Memorandum submitted by the Heritage Lottery
Fund
In its Memorandum to the Committee's inquiry
into Protecting, preserving and making accessible our nation's
heritage, the Heritage Lottery Fund outlined the breadth and
diversity of the projects it has funded, and described how its
significant investment in the UK's world-class heritage and its
progressive approach have brought about a major shift in the sector,
ensuring it is now reaching new audiences and developing new skills
and ways of working.
This Memorandum focuses upon the role of the
National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) and the Heritage Lottery
Fund (HLF) in enabling institutions to develop and care for their
collections, where together these funds have an outstanding track
record matched by no other organisation.
KEY POINTS
NHMF is a fund of last resort, saving
items of national importance that would otherwise be lost. Since
1980 it has made 650 grants totalling over £135 million for
the acquisition of cultural property, including over £56
million for works of art.
HLF has awarded over £1.2 billion
of National Lottery money to museum and gallery projects and more
than £237 million to archive and library projects.
For all types of museums, galleries,
archives and libraries collecting must be dynamic and incremental;
it must be supported by skilled professional staff.
There are two main issues facing
our collections: the funding and skills required for smaller,
often regional, institutions to be able to acquire material; and
the much larger sums required by national organisations, chiefly
museums and galleries, to acquire major works, notably fine art.
NHMF and HLF are committed to continuing
to play a key role in helping to enhance collections, to care
for them and fully exploit their use for study, learning and enjoyment.
NHMF is a fund of last resort and
is not adequate to meet the demands for major acquisitions.
HLF's funding criteria, its wide
range and the need for additionality limit its capacity to fund
major acquisitions.
HLF believes that this should be
tackled as a three-way partnership between Government, private
funders, and the National Lottery though HLF and the Arts Lottery
Fund. HLF is currently leading discussions with the sector to
explore possible ways forward.
Archives and heritage collections
in libraries face the additional challenge of giving greater access
to fragile material.
In particular film and television
archives are poorly placed to meet this challenge with inadequate
revenue support.
INTRODUCTION
1. The National Heritage Memorial Fund (hereafter
referred to as NHMF) was created by the National Heritage Act
1980 as a successor to the Land Fund, which was established to
be a living memorial to those people who gave their lives for
the United Kingdom in two World Wars. The initial payment of £12.4
million has been supplemented by an annual government grant, which
since 2001-02 has been £5 million.
2. Since its inception, NHMF has operated
as fund of last resort, saving items of national importance that
would otherwise be lost. During its first 25 years it awarded
£275 million across the whole spectrum of the historic and
natural heritage.
3. NHMF is the parent body of the Heritage
Lottery Fund (hereafter referred to as HLF), which distributes
the heritage share (currently 16.66%) of the proceeds of the National
Lottery. Like the NHMF, it operates throughout the UK, and is
the nation's largest heritage funder. Since 1995 it has committed
£3.6 billion in 25,000 awards to heritage projects.
4. HLF's aims are to:
conserve and enhance the UK's diverse
heritage;
encourage more people to be involved
in and make decisions about their heritage;
ensure that everyone can learn about,
have access to, and enjoy their heritage; and
bring about a more equitable spread
of grants across the UK.
5. HLF takes a broad view of what defines
heritage, reflecting what applicants value as their heritage,
and what they wish to leave as their legacy for future generations.
Besides its support for the historic environment, natural habitats,
museums, libraries and archives, it deals with industrial, maritime
and transport heritage, as well as that of language, dialect and
cultural traditions. Unlike traditional public funding streams
for heritage, many of the projects HLF funds cut across these
categories, reflecting its ability to take a flexible and holistic
approach.
6. HLF's broad remit leaves NHMF able to
focus on the purpose it was given by Parliament in 1980funding
the acquisition of the most significant at-risk pieces of the
nation's heritage, often at short notice.
NHMF AND COLLECTIONS
7. Since its creation in 1980 NHMF has made
over 650 grants totalling over £135 million for the acquisition
of cultural property of outstanding importance to the national
heritage including:
over £56 million for works of
art;
over £48 million for other historic
objects (including for industrial, maritime and transport objects);
and
over £30 million for archive
and special library collections.
8. At a cost of £68 million, NHMF has
enabled the acquisition, endowment and initial repair of 16 estates
bringing historic buildings, their contents, parks and grounds
(and sometimes their archives) into the public domain. That the
paintings and furniture in great country houses such as Kedleston,
Belton, Brodsworth and Tyntesfield were not dispersed on the open
market, but retained with their estates as entities for everyone
to understand and enjoy, has been entirely due to NHMF funding.
