The Current Situation

Introduction
The Current Regional Landscape
The Current State of Regional Museums and Galleries
Visitors and Users
Collections
Staffing
Funding
Governance
Regional Status
Notes
Abbreviations
References

Introduction

All museums collect and hold collections of things, which they judge to be important artistically, historically or environmentally. Beyond that, the museum sector is one of huge, almost infinite, variety. This is the main reason why the sector is so difficult to analyse, why hard data are rare, and why generalisations are dangerous and often misleading. Indeed, this is the best excuse for there being no national museum strategy.

Museums range in size from the biggest National museums, such as the British Museum, with its planned operating costs of £58.7 million in 2000/2001 (DCMS, 2001) to tiny one-room institutions with annual budgets of a few hundred pounds, and no paid staff. Some museums enjoy Government funding, some rely on local government or university funding, others have no source of income beyond admission charges and other earnings. Collections range from those of international importance and of a huge scale, to those which have a purely local significance. There are museums which charge for admissions, and ones which are free. The ratio is about 50:50 (Selwood, 2001a). Some attract overseas or national tourists in large numbers ? for instance, overseas visitors account for 40 per cent of visits to London museums (McCormick, 1999). Others cater for local or scholarly audiences. Some museums appear to be well-funded and sustainable, others are in desperate financial straits. In 1998/9 the net cost of service per head of population in nineteen of the largest English museum and gallery services ranged from £2.21 to £9.82 (GLLAM, 2000a).

It is, nevertheless, possible to create various typologies of museums. They can be categorised by source of funding, by nature of collection and by method of governance. It is method of governance which is the most convenient way of categorising museums, the four major categories being independent, local authority, National and university ¹ . Museums can be 'graded' within these categories on the basis of numbers of visits, so we can recognise that there are large, medium and small local authority museums, for example.

Through these typologies we can begin to make some sense of the sector, its structure and performance, and our expectations of it. We must, though, always remember that no two museums are alike, perform exactly the same functions, or operate in exactly the same circumstances. In addressing the issue of regional museum provision in England we need to recognise the difficulty of identifying a standard or a norm ² . The development of the sector has been so chaotic, so owing to accidental circumstances, that there is no pattern that relates, for example, to population distribution, or to any other indicator of need or demand. The challenge for Government is to match need with provision, so ensuring two things: firstly, that every individual has access to a museum service of a recognised quality; and secondly that appropriate museums are financially enabled to achieve this quality.

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The Current Regional Landscape

The current museum landscape in the regions is multi-layered, and there are many factors which impact on museums, affecting their ability to perform. Any given region might have within it:

• at least one large local authority museum service, based in a city
• a countywide local authority museum service
• a number of medium-sized local authority museums based in towns
• a number of small local authority museums based in small towns
• at least one large or medium-sized independent museum
• a number of small independent museums
• at least one large or medium-sized university museum
• a National museum branch museum
• a number of small regimental museums.
• In addition there may be English Heritage and National Trust sites.

There are significant regional variations to this model. The North East and East Midlands regions, for example, have no National museum branches, while Yorkshire & Humberside has several, such as The National Railway Museum, York; the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, Bradford; and The Royal Armouries, Leeds. The East Midlands has no large or medium-sized university museums. The South East, on the other hand, is blessed with a number of major National museums, almost all in London, and the North West has the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside; the Tate Liverpool; and the new Imperial War Museum of the North. Moreover, the National Portrait Gallery has bases for its collections in Gawthorpe Hall (North West) and Beningborough Hall (Yorkshire).

There is more uniformity in terms of regional infrastructures ? largely ensured as a result of the government?s policy of regionalism (DCMS, 1998a: Regions). Each region has its Regional Development Agency, its Regional Cultural Consortium (DCMS, 1999c), its Government Office complete with DCMS officer, its Area Museum Council (though the North East now has a body covering museums, archives and libraries, and other regions intend to create similar bodies), its Regional Arts Board, its HLF Regional Committee, for example. The effectiveness of these bodies varies, of course, and it is still early days in the development of coherent regional cultural agendas. Some strategic planning ? mainly through the new Regional Cultural Strategies ? has taken place, but that too is still in its infancy.

