Examination of Witnesses (Questions 267-297)
Q267 Chair: Good morning.
Can I welcome for the second part of our session this morning
Roy Clare, the Chief Executive of Museums, Libraries and Archives
Council and Dr Michael Dixon, who is Director of the National
History Museum—but you are appearing as current Chairman
of the National Museum Directors' Conference?
Dr Dixon: That's correct.
Chair: Adrian, if you want to begin.
Q268 Mr Sanders: Thank
you. We all know that museums and galleries have been doing quite
well over the last few years. They have enjoyed a boom in visitor
numbers. Have they been able to capitalise financially on their
success?
Dr Dixon: I believe we have. If
you look at the rate of increase of self-generated income by just
about all the national museums, over the period, let us say, since
the reintroduction of free admission in December 2001, I think
that that growth rate considerably outstrips that of the increase
in Government funding. In fact it outstrips it probably in most
museums by a tune of three or even four times.
I think it's important to understand that in
the free admission era the relationship between the museum and
its visitors is quite different. In the charging era visitors
would pay for admission and stay in the museum for quite an extended
period. Typically—and I will cite the Natural History Museum—they
would stay about four and a half hours on average. Obviously a
four and a half hour stay means the likelihood of using catering
facilities on-site is pretty much 100%. In the free admission
era, the visit is quite different. Typically now our visits average
in the region of two and three-quarter hours, so it is perfectly
possible for people to not use catering facilities on-site. I
think you have to understand the dynamic is quite different. But
similarly people, of course, are not a captive audience. They
can leave the museum and return, having used catering facilities
elsewhere.
I would make two points. First of all, the dynamic
is very different in the free admission era, and secondarily I
think museums have worked very hard over the last few years to
demonstrably help themselves. I think the statistics on self-generated
income will certainly support that.
Mr Clare: Chairman, I think those
remarks hold good for museums outside London that are not nationals
where the museums are of scale. It's not true for smaller local
authority museums where of course the greater preponderance of
the funding is not from national Government but from local government,
and the picture is very patchy across the country. I can elaborate,
but it's not a holistic picture.
Q269 Mr Sanders: It's
a big issue in my part of the world, the far southwest, where
3% of the country's population have to pay for 30% of the nation's
coastal asset in the highest water charges in the country. Why
should people in my part of the world subsidise free entry to
museums that are in London?
Dr Dixon: Free admission is of
course open to everyone. In fact, if you look at the visiting
statistics of individual museums you will see that everyone does
benefit—predominantly, of course, the major visitors within
a certain drive time of the major centres, but these are national
assets; the national museums hold national collections for public
good. We keep them there, retaining excellence in those institutions,
and to have those collections available for study. The statutory
obligations of nationals are to look after those national collections
and to make them available for study, which means having a great
deal of expertise around those collections as well as all the
public services that we provide.
Mr Clare: Chairman, not only the
museums in the southwest but the museums across the country do
benefit from the sharing of the scholarship, the loaning of items
from national collections, the support from Renaissance in the
Regions, which has enabled display of those collections, sometimes
in museums that are not themselves fully equipped to display at
national standard. There has been a supportive approach to this
and quite a number of the museums in the southwest have benefited
in those ways, in addition to the audience points that Dr Dixon
is referring to.
Dr Dixon: There is an economic
factor here too, in that it has been calculated by Arts &
Business that national museums[1]
contribute about £1 billion net to the national economy.[2]
There is an economic benefit to the public subsidy that goes into
those museums.
Mr Sanders: Is that from
people visiting them from overseas?
Dr Dixon: It's a wider economic
benefit. It's not purely from people visiting the museum.
Q270 Dr Coffey: Especially
coming from the private sector, there's an element of "you
pay for what you value", so it is interesting to hear your
experience of how the average length of visits is shortened, but
Jeremy Hunt announced last week—or, it was announced last
week—that we would keep free admission. One of the charges
that has been laid is that with this cut in funding museums will
close their doors more often, whereas Phil Redmond is taking the
other approach in Liverpool, saying about how we use volunteers
more. What is the right balance, in your view?