9. NHMF has helped museums to acquire over
260 important works of art. They include George Stubbs' Gimcrack
with Jockey Up now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Sir Joseph
Banks by Benjamin West in the Usher Art Gallery, Lincoln,
and the dramatic Iron Forge by Joseph Wright of Derby now
in Tate Britain. Historic objects saved by NHMF range from Iron
Age gold torcs and Roman coin hoards, to medieval treasures such
as the Middleham Jewel (Yorkshire Museum), and the carved Dacre
Beasts from Naworth Castle (V&A). They have included superb
examples of furniture design and craftsmanship from William Kent
and Thomas Chippendale to William Morris, Charles Rennie Mackintosh
and Charles Voysey, yet also iconic 20th century technology such
as The Flying Scotsman, the first steam locomotive to reach
100mph, and Bluebird, the car that broke the land speed
record in 1962.
10. Among the many notable NHMF acquisitions
for archives and libraries have been the papers of William Wilberforce
(1759-1833), Member of Parliament, philanthropist and campaigner
for the abolition of slavery (Bodleian Library, Oxford), the collection
of over 32,000 negatives and prints from the 19th century photographic
studio of Frith and Co (Birmingham City Library), manuscript volumes
of Haydn's London Symphonies (British Library). It has also helped
to retain in this country some of the rarest and most beautiful
medieval manuscripts to have survived, such as the early 15th
century Sherborne Missal (British Library), probably the greatest
English Gothic manuscript in existence, and most recently, the
early 14th century Macclesfield Psalter, one of the most technically
accomplished and best preserved products of the East Anglian school
of illumination (Fitzwilliam Museum).
11. As a fund of last resort NHMF has two
important roles: either helping to bring about closure of an acquisition
when most of the money has been found or, for items of the highest
cost, providing an early indication of support that makes a fund-raising
campaign possible.
12. The growing gap between NHMF's resources
and the prices commanded on the international market make it less
and less possible for NHMF to fulfil its remit to acquire the
most significant items at risk.
THE HERITAGE
LOTTERY FUND
AND COLLECTIONS
13. A consequence of HLF's broad remit and
expansive approach to heritage is that many of the projects it
supports have a collections dimension, whether or not that is
included in their headline description. In the last 12 years:
one-third of HLF's total funding
(over £1.2 billion) was awarded to 2,186 museum and gallery
projects, including more than:
£860 million on construction
and refurbishment of buildings;
£141 million on acquisitions;
and
£227 million on exhibitions,
interpretation, collections management, education and outreach;
more than £406 million was awarded
to all 22 DCMS-funded museums, of which more than £334 million
was to the 14 National Museums in England;
over £295 million has gone to
support projects in museums and galleries that now form part of
Renaissance in the Regions network of regional museum hubs;
more than 150 education posts and
100 spaces for learning have been created; and
archive and libraries have received
more than £237 million, including:
£53 million to 190 record office
projects;
more than £24 million to the
British Library and the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales;
£18 million to 26 film and sound
archive projects; and
more than £56 million for archive
and library acquisitions across the UK.
HLF FUTURE FUNDING
14. HLF is pleased that it has now been
confirmed that it will continue to receive one sixth of the funding
for good causes from the National Lottery. There will, however,
be a number of factors that will impact on the amount HLF will
be able to award in new grants during the lifetime of its next
Strategic Plan 2008-2013:
London Olympics 2012
HLF has always known that a successful bid would
be partly financed from the National Lottery. According to DCMS
estimates, for HLF this means £75 million less in ticket
sales and up to £68 million less as a result of changes in
the allocation of Lottery proceeds, a total loss of income of
up to £138 million, mostly in the three years leading up
to 2012. Afterwards HLF expects to revert to receiving a 16.66%
share of Lottery proceeds.
National Lottery Act 2006
The Act has changed the way that interest earned
by Lottery Distributors on their balances is distributed. The
National Audit Office estimated that this would cost HLF several
million pounds per annum.
HLF's Approach to over-commitment
Since the start of the National Lottery HLF
has committed more funds in new awards each year than it has received
in incomeon the basis that there would inevitably be a
time lag between money being received, awarded to projects and
drawn down by grant recipients. HLF is reaching the point where
it cannot continue to over-commit. From 2008, it will only be
able to distribute the amount it receives in income each yeararound
£200 million.