The regions themselves are very different from each other. All contain sub-regions, and sometimes the sub-regions are far more distinct than the regions themselves, especially in the South. There are cities which perform ?regional capital' functions ? in particular, the large local authorities including the former metropolitan authorities - such as Newcastle, Leeds and Manchester but again, further south the pattern is a little different, particularly where the presence of London has discouraged the development of dominant regional cities.

All regions include areas of prosperity and deprivation, though, outside of some London boroughs, many of the most deprived local authority areas are in the North. Other relevant contrasts between regions can be found in population density, transport infrastructure and, needless to say, in quality of collections and nature of museum provision.

Governance in the regions is complex, with a two tier structure of unitary county councils and metropolitan authorities, and district authorities with narrower powers. This is under review and far-reaching changes are on the horizon.

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The Current State of Regional Museums and Galleries

In terms of the current state of regional museums and galleries in England, there are hundreds of different tales which could be told. Nonetheless, there are some discernible patterns, and some definitions which could inform a strategy for developing the sector. It must be remembered that in terms of budgets, staffing and visitors, regional museums comprise a larger sub-sector than the National museums. If one divides the museums population of the UK by National and regional museums, the latter accounts for 97 per cent of all museums (Carter et al, 1999: Table 1.1). In 1998/99, the latest year for which comprehensive data are available, local authorities in Great Britain funded museums and galleries to the tune of £226.9 million, as compared to £250.1 funding from DCMS, the Welsh and Scottish Offices which is mostly committed to the Nationals (Selwood, 2001a). Moreover, regional museums accounted for 59 per cent of permanent staff employed by the sector (FTEs); 78 per cent of temporary staff (FTEs); and, 96.3 of all volunteers (Carter et al, 1999: Table A5a). They were also responsible for 66 per cent of all UK museum visits (Carter et al, 1999: Table A6a).

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Visitors and Users

Recent research suggests that the number of visitors has levelled-off in recent years (ETC, 2001). Of the 77.1 million visits to museums in the UK (Sightseeing Research, 2000: 22) in the order of 50 million visits were made to non-National museums ³ . This may be a low estimate. If it is true that there has been an overall levelling-off in the number of museum visits, this disguises rises in some locations, which might have resulted from a combination of recent capital investment with programming and marketing, at least partly intended to attract new audiences.

Socially inclusive programming will certainly lead to broadening and strengthening the audience base for museums and galleries, and this is clearly happening in places (Fleming, 1999; Dodd and Sandell, 1998; GLLAM, 2000b) although no hard data on changes in the national profile of visitors is yet available. Websites are now common - indeed, their use has been included in the key performance indicators identified by DCMS (see for example, National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, 1999/00 (DCMS, 2000a:155a) and the Audit Commission (DETR, 1999) - but with little significant investment, they tend to be basic. Information about visitors is, generally, not good (see the working party report on ?Markets and Users?), which makes planning difficult. However, museums are far better at marketing than they were even ten years ago, as the recent establishment of a Museums Marketing Group signifies.

Museums also tend to place far more emphasis now on education and learning, which creates a continuing healthy demand from schools, and on off-site outreach work. This is evidenced by various DCMS publications and initatives, including its publication of a second edition of Anderson?s review of museum education (1999), its subsequent advocacy document, The Learning Power of Museums (DCMS, 2000c) and its introduction of an Education Challenge Fund which it is enabling such funding schemes as ?Represent?, the West Midlands Regional Museums Council?s DCMS/MGC Education Challenge Fund Project 1999/2000 (Hooper-Greenhill and Dodd, 2001).

In the broadest of terms, public expectations of museums have grown, and continue to grow - not only because of museums being promoted as centres of education and lifelong learning (DCMS, 1998b: ?Museums and galleries?) but because they have also been identified as centres for social change (DCMS, 2000b). Museums are , thus, coming to be regarded as integral to a sense of community identity and pride, and are tied in with active citizenship and human values (Dodd and Sandell, 1998; GLLAM, 2000b; SMC, 2000). Museums are civilising agents through inclusive agendas, increasingly with disadvantaged communities. These factors must not be underestimated in making a case for Government intervention.