Dr Dixon: I think the challenge
for national museums is not so much keeping the doors open but
what we can provide by way of public programmes, absorbing a 15%
real terms cut over the next four years. The reality is that the
expensive services to deliver are those public-facing services.
They are the special exhibitions, the educational programmes.
Opening the doors in themselves is not necessarily the most expensive
part of running our operations. In fact, you probably have to
close the doors for significant periods of time to make really
significant savings in that respect.
Q271 Dr Coffey: But
say something like the Canaletto is £12, or whatever the
Royal Academy manages to charge, so there is that element of pricing
for what people perceive to be quality; how do you balance that
in your equations?
Dr Dixon: Those special exhibitions
are part of the income-generating activities that national museums
now operate. The proportion of space in individual museums and
galleries that is charged for of course varies enormously, as
do the audiences for national museums. For example, in my own
museum, the amount of gallery space that's paid for, in admission
charges, is quite small. The economic model varies quite widely
from institution to institution. Although I am speaking in general
terms here on behalf of national museums, I think you have to
accept that although there are a lot of similarities between those
institutions so designated, there are quite a lot of differences
too in terms of the economics and how they operate.
Mr Clare: I think there's a bigger
risk though in the funding, if I may, Chairman, which is that
the partnerships that I referred to in an earlier answer will
be the first thing that many nationals will find difficult to
do; not through any disinclination but because they cost money.
For example, just outside your constituency in Colchester there
was a very good relationship with the British Museum and with
the Fitzwilliam around an exhibition a couple of years ago, of
terracotta mini burial figures, it was an outstanding show, and
it was absolutely right to do it there because that museum partners
with one in Ipswich and you have a very good strong local regional
flavour to it, and it was important to recognise the role of the
national museum in making that happen. I am concerned that, in
the new era of funding austerity, that kind of activity will be
at risk. I do know that there is good intent on every side to
continue it but that's the area that would certainly come under
some jeopardy.
Q272 Chair: The national
museums basically have received the news now, and it may not be
as bad as it could have been, but you now have to adjust to the
new environment. Presumably for the museums outside the nationals
you are going to get a second hit once the local authorities come
to decide how much they are able to continue to support local
museums—
Mr Clare: I think that is right.
Chair: Have you any inkling about what
is going to happen—
Mr Clare: It's not a uniform picture.
A number of local authorities with whom we work were clearly ready
for reductions. Some of them were ready for much greater reductions
than have become apparent but all of them will be trimming what
they can invest. In the new Renaissance programme, which Ministers
have agreed to in principle—although a formal announcement
is not yet made—we are looking at Renaissance money being
contingent on there being evidence of ambition and funding locally,
from local government and from local independent trusts and other
sources. That contract is really important, because it's an
incentive to maintain local funding at an adequate level. Renaissance
national funding is there, quite literally, to add value, to create
development opportunities, to improve what museums can do, not
necessarily to simply manage core business. There is a big risk,
I think, when you note the figures—the figures I offered
in my written submission for 2008-09 show that local government
investment in all forms of culture and the arts is three times
that of the national scale, which is quite an impressive figure.
There is a very great importance attached to what local government
invests and we do know some of that is going to be at risk.
Q273 Chair: Do you
anticipate that will lead to closures?
Mr Clare: It may do. Apart from
one or two very notable examples that are largely borne of different
reasons—and there was an adjournment debate on the Wedgwood
museum, for example, last week—we don't have evidence of
intent to close. It is quite likely that mergers and acquisitions
are going to be a key. We are aware of a number of local authorities
quite spontaneously and properly working with each other to discover
how they can share overhead and reduce total cost. I suspect museum
managers can be shared and indeed, Cultural Ipswich got there
first with their groundbreaking idea. I know that Norwich are
now talking to them. I think that's all very healthy. There are
other examples across the country. So I am not yet sure we're
in closures territory, but reductions of service, certainly, but
we'd like to see that offset by greater attention to managing
overhead. That is certainly what the new Renaissance programme
aims to do, to incentivise that process.