15. As a consequence of these factors, it
is expected that there will be fewer major awards. This will have
implications for the whole spectrum of the heritage which HLF
funds, but may impact particularly on high-value acquisitions
of cultural property.
MUSEUM SECTOR'S
NEEDS AND
PRIORITIES
16. Besides being simple repositories of
precious objects and a resource for specialised scholarship, museums
are increasingly regarded as fundamental to a thriving community.
They can be generators of social cohesion, build local and personal
identities, create opportunities for lifelong learning and provide
an economic dividend through their contributions to regeneration
and tourism. People working in museums are also increasingly aware
of the need to be consultative, inclusive and representative of
the different cultural traditions and heritage of the community
they serve.
17. The unprecedented levels of investment
brought by HLF has wrought enormous change in institutions across
the UK, large and small, creating improved housing for collections,
modern and user-focused displays and facilities and opportunities
for fresh interpretation. Hundreds of other grants have enabled
museums and archives to enhance their educational offer, to explore
new means of engagement and reach new audiences.
18. However, realisation of their full potential
can be a struggle for many. To identify the barriers to success
HLF consults regularly with practitioners in the museum and gallery
sector, both when it reviews its strategic plans and on specific
issues, and has regular contact with representative national bodies.
Within these discussions, the following issues regularly recur:
a lack of resources for core tasks
of documentation/cataloguing, conservation and caring for the
collections;
increasing public demand for services
set against cuts in funding; and
the workforce is neither as expert
or diverse as it should be, and needs to develop leadership, curatorial,
general management and business skills.
19. HLF has welcomed initiatives to tackle
these problems. DCMS has convened a working group following its
consultation on its discussion document Museums in the 21st
Century, which is considering the fundamental needs of the
museum sector in responding to people's changing expectations.
HLF looks forward to learning the outcome of this work. The Museums
Association's Collections for the Future, and its headline
proposal on greater public engagement with collections runs entirely
with the grain of HLF's own values.
20. The consultation undertaken in 2005-06
for Our Heritage, Our FutureHLF's third strategic
planwould appear to suggest that the issue of acquisitions
is only a priority for a small, but important, constituency among
HLF's applicants: National Museums, or national bodies that have
a specialist strategic interest.
21. This apparent lack of more general concern
may be a consequence as well as a cause of the problem: inadequate
budgets and organisational structures based on functional skills
rather than intellectual knowledge may have led to the loss of
a "collecting culture" in many institutions. For many,
a redeveloped gallery, building extension or outreach project
can seem more urgent or a higher priority than a new acquisition.
MAXIMISING THE
VALUE OF
ACQUISITIONS
22. HLF requires all applicants seeking
grants for acquisitions to show how they will achieve public benefit
from the purchase. It encourages them to make the additional imaginative
effort to use the opportunity presented by an acquisition to reach
new audiences and develop new programmes.
23. HLF was pleased to note, in the report
Protecting and Preserving our Heritage, the Select Committee's
wholehearted support for its emphasis on encouraging access for
all to heritage assets.
24. Three examples of HLF-funded acquisition
projects illustrate this approach:
Falmouth Art Gallery purchased A
Beggar Boy, painted by John Opie, one of Cornwall's leading
18th century artists. The Gallery created an exhibition around
the painting and held a lively programme of educational events
and workshops. Visitor figures to the Gallery doubled in the first
year of acquisition and exhibition.
Buckinghamshire County Museum received
an HLF grant towards the purchase of The Jury, a painting
by 19th century Buckinghamshire artist John Morgan, showing twelve,
named local men gathered to serve on a jury. The Museum has created
an interactive web page based on the painting, has worked with
the local record office to develop a series of joint talks and
other activities, and is developing a teachers' resource pack
based on the painting.
Three museumsthe British Museum,
the Potteries Museum in Stoke on Trent, and Tullie House Museum
in Carlislereceived an HLF grant for the joint acquisition
of the "Staffordshire Moorlands Pan", a Roman bronze
and enamelled piece found by a metal detectorist and thought to
be a Roman "souvenir" of Hadrian's Wall. Following extensive
conservation of the pan, it will be toured to exhibitions at all
three venues which will be supported by education and outreach
activities.
