Thoughtland

Soft power, nation-branding and Scottish independence - Scotsman essay

Below is the pre-edited version of my article on soft power and Scottish independence for The Scotsman - a considerably cut-down version for the paper/website is here. All comments welcomed. Links will be embedded in the next few days. 

We have the (soft) power 

Scotland holds a positive image in the world, through the strength of its culture and values, writes Pat Kane, but an acrimonious referendum build-up might change all that. 

Pre-edited version of article in The Scotsman, 24 Feb, 2012

Look up “Scottish soft power” on Google, and you find a fascinating little vignette. A British diplomat in the Ukraine tells a story of a local Burns night - Macsween’s haggis flown over, schoolchildren in Pechersk reciting Burns in kilts, tickets to Gleneagles sold in a business-networking raffle. “It’s great to see Scottish soft power spreading its benign influence across Kiev”, says the evidently decent Leigh Turner. 

Soft power - meaning, in Joseph Nye’s classic definition, “the ability to influence others through culture, values and ideology rather than threat, violence or other forms of coercion” (otherwise known as “hard power”) - is one of the new tools in the kit of 21st century statecraft. Every geo-politician, from China to Chile, is attempting to become literate in “public diplomacy” - as soft power is otherwise known - of one kind or another. 

Attending to the global impact of our “national brand” has been an explicit target of the Scottish Parliament for a decade now, even before the SNP’s ascendancy (remember Jack McConnell’s ill-fated “the best small country in the world?”). But what will the coming independence referendum do for Scotland’s global reputation? Does Scotland’s soft power depend on the actual result of the eventual vote - or as much on how that result was conducted and debated? 

Since 2009, the Scottish Government has been buying into Simon Anholt’s Nation Brand Index - a well-recognised measurement of the “competitive identity” of 50 nations across the five continents, as perceived globally. Even in its devolved state, Scotland does extraordinarily well - the 15th best-regarded country in the world, alongside other small nations like Finland, Denmark, New Zealand and Ireland. On its six dimensions of its global perception, Scotland scores highest on “governance”, “tourism”, and “people” - and lowest on “exports”. 

Available on the Scottish Goverment’s website, there’s much to dig into in Anholt’s report - but the least that it delivers is a sense of Scotland’s existing global impact. Anholt describes his recipe for a successful, soft-powered national brand as “a three-legged stool”. One leg is strategy (a clear sense of national ambition and values), another substance (policies which exemplify those), and the last what he calls “symbolic actions” - particular events which bring the world’s attention to that nation’s direction and achievements. 

There’s no doubt that the independence referendum qualifies perfectly as one of Anholt’s “symbolic actions”. The question is: will it transmit as a positive, inspiring story of progress and empowerment, recognizable as such by citizens throughout the world? Or will it be seen as a snarling, resentful divorce, clouded in bitter recrimination and endless dispute? 

My partner, Indra Adnan, runs a consultancy called Soft Power Network, which advises companies and governments on strategy in this area. She notes that Scotland at the moment “has a huge stock of soft power” globally. Because it is somewhat distanced from Westminster, it has all the positive points of British soft power – its English language, its richness of customs, culture, values – but few of the negative ones.

As Anholt’s nation-brand index suggests, we are esteemed for the quality of our people (both in terms of employability and hospitability), the educational and entertainment value of our traditions and cultures, and an aspiration towards good governance. The political argument for independence also distances us from the “old story of British Empire”: nuclear missiles and adventuring armies, a rapacious City of London, an exploiter of others’ resources. 

Yet the manner in which the debate leading to an independence vote is conducted, Adnan says, will be vital as to whether Scotland’s global soft power is enriched or depleted post-election. 

Norway is our exemplar in many ways, but particularly in this respect. How does a nation come to “own the brand for peace”, as the Norwegians do? Crucially, through actions, not hype. Beyond the Nobel Prize, Norway is involved in 20 long term global partnerships for peace, from Palestine to Sri Lanka; its massive oil-derived sovereign wealth fund is notable for the high ethical criteria of its investments. 

In terms of soft power and national brand, Norwegian credibility comes from its integrity - the values of its society being consistently and visibly realised over time, in policies and structures. As the globe sees a Scottish government arguing for independence over these next two years, says Adnan, there has to be a consistency about its higher aims. 

“Humiliation of the former partner and destruction of what was partly seen as a global success will not transmit well as soft power”, she notes. “But if Scotland can tell a story of greater efficiency and more creative interaction across the islands - aiming at the increased general happiness of all parties - it will look like a country ready to do global business. 

“If it can frame its breaking away as a natural development rather than a withdrawal from a partnership it has fallen out of love with, it will be able to retain much of its former status on the global stage. Hard power is a zero sum game – everyone takes sides and someone will lose. Soft power is a win-win – more difficult to achieve but worth the game.” 

Perhaps unavoidably, the SNP would seem to be trying to deploy both hard-power and soft-power strategies at the moment. Calling BBC editors “Gaulitiers” and referendum-fixing Unionist political leaders “anti-Scottish”; making legalistic claims over territorial energy resources, European membership or the use of Sterling in a monetary zone; deriding Westminster talk of border posts or imminent impoverishment - this is the kind of grappling over control and resources that is the old hard-power story of tension between nations. 

But equally, the Scottish Government is cascading love-bombs of soft power everywhere. Take Salmond’s ideas-campaign across the English cities recently, offering Scotland as a “progressive beacon” to inspire other electorates on the island (alongside an embrace of British continuties like the Monarchy, or BBC programming). Also consider promotions like the Gathering, the Commonwealth Games and the Year of Creative Scotland, which build upon the continuing global cultural impact of Edinburgh festivals and golfing spectaculars. 

And perhaps even more sophisticatedly, take Salmond’s journeying into Qatar and China - invoking Al-Jazeera and renewable energy with the former, and receiving both pandas and Adam-Smith-olatry from the latter. This is an attempt to begin a story about Scottish power that imagines dialogue with difficult, as well as easy (meaning western democratic) partners.

The most interesting question in terms of global perceptions of Scotland’s independence-power comes from two areas: the green “reindustrialisation” of Scotland, and the removal of Trident missiles (and consequent redefinition of our military-industrial complex). 

Anholt’s nation-brand index shows that, in terms of global perception, Scotland scores high on “governance” - how our national government is “judged on competency and fairness, as well as its perceived commitment to global issues such as peace, poverty and the environment”. There could be no more globally-significant contribution to that reputation than a non-proliferating, nuclear-free, and UN-compliant Scottish state military. 

However, we are judged low on “exports” - “the image of products and services from each country, their contribution to innovation in science and technology and the degree to which a country is recognised as a creative place”. Yet there’s one obvious way that rating could be organically improved. 

The discourse of Scotland as a green energy powerhouse could build upon that already positive "governance" rating, as an environmentally-conscious nation - perhaps enriched with a more explicit peace-dividend stance towards our existing military manufacturing capacity. “Exporting” the values of our “governance”, as it were, with every pump, windmill and turbine. 

This is Anholt’s and Adnan’s point: the most authentic brand impact and soft power of small nations comes from building on what an readily-informed world already recognises about them, not from pushing a brittle new image that can all-too-easily crumble under pressure. 

So we should be relaxed about kilts in Kiev (or for that matter, Braveheartish girls in forthcoming Pixar blockbusters). For all the angsting of the designer classes, there’s nothing much we can do about a’ that Tartanry. But what a “Yes” vote to independence does present is an opportunity to amplify and broaden Scotland’s story about our democratic processes, our social welcome and the beauty of our culture and environment. 

And from a soft power and nation-brand perspective, a positive and constructive discourse running up to the referendum would still seem to be the best way to go. What’s fascinating, from David Cameron’s most recent speech, is that the defenders of the Union are beginning to wake up to this too. Expect more love-bombs carpeting us all the way up to the vote - but for external as well as internal audiences. 

Pat Kane is one half of Hue And Cry, and hosts the Scottish ideas-blog Thoughtland (www.thoughtland.info) 

 

How much free publicity would Scottish independence be worth?

