Memorandum submitted by the University
of Oxford
1. In summary, we attach importance to the
implication in the title of the present inquiry that caring for
collections represents a recurrent commitment. The University
of Oxford has museum and scientific collections and archives of
international importance. Storing, caring for, displaying and
making publicly accessible these collections both for the purpose
of teaching and research and as a universally accessible cultural
good entail significant costs. Access to adequate recurrent core
stewardship funding is as important to us as has been capital
funding from bodies such as the Heritage Lottery Fund or the National
Heritage Memorial Fund for major building projects or acquisitions.
However, funding opportunities have not been equally available
as between the museum sector on the one hand, and the archives
sector on the other. Among key outcomes we should wish to see
resulting from the Select Committee's inquiry would be:
— continuation beyond July 2009 of
core stewardship funding for university museums currently in receipt
of funding from the AHRC for this purpose;? similarly explicit
recognition through appropriate income streams of recurrent stewardship
costs in caring for documentary archives of national status;
— enhancement of the funding for museums
coming through the Renaissance in the Regions initiative to enable
all Regional Museum Hubs to achieve Phase One status;
— a strategic overview to ensure that
funding nationally reflects the importance and use of the various
collections.
MUSEUMS
2. Oxford University Museums and Collections
(OUMC) comprises the four great University Museums—the Ashmolean,
the History of Science Museum, the Pitt Rivers Museum and the
University Museum of Natural History—together with the special
collections in the Botanic Gardens and the Bate Collection of
musical instruments. All of OUMC actively seeks to attract audiences
from the widest social spectrum, and the recent joint success
of the Pitt Rivers Museum and the University Museum of Natural
History in winning the Guardian newspaper's competition
to find the most "Family Friendly" museum in the country
is clear evidence of achievement in this respect. Moreover, there
can be no doubt that OUMC as a whole represents the most important
University Museum in the world. In terms of visitor numbers (about
a million per annum), loans to other museums, and quality of curatorial
staff and collections, OUMC behaves like a "national"
museum, although it is not funded like one.
3. For the University of Oxford's museums
there have been two crucial enabling streams of recurrent funding
that have had a transformative impact on the effectiveness with
which they have been able to contribute to teaching and research
in higher education institutions, and to wider public education
and outreach:
— since 2001-02, the AHRC-administered
core stewardship funding scheme, which for the triennium from
2006-07 provides a total of £3.3 million per annum for the
four museums, accounting for 37% of their income; and
— since 2003-04, the MLA-administered
Renaissance in the Regions funding, which in the period April
2006-08 will provide a total of £1.2 million for the four
museums via their partnership in the South-East Region Museum
Hub.
4. As regards the critical importance of
the earmarked museum funding received via the AHRC, we must repeat
the concern expressed in our earlier submission about the uncertainty
surrounding the future of this income stream after July 2009,
when, under present plans, the museum core funding allocation
totalling £10 million is due to be resumed into the HEFCE
budget without any indication as yet of whether it will in future
be applied in support of the university museum sector. It is impossible
to overstate the importance to recipient university museums of
this stable source of funding. Its loss would, as we have already
said to the Select Committee, "almost certainly result in
the destruction of much of what it has been possible to achieve
by way of raising the profile of university museums within their
parent institutions and with the general public". It would,
of course, also undermine the beneficial impact of other funding
streams, in particular that flowing from the Renaissance in the
Regions initiative.
5. Renaissance funding is envisaged as a
desperately needed addition to regional museums' core funding
from other sources. By any standards the Renaissance project has
been an outstanding success, as is amply demonstrated by the MLA
document Renaissance in the Regions: Taking Stock. The
Learning and Access agenda has been powerfully stimulated. There
are now six Hub-funded education posts in Oxford (rising to 13
from April 2007), transforming our offer to schools and communities,
and working together between museums in wholly new ways. Hub money
has promoted activity, which in turn has attracted further funding
from other sources. Data collection and visitor surveys and analysis
have yielded useful management information. Less tangible, though
important, benefits include the increased levels of cross-Hub
cooperation, and the enhanced level of mutual understanding between
museums, which arise from working together.(The South-East Hub
combines City, County, Independent and University Museum Services.)
Renaissance in the Regions has achieved remarkable results with
a comparatively modest price-tag. It is important to sustain and
build further upon these achievements in terms of social and cultural
inclusion. But, equally, museums' ability to act as agents of
social change can only be founded on top quality collections,
scholarship, and exhibition and presentational skills supported
by core stewardship funding.
6. Central Government has encouraged museums
to regard the Renaissance initiative as permanent (for example,
museums have been advised there is no need to plan for redundancy
payments at the end of projects) but the scheme has not yet been
fully rolled out to all Regions. The North-East, West Midlands
and South-West regions enjoyed full funding from the beginning
and are known as Phase One Hubs. The other regions—Phase
Two Hubs, which include the South-East—received lesser funding
and the hope of eventual elevation to Phase One status. Ideally,
additional funds should be made available in the next spending
round to make this possible, since the current partial roll-out
has resulted in inequalities in funding between regions for which
it is difficult to find a rationale. But even if additional funds
are not forthcoming, these inequalities—already having lasted
four years—should be addressed as a matter of urgency.
7. The sources of core funding in English
museums are varied, and include direct DCMS funding, local authority
support for local museums (including some of the great municipal
museums), AHRC support for some university museums (which are
also supported by their host universities), and independent museums.
This diversity of funding sources has, perhaps unsurprisingly,
resulted in inequalities. For example, a rough calculation based
on figures available from the DCMS website suggests to us that
some institutions directly funded by DCMS can, in terms of subsidy
per visitor, achieve up to two or three times the amount enjoyed
by Oxford University's museums through their funding streams.