25. HLF accepts that if museums are to stay
relevant, have outreach and education activity and stimulate the
public interest, then they must maintain stores from which they
can refresh their exhibits. Applicants for a grant for an acquisition
however must demonstrate how the public will be given continuing
access to the acquired object.
FUNDING FRAMEWORK
FOR ACQUISITIONS
26. HLF shares the Museums Association's
view that all museums should maintain an intelligent, proactive
approach to developing their collections. These should be a dynamic
resource, reflecting changes in knowledge and society over time
and fulfilling museums' public duty to document and preserve particular
aspects of culture, society and place.
27. Collections in national, local authority,
university and charitable (independent) museums are all in the
public domain and, taken together, constitute a national heritage
resource. It is therefore in the general interest that all institutions
should actively seek opportunities to enhance the quality and
range of their collections. In enabling museums to make acquisitions
HLF is in fact buying for the nation.
28. The concerns that are currently being
raised about museum acquisitions reflect two distinct issues.
The first is a diminution in collecting activity in local and
regional museums. The second is the difficulty, for the larger
and National museums, of acquiring items of outstanding importance
to the national heritage at today's market prices. Here the risks
are not only loss of opportunity for public access to such items,
but their loss altogether to the national heritage.
29. HLF understands that among regional
museums, some of the largest have purchase budgets of no more
than £4,000 per annum, and many lack sufficient resources
to provide even a small proportion of the purchase price of an
item.
30. Whilst paucity of internal purchase
budgets is one factor, so too apparently is a loss of specialist
curatorial expertise and a lower priority given to collecting
against other activities and developments. HLF therefore welcomes
the initiatives being promoted and funded by MLA through Renaissance
in the Regions which are leading to the creation of new subject
specialist posts within the Regional Museum Hubs, and support
for the development of museum subject specialist networks across
the country.
31. A question that is sometimes posed is
whether it matters if items of UK heritage are lost to the public
cultural institutions of other nations, where their preservation
and public access is normally assured. HLF believes this is a
reasonable consideration in the difficult task of deploying scarce
resources. The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art
is currently not permitted to disclose the intended destination
of an item for which an export licence has been temporarily deferred,
and this prevents funders in the UK from taking this factor into
account. HLF believes that this policy should be reconsidered.
32. HLF shares National museums' and others'
concern over the loss to the UK of high-value items, mainly (but
not exclusively) fine and decorative art. It recognises that UK
Government policy is to balance the need for a vital art market,
contributing to the national economy, with the need to sustain
the national patrimony through mechanisms that provide both incentive
and safety net.
33. From its inception HLF has tried to
avoid having influence on market values. It has always adopted
a cautious approach to trade valuations, and has often imposed,
as a condition of grant, bidding ceilings for objects sold at
auction so that its funds do not serve to inflate market prices.
Occasionally, HLF's view of the value of an item, on which it
always takes expert advice, proves to be lower than the market
is prepared to pay, and the object is lost. That is regrettable,
but HLF does not and cannot support acquisitions at any price.
34. HLF acknowledges the difficulties being
experienced in National museums and galleries where, it is said,
current resources available for purchases have only 13% of their
value in 1980the year when lack of resources led to the
creation of NHMF[16].
Since purchase funds are a matter for internal allocation, this
prompts the question as to whether it was helpful for the National
museums, some years ago, to elect for the aggregation of their
government grant-in-aid so that there was no longer an element
ear-marked for purchase monies.
35. The availability of institutional purchase
monies is a matter for Government, local authorities and others
who have responsibility for the revenue funding of museums, an
area where neither NHMF nor HLF has any remit. It is part of the
problem, however, since without this basic resource it is impossible
for institutions to access even what other sources of funding
for acquisitions exist.
36. While tax concessions remain a bulwark,
as the evidence of MLA's AIL Panel to the Committee's inquiry
on Protecting, Preserving and Making Accessible our Nation's
Heritage pointed out, the level of funding that needs to be
generated to supplement the tax settled can often far outstrip
the purchase grant or acquisition reserves of any UK institution.
It appears that there is a class of object that, however important,
can never be affordedunless national governments come to
the aid of institutions, as the Scottish Executive has done recently
on two occasions in supplementing an HLF award: the acquisition
of the John Murray Archive (for the National Library of Scotland)
and of Titian's Venus Anadyomene (for the National Galleries
of Scotland).
37. Meanwhile HLF is actively leading discussions
with representatives of the National Museums, MLA, the Art Fund
and professional bodies to consider possible ways forward in developing
a constructive and agreed approach to acquisitions and the development
of collections in general.