Pete Martin, creative director at Gate Worldwide, has done some rough calculations on how much free publicity from a “Yes” vote to independence would be worth, if we equated global tv news coverage with spending on television ads.

UK rates can be £5 per thousand viewers of a 30 second ad, and those in India and China around £2-3 (US rates can reach as high as £18 per thousand, for example during the SuperBowl). So let’s conservatively assume a median rate of £4 per 1000 viewers. The largest verifiable TV audience was the 1 billion who watched the Beijing Olympics: let’s take that number as the potential audience for news of an independent Scotland. 

If an incontrovertible “Yes” vote provoked a 5-minute news item in most global networks, that comprises ten thirty-second slots, worth £40 per thousand viewers. Presuming a billion-strong audience for the nightly news, the free publicity value for Scottish independence - calculated purely in terms of tv ads - comes out at £40 million. 

Martin estimates that press and online media coverage would easily be double that amount, bringing the free publicity benefit of independence to £80 million. And he also notes that in terms of impact, a positive story delivered through a trusted source like a news agency has much more social value than sheer advertising spend. And this is only relevant to the immediate reportage of the vote itself, missing out prior or subsequent coverage. 

Labour For Independence? Essay for The Scotsman

This is an essay the Scotsman commissioned me to do on the crazy-maybe-not-so crazy idea of a “Labour for Independence” campaign at the coming Independence Referendum in 2014. A bit of miscommunication meant that I originally wrote a much longer piece than has eventually appeared - the unedited version runs below, the edited version is here. 

I also received some excellent pre-publication responses from political commentator Gerry Hassan, and a new voice to Thoughtland - Cailean Gallagher, the young editor of the Oxford Left Review, who is (as far as I know) the only “out” Labour party member supporting independence. These are printed below the main piece. And of course, all comments (from all comrades!) welcome. 

Labour For Independence Isn’t Such a Mad Idea

Pat Kane, The Scotsman, Feb 9, 2012

Unedited version below (1763 words). Edited and published version (950 words) here. 

THE SCENE is the aftershow of a riotously joyful Celtic Connections gig. I have just met one of my oldest friends in the Scottish music scene - a great facilitator of the business of rock in this country for over thirty years. A smart, sophisticated man (he once included a book of Seamus Heaney poems in my dressing-room rider) we naturally fall to talking about politics. 

I’m surprised to find out that he describes himself as “virulently Labour”. How virulently? “I have to confess a terrible thing”, he says. While half-smeeked at a recent cultural opening, he tottered over to a notoriously sweet-natured Scottish Government minister and asked her, “you still a member of the Scottish Nazi Party?” 

It’s so ludicrous I have to laugh out loud. “But you see, I’m of that generation”, he explains. “Hate narrow nationalism. Closer to a worker in Liverpool than a laird in Ullapool. You cut me, I bleed Labour”. You’re a bit in trouble then in the old homeland, aren’t you? “You could say that”, he murmured, gripping his German beer. 

For those of us who would describe ourselves as “Scottish Left”, and who see independence as the most immediate lever to realise our values and visions, it’s chastening to come out of our echo chambers and hear just how subcutaneous some political identities are. I sent my friend scurrying off with the challenge, “Come on now! You should be starting Labour for Independence!” Out of the mouths of party-animals... 

Yet even as a piece of social-science fiction, it’s an interesting concept. Under what conditions - say, the next 24 months leading up to the most important political event in 300 years for Scotland - could a “Labour for Independence” exist? 

One basic argument for the existence of Labour for Independence is the need for strategic thinking about the party’s survival, if a majority for independence is achieved. If the current Scottish Labour leadership’s claim is sincerely held - that is, willing to serve Scotland, no matter the constitutional arrangement - then it seems somewhat reckless for the Scottish Labour movement not to develop some sense of their platform in a future independent country.

Many on the Scottish Left have given the SNP our crucial votes, regarding them as the main instrument towards achieving full sovereignty (though with the Greens, and in past years the ultra-left parties, as other options). 

But post the Great Day, would we necessarily wish to find ourselves with a “National Party of Scotland”, to quote Salmond’s words immediately after the May 2011 victory: a party fully vindicated in its mission, and awaiting a electoral mandate which might even extend (according to some recent polls) their current command of the Scottish polity?

I don’t question the talents, commitment and values of the SNP Cabinet, MSPs and wider membership. But one-party dominance would not be healthy for a newly independent country, which would need all available minds and talents on hand to steer us through the rapids of realpolitik, geopolitics and globalisation. 

Would Scottish Labour - or at least some significant chunk of it - really want to be on the sidelines at this vital moment? Despite the fury this would cause in the current leadership, would it not be prudent for some groupuscules in the People’s Party to start brewing up some wisdom, strategy and research around their post-independence existence? 

Of course, in an earlier, less acute stage of the “process-not-event” of Scottish self-determination, we have seen innovation of this kind from the Labour Party in Scotland. Jim Sillars famously broke off from being a hammer of the Nats to found the Scottish Labour Party, and thence to the SNP itself (his old compadre in the SLP, Alex Neil, is now a well-behaved Enterprise Minister for the Scottish Government). 

From the 80’s, the ginger-group Scottish Labour Action once contained both Wendy Alexander and Jack McConnell in its ranks. SLA produced confident pamphlets about Labour’s “home rule” traditions which envisaged much more “fiscal autonomy” than anything proposed by the Party at present. And of course, not forgetting the mavericks of old, like John McAllion, Dennis Canavan and (perhaps) Malcolm Chisholm, dormant volcanoes of “independent-mindedness” in the Scottish Labour party.

In this current vertiginous stage of the “process”, is Scottish Labour capable of the same kind of innovation? Certainly, if the Labour leadership line holds against constructing an answer to the SNP’s “Devo Max” proposition, Labour for Independence might become a necessity for some. 

UK Labour let the musculature of federalism go to waste in its 14-year Westminster dominance. They spurned the chance to cement a “progressive majority”, through a steady argument for PR with Lib-Dems as allies. This allowed the Orange Book Liberals to come through and get their sweaty palms on the reins of power. Salmond’s calculation may well be based on this historical failure. With Devo-Max, he’s offering the federal key to a pallid political constituency that can barely raise a trembling finger to respond.

Incidentally, constitutional literacy, and pluralist thinking, is not dead in the UK Labour Party. Compass - shaped by political guru Neal Lawson, who has invited me to speak at its London conferences many times - is the residue of an intelligent centre-left that reaches out to Greens, Scottish and Welsh nationalism, and the wetter Lib-Dems, in an organisation which is now open to non-Labour-Party members. But their presence in Scotland is barely established.

Thus we will witness the gory spectacle of Scottish Labour epigones sharing, or half-sharing, or phoning in that they’re sharing platforms with Westminster Coalition politicians. They will defend a “Union” which retains domestic and offensive nukes, which accepts spending cuts over capital investment and Keynesian stimulation, which is currently privatising and stratifying its health and education services in England... We can imagine the SNP’s gleeful framing of all this, and its brightly positive responses.

Does every member, and every MSP, in Scottish Labour really want to be lining up alongside the serried horrors of Westminster, associating themselves with an acid rain of negativity, fear-stories and condescension? Or might at least some of them want to argue a Labour case for independence which allows them to speak as the social-democrats, or democratic-socialists, they are in their hearts? 

I’m on the steering group of the Jimmy Reid Foundation precisely because, like its founder, it creates a space on the left in Scotland for economic equity and social justice that includes - or at least doesn’t exclude - the context of independence. Its first report on government procurement, written by SNP stalwarts and economists Jim and Margaret Cuthbert, is a perfect example of how an SNP government can find a “critical friend” in a Scottish Left, now fully alive to the possibilities of maximal self-determination. 

How do we assert a national economic interest over £9billion pounds worth of Scottish government expenditure? What’s the proper argument between “value for money” for the Scottish taxpayer (often returned via successful overseas bidders for Scottish contracts), and supporting indigenous enterprises - and what does that imply for the strategic usage of the economic powers of statehood?