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Collections

Many millions of items, collected over hundreds of years, make up the collections of regional museums. These collections comprise a great national resource, and cover a vast range of subjects (Carter et al, 1999:20ff). They are the subject of a forthcoming MLA strategy (MLA, 2001). Some 49 collections, considered to be of national and international importance, are Designated as such. £15 million of DCMS funding has been earmarked for these between 1999 and 2001 (DCMS, 2000a:39). Other collections are of local and regional importance, but are nonetheless of great community value. Most wide-ranging major collections are held in the bigger local authority museums, while university and independent museums tend to contain specialist collections.

Collecting continues, but nowadays in a more responsible manner than in previous times, with a far greater awareness of the cost implications of conservation, documentation, storage and staffing consequences. Funding for acquisitions is scarce right across the board, with few earmarked sources of funds specifically earmarked for such purposes. ⁴ Although public sector provision for conservation has declined substantially, the conservation scene in the UK remains very sophisticated (Winsor, 1999). Collections are, generally, cared for much more professionally than ever before, thanks to greater professionalism, widely accepted standards, such as those brought about by the Registration scheme and through AMC support, and better training. This is especially true in the local authority sector, less so in independent museums, where staffing levels can be very low, and where the importance of investing in the training of volunteer workers is not always recognised or supported by funding bodies. Insurance is a growing problem for regional museums.

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Staffing

More people work in regional museums than ever before, and they are better trained. They are usually highly motivated but, by most standards, lowly-paid, and senior management and leadership training is lamentable (MTI, 1998:41ff) . Many staff in independent museums work voluntarily with all the administrative difficulties this entails. Carter et al (1999:Table A5a) suggests that independent museums which made returns to DOMUS had an average of as many of 31 volunteers.

It is feared that there has been a loss of curatorial expertise across the regional museums sector (Gunn and Prescott, 1999). This may well be the case as museums have created marketing, education, IT and other specialist posts in order to reposition themselves in the cultural market economy without necessarily having extra resources for new posts. This has probably led to a decline in collections research. There are now over 150 freelance companies working in the sector.

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Funding

It is difficult to assess the situation with regard to revenue funding. It may be that more local authority money is being spent overall on regional museums than in the past, but this is obscured by the creation of new museums and the expansion of the sector, rather than indicating a healthier situation for existing institutions. The pattern of spending is unequal, with spend per head of population by local authorities in England which run museums varying between over £9 to under £2 (GLLAM, 2000a).

Spending by local authorities on museums (unlike on archives or libraries) is purely discretionary. There is no statutory obligation, and there are no specific levels of service which must be provided. Government funding flows to authorities through the Rate Support Grant (RSG) which is calculated through the Standard Spending Assessment (SSA) for each authority. The balance of local authority spending is made up of locally-raised Council Tax. This means that when local authorities are under pressure to make spending cuts, the risk to discretionary services, such as museums, is acute.

Many services have experienced significant cutbacks in recent years, and this may have affected some regions more than others. In particular, museums in the larger urban areas may have suffered most, yet this is where museums can probably do the greatest good in helping effect social change. Examples of projects specifically intended to address such issues include the Neigbourhood Wardens Project by Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery, and Stop The Rot by York Castle Museum (GLLAM, 2000b; Research Centre for Museums and Galleries, 2001).

There is significant direct Government funding spent in some regions, but not in others, in an obviously inequitable manner in terms of readiness of access to the funded museums by the population at large.

Capital Funding has been scarce for many years ⁵ , but the availability of National Lottery funding has led to significant investment with enhanced displays and facilities on a wide scale, making museums more attractive and more accessible. Between 1994/95 and 1998/99 the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Millennium Commission alone provided some £400 million of capital awards (Selwood, 2001b). Babbidge (2001:28) identifies a further £28.4 million of Lottery funding as having been awarded to museums and gallery projects from the four national arts councils between January 1995 and December 1999. It remains to be seen whether this capital investment will lead to revenue problems in the medium- and long-term as some predict (Babbidge, 2001:29). But, this is by no means inevitable, especially if audiences grow, and museum earned income thereby rises.

