APPENDIX 1
Memorandum submitted by the Royal Armouries
The Royal Armouries has been involved in the
drafting of and agrees with the submission made by the National
Museums Directors Conference. In addition to the points made there
we should like to highlight the following.
While we agree with NMDC that the full impact
of free entry is as yet un-clear there is no doubt that in Leeds
the effect has been to remove many of the lingering concerns that
the community had about the museum that were rooted in the very
high entrance charges imposed by our private finance initiative
partners before 1999. The Government's policy has certainly help
us in our attempts to integrate with the local community and for
this we shall always be grateful.
Free entry has also had a significant impact
in Leeds on the length of visits. Whereas during the charging
era many visitors were staying over four hours, presumably in
an attempt to "get their money's worth", most are now
staying for a shorter period of time which we believe helps them
to get the most out of their visit, remember more, and leave wanting
to return
Since the introduction of free admission we
have seen a significant increase in the numbers visiting the museum,
up by 56.5 per cent. As a consequence we are facing increased
staffing costs, our manpower costs in areas such as education,
customer service, security, interpretation and cleaning have increased
by £420,000. We are incurring additional expenditure on general
maintenance of the museum eg paint work, repairs to interactives,
cleaning materials and in general our facility costs have increased
by a £100,000.
As a direct consequence of free admission our
visitor mix has changed with more visitors now coming from the
lower income groups. Whilst this is excellent news and means that
we have opened up the museum to a much wider audience, the down
side is that the retail spend per head has dropped. Many of our
visitors quite simply come for a free day out and have no intention
of spending money on either retail merchandise or food. This has
severely limited our ability to grow our self-generated income
in line with visitor numbers.
Our visitors' expectations are high and the
museum aspires to fulfil their expectation by providing a wide
range of educational programmes including life long learning at
the weekends. Imaginative events such as jousting tournaments,
chariot racing, Africa Africa, Tattoos and themed sleepovers are
organised to inspire, educate and entertain. We aim to provide
world-class exhibitions C current exhibition "The Knight
is Young" is particularly aimed at attracting a younger
audience. Themed family events such as Bushido, Romans, Zulus
and Chivalry and Romance help us to retain and attract new visitors.
As a regional museum in Leeds, and not in a
main tourist area, most of our visitors come from within an hour
and a half drive time of the city. We therefore need to be able
to provide a constantly changing programme of innovative events
and exhibitions to maintain our high percentage of repeat visits
and to that end need to ensure that funding is sufficient to enable
us to continue and improve upon our successful formula.
Our contribution to education would be impossible
without self-generated funds. New initiates are often entirely
paid for by non-government monies even if they directly address
government policies and initiatives. An example is the Royal Armouries
Materials Science project. Based at the Tower of London this requires
£60,000 a year plus set up cost of £100,000 to succeed.
All this money is coming from trusts, business and individuals,
none from the Government, despite its policy to improve and increase
science teaching.
We welcome our additional visitors and hope
to keep building on our success, however there are costs involved
and our current grant-in-aid and self generated income are not
keeping pace with our expenditure. Without proper funding there
is a danger that we will be unable to sustain our repeat visits
and reduce our ability to attract new visitors as a result of
having to provide a less attractive visitor experience.
4 October 2002
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