Seven arts education co-ordinators are now working at advisory level in education authorities, bringing arts workers into schools and expanding arts development and exposure for children. Educationally the scheme has been a great success; financially it has been a triumph. The posts are jointly funded for the first three years by the SAC and the authority; thereafter the post holder is expected to generate grants to pay for his or her own salary as well as their work.

Following a meeting with Alan Blackie, the president of the Association of Directors of Education, the SAC is now offering a links officer to every Scottish authority. Moreover, under the Scottish Executive’s national cultural strategy, cultural co-ordinators will be introduced to improve the contact between schools and professional artists. All but one of the 32 authorities have made successful applications for these posts and soon 100 co-ordinators could be at work across Scotland.

The news excited the 70 youth and children’s theatre workers at the annual What You See Is What You Get Showcase for Scottish youth arts. This three-day meeting for performers and promoters, which this year was hosted by the Byre Theatre in St Andrews, Fife, and is organised by Imaginate and funded by the SAC, offers a continuous programme of performances, discussions and opportunities for informal meetings.

The last are important. Arts staff often work in isolation from their fellows. In fact, coffee breaks were almost the highlight for Colin Marr, the director of the Eden Court Theatre in Inverness.

“You come out of the show into the coffee bar and the conversation is about the work you have just seen,” he says. “There is no politics, no girning. Everyone here just cares about the work. It’s so refreshing. You remember why you wanted to work in theatre.”

Displaying their wares at the showcase were musicians, puppeteers, youth theatres and theatre companies, all anxious to make their mark with those who hold the purse strings. In the name of market testing, Imaginate director Tony Reekie arranged for Fife schools to send parties of children. It makes sense, of course, for artists and promoters to study the reactions of the target audience but it occasionally teased the arts workers who were trying to balance their opinions against the reactions of the school groups.

Mr Reekie had no such problems, saying of the mixed reaction to the Lyceum Youth Theatre’s Porcelain Dolls: “The people who were uncomfortable were the adults and that’s how it should be.”

The children’s shows varied from the very good, such as Shona Reppe Puppets, to the barely employable, but at least the showcase allowed these comparisons to be made and laid the groundwork for a future critique of young people’s theatre, not least by including in the delegate handbook the criteria used by Danish children’s theatre.

The concluding session posed some challenging questions, such as whether youth arts should abolish the category of youth theatre. By now, however, the delegates were too tired to debate such ground-breaking ideas. Mr Reekie admits that this side of the showcase needs recasting, perhaps bringing in a keynote speaker, but he feels it is important that practitioners recognise the changes that are taking place in youth arts and keep questioning what they do.