Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140
- 153)
TUESDAY 19 DECEMBER 2006
MR ALEC
COLES, MS
JANET BARNES
AND MR
NICK DODD
Q140 Mr Sanders: How should any national
strategy tackle the dilemma between this debate of access against
excellence or collections against learning?
Mr Coles: With respect, it is
a fatuous debate. I do not think there is a debate. I do not think
the things are mutually exclusive, they support each other. I
have to say that this was debated again at the Museums Association
conference but it is so tired an arguement because you cannot
do the learning without the collections and if you were not using
the collections for some reason such as learning why would you
maintain them?
Q141 Mr Sanders: The Government therefore
must be wrong in placing its emphasis on increasing access because
that is very clearly part of the debate?
Mr Coles: But I do not think they
are mutually exclusive. The care for collections is a vital part
of increasing the access.
Q142 Helen Southworth: The Heritage
Lottery Fund announced in October that it was developing new proposals
to help museums and galleries with £3 million to be allocated
in 2007. It includes development of curatorial skills and research
and increased activities of the public but it also specifically
mentions acquisitions. What are you hoping for from that?
Mr Dodd: We will certainly be
bidding to be one of those consortia or individuals to take advantage
of this. What we hope is that it is a combination fund for acquisition
which includes both buying something and also making use of it
and bringing it to the attention of your publics in as wide a
way as possible. I think the combination is important because
the criticism is that we buy stuff and stick it away and the danger
is that you acquire stuff without ever showing it and so on and
so forth. I think it is important that this scheme does have both
those costs within it. It is back to this access and collections
argument. Both of them are included; it is not mutually exclusive.
We would hope to be purchasing against our collections strategy
and acquiring works that fit within quite a narrow range of collecting
that we do in order to ensure that our historic collections are
interpreted according to the new material that we buy. We would
also like to explore in part of this process a hub-wide collecting
strategy in Yorkshire so that we are not duplicating and we are
achieving excellence across the whole of the hub without competing
for the same things.
Q143 Helen Southworth: So museums
are not going to bid against each other?
Mr Dodd: Exactly. We never do
that anyway.
Ms Barnes: We have not quite decided
on what we are going to go for in York but certainly we would
be part of the bidding process. I think that in York we will be
particularly interested in perhaps starting new areas of collecting,
especially in social history, so I think that it is an opportunity
for us to grow a particular aspect of what are huge collections
at the moment. As Nick says, we obviously will be doing that with
a public outcome in mind, not purely to put them away, and that
is how we think about all our research projects now and all our
collection projects. All our data collection work always has a
public outcome so that we see that as a seamless process.
Mr Coles: I really welcome this
initiative because collecting is something that is not always
well resourced and what is specific about this scheme is the strategic
dimension to it, so it is allowing people to identify specific
areas of collection and commit themselves to building in those
areas. In that sense it is a very new departure and is to be welcomed.
I also welcome the opportunity to consult on it. We have to remember
we are talking about many different categories of collection here.
As well as the public benefit, what will be a huge boon to the
sector is that an important element of it is about training people
and sharing knowledge so that people are better equipped to collect
because I think in a sense that is one of the reasons that collections
have not grown to the extent that they should.
Q144 Helen Southworth: All three
of you put quite a focus on a collection strategy for within your
own areas and a co-operative collection strategy. How robust do
you believe that the current museums sector is? We are very conscious
of the Bury decision. How robust do you think the current situation
is and are you content with the current framework?
Mr Dodd: I think it is indicative
of how strong the sector is generally in this area but Bury was
only very recently. There was a proposal to sell in the Watts
Museum in Surrey but it is very rare in the public sector to see
works of art or any object disappearing back into the private
sector for sale. The last major one was Derby which was over 15
years ago. So I think that that is indicative of the strength
both of the museums' hold over the public imagination about donating
works in perpetuity to public collections but also the good governance
of local authorities in what have been difficult circumstances
over the last 15 years in terms of their expenditure and for them
not to see collections as being a ready resource for improvement
to holes in the road or whatever. You have seen them acting as
good custodians of a dispersed national collection and important
works of art or archaeology or anything else, so I think it is
fairly robust.
Mr Coles: I think the key to this
is the accreditation scheme as well as the requirement from funders
like the Heritage Lottery Fund to see proper collection strategies
in place. It is clear Bury has suffered and will suffer as a result
of what has happened in terms of its relationship with the MLA
and indeed presumably its relationship for future grant getting.
Q145 Mr Sanders: Could I just ask
you about due diligence in terms of acquisitions. How significant
is it and have you got any comments that you want to make to us
about it?
Ms Barnes: We only acquire works
that we have provenance for. Obviously the archaeology field and
antiquities field are the main areas. In York if provenance is
not clear we do not acquire. We think that it is important that
we have these guidelines, especially for smaller museums that
perhaps do not have experts or access to experts about material,
so it gives us very clear guidelines about how to operate. It
does mean that you may miss wonderful objects but I think that
we all feel that that is a very important ethical stand.
Q146 Chairman: So has that actually
meant that you have decided not to proceed with an acquisition?
Ms Barnes: Not in my time at York
no, but that is only the last four years.
Q147 Rosemary McKenna: These questions
are for the trusts. As a Scot I am interested in how it has worked
in England because we are watching to see what is happening in
Scotland, particularly Glasgow. Could you tell us what trust status
has allowed you to do that you would not have been able to do
otherwise? Are there any disadvantages?
Ms Barnes: I was involved both
with Sheffield and with York so I have seen two processes, two
situations. From my perspective I can see no disadvantages at
all and I will speak from a York perspective now because obviously
Nick will speak from Sheffield. The main advantage in York has
been the fact that we are now a stand-alone organisation outside
the council, albeit we have a very strong link with the council
because they still give us funding which amounts to about one-third
of what it costs to run the service. It means that we have much
more power within the city because we are an independent body.
