When you think of museums do you think of the V & A or the Natural History Museum in London. Huge buildings capable of housing a full sized Dinosaur and with queues of foreign tourists lining up to get in. These are national museums funded by central government. Most museums aren’t like this they are small, in out of the way places and run by local councils. A museum can be a terrace house with period furniture, a cotton mill with fully operational water or steam driven weaving machines, a fishing trawler and a large shed full of nautical related stuff, a partially preserved castle or just an old building with all sorts of odds and sods in it from Roman Britain to military memorabilia up and till the second world war.
Unlike the national museums these local ones are not open all the year round or every day of the week as visitor numbers just aren’t there. In fact the numbers are largely made up of school trips which is why so many museums feature displays on Roman Britain and the 1st and 2nd World War in line with the national curriculum. Of course there is also a focus on local history because even if there is no longer a cotton industry or a fishing fleet these occupations have shaped the locality and given it its unique character.
The buildings have most often been donated and the collections loaned or bequeathed. In fact so much has been acquired over the years that only a fraction of the collections are able to be exhibited the rest are stored-big sheds full of agricultural machinery from between the wars or office equipment from long closed factories like typewriters, phones, clocking in machines and tools for making things that are no longer made.
The size, randomness and location of all this is part of the challenge of running a big local authority museum service. A challenge which in the current harsh financial climate includes cutting costs. These museums don’t generate sufficient income to meet their running costs. The buildings have high maintenance costs and as a result of age and design are expensive to heat and light. There is little point in raising admission charges at the expense of visitor numbers when the cafe and the gift shop are the biggest source of income. Casual staff are engaged during the season and supported by enthusiastic volunteers as part of keeping the costs down. The “Friends of the museum service” do some fund raising and try to get corporate sponsorship from local businesses to fund exhibitions during the summer but the collections are not sexy enough to attract corporate sponsors and local businesses are cutting back.
Local government councillors say museum services can’t be protected from cuts and must make their share of the savings. Increasingly questions are being asked about whether we can afford all or any of these museums.
The thing is it turns out to be very difficult to close a museum or give away a collection. Could the “Friends” take over the running of the museum and staff it with volunteers? Is this an example of “Big Society” get the local community to look after their local heritage? Sounds an obvious solution but even if you don’t employ paid staff it still costs more to run these museums than you can collect from visitors and then there is the responsibility of repairs to the building. The “Friends” don’t want the financial liability unless the local authority will retain responsibility for the capital costs and provide a guaranteed annual grant to meet the gap in running costs, which they won’t. You can’t sell the building or collections because of the terms on which they were bequeathed and you can’t loan out the bulk of this because other museums don’t have the space.
The answer so far has been to apply for grants to the Heritage Lottery Fund for capital works but often there is a requirement for matched funding from local authorities which increasingly is not there. Opening hours are reduced, repairs neglected and paid staff replaced by volunteers. At some point a museum will be closed and moth balled whilst the legal people work out a way to get round the obstacles to selling off the lot.
Blair McPherson was until recently the Director of Community Services for a large local authority. He is author of People management in a harsh financial climate www.blairmcpherson.co.uk