhelming documentary evidence, with the result that many youth programmes have been less subject to structural or terminological tailoring in order to dovetail with official targets.

Instead, the national policy emphasis has been on facilitation and support, administered at a local and regional level. Under the National Cultural Strategy document, Creating Our Future, Minding Our Past, published in 2000, the Scottish Executive launched the Cultural Co-ordinators scheme, in partnership with the Scottish Arts Council (SAC), which funds a network of local authority officers employed to make links between schools and all areas of the culture and heritage sector. Now numbering over 100 full- and part-time posts across the country, the Cultural Co-ordinators have since been joined by Creative Links Officers, with the complementary role of accessing local, national and international professional resources to augment arts experiences young people beyond the context of formal education.

The CREATE Scotland website, for example, was launched by the leading charity YouthLink Scotland under the Creative Links programme in 2003, its features including a youth arts directory that currently lists over 400 organisations working creatively with young people in Scotland – a figure which in itself loudly testifies to the sector’s current state of health.

YouthLink Scotland and its member organisations, which include 32 local authorities and 46 voluntary sector bodies, support 40,000 youth workers across Scotland in delivering services to over 300,000 young people. There is general recognition that today’s young Scots have high expectations of youth arts provision, and youth work organisations are more increasingly recognising the value of bringing in professional arts practitioners to deliver such services.

The benefits of involving young people in the running of an organisation are increasingly being recognised throughout Scotland’s youth arts sector. The undisputed leader in this field is the Castlemilk Youth Complex in Glasgow, whose state-of-the-art, client-managed facilities include a fully equipped theatre (staging in-house devised performances), digital recording and broadcasting studios, and its own record label, Burning Haggis Records. Other projects managed by or in close consultation with young people in the Oasis Youth Centre in Dumfries, with its Youth Music Forum and Skills for the Music Industry project, and the Macrobert in Stirling with its Young Consultants scheme.

A range of umbrella bodies support the arts in Scotland at a strategic level through development of good practice, information and guidelines, facilitating networks and organising events. These organisations include, YouthLink Scotland, Voluntary Arts Scotland, the National Association of Youth Orchestras, the national youth theatre network Promote-YT (Scotland) and Scottish Screen education department.

Youth arts in Scotland have also been among the chief beneficiaries from the arrival of several innovative new arts buildings, with an integrated community remit, including !!Link!!, WHALE Arts Agency and North Edinburgh Arts in the capital, The Space in Dundee and the Tolbooth in Stirling.

All 32 local authorities deliver some level of youth arts in Scotland. Each authority is structured differently and those responsible for youth work are often part of Community Learning and Development Departments, Culture and Leisure Departments or Community Resources. The local authorities also run youth arts through Social Inclusion Partnerships (SIPs), the health sector and the prison service.

Examples of informal local authority programmes for young people include the City of Edinburgh Council’s Go4it summer programme, Glasgow City Council’s ‘Arts in the City’, designed and devised in partnership with young people leaving local authority care, and Aberdeen City Council’s 2004 summer initiative for young people, BEAT: ‘Bringing Every Art form Together through music’.

Voluntary sector organisations, whether working with young people at risk, or supporting young peoples development out of school hours, offer a wide range of activities. Boys and Girls Clubs Scotland, for instance, are currently developing a youth arts forum. Projects supported by the Princes Trust Scotland include initiatives to build links between local young people and the refugee and asylum-seeker community in Glasgow. Fairbridge Scotland regularly incorporates arts activities into its programme, including a recent totem-pole carving project, and an animated film about young people’s experience of stress.

In 2003, the SAC, Youth Music and the Musicians' Union funded a national audit in youth music in Scotland, which was developed and collated by the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD). The project had originated when the Scottish Arts Council Music Department began preparing its five-year strategy for music, and discovered that no comprehensive overview existed of music provision for young people in Scotland.