The question of the demilitarisation of Scottish society - from nuclear missiles to Hamish Henderson’s “braggarts crousely crawing” - is something that has animated a Scottish Left for decades. Yet the highest of moral high-grounds in the national conversation is currently held by the SNP, in terms of its implacable opposition to Trident and its thoroughly non-adventurous conception of our “defence” forces.

Is every Labour supporter blithely happy to attack independence as a threat to our military-industrial (or even just military-employment) complex? In terms of the sheer difficulty and expense of relocating Trident from Coulport (as recently indicated by the Ministry of Defence), could not a hypothetical “Indy-Labour” support a “Yes” vote - as an instrument towards the removal of these weapons of mass destruction from these islands as a whole? And is there no appetite or ability to plan for “swords-into-ploughshares” left in the labour movement? 

When framed in an independence context, a few of Scottish Labour’s current policy positions begin to make at least some kind of sense. Their opposition to SNP plans to lower the rate of corporation tax rings hollow, if we think of Scottish Labour as part of the same party which rampantly deregulated finance in the City of London under Gordon Brown. 

But placed in an independence context, it starts a real debate about national economic strategy, one brought to a focus regularly over the years by the political scientist Micheal Keating. In his words from 2007, “An independent Scotland could thus be not only viable but successful, but only with structural change accompanying independence. One form would be the deregulated, low tax model, open to international business. Another would be a concerted and networks economy, with a stronger emphasis on public services and high-value activities. Little of this, however, features in the political debate.” 

Or to be precise, the SNP - in their public discourse at least -  try to transcend both forms: low-tax and pro-enterprise on one side, the “social wage” and the “commonweal” on the other. Can it really be done? We haven’t even touched the Greens’ critique of petro-fuelled growth in Scotland, solidly within the context of independence - that’s for another time. A proper left-green critique of the SNP’s macro-economics is required. But it won’t be remotely credible coming from a Scottish party so associated with the bubble-wrapped neo-liberalism of the New Labour years. 

However, a small sliver of that party - audibly imagining itself operating under independence, and bringing its positive, constructive visions of political economy to that society - might have a chance of being heard. They might also be the penicillin that keeps the Labour Party from expiring entirely in a post-independence Scotland.

Back at the rock’n’roll gig... I left my “cut-me-I-bleed-Labour” friend with a hug across his shoulders. We’ve worked together in this country for nearly a quarter of a century, and we’re certainly not going to let the difference between left-nationalist and democratic-socialist sully that in the slightest. 

“But promise me”, he pleaded at the last, “the SNP will disband as soon as they get independence, won’t they?” I doubt that very much, I answered. But for the health of the country, I hope that some in Scottish Labour are thinking about how they’ll cope, and maybe even thrive, in the early days of a fully sovereign nation. 

What makes for a "creative place" in Scotland? PK essay for Sunday Herald

I was asked to write an essay by my old paper The Sunday Herald about the idea of how you make a "creative place" in Scotland - extending and riffing on my experience as a judge for the Creative Places award for Creative Scotland, announced a few weeks ago. (Unedited version below). It was a nice opporunity to ruminate on my own relationship between creativity and place. I was delighted by the witty graphic on the left, which makes a limpid watercolour out of one of the architectural "carbuncles" that Coatbridge (my home town) is notorious for. 

How art can reinvent our towns

Sunday Herald "Essay of the Week", 29 January 2012

By Pat Kane

It was at the start of my jog, during a weekend visit to my mum, that I came upon the town's newest landmark: the Coatbridge Superhero Archway.

At the mouth of the Monklands Canal, two guys were bolting the cast-iron sculpture on to some old pillars. The arch depicts three masked and caped crusaders, surrounded by flora, fauna and the industrial workers of the town's past. On the way back, I ran down the old canal to the high street. What used to a be slalom ride of broken Buckfast bottles – the green, green glass of home – is now a veritable sculpture park. Witty, outsized objects, riffing on Coatbridge's heritage as the "Iron Burgh", open out into an amphitheatre that could (on that single day in June when the cloud breaks) be adequately described as Mediterranean.

And here, instead of lost, angry guys swaying and muttering their way home, there were clumps of Glee-like, floppy-fringed teenagers, using this stage to mount their squeaking, shrieking rehearsals for life.

For a town which won Carbuncle Of The Year in 2007, this has the makings of a municipal counter-attack. The superhero arch was inspired and supported by comic book and movie writer Mark Millar, a local lad done good. The sculpture promenade is a thematic extension of the Summerlee Heritage Museum, which elegantly frames a lost industrial past as well as any comparable institution.

There is one more unexpected glint of cultural gold I've discovered in my home town (apart from its reserves of excellent pop stars and unstoppable footballers). A very accomplished and influential mover in the Scottish arts establishment told me proudly that his child has just got into Coatbridge College's performing arts department – "he's delighted to be there, it's very highly rated". And on checking, so it proves (which might explain the Glee Kids down at the Canal). Who'd a thunk?

So does all this activity mean that Coatbridge might count as a "creative place"? I ask because I've just completed my judging duties on an awards scheme, begun by Creative Scotland this year, which aims to "celebrate and recognise the hard work and imagination that contributes to the rich cultural life of a community, as well as its social and economic wellbeing". It was a fascinating process, and a delight to meet the excited winners.

But it's made me think hard about how we might define a "creative place". Can creativity be conjured out of your fly-blown town by some adroit marketing and branding exercise? Is it right to place an expectation on parts of Scotland that might be doing their best to survive, that they find a way to make themselves sing and dance for passing tourists as well? Or is there something new here about finding untapped sources of optimism and energy in the country – rooted in local action and imagination, rather than the usual political flyting?

The Canadian economist Richard Florida has made a global career for himself by advocating a formula that "technology, talent and tolerance" is what's required to make your area "creative". Technology meaning a combination of networks and transport, allowing mobility and connectedness; talent meaning universities, start-up zones, cultural sectors; and tolerance meaning a willingness to accept bohemian, non-majority lifestyles, and thus the kind of personal eccentricity that drives innovation. (Florida is notorious for his "gay" index – the healthier your gay scene, usually the higher your creativity quotient). Florida's template has been criticised for its cookie-cutter approach: the unedifying spectacle of burghers scurrying around looking for their local "3Ts", then handing it over to a branding agency to polish up for the tourist/investment market.

The Creative Place Awards are a fascinating counter to the idea that there is a formula for civic creativity. If any finalist was close to Florida's 3Ts, it was Huntly – where its head (a German artist) had commissioned a South African artist to rebrand the market town, and whose vision for the moribund central square partly involved turning empty shopfronts into artistic installations.

Creetown, one of the category prizewinners, was also setting itself up as an "art town" – but the link seemed more integral: the local granite mines had attracted acclaimed Japanese sculptor Hideo Furuta, who then redesigned its Adamson Square into a beautiful swirl of grey, glittering carvings. Kilmartin House had built a steady visitor attraction from its neolithic remains, but Prestonpans took the model of a not-for-profit community pub as the basis for its artistic programme. Another category winner, Wigtown, was making the most of the current appetite for readers and writers to find themselves in congenial places, the better to contemplate ideas and experiences away from the digital chatter.

Did St Andrews – which probably fits most of Florida's categories already – really need to be awarded its category winner prize (towns with a 100,000-plus population), even given its plans were by far the more developed and ambitious? This is perhaps a flaw in the Creative Place approach that needs to be addressed: the extent to which localities can even get to the starting gate of effectively promoting their "creativity" to funding agencies. Those which already have more cultural capital and confidence will be able to make a much more fluent case than those at the hard-scrabble end of Scottish life.

AT the end of the ceremony, I sensed that Andrew Dixon, head of Creative Scotland, had registered this problem – putting a call out to places like Raploch in Stirling (home of the El Sistema/Big Noise project, otherwise losing its funding this year) or areas in Glasgow such as Govan.