Much of this funding is available only on a challenge basis, which has disadvantaged many museums in need of investment but without access to match funding. Also, some museums are stretched so thinly in terms of staffing that they find it very difficult to structure themselves appropriately to prepare bids and implement capital schemes.

It should also be noted that despite the advent of Lottery funding many regional museums have significant capital requirements just in terms of repairing and modernising buildings, many of which are old and listed, over and above the need to bring displays up to modern standards. The fact that the distribution of capital Lottery funding has been skewed towards London and the South East highlights this particularly (Selwood, 1997; Babbidge, 2001:26-27).

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Governance

There has been some recent debate about the respective efficiency and effectiveness of local authority and trustee governance. (Rothschild, 2000; MLA, 2000). It is certainly not proven that trustee governance is better for museums than for them to be part of local authority structures, and many would argue that the benefits of museums being rooted in democratic structures outweigh those of ?floating free?. Sheffield?s museums have been transferred by Sheffield City Council to two Trusts, one of which has benefited from Arts Council of England stabilisation funding (MLA, 2000). Other local authorities, such as York City Council, have committed themselves to something similar. More evidence is needed for it to be clear whether there would be general benefits for museums through this kind of process.

There is no consistency in the placing of museums within local authority structures, and many museums have had several shifts of department as authorities strive continually to create structures which deliver the best services at the least cost, or as a result of local government reorganisation. These shifts have not always been beneficial to museums and have often led to the downgrading of authority of museum staff, and the inevitable loss of influence this entails.

Cabinet local government means that fewer councillors are now directly involved in museum governance, which risks the lessening of support, and a greater reliance on the goodwill of a single councillor rather than on a committee of (potential) advocates.

While most local authority museums are governed by single local authorities, there are some which are governed by local authority partnerships, with each constituent authority making a financial contribution. It is common for museums to work collaboratively, regardless of governance, and there are many regional networks. Local authority representatives often sit on the governing bodies of independent museums where authorities make financial contributions.

Local authorities are now required to produce local cultural strategies (DCMS, 1999a). The authorities are also bound to assess the services they provide through Best Value - a management system intended to encourage the improvement of local services, first introduced in new Labour?s agenda for modernising local government (DETR, 1997). Both of these government requirements could be beneficial to museums in terms of flagging up their role in improving the quality of life in a community. Badly run services, or those which have been starved of resources over an extended period, may, on the other hand, be threatened through Best Value (see Vize, 1999).

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Regional Status

No museums are funded, or governed, to deliver a regional service, yet a number do fulfil what might be described as a regional, or sub-regional function. These include services such as Hampshire and Norfolk, which are federations of different local authority museums brought together on a countywide basis, and Beamish, which is funded and governed by a group of local authorities, which operates from a single site, with the "North of England" as its collecting area.

Tyne & Wear Museums (TWM) is a multi-site service which is governed by a joint committee made up of representatives of five metropolitan district councils, on whose behalf the service runs nine discrete museum sites. The service also runs a tenth museum, the Hancock Museum, on behalf of Newcastle University which, in partnership with the Natural History Society of Northumbria, governs the museum. Indeed the service also manages other museum collections which are independently Registered and owned by separate institutions, so the federation is extensive. In addition, TWM has been in receipt of annual Government funding since 1986 when its former governing body, Tyne & Wear Metropolitan County Council, was abolished. What on the face of it is an extraordinarily complex organisation is, in fact, widely acknowledged as extremely efficient, with a strong reputation in diverse areas of work, notably audience development.

While TWM and the National Museums & Galleries on Merseyside (NMGM) are both in receipt of direct Government funding, TWM is usually regarded as more ?rooted? in its region than the NMGM (TWM attracts about twice as many visitors as Merseyside on a much smaller budget), which is governed by independent Trustees with a very limited local authority involvement. This suggests that the TWM governance model is worthy of further scrutiny in terms of the remit of this Task Force.

Any museum with a significant ?specialist? collection can be said to play a regional role, in the sense that visitors may be drawn from the surrounding ?region?. A number of Designated independent museums would fit this model, such as Harewood House or the Mary Rose Trust. Indeed, such collections may have wider appeal still.