The resulting report, What’s Going On?, was published in 2003, concluding that:

55,000 – 60,000 young people take part in music activities each week

100,000 more young people would take part in music activities if given the opportunity

The estimated total annual turnover of youth music in Scotland is £28 million

The average annual turnover of youth music organisations is £25000

The barriers to participation include fees for instrumental instruction, access to instruments, tutor availability and perceived cultural or gender obstacles.

In welcoming its key recommendations, including the development of a national youth music strategy, and a review of music tuition provision by local authorities, the Scottish Executive went on to announce a new three-year funding package of £17.5 million, centred on the guarantee of at least one year’s free music tuition for every Scottish child before they leave primary school. This laudable reinforcement of the statutory backbone is currently complemented by a wide range of other local and national, public and voluntary sector activity across all musical genres. The SAC’s Contemporary Popular Music strategy, for instance, published in 2001, substantially geared towards developing initiatives in this field as a means of encouraging greater participation by young people. The National Youth Orchestras of Scotland, meanwhile, currently showcase new talent in no less than five performance ensembles, from the National Children’s Orchestra to NOYS Futures, a chamber group focusing exclusively on contemporary music.

With its alumni including such top Scottish actors as Douglas Henshall, Siobhan Redmond, Caroline Paterson and Blythe Duff, Scottish Youth Theatre, funded in 1976, is a recognised leader in its field, running an extensive annual programme of classes, workshops, residential schools, festivals and other performances around the country. Its work is complemented by a well-developed regional network, including both stand-alone local companies and those attached to theatre venues, such as Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum and Dundee Rep.

Launched in 1999 to build on the success of its predecessor, the Scottish Youth Dance Festival, the national youth dance agency YDance now supports residencies in rural and urban communities from Benbecula to Motherwell, as well as an extensive programme of youth leader training, conferences and outreach projects, together with its innovative educational CD-Rom packages. Jazz Art UK, specialises in jazz dance provision for young people in Scotland, while traditional Scottish dance is enjoying widespread popularity through the Fèisean movement (see below).

Fèisean nan Gàidheal supports the development of traditional music and Gaelic arts in Scotland with a network of festivals, events and support mechanisms for young people. Local authority Cultural Co-ordinators are often actively involved with traditional music projects, while other leading initiatives include the year-round education programme run by the Celtic Connections festival, the National Centre of Excellence in Traditional Music at Plockton High School, and the youth tuition provided by the Scots Music Group in Edinburgh. For aspiring young performers, an extra focus has been given to these activities by the BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year competition, launched in 2001, and already established as a highly prestigious career springboard.

There are a number of Scottish media-related organisations involved in youth arts, including the Channel 4 IdeasFactory, Scottish Screen’s ‘First Light’ funding scheme, Glasgow Media Access Centre (GMAC) and Edinburgh Mediabase, along with Media Education and Young People Speak Out in Edinburgh, and Starfish in Glasgow.

Scotland’s larger galleries, museums and heritage venues all support outreach and education departments, working locally and nationally to develop heritage and arts projects with young people, while the introduction of digital and interactive technology offers fresh opportunities for engaging with younger visitors. Current examples of notably innovative practice with the 12-25 age range include the programmes run by Peacock Visual Arts in Aberdeen, Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh’s National Portrait Gallery, and the Changing Room gallery in Stirling. Young Roots, a partnership project between YouthLink Scotland and the Heritage Lottery Fund, offers grants to young people for heritage projects.

Recent years have seen a marked growth in festivals with a youth focus around Scotland, including major international events like Discover, a film festival for children and young people jointly launched by the MacRobert and Dundee Contemporary Arts, in 2004, and the longer-established Aberdeen International Youth Festival, while the UK-wide National Festival of Youth Orchestras is a key annual fixture at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Overall, Scotland's youth arts scene is characterised by both vibrancy and innovation. It has seen substantial growth in the last ten years, with significant developments in practice and partnership strategies, and in sustaining an effective balance between issues of access and excellence. Looking ahead, the Cultural Commission has identified the realisation of young people’s creative potential as a priority focus for the second stage of its root-and-branch review process.

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