Yet his other prompts – to Ullapool, a centre for ideas driven by the energies of new MSP Jean Urqhuart, or to Skye, with its Gaelic College and other festivals – recognises that Scotland might have a particular answer to the "creativity" question: one that comes from the way that island or rural communities draw from language or landscape, as much as from post-industrial communities grappling with their heritage and legacy.

At the ceremony, I couldn't help quoting the famous MacDiarmid lines: "Scotland small? Our infinite, multiform Scotland small?" But I also recalled what the Channel 4 executive Stuart Cosgrove said when I asked him why he was buying a house in Glasgow's Dennistoun: "Because there's a thousand stories in every street." In his 1990s C4 show Halfway To Paradise and his obsessional football broadcasts, Cosgrove exemplifies that approach to Scottish contemporary life that looks for the beauty, the intensity and even the globality in the local.

In a Scotland about to stop the world and get on, we should be looking for ways that the vapours of self-confidence and optimism billowing from political leaders can suffuse every corner of Scottish society. Articulating your local story, and then using that as a resource for all kinds of enterprise – not just cultural and artistic – could be one obvious way to do that.

Yes, tourism is one part of the equation, though the exact nature of the tourist market you seek determines how you tell that story. The “internal” tourist - buying Pete Irvine’s Scotland The Best or reading Scottish quality papers, perhaps in futures years benefitting from an education in Scottish studies, keen to test Macdiarmid’s fractal notion of the country - will be alive to ersatz hype of all kinds. 

The virtuous circle, for the tourist industry, is that an exacting internal market will provide the kinds of inimitable experiences sought by high-end cultural tourists from around the world. All those “Rough Guide” buyers and “Wallpaper” readers (or their European and American equivalents), keen to return to the metropolitan home with treasured narratives of the rich Caledonian lifestyle. 

Yet why should we read "creativity" as meaning only arts, culture and media? The director of West Kilbride's Craft Town Scotland, one of the Creative Place winners, told me with some pride that they were already a "Transition Town". The Transition Towns movement – comprising 700 places in 35 countries, adhering to shared practices of sustainability – is an example of how the doughty issue of low-carbon living can come alive, as a friendly day-to-day experience.

Its founder, Rob Hopkins, is quite explicit that one of the principles of Transition – apart from building up the resilience and self-sustaining nature of communities, and keeping their supplies as local as possible – is what he calls "inner" transition. People need an "engaged optimism", aroused by acting in concert with their neighbours, to defy hard times.

In Hopkins' words, "playfulness, creativity and happiness" are key. The ends of a Transition Town might be to get off the treadmill of growth: but the means are carnivals, festivals, galumphing great local initiatives, using all the tools of arts and culture to incite involvement and commitment.

West Kilbride's winning offer was due to its explicit vision about the role of "makers" as central to the wellbeing of communities. Makers is a broad new term from the US, celebrating the power of craft across arts, technology and the trades. (It could easily trace its origin to Scots: we call our poets "makars", a word close to the Greek root of poetry, poiesis, meaning an act of creation).

It was genuinely exciting to hear Crafttown's director, Maggie Broadley, enthuse about a new kind of "makerism" – putting technical apprentices, artistic producers and older mentors from other industrial eras into the same creative places.

We hear politicians' abstract words about the "reindustrialisation of Scotland" in a green economy. But initiatives like Crafttown start to herald a new popular culture of ingenuity and daily enterprise in Scotland, which creates a seedbed for sustainable living, via an active, skill-oriented pursuit of wellbeing. This vision of "creativity" moves beyond the arts-media definition, into something like the basic human energy of a nation.

Yet my mind drifts back to my own experiences of place and creativity, and for some reason, it drifts to Girvan. Like many Coatbridgeans in their late 40s, my memory of the Scottish seaside town is full of bitter-sweetness. I shared with a graphic designer friend of mine an obsession about Girvan for a while – not just because of the smelly motorised boats that went round its concrete pond, but its 1972 commissioning of Keith Albarn (cybernetic artist and father of Damon) to build a psychedelic palace called the 5th Dimension (a kind of fairground ride for the mind) on its seafront.

I'm convinced that a large chunk of my imaginative development began with me clambering around this unreal structure as a child. If anything is worth a retro reconstruction, it's the 5th Dimension. (It also shows that Scottish localities reaching out for cosmopolitan artists is nothing new). But it's an example that proves why the current "creativity" of any place should begin through a recall of the "creativity" that already exists there.

How many stories can we excavate, and perhaps generate, from the massive commitment to pleasure and freedom that the Scottish seaside town represents? Their current travails – in terms of poor employment and drugs cultures – are well known. But anyone who visits them, after they fight back their nostalgic disappointment, can see what a stage they could be for the imagination.

One element of Florida's mantra – "it's not new malls with high rents that support creativity, but old buildings with cheap rents" – applies directly to the Scottish seaside town. What could bohos and makers bring to these places? What would it take to drape a string of Brightons down Scotland's coasts?

YET when it comes to my home town, I have to admit that the very idea of Coatbridge even being able to make an argument for itself as a "creative place" has its own poignancy. As a teenager, I found creative enclaves there, for sure: a local library teeming with European and American modernist literature; a school drama department; English teachers, who responded to my expressive hunger; and later, the Masonic halls and local pubs that would allow spotty musicians to mess about for hours.

But I can't deny that much of this occurred in a mild warzone of tall poppy-cutting – where sports were the only cultural expression worthy of a young man; where deviance from the herd was a kind of punishment in advance, for those not wishing to submit to the managed life.

So you explode out of that environment – to Glasgow, its universities, London and then the world (of ideas and of cities) – driven by the desire to shake off the shackles. But that explosion has its own psychological costs and pathologies; and over the years, you find out how many other interesting, idiosyncratic friends simply didn't have the willpower to break away as freely as you did.

The idea that something like Creative Places – or indeed, the whole approach of a Creative Scotland – mollycoddles people into creativity that it creates an extended kindergarten that protects the real artist from struggle, or the need for do-or-die commitment ... Well, it's a soundbite.

But it's possible to be in a historical moment where all the boats of human potential rise together – if we find ourselves with enough collective will, and the right tools to hand. Let's be patient with a good big idea, integrative and sustaining, when it arises.

The standard Scottish snarl would be that schemes like this are bourgeois-bohemian jobs for the bourgeois-bohemian girls and boys: we should subject them to the X-rays of money and power analysis, and find them wanting. Alternatively, maybe this drawing-together of the dots of Scottish social potential is exactly the kind of native innovation we always thought a more autonomous Scotland would be all about. Sometimes, just sometimes, we are the answer to our own prayers.

And in a personal spirit of reconciliation, I urge the good burghers of Coatbridge to get their act together as a Creative Place for next year. With all due respect, it's about time.

Pat Kane is one half of Hue And Cry, whose new album, Hot Wire, is out in March. His forthcoming book is Radical Animal www.radicalanimal.net

Scotland 2012: Educating For Independence

Some Ne'erday thoughts on politics in 2012. All comments welcome. (I will be hyperlinking references in this piece over the next few days). 

* * *

We hear that a "prospectus" for the independence option in the referendum is being prepared in the bowels of the SNP - a "little blue-and-white book" which will provide a coherent policy framework, for citizens considering what will probably be the biggest political decision of their lives. 

Quite a few columnists have been noting with wry interest how the year's end has brought what seems like the UK establishment's praise of Alex Salmond, as a major political figure on these islands (eg, The Times' "Briton of the Year"). In a gripping stretch of realpolitik, the Labour activist Ian S Smart wonders whether this is an "Ally's Army" episode - the UK building us up for a world-changing moment, ready to catch us in their Unionist embrace as we inevitably fall short of our ideal and reject independence, leaving a quiescent, depressed and tractable Scotland. 

Yet isn't it equally possible that a properly-bolted-together prospectus for independence would be one of the more significant cultural "memes" of the next 18 months - one which might reverberate beyond the London media, and become part of a global conversation about democracy and self-determination? Debate about the independence process often talks about the significant "holes" in the SNP's position. As a Unionist tactician, Smart is clear as a bell about how to exploit them. For him, it's only the threat that independence will disrupt the continuity of pensions or welfare benefits, of access to BBC shows or easy financial transactions across the border, that's needed to secure a clear majority against. 