38. This important issue cannot be dealt
with by HLF alone. We see support for the acquisition of cultural
property as necessarily a three-way partnership between:
Governmentthrough fiscal arrangements,
a properly-funded National Heritage Memorial Fund for outstanding
items, national support for local museum purchases through the
MLA Purchase Funds, and Arts Council funding for contemporary
work.
Contributions from private and charitable
sources, such as the Art Fund, and private donors.
The National Lottery, through the
Heritage Lottery Fund and the Arts Lottery Fund.
39. This is conceptually simple and administratively
straightforward. The problem arises because the resources available
to NHMF and prospective purchasers do not match the current market.
In this situation everyone looks to the HLF. But the declared
priorities and sheer breadth of the heritage that HLF needs and
wants to support, and the many calls on its finite resources,
require that the other elements in the partnership must also be
properly resourced and fully engaged. Both the established criteria
of the Lottery and the principle of additionality make it inappropriate
for the Lottery to be regarded as the mainstay of the nation's
strategy for saving outstanding cultural property. Instead, this
should be a matter of public policy. It was the reason why NHMF
was established, but reducing resources over the years have eroded
its capacity to discharge the job for which it was created.
40. HLF welcomes the government's commitment
to double NHMF's annual grant to £10 million from 2007-08,
but note that this is still £3.5 million less than the grant
in 1985, and in consequence NHMF will continue to remain fettered
in its fundamental role, and will only be able to deal with a
fraction of the cases where its support would be appropriate.
HLF urges the Government to accept the recommendation of the Goodison
Report of 2004 that NHMF's annual grant should be raised to £20
million.
ARCHIVES
41. The archives sector presents distinctive
challenges. Unlike other heritage institutions, where exposure
to the "real thing" is fundamental to their importance,
public access to archives (and library special collections) can
often be satisfied by access to surrogates, whether paper or digital
copies. Nevertheless, as HLF is advised by the archive sector,
it is first the preservation of the original material and housing
it to appropriate standards, and then its digitisation, cataloguing
(and computerisation of existing catalogues) that is a priority.
On this basis, archives would have a low priority for lottery
funding.
42. However, for many people archives have
the potential to provide the "front door" to the heritage,
whether through looking at the history of their family, the house
where they live, or the communities to which they belong. It is
no surprise, therefore, that visits to records offices rose by
almost 25% between 1976 and 2003. In view of this, it is perhaps
more surprising that they are often perceived at operating at
the margins. Certainly, in England and Wales, the fact that lead
responsibility lies with the Department for Constitutional Affairs
rather than the Department for Culture, Media and Sport reinforces
that view, and gives archives a low profile with both national
and regional administrations. Local authorities unfortunately
often see their Record Offices as a low priority, and it is to
be hoped that the many excellent projects of community engagement
and partnerships with other providers that we are now beginning
to see emerging in this sector will help to change this view.
43. The position of film and television
archives is even more difficult. There is no systematic pattern
of coverage for the UK and where there are regional archives they
are generally operating at an extremely low level of revenue support
and struggle to cover their basic operations. In this situation
they are poorly placed to provide public access and services.
HLF understands that national proposals are being developed for
better integration of and support for the regional film and television
archives, and hope that these come to fruition.
44. The report of the Archives Task Force
analysed the organisational and market issues faced by archives,
and suggested a range of actions to address them, costed at £11.96
million. No sustained programme of action has as yet come out
of that report, though HLF continues to support local initiatives
that are in line with the recommendations. That more has not been
done lies with the limited capacity of individual archives, which
is a problem beyond our scope.
CONCLUSION
45. Both NHMF and the Heritage Lottery Fund
have contributed significantly to the enhancement of collections
and collection care in UK museums, archives and libraries. HLF
accepts that it has a key role in helping to save outstanding
cultural property for the nation, most particularly through NHMF
which was established exactly for this purpose. The HLF will continue
to support, as resources allow, projects that enhance collections
and improve their care, always in the context that applicants
can demonstrate the access and learning benefits that will directly
ensue. It cannot alone, however, meet all of the needs of the
sector, only be part of the solution. HLF will continue its active
discussions with the sector to ensure it can play that part as
effectively as possible.
September 2006
16 Mark Jones, Acquisitions:the current crisis;
Paper prepared for HLF meeting, May 2006. Back
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