Immediately when we were created, my fellow colleagues and I were
invited on many different boards and committees and opinion-forming
structures because we became part of the community and our voice
was important at the table. This would never ever have happened
in my equivalent within the council; you just never would have
had that authority, so I think in a way it is the voice of the
museums. We were also able to become much more audience-focused.
We were not inward-looking, we were not worrying about what was
happening within the council and we were not diverted. We were
much more focused in our own thinking and our own planning. We
were also able to plan, so for example we have a forward plan
to 2013. We also have achieved inflation-linked stable funding
agreed by the council a few months ago until 2013. Who else can
say that? I think that those are the main points really. From
the point of view of the council what they wanted us to do was
to improve the collection care, raise the numbers of visitors
(which were on the decline) and improve our service to schools
and our learning potential and benefit to the residents of York.
That was their main thrust and we have been able to do all that.
I said at the beginning that a lot of that was due to Renaissance.
We would obviously have pursued those goals but we were unable
to do it. The essence of the success has been the agreement between
the trust and the council in a partnership deal, and they have
not abdicated responsibility.
Q148 Rosemary McKenna: That is a
very important point because that would be the danger, would it
not, that the local authorities would say, "You are independent
now so just go off and do your own thing," and they have
not done that?
Ms Barnes: You cannot do that.
Q149 Rosemary McKenna: I know but
some might try.
Ms Barnes: Yes that is true. You
cannot set it up to fail. You have got to set these things up
to succeed and that means you have got to have partnerships and
you have got to have an understanding of how both sides work towards
the same end. In the end we are all looking after these assets
for the City of York so we are all in it together. That attitude
has been absolutely crucial. You have to have a funding agreement
which is very clear and you have to have an understanding, we
call it a partnership delivery plan, which we look at year on
year, and I have access to the council at the highest level and
I have to report on a six monthly basis so if there are any issues
we know about them and, to be quite honest, there really have
not been. It is marvellous; I would recommend it.
Q150 Rosemary McKenna: Nick, do you
want to add anything?
Mr Dodd: Janet is at a relatively
early stage of the delivery of the improvements she is showing
in York. We have been through that early stage and have come out
the other side of that and have been around a bit longer and are
a bit more mature in terms of our organisation. Certainly looking
back over the period of time from when we were set up—we
are a not-for-profit company, limited by guarantee and a charitable
trust—all the city has done is transfer the authority of
the collections and management of the museums from one public
body to another public body. It is not privatisation and it is
not demunicipalisation or whatever. We only have the assets we
have, which are our staff and our intellect or our knowledge.
Everything else continues to be owned by the city, so at any moment,
should they want to, they can have them all back. It will cost
them more money to do so and that is where the efficiency and
effectiveness comes in. The trust is more efficient and effective
in delivering the same amount of service because of the inherited
or bureaucratic inefficiencies of a museum operated within a local
authority because you are paying out for being in a bigger organisation.
That is not to say that museums individually are any less or more
efficient, but they have higher on costs. We also have the advantage
of being a great deal more flexible in terms of what we choose
to do and where we choose to do it because our service level agreement
is quite broad. The more constrained a trust is and the more like
a local authority service it becomes the less the benefit flows
back to the local authority. The purpose for the local authority
is to get as much benefit from this arrangement as possible. They
have given up direct control and achieved something better as
a result, so there is a tradeoff. What they get is more audience.
We are 300% up on where we were when we were first set up. There
was a great deal of increase in revenue. We generate 40% of our
revenue outside the local authority. We have the lowest spend
per head of any of the major cities in this country in terms of
cost to the ratepayer and we have one of the lowest spends in
terms of cost to the visitor, so it has its advantages. The thing
that has to be watched out for—and Janet has very cleverly
extended the issues that she has got to 2013—is when you
get over the euphoria of having a trust set up and you get the
initial gains from things like rate rebates and changes to pension
arrangements and so on, you are then on your own in terms of generating
the much harder to generate efficiencies and effectiveness that
you would have in any organisation, and you are generally not
getting any further resource except that which you can generate
for yourself. The local authority is not more generous to us than
it was to our previous incarnation.
Q151 Rosemary McKenna: It allows
you to take advantage.
Mr Dodd: It allows us to take
advantage, take risks, to do things that we would not otherwise
do. One of the major reasons why that is possible is because it
brings in a much wider range of civic people into the organisation
through both the board of the trust but also through any advisory
capacity that is there, so in a sense you are bringing in these
skills within a city which you did not have before, particularly
business and accountancy and legal skills. That leads to an ability
to have a high level of management and a high level of leadership
skills across the organisation which give you added benefit. If
we were still within the local authority we would probably be
about fourth tier without any access, as Janet suggested, to the
chief executive and so on. Within a trust that small that is possible.
Mr Coles: I certainly would not
dissent from anything colleagues have said but it is not the only
model because Tyne & Wear Museums is a joint service of five
local authorities who have clubbed together and the things you
described, both in terms of the way it works and in terms of the
outputs and in terms of economies of scale, excellence, first
tier level; all that has been achieved that way.
Q152 Rosemary McKenna: In a different
model.
Mr Dodd: You have three exceptions
to the rule on this table.
Q153 Rosemary McKenna: So things
are good in the museums sector at the moment but there is a bit
of concern about future funding. Would that sum it up in a very
brief sentence?
Mr Coles: I would not disagree
with that.
Mr Dodd: A very great deal of
concern about future funding, not wanting to diminish that, and
unfortunately we cannot speak for our colleagues who still exist
within local authorities.
Chairman: I think that is all the questions
we have. Thank you very much.
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