Yet perhaps there's a much "higher road" than one where focus groups can be negatively targeted with, in Smart's words, "frightening effectiveness". There's an old saying in Scottish politics about never underestimating the intelligence of the Scottish electorate. Surely some of those smarts come from living through a period where the constitutional question has, at the very least, inserted an awareness of how governance, at a macro-level, matters to the everyday person. Two effective SNP administrations at Holyrood have made that manifest, through a range of tangible policy differences in education, health and local taxation. 

Perhaps we should remind ourselves that Scottish citizens have a level of political awareness which is more acute and lively than in other parts of the island. So the challenge for independistas in 2012 is not to nervously huddle around an obdurate minority in the opinion polls for independence, but to intellectually and rhetorically "work as if they were in the early days of an independent nation", to misquote Alasdair Gray. That is, to stretch and develop their existing understanding of the possible powers of a Scottish Parliament, making concrete and clear what extra benefits (and defences against Tory-Coalition policies) come from statehood. 

I think one of the tipping points will be a context in which a Eurosceptic majority looks like solidifying in the English polity and returning a right-wing, small-government Tory regime (perhaps earlier than expected). Against that, I'm sure it's possible to present a joined-up welfare-pensions-and-taxation framework for independence which will look more attractive, even more stable, than a status quo which leaves some of these services and functions to a regime which is fundamentally opposed to concepts such as "the social wage" or "social democracy". 

An England spiralling into isolationism will also leave headroom for the SNP's development of their diplomatic and geo-political arguments. A real educational achievement in the popular consciousness for independence would be an awareness that a Scottish state, if democratically mandated, would have the right and the ability to situate itself, in a tailored and unique way, amidst European and global political and economic frameworks. If the debate over the border escalates into an near-referendum moment on whether the UK should remain within Europe under current terms at all, would that allow the Scottish electorate to vote for the pragmatism of keeping international options open, both in a Nordic and a EU direction, in a situation of upheaval and chaos? 

Jim Sillars' request that Scots (politicians and citizens) start "thinking like a state" has never been more pertinent - however much I might dissent from details of his analysis. And there are aspects of that state-thinking in the coming "prospectus" which I will probably object to strongly. For all Angus Robertson's character as an individual, I profoundly disagree with his discourse around Scottish armed forces under independence. We need much less of the "our-fair-share-of-the-military-spending" rhetoric, and much more vision about the changed culture of a "Scottish Defence Force" - a clear sense of different priorities about participation in future interventions and peace-keeping, a background recognition that the "great traditions" of Scottish regiments should not be so blithely celebrated. Freedom Come 'A Ye, over Scotland The Brave. 

I will also probably be unhappy with any kind of "continuity plan" for broadcasting and media regulation, involving BBC Scotland having greater autonomy under independence (while retaining its title and general programming). I don't believe it's beyond the wit of independence policy-makers to sketch out a future where access to beloved programmes is guaranteed, in a time-shifting and digital multi-channel environment, but where the name-change to an "SBC" or some other title signifies the same shift in seriousness as "Scottish Executive" to "Scottish Government". That is, a Scottish "state" broadcasting service which (of course) parallels the BBC in its constitutional distance from political control, but which at least accepts - as the current BBC Scotland essentially cannot - the basic legitimacy of a Scottish state perspective. Meaning less Central Belt murr-durrs on the nightly news bulletin, and more coverage of a Scotland that will exists in the world of globalisation, and covers the complexities of national progress within that. And much more besides, in terms of the cultural, social, energy and business agenda.

But all that aside... If we can seize 2012 as the year of "education towards independence", I think Comrade Smart's sophisticated but depressive view of the insubstantial nature of Scottish political will for independence can be overturned. If he's right about the "Devo Max" option being a non-starter for the Unionist parties - which remains to be seen, and that's another post - then an independence movement has a clear run at a prospect which only asks us to be at our best, as persuaders, thinkers, tactitians and activists. In a world where there are enough grand narratives of despair available, we should enjoy the opportunity to argue for a tangible achievement of progress and modernity. 

For 'a that, and 'a that, it's comin' yet... 

Statehood a matter of poetic justice: my Scotsman essay on artists and independence

I've written this Perspective piece for the Scotsman today, on the interesting tensions (and affinities) between the coming "independence" referendum, and the arts-and-creative community in Scotland. The unedited version runs below. All comments welcomed. 

Note: I got it wrong in the original piece about Annie Lennox being opposed to Nationalism in general - it seems she's come out as a supporter of Scottish independence in the past. Sorry to Annie (and indepdendistas!) 

Statehood a matter of poetic justice

Edwin Morgan's posthumous donation to the SNP fed into what can be seen as a growing momentum towards greater self-empowerment

By Pat Kane

The Scotsman, Tuesday 15 November 2011

That terrifying old volcano, Hugh Macdiarmid, once wrote a poem about an alternative, super-cosmopolitan Glasgow - where paperboys ran around with special evening editions titled Turkish Poet’s Abstruse New Song: Scottish Author’s Opinions. “And, holy snakes, I saw the edition sell like hotcakes!”

Irony noted, Mr Grieve. But is it any likelier that a gay, Glaswegian, modernist-futurist poet - if not a translator of Turkish abstruseness, then certainly of Hungarian, Russian, Portuguese and German - would bequeath nearly a million pounds to fund a campaign for Scottish independence in a coming referendum?

Even if you’d scripted it direct from Alex Salmond’s laptop, you couldn’t have a more resonant challenge to the artistic and creative classes of Scotland to put themselves on the line, than Edwin Morgan’s posthumous donation to the SNP. Morgan's successor as the nation's Makar, Liz Lochhead, has also recently declared her explicit preference for an independence vote in the coming referendum. If these national embodiments of pluralism,diversity and experiment are willing to nail their reputations to the mast of a sovereign Scottish state...well, what better justification would any other creative type need? 

Of course, the sound you’ll now hear is that of a thousand creatives scattering to the corners of their cafe-bars, Groucho Marxists to a man and woman, refusing to be part of any club that compels them to join. And quite rightly too. Just as Norman McCaig asked that we “observe two minutes pandaemonium” to mark the birth of Macdiarmid, we should expect only dissensus from any artistic community worth its name in Scotland.

As the chairman who bridged the gap between the old Scottish Arts Council and the new Creative Scotland, Richard Holloway’s parting shot was an essay titled "Creative Disloyalty". In its closing words, Holloway asked for “vigilance in protecting the spiritual integrity of Scotland’s makers, including their ancient right to bite the hands that feed them...We willnever forget Graham Greene’s admonition that disloyalty is the primary virtue of the artist. If we can all learn to live within that tension without trying to resolve it, then Scotland will have become a truly creative nation”.

Militant eclecticism is easy to find in Scotland’s existing cultural landscape - the near-random musical associations of Celtic Connections, the film and book festivals across our cities that sample primarily from the international circuit, never mind the long-standing global networks that feed into contemporary art, or the Edinburgh Festivals.

Even our new National Theatre of Scotland is more like a constitution than an institution - a generous theatrical process that insinuates itself into various aspects of Scottish life, rather than a company-in-a-building dedicated to curating a national canon of works. And when esteemed figures like the historian and diplomat Paul M. Scott decide to object to that very amorphousness, the response is to bring him into a discussion space with NTS stalwart David Greig, under the ambiguous headline “Staging the Nation”.

How much of national identity is a stage-act, a confidence trick, a community imagined from the footlights? And if so, does that matter, as long as the effect is to raise wellbeing and general happiness? Surf through the rapidly maturing Scottish cultural blogosphere, and you’ll find such questions being raised, countered, complexified, at a much quicker pace than the publication of unpurchased journals in arts-venue bookshops.

The tumult of Scottish culture, as it relates to the stern imperatives of national progress, is like the way play functions for complex mammals. Both are rehearsal spaces for possible futures; both are zones of experimentation that help sharpen our responses to challenges and trials.