Q274 Chair: Can I
ask you about the MLA itself? Did it come as a surprise to you
when you received the call to be told that the MLA was being wound
up?
Mr Clare: The
formal call arrived in July. There were inklings a lot earlier
than that. MLA, as everybody knows, did not have the benefit of
a Royal Charter to support it. It doesn't need an Act of Parliament
to close it, and it has been long thought by many people that
bringing together the functions that the MLA manages with those
of the Arts Council could improve the way local authorities, for
example, are served and, therefore, how their populations are
served. So there is nothing intrinsically difficult about the
concept but the announcement in July, of course, then had to await
further work including the Spending Review, so it wasn't so much
the phone call as the three-month interval that has caused us
the most difficulty.
Q275 Chair: When we
had Tim Bevan of the UK Film Council, he firstly told us that
he got a call at midnight from the Minister to be told that his
organisation was disappearing, and it's fair to say he wasn't
very happy about that. You sound as if you understand the reasons
much better than Tim Bevan appears to understand why the Film
Council has demised.
Mr Clare: I cannot comment on
Tim Bevan, but I do know that we have been closely in touch with
all parties as we were authorised to do ahead of the election.
We knew where everybody felt the pressure points were going to
be, and we are also, of course, keen for everybody to realise
that the MLA had reworked itself substantially over two and a
half years reducing our overhead cost at just over 2.8%. We thought
that was a really impressive achievement. It didn't stand us in
good enough stead unfortunately when the measurement came. But
I do think the model of what we've done is fully transferable,
including reducing the costs of operations of NDPBs operating
in the regions. We did away with office space, for example, and
that's on the record. We've done a great deal to demonstrate that
mobile working is a successful way to support local government
at minimum cost. So we would like to see the lessons of the MLA
taken into the Arts Council and other bodies that are taking the
work forward. I think the area for us of concern is not the
closure of the MLA but the service to the sector and the public,
and I know that is a separate question but it is where our focus
has been throughout.
Q276 Chair: Do you
think it is inevitable that the functions of MLA will go into
the Arts Council?
Mr Clare: I think
most of the functions logically could, including noticeably the
flagship Renaissance programme, and quite a lot of the things
that we do that are specific to museum support, including the
very successful accreditation programme which now has more than
1,800 museums in it; the similar programmes we are offering both
for archives and for libraries; the designation programme, which
applies to all three in our sector of museums, libraries and archives—the
designated collections are the outstanding collections outside
the national museums' collections. We think all those things are
important and coherent. I think there is a question over whether
the Arts Council, with its new funding regime, has the capacity
to absorb the additional work involved and also whether, in its
current form, the Arts Council is sufficiently reformed to adapt
to the new ways of working with lower overhead costs. So today,
we don't know whether that's going to be the place that we go,
but a lot of work is happening, both behind closed doors and more
openly, to generate the idea that the Arts Council is the logical
place for MLA's functions to go.
Q277 Chair: Do you
think some of the MLA staff will go into the Arts Council?
Mr Clare: The logical
thing would be for a number of them doing specific jobs with specific
expertise to go with the functions and that's certainly our starting
point.
Q278 Chair: There
are functions that would be quite difficult to put into the Arts
Council, aren't there? Things like acquisition in lieu; how would
that work?
Mr Clare: Acceptance
in lieu and the Government indemnity scheme and export licensing
operate within a single unit that is led as a unit within the
MLA. It could operate as a unit within almost any other body you
care to name so long as there were no explicit conflicts of interest.
We certainly would suggest that the entire unit, which we've moved
to Birmingham at cost to the public purse, could transfer as an
entity into Arts Council. I think that work is still being discussed.
There is no reason, in principle, why it shouldn't, and it would
save further costs and impact in the West Midlands in moving it
back out again.