Moreover, as suggested in section 4 above, in the absence of an
overall strategic perspective there is a potential for decisions
by different funding authorities to conflict.
8. Within the structure of two different
basic levels of funding, the current allocations are also based
on numbers of museums and total populations in each region. These
are perfectly reasonable criteria, but no consideration has been
given to, for example, the relative importance of the collections
or the number of visitors attracted. Visitor numbers in the past
have been unreliable, but automatic counting systems and quarterly
reporting to MLA have improved reliability. Over-reliance on visitor
numbers as an indicator would create its own difficulties, but
visitor numbers do give some kind of approximate guide to the
quality of collections and the level of service offered to visitors.
As such visitor numbers should have some influence on funding.
Assessing the importance of different collections is difficult,
but ignoring it altogether does create anomalies. There will,
of course, be special factors affecting each case, but prima facie
there seem to be enough anomalies to justify a review of the basis
on which funds are allocated.
9. We would stress that the costs of individual
museums vary for all sorts of reasons, and that the better-funded
museums are still spending their money wisely. Nevertheless the
disparity between DCMS funding levels and the rest, together with
the Phase One/Two inequality in Renaissance should be re-examined.
The Spending Review in 2008, together with the rearrangement of
university museum funding in 2009 (with the return of this function
to HEFCE), provides an important opportunity to look afresh at
museum funding right across the board. The existing allocations
have grown up over time through a series of individual steps designed
to address some issues but not others. We would argue the case
for a look at the whole field to ensure that museum resources
are used most effectively, although the need for such an overall
examination should not become a reason for deferring finding a
solution to the relatively immediate problem posed to recipient
museums by the transfer of AHRC core funding.
LIBRARIES AND
ARCHIVES
10. The heritage collections (including
rare manuscript, archival, printed and other material) held in
the University's libraries, principally in the Bodleian, is extensive,
and includes the personal papers of six British Prime Ministers.
The Bodleian is recognised by the National Archives as an approved
depository for material acquired on behalf of the nation, through,
for example, the Acceptance in Lieu scheme. However, as distinct
from the position with regard to the funding of core museum stewardship,
the University of Oxford does not receive an earmarked recurrent
income stream specifically for the care and enhancement of its
heritage collections, these costs being met from the University's
general library budget (including benefactions and trust fund
income).
11. Against that background, we believe
that the concept of "national" collections needs to
be readdressed. A small number of libraries and archives embedded
in Universities—such as at Oxford—contain a disproportionate
amount of the documentary heritage, and consequently attract researchers
from a national or international field, bearing the burden of
responsibility for both preservation and access on a scale that
is akin to "national" libraries or archives. The institutions
in this category (principally the University libraries of Oxford
and Cambridge) receive little in the way of revenue funding directed
at supporting preservation and access of these "national"
collections. These de facto "national" roles,
are often not part of the core function of a university library
or archive service, and can be considered as being at risk from
insufficient funding to provide these broader functions and services
at adequate levels.
12. The Goodison Report (2004) focused on
museums and did not therefore explicitly explore the potential
of tax benefits as a means of supporting the documentary heritage.
Either through extending the very successful Acceptance in Lieu
scheme, or through a more general scheme to permit full tax recovery
on charitable donations, tax should be seen as the key to the
future of library and archival institutions that care for heritage
collections. The proportion of funds that must come from philanthropic
sources for libraries and archives grows year on year, yet UK
institutions are at a considerable disadvantage compared to our
US counterparts, especially those that compete in the same markets
for acquisitions. But the use of tax-related schemes should not
be confined to acquisitions, as it could equally well support
conservation, exhibitions, and curatorial posts.
13. The funds available to support acquisitions
of literary heritage are of grave concern. The UK is losing important
collections to private and institutional buyers from overseas.
This part of the heritage (together with older manuscripts and
printed books) lacks the same statutory controls that apply to
other parts of the heritage, for example archaeology and the built
environment, where landowners, private individuals, local authorities
and the state all share responsibilities to see that the heritage
is properly managed. No such framework exists in the case of the
documentary heritage (with the possible exception of the Waverly
Committee), and especially the literary portion. As a result significant
heritage items are being lost to the nation.
14. We do, therefore, have concerns over
the levels of lottery spending on libraries and archives, especially
in respect of the expected impact of the 2012 Olympics on the
funds available to be distributed through HLF (see Dame Liz Forgan's
evidence to the Select Committee's previous inquiry). The Olympics
will undoubtedly have a great impact on the funds available for
distribution by the HLF, especially on larger projects which appear
to be the principal target for savings within the Fund. This will
disproportionately affect archives, as they rely to a great degree
on HLF funding.
15. Since the Heritage Lottery Fund ceased
to employ a Libraries' Advisor, the sector's contact with the
HLF has lacked a strategic focus. The Archives community has had
an officer supporting HLF applications, but this post had no remit
to work across the sector, for example with libraries. Although
sectoral reporting has ceased to be a feature of the HLF Annual
Reports, there is hard evidence to suggest that HLF spends significantly
less on libraries and archives than it does on other sectors.
HLF seems to find it easier to understand the populist appeal
of museums and galleries, and less easy to understand the importance
of libraries—which interact with the public—and the
heritage—in different ways to museums and galleries. A Libraries'
Advisor at HLF would go some way to addressing this problem.
16. The National Heritage Memorial Fund
plays a vital role in underpinning essential support for acquisitions.
We think it very important that it be given additional resources
from the Treasury, as its responsiveness and "light touch"
make it possible for the NHMF to react rapidly in support in circumstances
which demand prompt action. We should also wish to see existing
funding streams such as the PRISM Fund and the V&A Purchase
Grant Fund at least maintained and preferably given additional
support, in view of the valuable work they do. (These comments
apply equally from the museum perspective.)
26 September 2006
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