No matter who actually coined (or used) the phrase, we have an understanding that Scotland’s political state is “a process, not an event”. Part of what keeps it processual is the unpredictable, unbiddable nature of Scottish arts and letters.

And yet, if it’s truly unpredictable and open, then it’s also possible that some figures - like Morgan & Lochhead - might well choose to arrest the beguiling flow of their art, and make a concrete public commitment to a political or constitutional option. The interesting question is who captures the value of those commitments - and how subtly.

In the SNP’s “impossible” electoral majority of earlier this year, one evident factor was the sophistication of their media and cultural strategy. Their use of endorsements from celebrities, artists and notable public figures wasn’t just about borrowing their high-wattage power - showbusiness for beautiful people gracing showbusiness for ugly people.

Much more important was the way they regularly told a story of changing their vote from Labour to SNP - a story draped with the emotive language of disillusion, regret, commitment and relief. On an overall level, this helped to legitimate the feelings of switch voters - already specified issue by issue, and demographic group by group, by the SNP’s Activate software.

Was this some fiendish, white-cat-stroking psychological masterplan,political marketers deploying tractable Scotterati like pieces on a chessboard? Some figures (the present writer included) have been on the independence bus for decades. But for some others - like actor Brian Cox, who has previously voiced Labour party political broadcasts - the moment of conversion was thrawn and deeply considered. Some, like comix writer Mark Miller and actor Alan Cumming, were complete surprises to the SNP, recording their own video tributes and giving them to the party.

So yes, cultural figures were one of the “verticals” - including fiscal-autonomy-loving businessmen, or farmers, or new-build homeowners - that were stacked up in favour of an SNP victory. (There was a wide spread of artist endorsement, with understandable self-interest, for the creation of a Scottish Digital Network - itself a cross-Holyrood commitment).

Again, the idea that they were mere code in any party's  programming of the electoral mind would make the support of any “creatively disloyal” Scottish artist melt away like snow off a dyke. But there are signs that this support is coming up from the creative grassroots in any case, looking for a home in the next great political contest of the independence referendum.

Particularly indicative was an post-election article in a London-based Sunday newspaper, who decided to commission pieces from five Scottish writers about the Union. Without apparent coordination or planning, four out of the five (Iain Banks, A.L. Kennedy, Janice Galloway and David Greig) recapitulated the “Labour to SNP”/ “Union to Independence” narrative almost perfectly.

Yet, as one might expect from a page full of expert human observers, the dominant metaphor was complex and personal: that of sad but adult partners, ruefully accepting their rocky history and impending separation, hoping for less fractious and more constructive times ahead.

There is something qualitative, specific and nuanced about these accounts that points towards the real power of Scottish arts in this coming referendum. It wouldn’t be hard to assemble a tick-list of prominent cultural Scots - say, Billy Connolly, Ewan McGregor, J.K. Rowling, Robbie Coltrane - whose previously-voiced discomforts with “nationalism”, Scottish or otherwise, might make them a target for recruitment in a “No/Pro-UK” campaign.

Yet would any of these figures, or others waiting in the sidelines, be willing to be used in a populist, headline-banner way to stand in the way of Scottish progress towards more self-empowerment?

In my last incarnation as a political activist, in 1992, we formed a group with the unequivocal title of Artists for Independence - but which nevertheless expressed that desire in the form of a “multi-option referendum”. We figured, in our incorrigibly artistic way, that the only way to answer the question was to give the people a set of rich democratic options, and let them decide the future of their country.

It looks like we’re about to have the subtle democratic process we dreamed of twenty years ago - too subtle for its own good, some might say (and in a sweaty moment, I might agree with them). Within that framework, then as now, my argument would be for clear nation-state independence. But any creative, at some point, has to realise that there are deeper tendencies flooding through them and their work than they can consciously grasp.

In his great poem introducing the Parliament, Edwin Morgan voices the people’s desire for our politicians to be “thinking persons, as open and adventurous as its architecture”. Artists should be intrinsically happy with the open and adventurous. But our task in this moment might be as much to keep profoundly blethering, telling stories, exploring stubborn details, wildly going over the score in all directions: a commitment to enrich imaginations, as much as imagine rich nations. And of course, hoping that all our editions, however abstruse, keep selling like hotcakes.

Pat Kane on The Steamie: Ancien Regime meets Salmond's Juggernaut of Joy

This is my first blog to be reposted on The Steamie, the Scotsman's political comment forum. All comments welcome

Pat Kane: Ancien regime meets Salmond's Juggernaut of Joy 

Extraordinary times, which drive even the most immersed book-writer to his keyboard. We might be seriously facing a scenario within the next few years, sketched out by Gerry Hassan in his recent article in Open Democracy, where a Eurosceptic Tory party forces a referendum on the UK's relationship to Europe - and a coherent, democratically-mandated SNP runs a referendum that promises to realise the "Independence in Europe" dreams of the last 30 years. 

It matters a bit which referendum comes first - but certainly, the prospect of an RUK/England wriggling free of the next round of Euro-integration will be enough to bring an extra dimension of worldliness to the independence case in Scotland. Winnie Ewing's fantastic old one-liner "stop the world, we want to get on", might finally connect with the hearts and minds of a Scottish majority. 

What's also fascinating me is the deep tactics of the SNP's inner core around the referendum questions. Watching the three Scottish Labour leader candidates on BBC's Politics Show on Sunday, I had a real sense of them walking blindly into a bear trap. Each one of them sang in unison about the "Devo Max" option being a Nationalist ruse - a way to get increased powers for the Scottish Parliament no matter what the vote, indicating the SNP's fundamental insecurity about the possibility of securing a majority for independence. 

It's likely that all the Unionist parties will fall in line with a critique of Devo Max as an SNP fudge (even Murdo Fraser and his re-branded McTory vision seems to be reverting to type), and push for a single-vote referendum on independence. This will allow Salmond to portray them as unwilling to grant a range of sensible, widely-approved extra powers (such as fiscal autonomy and the Crown Estate) to Holyrood.

But you guess Alec knew this would happen all along. Look at the pitiful spectacle of the AV campaign, rooted in the cross-party turpitude on non-Celtic constitutional change that characterised the New Labour era. You wouldn't need to be a genius to conclude that the Unionist parties would be utterly incapable of a "federal" response to the SNP's demands. Remember Salmond's post-UK General Election call to make up a "progressive" Rainbow coalition? That was undoubtedly another marker put down to indicate the SNP's democratic generosity towards political affairs on these islands. Eck plays a long, subterranean game. 

And in the meantime, the SNP's Juggernaut of Joy rumbles out of its hangar again, with its databases and sentiment management systems, its army of activists and its mastery of the big cultural narratives. The aim, like 2011, will be to corral as much of the nation's cognitive and emotional mindspace as possible, and steer it towards the hopeful, can-do, progress-oriented prospect of a prosperous, secure independence: Scotland Forward, indeed (or #scotfwd, as it will reverberate round Twitter). 

"Nae Limits", "Scotland: it's Starting". The appeal to a shining, inspiring horizon, using local and familiar language, is what cognitive scientists like George Lakoff and Mark Westen would called "priming", "framing" and "embodiment". It's of course entirely possible that the Unionists will realise the nature of the consciousness-politics that the SNP is practising, and try to build up their own Juggernaut of Joy. 

But as comrade Hassan often says, where is the energy in the Unionist argument? The sheer instability of the Coalition, the cross-ideological disgruntlement of middle-England with their status in the world (evidenced by Euro-phobia and immigration-scepticism), the hapless nature of the UK Labour leadership (never mind the nativising of the Scottish Labour Party)... Would even the massed celebrity ranks of Ewan McGregor, Billy Connolly and Annie Lennox be enough to make the emotional case for Scotland in the Union? 