It is the great civic collections based in the larger cities, where we can best identify the playing of a regional role. These collections may be distributed among a number of sites (e.g. Bristol or Leeds), but it is the combination of quality, scale and range which distinguishes these collections from others. In turn, these services have a wide range of staff expertise and skills, and (relatively) significant management capacity. They are based in cities which perform regional capital functions, in terms of culture, leisure, retail, and the creative industries, and which are natural hubs for regional activity. It is in such cities that we find the potential for significant usage on a regional scale, where access for the many to important collections is truly possible.

Inevitably, the pattern of regional museum distribution is complex and uneven. In some regional capitals there are museums governed separately from local authority museums, which could claim through the scale and importance of their collections to be a part of their city?s regional provision (e.g. Manchester?s Museum of Science & Industry and the Manchester Museum, or the Hancock Museum in Newcastle). In some regions it is harder to identify regional capitals, but there are what we might term sub-regional capitals, such as Plymouth, Oxford, Norwich or Hull. These cities also tend to have large scale, important collections, and their major museums may also not be governed by local authorities (e.g. the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford).

In terms of a national strategy to meet user needs, the distribution of collections with quality, scale and range is key. Most are in big cities, regional (or sub-regional) capitals, though not all are governed, or managed, as units. If we can learn from the current pattern of provision, from good practice and unseized opportunities, we may be able to propose a national pattern of regional provision which would give the quality access for everyone we are seeking. This provision would mean a number of things:

1. The stabilisation of identified regional services.
2. The building of capacity in the regional services to take on enhanced regional functions.
3. The creation of a new system of relationships involving national, regional and other museums, keying into regional cultural strategies, and enabling all potential users to have access to high quality museum provision.
4. New governance structures for regional museums, possibly crossing over local authority boundaries.
5. New government funding available to the new services.
6. Identification of the respective roles of regional museum services and enhanced AMCs, so as to increase opportunities for activity in smaller museums in the regions.

Museums are capable of playing a key role in the fostering of community identity and pride. Those which are firmly fixed in local and regional democratic processes are well placed to reach out to excluded groups and individuals. A new system of nationally funded, regional museum services would be a radical mechanism for delivering quality museum provision for all, ensuring that the beneficial outcomes of museum use are distributed equitably.

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Notes

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^{1 The Museum & Galleries Commission's DOMUS database, for example, used seven museum types: armed services; independent; local authority; university; national; National Trust and English Heritage (Carter et all, 1999: Table 1.1)
2 The Museum & Galleries Commission's Registration Scheme, introduced in April 1995, represents the most comprehensive attempt to introduce minimum standards. Other initiatives include the MGC's checklist for levels of collections care (1998); the MDA's museum documentation standard (1997); MLA's development of a standard for learning and access (MLA, 2001a) and DCMS's standards for developing access policies (DCMS 1999c).}

^{3 Museums sponsored by DCMS alone attracted 24 million visits in 1998/99 (DCMS, 2000)}

^{4 Those that exist include the National Acquisition Fund, Scotland, the Heritage Lottery Fund and - from the private sector - the National Art Collections Fund and the Contemporary Art Society.}

^{5 Selwood (2001) tracks non-Lottery capital funding to museums, 1993/94 to 1998/99.}

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Abbreviations

AMCs Area Museum Councils

DCMS Department for Media, Culture and Sport

DETR Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions

DfEE Department for Education and Employment

ETC English Tourism Council

FTE full time equivalent

GLLAM Group for Large Local Authority Museums

HLF Heritage Lottery Fund

MGC Museums & Galleries Commission

MTI Museums Training Institute

NMGM National Museums & Galleries on Merseyside

SMC Scottish Museums Council

TWM Tyne and Wear Museums

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References

Anderson, D (1999) A Common Wealth. Museums in the Learning Age. London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport

Babbidge, A (2001) ?UK museums ? safe and sound??, Cultural Trends 37. London: Policy Studies Institute

Carter, S, Hurst, B, Kerr RH, Taylor, E and Winsor, P (1999) Museum Focus. Facts and figures on museums in the UK. Issue 2. London: Museums & Galleries Commission

Coles, A, Hurst, B and Winsor, P (1998) Museum Focus. Facts and figures on museums in the UK. Issue 1. London: Museums & Galleries Commission

