Adapting in an era of change
Continued funding cuts mean museums have to make tough decisions about how they run their services.
With funding cuts continuing to bite deep, museums and galleries in England are
being forced to make tough decisions about how they run their services.
The most recent round of cuts, announced in June as part of chancellor George Osborne’s in-year budget review, saw £30m shaved off the Department for Media, Culture and Sport’s (DCMS) annual budget of around £1.2bn as part of measures to deliver savings of £4.5bn across government departments in 2015-16.
This meant that the overall cut for the year was 0.5% for national museums directly funded by the department and arms-length bodies such as Arts Council England (ACE). Historic England was exempt.
A DCMS statement said that savings of £25m would be delivered by the end of the financial year through “underspends” across the department including a 1% (£0.9m) reduction in its core budget.
ACE confirmed that the cuts would not affect 2015-16 grants going to National Portfolio Organisations and Major Partner Museums.
Preparing for the worst
While the full extent of the cuts will not become clear until the emergency budget on 8 July and future spending reviews, Museums Journal understands that some national museums and galleries are being asked to model 30% reductions over the next three years.
It is also not known whether national museums will be asked by the DCMS to hold back a 5% contingency fund from their budgets for this financial year, as was the case last year, although it is understood that museums were allowed to spend it.
The prospect of further cuts is particularly unsettling for a sector already grappling with the challenges associated with the need to increase profitability, generate new income streams, maintain stable industrial relations and continue producing work that meets public expectations.
“National museums have lost a lot of funding over the past few years and more money is going to be lost,” says David Fleming, the president of the Museums Association (MA) and the director of National Museums Liverpool. “One of the inevitable consequences of budget cuts is that museums will have to adjust the way they work.”
Philanthropy and private sponsorship are often touted as the answer to reduced public funding and form a key part of the Conservative Party’s philosophy on the future funding of arts, heritage and culture.
The challenge with private funding, says Fleming, is that it is not guaranteed, unlike public funding settlements that cover specific periods.
“The issue of raising money from other sources is that you don’t know how much you’re going to raise,” he says. “A museum can’t plan according to what it might raise, it has to plan according to what it knows it will have. If its commitments end up exceeding its income then it is in serious trouble.”
Another major concern is the impact that a growing reliance on private funders is having on museums and galleries in terms of their reputations. There have been protests over oil giant BP’s sponsorship of Tate and the British Museum.
And there have even been concerns that sponsors are seeking to influence the content of museums’ exhibitions.
Private funding risks
“There are always risks with funders seeking to influence cultural activity in some way or another,” Fleming says. “That’s not new, but I think the more that museums seek philanthropic and private sponsorship, the greater the scrutiny will be of the risk of that kind of behaviour.”
Also of concern is that opportunities for philanthropic support vary across the country, with the lion’s share going to London.
“Most of the big firms aren’t based in Leeds,” says John Roles, the head of museums and galleries at Leeds City Council.
“Yes, you can go [to private firms] and get £20,000 from them, which is not to be sniffed at, but that is small beer. The money they tend to give is for extras – the real issue is the core budget.”
However, a project between Museums Sheffield and a group of European art collectors suggests an increasing awareness of the need for philanthropic giving to institutions outside London. Going Public: International Art Collectors in Sheffield will hold a series of exhibitions that include works by Sarah Lucas, Marcel Duchamp and Jake and Dinos Chapman, among others, and a summit event in October to debate the role of philanthropy in public art.
“What we are looking for is a combination of private and public funding,” says Kim Streets, the chief executive of Museums Sheffield.
“I can imagine a future where public funding disappears, perhaps in 10 years’ time, so for me the idea is that our own commercial activity grows of course, but that philanthropists also play a role in developing public art galleries.”
Fragmented sector
Museums outside London could also benefit from more lottery funding. ACE has promised to increase the proportion spent outside the capital by 5%. The measure, announced in May by the arts council’s chief executive Darren Henley in a speech made at the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull, would take arts council national lottery spending outside of London to 75% by 2018.
Although Osborne’s in-year cuts resulted in a £230m budget reduction for the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Treasury has confirmed that this will not affect the budgets of local authorities – the main funders of regional museums – as they are assessed separately.
A spokeswoman says the central government grant settlement for local authorities for this financial year will be left untouched.
There are fears, however, that the funding situation for local authority-run museums will not improve, especially in the new context of a Conservative majority government that, unfettered by a coalition, could use the emergency budget and subsequent spending reviews to push forward with its austerity agenda.
“As it was an unexpected election result it probably added another layer of confusion,” Roles says. “The assumption is that there are likely to be some fairly hefty cuts.”
Cost-cutting measures at Leeds Museums and Galleries, designed to generate £700,000 in savings over four years up to the end of March 2015, have resulted in job losses, reduced opening times and increased charges for visitors.