Q279 Chair: So you
are reasonably confident that if the Arts Council takes on perhaps
additional resource and expertise, the service that MLA has been
providing until now can continue without any reduction in the
quality to your clients, as it were?
Mr Clare: The MLA
board's objective, clearly headed by Sir Andrew Motion, is that
that should be the case. You asked specifically, am I confident?
No, I am not confident today because that work is not yet complete.
I do have empathy with Arts Council, who have a very significant
cut of their own to manage, including a substantial cut to their
overhead. It is no surprise to the Arts Council that my position
is they could follow our lead on some of their cost reduction
in the regions—I do think they could—but I have real
sympathy for the fact that they have just taken this hit and now
they're being invited to take on new guests. Inevitably, in a
marriage, they want to know what size the dowry is. So, no, not
confident but certainly getting a hearing and working very closely
with DCMS and the Arts Council to bring about a successful conclusion.
I think we are in a high-risk position because
there's a misunderstanding about the weight of work we've been
doing, which has been widely acknowledged as having been successful
in its form, and specific to museums, libraries and archives,
which are not like theatres. A great museum is also a theatre
and a place of dance and music but it is not the same as saying
that a museum behaves in all respects like a theatre. So there
is specific tailored expertise and knowledge that we think needs
to live through this in a very recognisable way and that suggests
an adapting the Arts Council if that's where all this is going.
Q280 Chair: So to
make you confident, you are looking for more assurance that the
Arts Council is going to take on people who understand museums
rather than theatres and dance halls?
Mr Clare: Yes,
and only this week I have written to the Permanent Secretary,
copied to Ed Vaizey, I emailed yesterday, and we had a debate
with Jeremy Hunt. I am getting a completely good hearing at the
right levels for the very important messages we are transmitting.
I think it is a practical issue of timing and scale of reduction
that the Arts Council has to manage. If the willingness is there
in the Arts Council to do it, I've no doubt we can make a good
fist of it, and certainly at chief executive level, Alan Davey
and I are sure that we could do it.
Q281 Chair: You don't
see any alternative to the Arts Council?
Mr Clare: I don't
see a plausible alternative. Lots of others have suggested variations
and there have been some circling to see whether they could cherrypick
some of the functions. I don't think that is a good approach because
the clear advice we're giving is that a coherent package is what
will work. For example, a coherent package will work for local
government, which is a big consumer of what we offer and what
local government is slightly fed up with is more than one body
coming with slightly different messaging. So we are very keen
to support local government in getting, as it were, a onestop
shop in terms of advice, support, the evidence for outcomes and
also, of course, best practice.
Q282 Chair: NMDC don't
see any additional role that you might take on?
Dr Dixon: The important
thing is that the services that national museums rely on at the
moment are still available and of the same quality. I would hope
that we would be consulted in the proposals as they go forward.
The acceptance in lieu scheme, the portable antiquity scheme,
the Government indemnity scheme, are all things that we rely on
to varying extents at varying times, and we would wish to see
those services continue at their current standard. I suppose there
is a more generic point that some NMDC members would exhibit at
this point, and that is, is there a danger that administration
of certain aspects of museums through the Arts Council just perpetuates
the slight misunderstanding that museums are synonymous with the
arts? Museums, of course, cover a very broad spectrum of interests,
so that would be a concern perhaps to some members at this time;
can the Arts Council fully represent the breadth of museums?
Q283 Chair: But generally
you share Roy Clare's view that if the Arts Council takes on the
people who do have that knowledge and expertise, you're reasonably
confident that it can continue?
Dr Dixon: Yes,
I do.
Q284 Alan Keen: To
move on to collections now, Michael has already told us that closing
the doors for a relatively short while is very, very marginal
in cost savings. Obviously collections must be a large part, in
addition to education. How are the cuts going to be managed in
the best way to protect collections? You can't just shut them
in a room and leave them there and expect them to be in the same
condition when you come back.