In their best lights, the SNP have a case to make about independence as the eventual achievement of political and economic modernity in Scotland: the expertise, values, traditions and resources of the country finally getting their appropriate and effective structures of power and democracy. That was the case, articulated by Jim Sillars in the mid 80's, that brought this particular Labour die-hard into the independence fold. But it seems as if the ancien regime is accomodating the vision, by crumbling to pieces around about us. 

Pat Kane's Cal Merc column: English riots, Scottish stupor and the consumptive young

Here's my latest column for the Caledonian Mercury - I've written this response to the English riots, and have pondered a little at the end about why (so far) there's been no equivalent over the border.

All comments more than welcome.

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It was going to take something extraordinary to pull me back into daily commenting, as I wrestle with a thesis about how environmental politics has to reckon with our human desire for novelty and stimulation. I guess destructive consumer riots in most of the major conurbations south of the border will do it. 

You’ll have probably read enough overview-porn on this, so I’ll confine myself to some blips on my own personal radar. The copy-cat behaviour, spreading beyond London, fascinates me. I wonder what the mix is in each area between the two elements copied - one about young men physically and spatially confronting the authority of police in the streets, the other (involving all sexes) about looting and destroying local and chain-store shops. 

For the first, it surely involves a few strands. There’ll be some legitimate grievance from some ethnic minorities about stop-and-search and racial profiling - the unresolved legacies of decades of structural deprivation, the control levels probably increasing after the domestic terrorism of 7/7. 

But that also cross-fertilises with the desperate solidarities of gang society - sometimes racially, sometimes geographically defined, engaging young men at a psychologically-susceptible moment in their development, and amplified by its own specific pop culture in music and media. Politicians might encourage us to downgrade this, but I don’t want to underestimate the power of the Tottenham police’s killing of Mark Duggan as a cultural meme - easily inflaming other street-battling, gang-oriented youth in different parts of the country. 

The looting and arson is, to me, a lot more complex. I’m partial to the academics pulled together by the Guardian’s Zoe Williams on Tuesday, who noted that the young looters weren’t exactly storming shops for basic staples - the food riots that were the early tremors of the Arab Spring for example - but for goods that confer status in consumer society (phones, tv, clothes). 

The late-night shots of male and female hoodies sashaying down the street with JD Sports and Debenhams bags was like some surreal parody of a Saturday afternoon’s “retail therapy”. Which is, of course, our official compensation for securing and holding down jobs in a service economy. 

Most of the commentary you’ll read will be about how we piece back together a “work ethic” for a now “feral” youth: a generation who, in an age of free downloads and welfare mollycoddling, have lost all sense that consumer gratification should come well after one's respectable efforts in the labour-market. 

Let me just, for a moment, flip it round. These kids aren't rioting for the right to a job in traditional sectors threatened by neo-liberalism (we don't need to bother about that these days, of course, as globalisation has relocated industrial production in the South). 

No, this generation is cursed with semiotic plenitude. They have been super-conditioned by all kinds of powerful media and branding to think they live in a world sprinkled with stardust. A world where self-expression and recognition, not just through the medium of art (X-Factor) but via the basic interactions of their lives (Big Brother), is what essentially matters. 

If you don’t have the talent (and few do, and even those who do soon realise how tough it is to make it), then you have to buy into the lifestyle that at least evokes such stardom. When you realise you are always going to fall far short of the spending power to live that lifestyle, that’s a recipe for permanent, corrosive dissatisfaction. What’s different compared to the seventies is the explosion of media - meaning the explosion of ways to get a tantalising, frustrating taste of the consumer identity you know you’ll never quite possess. 

Our headlines about youth in recent years have been about the calamitous rise in their mental disorders, as much as their delinquency or failures of character. Might not the compelling, multi-sensory surround of lifestyle consumerism be to some degree the cause of those disorders? And might not that psychological fragility contribute to the corroded characters of those English youth, thinking they can turn their high-streets into glass-strewn fields of excess? 

How do these kids get out of this bedazzling trap? My 2004 book The Play Ethic suggested one response to the shower of visions of the good and creative life that a multimedia society generates, without it providing an equal socio-economic opportunity to realise them (certainly not under New Labour's empty management of neo-liberalism, and even less under the Coalition's sado-austerity).

My proposal was that we systemically and infrastructurally expand the zone within which people could express themselves in an unalienated way, through freely-chosen and satisfying arts, crafts, trades and lifestyles. This would be supported by a new social contract, involving shorter working hours and a radical reinvestment in public structures and amenities. 

My new thesis ties that collective, playful zone to the biggest crisis that we all face - the need to move away from hyper-consumerism under the terminal threat of climate change. I’m suggesting that a playful lifestyle will enable us to replace status consumption with joyous co-production, and also lighten our load on the planet.

The classic retort has been that this is an unaffordable, indulgent luxury. I’m a fool to presume that our human nature is naturally social and convivial; and I’m incapable of addressing fundamental questions about prosperity and economy. Alright then: On the brink of a double-dip recession, with the Western world up to its eyeballs in debt of all kinds, and with financial plutocrats dumping the costs of their mendacity on the populace - can anyone out there say that the the traditional production-consumption model has served us all that fabulously well? 

At the moment, given the parade of revolting, hypocritical harrumphing from millionaires and Bullingdon types in the Westminster regime (and a timorous opposition), I have no hope that any of these ideas will even be audible at a UK level. So before I go back to peering at my Kindle, a few words on what is (so far) an interesting anomaly: Why no consumer riots in Scotland? 

Well, we do have rather regular consumer riots, at least in Glasgow. They’re called Old Firm games. These are policed in a generally acceptable way - and enteprisingly, some of those collective resentments are turned into solid retail and merchandising revenues. The only errant elements are: the occasional attempts to bouncy-bouncy Glasgow’s Underground train off its tracks; some outbursts of domestic or street violence in and around fixtures, fatalities only occasional; and more recently, a problem around the psychic compensations of 19th century migrant labour-history for bored-shitless-with-themselves West of Scotland males. (Yes, look up there: the red irony light is ON). 

But I also couldn’t help noticing a classic Scottish social indicator, sneaking into view as London roiled and burned. It seems that we are still the leading European nation for drug deaths; slightly down on last year, but still seven times the continental average. I walked through Sauchiehall Street today - the equivalent of Manchester’s Arndale or Tottenham’s High Street - and felt weirdly safe among my fellow, trundling Glaswegians. The only impedance to one’s complacent, Salmondesque stroll? The regular piles of shrunken, junkie humanity at my feet, nodding off with a plastic cup in their laps, none of whom seemed remotely capable of conducting any kind of consumer riot amidst the retail saturnalia.

Maybe that enduring self-loathing and inferiorism of Scottish life - possibly more virulent in the 50% who didn’t vote in the last Holyrood election, than among those who did - has its pacific benefits, after all. The needle and the damage done keeps the more brittle portions of the Scottish poor quiet and manageable - that is, until Smart, Successful Scotland gets round to them, as something to tick off the progressive checklist. Onwards, and sideways.

Scotsman essay: We need a new Scottish eco-lifestyle

This is the unedited version of my essay in The Scotsman, 15 July 2011, titled "Difficult to buy into the good life". It's the core argument from my forthcoming book Radical Animal, put into a Scottish context. All comments more than welcome. 

* * *

We live in a strange news landscape in Scotland. At one level the story is cuts, austerity and threats to public services, at another an aspiration to a more empowered nation that can grasp new levers of growth and prosperity. And sitting between the two, always awkwardly, is Scotland's environmental agenda.

We are pulled one way by Greens who warn of our heedless approach to material consumption, another pulled another way by parties (not just the SNP) who see renewable energy as the great "reindustrialisation of Scotland". How can the same agenda both call for strict limits to personal lifestyle, and offer a new age of unlimited prosperity?

The great unanswered question is the degree to which we deal with the "demand" side of low-carbon living, as much as the "supply" side (the production of clean and renewable energy). How far can the Scottish lifestyle - in many realms, no less hyper-consumerist than any other part of the West - change to meet the challenge of climate crisis?