“The council is contributing £4.6m [a year] to run the service of nine museums,” Roles says. “That is almost precisely the sum that staffing to open those museums costs. To do anything you have got to raise other money from whatever source you can.”
Roles says that one of the dangers is that the sector will become increasingly fragmented as museums battle over smaller amounts of public funding, adding that medium-sized venues are likely to be the worst hit.
Charging for entry
“If you are a small or medium-sized museum, a 10% cut immediately means you run into trouble,” Roles says.
Roles also acknowledges that similar approaches to generating income, such as increasing or introducing charges, would not work across the board. Higher charges may be suitable for museums based in cities with high numbers of tourists, but not for institutions that rely on local visitors and have always been free.
An increasing number of local authorities are looking at running their museums as charitable trusts or community interest companies as part of efforts to make them more cost-efficient.
While there are advantages to running an independent museum, it should certainly not be thought of as the silver bullet for struggling institutions, especially since the majority of trusts are reliant on public funding.
Tamalie Newbury, the executive director of the Association of Independent Museums, says museums that have made the transition from local authority to trust should not necessarily expect to benefit from significant financial savings straight away. However, the longer-term benefits can include cost-efficient procurement of services, increased autonomy and agility.
“The high-level benefits are having a museum that has the ability to set its own purpose, ethos and goals, and to sustain those over a long period,” she says. “Local authority-run museums are often forced to make changes because of the political agenda and changes in the make-up of the council.”
Museums are not doing enough to show social impact
Museums are lagging behind other sectors when it comes to demonstrating how their work has a social impact, according to a review instigated by a research programme led by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
A Review of the Social Impacts of Culture, conducted by the Sport Industry Research Centre and the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research on behalf of the DCMS’s Culture and Sport Evidence programme, found that heritage organisations, museums, libraries and archives were not as successful as organisations in the sports and arts sectors in producing the quantity and quality of evidence on their social impact.
The report, published in March, defined social impacts as improved health, reduced crime, increased social capital, improved education outcomes and wellbeing.
It stated that there was a lack of hard evidence on the development of social impacts with heritage. While the report acknowledged that institutions had assessed their potential to make a social impact, there was not enough evidence on how successful they had been.
These findings are worrying in an environment of continued funding cuts, whereby museums need to ensure politicians are aware of their ability to deliver public policy goals and contribute to social change.
“If we are to continue to make a strong case for cultural funding, museums will have to demonstrate their civic value to their public funders,” says Moira Sinclair, who recently left Arts Council England to become the director of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, a grant-making body that often supports museums. “The best museums can show clearly how central they are to their communities.”
The most recent round of cuts, announced in June as part of chancellor George Osborne’s in-year budget review, saw £30m shaved off the Department for Media, Culture and Sport’s (DCMS) annual budget of around £1.2bn as part of measures to deliver savings of £4.5bn across government departments in 2015-16.
This meant that the overall cut for the year was 0.5% for national museums directly funded by the department and arms-length bodies such as Arts Council England (ACE). Historic England was exempt.
A DCMS statement said that savings of £25m would be delivered by the end of the financial year through “underspends” across the department including a 1% (£0.9m) reduction in its core budget.
ACE confirmed that the cuts would not affect 2015-16 grants going to National Portfolio Organisations and Major Partner Museums.
Preparing for the worst
While the full extent of the cuts will not become clear until the emergency budget on 8 July and future spending reviews, Museums Journal understands that some national museums and galleries are being asked to model 30% reductions over the next three years.
It is also not known whether national museums will be asked by the DCMS to hold back a 5% contingency fund from their budgets for this financial year, as was the case last year, although it is understood that museums were allowed to spend it.
The prospect of further cuts is particularly unsettling for a sector already grappling with the challenges associated with the need to increase profitability, generate new income streams, maintain stable industrial relations and continue producing work that meets public expectations.
“National museums have lost a lot of funding over the past few years and more money is going to be lost,” says David Fleming, the president of the Museums Association (MA) and the director of National Museums Liverpool. “One of the inevitable consequences of budget cuts is that museums will have to adjust the way they work.”
Philanthropy and private sponsorship are often touted as the answer to reduced public funding and form a key part of the Conservative Party’s philosophy on the future funding of arts, heritage and culture.
The challenge with private funding, says Fleming, is that it is not guaranteed, unlike public funding settlements that cover specific periods.
“The issue of raising money from other sources is that you don’t know how much you’re going to raise,” he says. “A museum can’t plan according to what it might raise, it has to plan according to what it knows it will have. If its commitments end up exceeding its income then it is in serious trouble.”
Another major concern is the impact that a growing reliance on private funders is having on museums and galleries in terms of their reputations. There have been protests over oil giant BP’s sponsorship of Tate and the British Museum.
And there have even been concerns that sponsors are seeking to influence the content of museums’ exhibitions.
