Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60
- 79)
WEDNESDAY 23 OCTOBER 2002
SIR NEIL
CHALMERS, MS
SHARON AMENT
AND MR
NEIL GREENWOOD
60. You have described free admission as a blunt
instrument. Why?
(Sir Neil Chalmers) Because I think that it enables
more people to come. People come more often. Again, it is early
days in terms of figures showing what percentage of people are
making repeat visits. The information that we have thus far indicates
that we are not actually changing the social spectrum of visitors
who come to the museum; it is very much the same kind of visitors
as before but coming more often.
61. Does that mean you were not doing your job
very well before, because you had not got a wider spectrum, or
that you did incredibly well because you have kept the same people
but they are coming back more?
(Sir Neil Chalmers) I would like to think it is because
we were doing a good job, but I think it shows that the toughest
job of all with museums is to target and successfully attract
visitors who would not normally think of going to a museum.
62. Clearly, you did not manage to do that when
you had to pay to go in.
(Sir Neil Chalmers) I think we managed as successfully
as any other national museum. If you look at the spectrum—and
Sharon Ament could give you the actual social mix, if you like—we
have a very good mix. What I am saying is going free is not the
instrument to broaden social diversity.
63. So going free or charging has no impact
at all. It is what you are doing in your outreach and how you
manage yourself that is the important thing.
(Sir Neil Chalmers) I think it is very much how we
interact with and reach particular segments of the community.
64. I come from the West Midlands. How do you
reach people in the West Midlands?
(Sir Neil Chalmers) At the moment we have exhibitions
which travel around the country.
65. Where do they go in the West Midlands?
(Sir Neil Chalmers) I cannot answer that straight
off. We have the Wildlife Photographer of the Year, for example,
which goes to venues throughout the country.
66. You see, I think you should be able to answer
that. It is not a trick question. The West Midlands is a big area,
and the fact that you, in your senior position, cannot answer
what is a very wide-ranging question I think shows up a very real
problem in what you are doing, frankly. Do you accept that criticism?
(Sir Neil Chalmers) No, I do not, because we lend
our objects and our exhibitions to literally scores of galleries
and museums, and to other venues such as shopping malls and other
centres throughout the land, and the fact that I cannot, unprepared,
answer your specific question of what location we have sent them
to in the West Midlands . . .
67. I am being very general. I am saying any
part of the West Midlands with anything that you have done, and
you, at the top, cannot answer that. I find that very disturbing.
I actually go to the Natural History Museum quite often, and I
would be very aware if something was coming to the West Midlands.
I should have expected you to be made aware because you would
be in contact with somebody like the West Midlands MP. I certainly
know of other galleries when they are doing that sort of thing.
I think there is a problem here with how you are actually interfacing
with the public. Also, on the scientific resource, your collection
is a scientific resource, but as a museum operating, the public
trot round and look at dinosaurs and things—and I love it;
I do not knock it, but we do not really get the science. I read
the labels. They are aimed at 13 years and below as far as I can
see. That is accessing science for 13 years and below, but in
terms of a national major science institution, behind the scenes
how are you communicating?
(Sir Neil Chalmers) I would invite you to come to
the Darwin Centre, which the Queen opened yesterday. That is a
major answer to that very question. It is the first phase of a
two-phase project. I believe it is a major way forward of opening
the museums of science to the public. The result will be, when
the second phase is completed, that we will have moved from having
less than one per cent of our objects on show to some 80 per cent.
We have the opportunity now, every day, seven days a week, for
our scientists to come out into a display area where they can
give demonstrations about their collections. We talk about them
as involvement. It is not a lecture; it is a discussion about
issues of the day. They are aimed at an audience which is more
adult than the typical young child audience, which we find a lot
of, I am glad to say, in our major galleries. We also have behind-the-scenes
guided tours.
68. As it happens, I went to the Darwin Exhibition
and was amazed at how small it was for the amount of money that
has been spent on that phase. I did listen to a scientist talking,
and he was extremely good. He was addressing mainly adults and
he was addressing us like 13-year olds. He said, "how many
of you know London? Under your feet there is this." It was
exactly like talking to 13-year olds. He was very good, but he
was targeting 13-year olds. I was not getting any sense of real
science here; I was getting a sense of populist—and believe
me, I have written this stuff so I know it—skating over
the edge, enthusing people. That is all very good, but not heavyweight
science.
(Sir Neil Chalmers) I have been to some ten or a dozen
of those presentations since the Darwin Centre opened, and I would
simply say I disagree with you and I would ask you to come back
again and to get a wider range.
Mr Doran
69. The Chairman has made the point that you
did comparatively well out of this funding round, but in your
submission to us you did express some concerns about the process
which has led us here, and in particular you make the point that
there is no formal bidding process and no formula for considering
performance. Could you expand a little on that? I am interested
to know exactly how you would see the ideal.
(Sir Neil Chalmers) This picks up on a comment that
Neil MacGregor made a few minutes ago when he said the process
was opaque. We write what we think is a very clear statement of
what our future funding needs are for the museum, setting out
what our major needs are and how we are fulfilling government
objectives in terms of the funding agreement that currently exists.
What emerges is a very short letter saying, "We are now going
to give you a sum of money." That will be a grant-in-aid,
and there is sometimes, as there was in a letter my Chairman received
yesterday, some additional money—some very welcome additional
money—for specific projects. There is no understanding at
all of how those figures were reached, and what weight, if any,
was placed upon the arguments we put to the Department. I would
like to see at least the beginnings of a dialogue in that direction,
so that we know that our arguments are being taken note of and
agreed with or disagreed with. That would at least be a beginning.