At the same time, how do we answer our deep human appetite for spectacle, sensuality and novelty, without our lust for stuff crisping the planet? How do we shift and change our psychic investment in lifestyle consumerism, in order that we can reduce the material throughputs that exacerbate global warming?

There is a growing realisation that we cannot adequately respond to the challenges of climate change without a new and better understanding of human nature. At the moment, many Western governments are trying to use the insights of behavioural economics to "nudge" and "steer" citizens towards sustainable living.

They make policy in the light of our inner "Homer Simpson" - an understand of humans as short-termist, reputation-obsessed naked apes. And as good "liberal paternalists", they gently take us in hand to lead us towards the environmental life, through stealth legislation and marketing aimed at making green lifestyle a status aspiration.

But such campaigns confront a general scepticism about politics and policy. Once the citizens have rumbled that they're being nudged or steered, the cry of "nanny state" or "climate conspiracy" can soon rise up - easily resulting in popular and irrational resistance to any kind of change. See the Tea Party movement in the US, or the legions of petrolheads in the UK that drive Jeremy Clarkson's reactionary productions to the top of the charts

In Scotland, there may not be quite the same depth of scepticism about political intentions as elsewhere. We have just resoundingly elected a Scottish Parliament for whom sustainability is a national ambition, allied to world-leading environmental targets for society and economy. The governmental cues for a green Scotland hardly need to be cautious, stealthy "nudges", when the popular vote for a direction of travel was so clear.

Scotland also has a rich history of environmental experiments in living - from Findhorn to the Fife Diet, from the crofting revival to wind-and-wave powered island communities like Islay. And despite the justifiable complaints from Greens about its fervour for road-building, the SNP government has enough environmental vision to seek to scale-up the best of such experiments to the level of national policy.

But let's not kid ourselves, or get too Caledonian-smug. At present, the broad middle of Scottish socio-economic life is locked into a high-consumption, trend-driven capitalism. Just look at the adverts that comprise a core revenue stream for much commercial media in this country. They fall into predictable categories - consumer electronics, holidays, financial services, furniture, cars.

What's the lifestyle that results from these seductive appeals? We keep buying essentially the same arrangements of metal, fabric and plastic - which deliver incremental improvements in performance and efficiency, but which hardly demand a whole new production cycle to be delivered.

We scout around for the financial credit needed to purchase and house this stuff, being urged back into the debt holes that we know nearly sunk our economy three years ago. And once the strain of working-to-consume gets too overwhelming, we briefly escape to foreign climes, in a boozy blur of intense, compensatory hedonism, usually completely heedless about the environmental externalities of our actions.

Many green thinkers would line up behind Professor Tim Jackson's attempt to nail this self-defeating (and globally-destructive) life-style loop in a one-liner: "We spend money we don't have, on things we don't need, to make impressions that don't last, on people we don't care about." This is the negative case for how our current consumer lifestyles alienate us from our authentic, flourishing selves.

The positive case, one assumes, would be to spend money we had, on things we needed, to make impressions that lasted, on people we cared about. How attainable is this mentality and lifestyle? This is where an ingenuity gap opens up, sitting between all the major contenders for changing our behaviours in a green direction.

The green lifestyle experimentalists could justifiably claim they were largely already there. They emphasize community and locality, reinforced by much consultation and democratic process. This ensures that people's words and actions make the desired "impression" on those they "care" about, via a satisfying and active civic life.

The idea of resilience - where the skills and craft required to maintain the health of a community lie very much within that community - brings money, and needs, closer together. Repair - and repairable, durable design - becomes more important than gadget lust. Unique, idiosyncratic services and products, well and passionately made, become an occasion for necessary consumption, rather than a therapeutic splurge at the mega-mall. And never mind the rise of sheer barter and mutual exchange, represented by websites like Gumtree and Freecycle.

There's no need to fantasize that parts of Scotland are conducting an internal exodus to this kind of lifestyle - in pockets, it's already happening (well charted by Lesley Riddoch's reports and columns). But stand for a moment in the rush-hour of Glasgow, Edinburgh or any other busy conurbation in Scotland, as crisply-dressed and clearly-stressed men and women hurtle from office to shops to home, navigating their lives by smart-phone. Facing this melee, the arrival of a slower, more experiential, more self-determining and sustainable Scottish lifestyle is coming at a very slow creep indeed.

What bridge can be built between Green Scot and Consumerist Scot, given that government lecturing, and alternative lifestyles, can easily bounce off our plastic-coated lives of credit cards, designer brands and free upgrades? I think one answer might lie in getting away from the miserable reading of humanity that comes from the "nudge" thinkers and behavioural economists, and looking to other areas of our evolved nature that produce optimism, ingenuity and enthusiasm - namely, our playful selves.

Play is both natural and radical for humans. It's both our connection to the wider world of complex mammals, who also use play as experimentation to help them survive and thrive. But play is also that lifelong flexibility (what the biologists call "neoteny") which allows us to innovate - to "take reality lightly" and shape it according to our plans and dreams.

Can we disconnect our playful capacities - our natural imagination, experimentalism and lust for novelty - from the exploitations of hyper-consumerism? And then reconnect it to a whole range of engagements and activities that provide equal levels of psychic richness and satisfaction to that of status goods or fashionable consumption?

I don't think green lifestyle radicalism can do this on its own. And I do think there is an opportunity for businesses and policy-makers to innovate around answering those playful needs in a much more sustainable manner (from information platforms to festivals, fashion to food consumption). We may need less of an onslaught of trinkets, but we will need more of what the sixties radical Ivan Illich once called "tools for conviviality".

Prosperity for Scotland may well lie in the production of cleaner energy. But if it isn't matched by a shift towards a less consumerist, and more joyfully participative lifestyle, it'll only be half a revolution. 

Pat Kane's forthcoming book is Radical Animal: innovation, sustainability and human nature (www.radicalanimal.net).

Map of Thoughtland: Newsnet Scotland

Newsnet Scotland was launched on March 2010 to address a perceived imbalance in the reporting of Scottish News and current affairs.  We believe that a nation without a balanced media is the poorer for it. Staffed by volunteers Newsnet is the fastest growing news outlet in Scotland, each month we enjoy double digit readership growth.

via www.newsnetscotland.com

I was chatting with Mick Fealty of Northern-Irish-Huff-Post-esque Slugger O'Toole today about the crisis of newspapers - and how they might learn from the way that passionate user communities stream a flow of free editorial into their networks. Newsnet Scotland is a paradigm example of the phenomenon. It was set up by some Scottish independence supporting activists and coders, and is explicitly aimed at redressing what they percieve to be (and arguably is) a media imbalance in the reporting of independence politics in the MSM (Mainstream Scottish Media), ie a bias towards "Unionist" (pro-UK) perspectives. Amid some kitschy cultural moments, Newsnet Scotland does a great service in giving its activist constituency a mix of curated pieces from independence-learning mainstream writers, and "commissioned" pieces from a range of activist voices (Thoughtland has already been sought out). Revenue? Trying to surmount the usual online ad hump. But vibrant and authentic to the mood of the Scottish Spring. 

Map of Thoughtland: AFTERnow

Western civilisation has conquered great health perils in the past. But the peculiarly modern malaise seems resistant to treatment. Obesity, depression, addiction, loss of wellbeing – these are issues which sap the resources and spirit of modern practitioners. The AfterNow Project seeks to trace the development of our current situation. In six 5-minute introductory videos – backed up by a dozen 10-minute audio podcasts and over 30 short papers – we unpack the ideas which shape and limit contemporary responses... and look to a brave new future for public health.

via www.afternow.co.uk

Very impressive site from Glasgow University's Public Health and Health Policy Section, the brain child of its head Phil Hanlon (with input from the IFF's Andrew Lyon). AFTERnow does a multimedia assault on the agenda of wellbeing (and its corollary, "ill-being") in public life. (Interesting linkage note: I was alerted to its existence from this tweet, which was essentially telling me not to go listening to wild-eyed Italian autonomists for my anti-consumerist critique, when it was right on my doorstep. This is how exactly how a Thoughtland should operate, citizens...)