Private funding risks
“There are always risks with funders seeking to influence cultural activity in some way or another,” Fleming says. “That’s not new, but I think the more that museums seek philanthropic and private sponsorship, the greater the scrutiny will be of the risk of that kind of behaviour.”
Also of concern is that opportunities for philanthropic support vary across the country, with the lion’s share going to London.
“Most of the big firms aren’t based in Leeds,” says John Roles, the head of museums and galleries at Leeds City Council.
“Yes, you can go [to private firms] and get £20,000 from them, which is not to be sniffed at, but that is small beer. The money they tend to give is for extras – the real issue is the core budget.”
However, a project between Museums Sheffield and a group of European art collectors suggests an increasing awareness of the need for philanthropic giving to institutions outside London. Going Public: International Art Collectors in Sheffield will hold a series of exhibitions that include works by Sarah Lucas, Marcel Duchamp and Jake and Dinos Chapman, among others, and a summit event in October to debate the role of philanthropy in public art.
“What we are looking for is a combination of private and public funding,” says Kim Streets, the chief executive of Museums Sheffield.
“I can imagine a future where public funding disappears, perhaps in 10 years’ time, so for me the idea is that our own commercial activity grows of course, but that philanthropists also play a role in developing public art galleries.”
Fragmented sector
Museums outside London could also benefit from more lottery funding. ACE has promised to increase the proportion spent outside the capital by 5%. The measure, announced in May by the arts council’s chief executive Darren Henley in a speech made at the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull, would take arts council national lottery spending outside of London to 75% by 2018.
Although Osborne’s in-year cuts resulted in a £230m budget reduction for the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Treasury has confirmed that this will not affect the budgets of local authorities – the main funders of regional museums – as they are assessed separately.
A spokeswoman says the central government grant settlement for local authorities for this financial year will be left untouched.
There are fears, however, that the funding situation for local authority-run museums will not improve, especially in the new context of a Conservative majority government that, unfettered by a coalition, could use the emergency budget and subsequent spending reviews to push forward with its austerity agenda.
“As it was an unexpected election result it probably added another layer of confusion,” Roles says. “The assumption is that there are likely to be some fairly hefty cuts.”
Cost-cutting measures at Leeds Museums and Galleries, designed to generate £700,000 in savings over four years up to the end of March 2015, have resulted in job losses, reduced opening times and increased charges for visitors.
“The council is contributing £4.6m [a year] to run the service of nine museums,” Roles says. “That is almost precisely the sum that staffing to open those museums costs. To do anything you have got to raise other money from whatever source you can.”
Roles says that one of the dangers is that the sector will become increasingly fragmented as museums battle over smaller amounts of public funding, adding that medium-sized venues are likely to be the worst hit.
Charging for entry
“If you are a small or medium-sized museum, a 10% cut immediately means you run into trouble,” Roles says.
Roles also acknowledges that similar approaches to generating income, such as increasing or introducing charges, would not work across the board. Higher charges may be suitable for museums based in cities with high numbers of tourists, but not for institutions that rely on local visitors and have always been free.
An increasing number of local authorities are looking at running their museums as charitable trusts or community interest companies as part of efforts to make them more cost-efficient.
While there are advantages to running an independent museum, it should certainly not be thought of as the silver bullet for struggling institutions, especially since the majority of trusts are reliant on public funding.
Tamalie Newbury, the executive director of the Association of Independent Museums, says museums that have made the transition from local authority to trust should not necessarily expect to benefit from significant financial savings straight away. However, the longer-term benefits can include cost-efficient procurement of services, increased autonomy and agility.
“The high-level benefits are having a museum that has the ability to set its own purpose, ethos and goals, and to sustain those over a long period,” she says. “Local authority-run museums are often forced to make changes because of the political agenda and changes in the make-up of the council.”
Museums are not doing enough to show social impact
Museums are lagging behind other sectors when it comes to demonstrating how their work has a social impact, according to a review instigated by a research programme led by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
A Review of the Social Impacts of Culture, conducted by the Sport Industry Research Centre and the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research on behalf of the DCMS’s Culture and Sport Evidence programme, found that heritage organisations, museums, libraries and archives were not as successful as organisations in the sports and arts sectors in producing the quantity and quality of evidence on their social impact.
The report, published in March, defined social impacts as improved health, reduced crime, increased social capital, improved education outcomes and wellbeing.
It stated that there was a lack of hard evidence on the development of social impacts with heritage. While the report acknowledged that institutions had assessed their potential to make a social impact, there was not enough evidence on how successful they had been.
These findings are worrying in an environment of continued funding cuts, whereby museums need to ensure politicians are aware of their ability to deliver public policy goals and contribute to social change.
“If we are to continue to make a strong case for cultural funding, museums will have to demonstrate their civic value to their public funders,” says Moira Sinclair, who recently left Arts Council England to become the director of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, a grant-making body that often supports museums. “The best museums can show clearly how central they are to their communities.”