DCMS (1998a) A New Cultural Framework. London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport

DCMS (1998b) Comprehensive Spending Review: A new approach to investment in culture. London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport

DCMS (1999a) Local Cultural Strategies: Draft Guidance for Local Authorities in England. London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport

DCMS (1999b) Museums for the many. Standards for Museums and Galleries to use when developing access policies. London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport

DCMS (1999c) Regional Cultural Consortiums. London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport

DCMS (2000a) Annual Report. London: The Stationery Office

DCMS (2000b) Centres for Social Change: Museums, Galleries and Archives for All. Policy Guidance on Social Inclusion for DCMS funded and local authority museums, galleries and archives in England. London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport

DCMS (2000c) The Learning Power of Museums ? A Vision For Museum Education. London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Department for Education and Employment

DCMS (2001) Annual Report 2001. London: The Stationery Office

DETR (1997) Modernising Local Government: Improving local services through Best Value (Green Paper). London; department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions

DETR (1999) Best Value and Audit Commission Performance Indicators for 2000/2001. Volume 1. The Performance Indicators. London: Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions

Dodd, J and Sandell, R (1998) Building Bridges: Guidance for museums and galleries on developing new audiences. London: Museums & Galleries Commission

ETC (2001) Action for Attractions. London: English Tourism Council

Fleming, D (1999) ?A Question of Perception?, Museums Journal, April, pp29-31

GLLAM (2000a), Benchmarking data for 1998/9 (unpublished)

GLLAM (2000b) Museums and Social Inclusion: The GLLAM Report, Leicester: Department of Museum Studies, University of Leicester

Gunn, AV and Prescott, RGW on behalf of the Scottish Institute of Maritime Studies, University of St Andrews (1999) Lifting the Veil. Research and Scholarship in United Kingdom Museums and Galleries. London: Museums & Galleries Commission

Hooper-Greenhill, E. and Dodd, J. (2001), Museum and gallery education and the Area Museum Councils of England: Evaluating the Education Challenge Fund (Leicester: Research Centre for Museums and Galleries, University of Leicester)

MGC (1998) Levels of Collection Care. A self-assessment checklist for UK museums. London: Museums & Galleries Commission

MTI (1998) Review of Management Training and Development in the Museums, Galleries & Heritage Sector. Final Report. Museum Training Institute

McCormick, T (1999) International Visits to UK. Museums and Galleries. An analysis of the museum perspective. London: Museums & Galleries Commission

Middleton, VTC (1998) New Visions for Museums in the 21st Century. London: Association of Independent Museums

Research Centre for Museums and Galleries (2001). Small museums and social inclusion, (unpublished research paper), (Leicester: Research Centre for Museums and Galleries, University of Leicester)

MLA (2001a) A Learning and Access Standard for Museums, Archives & Libraries (framework paper) (London: MLA: Internet: http://www.mla.gov.uk/ reports/learnacc.html)

MLA (2001b) Preserving the Past for the Future: A stewardship Strategy for MLA. Draft Strategy. London: MLA (unpublished)

MLA (2000) Regional Collections. Towards a Sustainable Future. Discussion paper. London: MLA (unpublished)

Rothschild, Lord J, (2000), Speech at the Royal Academy Annual Dinner, 23 May (unpublished).

Scottish Museums Council (2000) Museums and Social Justice. How museums and galleries can work for their whole communities. Edinburgh: Scottish Museums Council

Selwood, S (2001a) ?Museums and Galleries? in Selwood, S (ed.) (2001) The Cultural Sector in the UK: profile and policy issues. London: PSI

Selwood, S (2001b) ?The National Lottery? in Selwood, S (Ed) (2001) The Cultural Sector in the UK: profile and policy issues. London: Policy Studies Institute

Selwood (1997) ?Museums, galleries and the Lottery?, Cultural Trends 28: 1-27.

Sightseeing Research (2000). Sightseeing in the UK 1999 (London: English Tourism Council)

Vize, R (1999) ?Good, better, best?, Museums Journal, August 1999:39-43

Winsor, P (1999) ?Conservation in the UK?, Cultural Trends 33. London: PSI

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