70. Is that the way it has always been?
(Sir Neil Chalmers) I think it is fair to say yes.
I have been the Director of the museum for 14 years now and that
is exactly how it has gone.
71. You make a case and are handed some money.
In some years it may just be the normal percentage increase that
everybody gets and in some you might get a little bit more or
a little bit less, but you do not know what you are doing right
and what you are doing wrong, in a strict financial sense.
(Sir Neil Chalmers) No. We have an annual meeting
with officials, who go through our funding agreement and they
compare what we said we would do in terms of targets with what
we have actually achieved, and we do not know how the outcome
of that meeting is then fed into the funding allocation that is
made.
72. In a situation where you have a special
project which may require more funding—a major extension
or something of that sort, not an exhibition, or a major repair
to the gallery—is there a process for making separate bids
on these issues alone?
(Sir Neil Chalmers) There is not a process. We certainly
put in special bids, but we take the initiative ourselves. Sometimes
those are successful, I am glad to say. I can give an example.
We had a problem with one particular building, the Palaeontology
Building, and those of you who know the Natural History Museum
will recognise it as the rather modern, concrete building on the
corner of Cromwell Road and Exhibition Road—not everybody's
favourite building. It had major design defects, which were not
of the museum's making; it was designed and built by the Property
Services Agency. Those design defects became apparent, and there
was a very large bill attached to their remedy, so we went to
the Department some four years ago and made the case, and I am
very pleased to say that the then Secretary of State, Chris Smith,
gave us some additional funding to help us remedy that. There
is not a process; you just go and make your case.
73. There is no process whereby you sit down
with the Department and they set out targets for you and you set
out long-term development plans of how you see the museum developing
and you reach a formula which will enable that to happen?
(Sir Neil Chalmers) It does not happen like that.
In fact, we have moved away from that somewhat. Funding agreements
have become very much the dominant way of having a dialogue with
government, and they do not take account of long-term perspectives,
where you are trying to go with your museum.
74. What are your targets? How do you measure
each year whether you are succeeding or not? You have the straight
figures of people coming to the museum, but what else do you have?
(Sir Neil Chalmers) The things that are easy to measure
are things of just that sort: how many visitors you get, what
section of the community they come from. You can also, on the
scientific side, say how much research is going on, or how many
peer review research papers you publish. What you do not get is
the qualitative information, which is crucial to running a museum
successfully, because you want people to be satisfied, inspired,
enthused. We want our science to be of great benefit to people,
and we want it to have a long-term impact in the scientific community.
It is those things which are much more difficult.
75. You also made a point about your inability
to borrow. I presume that is common to all the museums we are
discussing.
(Sir Neil Chalmers) It is indeed.
76. How would you see that changing if you had
the opportunity to persuade ministers?
(Sir Neil Chalmers) If I may, I will defer to my Director
of Finance, who I think can give a more detailed response than
I could.
(Mr Greenwood) One of the continuous problems that
we have is trying to allocate scarce cash in annual and triennial
budgeting rounds. We are in a situation where we are trying to
determine the most appropriate use of that particular cash for
a return. If one were just looking at a normal business, of course,
one could do it on net return, profit, etc, classic investment
models, but when one is investing in, let us say, scientific equipment
or a gallery, it is more difficult to actually ascertain what
the direct return will be and the qualitative aspects that we
were talking about. One has that constant conflict between trying
to, say, invest in income-generating activities, where one can
plough back the profit into the business, as opposed to investing
in other areas of museum core activity. If one were able to borrow,
for example, say, on income-generating activities, one could ring-fence
those particular activities and go to a bank and say, "Here
we have a good business case. Does it stack up? Are you prepared
to lend on the basis that there will be a return in future years
that can pay off the loan?" or whatever. That is what the
freedom to borrow could actually do.
77. Until we can reach a situation where you
can do that, there will be no PFI projects in any of our museums?
(Mr Greenwood) We are looking for PFI projects at
the moment. We are looking there more in terms of large-scale
developments rather than specific, small-scale income-generating
activities.
78. Where is the restriction? Is that government-imposed
or is it part of your constitution?
(Sir Neil Chalmers) It is not part of our constitution.
As the British Museum, our powers are defined by the British Museum
Act 1963. They are identical. It is defined by government accounting.
Mr Flook
79. What impact do you think popular culture
has had on your funding? I mean things like well-known films about
dinosaurs, etc. How important has that been in the Government
giving you more money than the British Museum?
(Sir Neil Chalmers) I have never noticed that to feature
in our discussions with the Government, and I do not think it
directly affects their attitude towards us. Certainly popular
culture is important to us, I think in terms of short-terms peaks
of interest. Sharon Ament may be able to give more direct figures
but, for example, when Jurassic Park was first released
on an unsuspecting world, we had, by good fortune rather than
by good management, a few months earlier opened our dinosaur exhibition,
so we had a second huge peak of visitors.
(Ms Ament) Last year in January we introduced a smelly
T-rex, which came in at the point where Walking With Dinosaurs
was very current, and we had 400,000 visitors come to that—and
we were charging at the time. It is to do with popular exhibits
recapturing the public's imagination. It works, especially for
families.
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