Dr Dixon: You're
absolutely right. The collections we have in this country are
fantastic national collections. If they are to have value, then
they have to be used; they have to be accessible for scholarly
study as well as for exhibiting in public. I think that is the
challenge we face in the current funding environment. Over the
period since the reintroduction of free admission, museum funding
has grown only roughly at the rate of inflation as opposed to
Government funding overall, which is almost twice that rate. So
we've not enjoyed a boom in the last few years and indeed, therefore,
a 15% real terms cut is quite painful.
I'll speak for my own museum; I can't speak
for the boards of trustees or indeed the directors of all museums,
but our board of trustees will look very carefully at what essential
services relate to our collections and what essential expertise
we have to retain around those collections to make them really
valuable as internationally important research collections. To
give you a measure of that, the Natural History Museum has a scientific
staff of about 350 but we receive visits from over 8,000 scientists
from other institutions that use those collections, so they are
an incredibly important resource. But they are not an important
resource if there is no intelligent access to the collection,
so you need curatorial staff and research expertise around those
collections to make them really accessible and valuable. In the
case of Natural History collections, of course, they are relevant
to some of the big questions of the day. What is the impact of
climate change? What is the impact of biodiversity loss and things
of that sort? Individually, museums will have to ask themselves
some very important questions. What compromises can we make in
the short term in terms of collection storage and security and
what compromises can we make in terms of the expertise within
the organisation that relates to those collections? Because of
the statutory obligations of our boards, I think that's the first
consideration before we look at other measures of how we can effect
expenditure reductions.
Mr Clare: I think
there's another aspect of this. I agree with what Dr Dixon said
but there's another aspect which is under the broad heading "Collection
Development", which is, what comes in needs to be accompanied
by something going out. It's a very unpopular notion among a great
many curator specialists because collections are held to be there
for ever. The reality is that there are quality differences across
all collections whether national or regional. There are also overlaps
in collections between museums, both at national and regional
level. There are also some collections that have grown up over
time that perhaps are no longer reflected in museums' current
approach to their thinking and themes. All of these are completely
legitimate but they do need a wholehearted and very focused approach
to the management of them.
A couple of years ago—and the NMDC was
among those who helped the process— the Museums Association,
which sets the ethical standard for this rewrote the ethical code
to enable this kind of process to be done effectively; coming
to the point that you can dispose of and certainly disperse collections
in different ways. This remains controversial and difficult to
do but there are now some examples where museums and galleries
have successfully liberated items from collections. There are
very strict procedural guidelines for how you do it, and it has
to be for the benefit of the collections. It has to be a last
resort. In one sense, it is about money, but, short of money,
I referred earlier to mergers and acquisitions, and if collections
are going to have to be brought together there will have to be
a process of looking over each of them as they come together so
that the high ground, the really important elements of the collection,
are maintained. It is simple to say, it's not simple to do, but
otherwise we do have an unsustainable challenge over the next
50 years if you take a long view. We have a lot of stuff that
is never seen by the public, ever. We have a lot of stuff that
the public wouldn't want to see. Some of it is totally legitimate
as research collections there for people to dig deeper. Some of
it is of questionable value at any level. So I think this is a
big area where there has been, over many years, discussion about
a proper strategy. There is going to have to be one, at a point
when custodial costs are not going to grow less as a proportion
as the overall fixed costs are growing higher.
Q285 Alan Keen:
What would be the least damaging approach? We are saying, presumably,
that we have five or six years before funding can start increasing
again, and we have talked about collections being used for education,
but what about the education and the future of the curators themselves?
Curators get older and move out. In a period of five or six years,
how would you cope with not having the money to bring new people
in and train them?
Dr Dixon: Absolutely.
That expertise, curatorial expertise, knowledge of the collections
is, of course, incredibly important and we don't want to lose
that expertise, for the reasons I explained earlier; it makes
the collections less useful. It is a challenge, particularly as
that expertise takes often decades to build up, and that's the
sensitivity at the moment, that although one would like to believe
that the current funding situation is a five- to six-year problem,
and we can then start to rebuild some of our expertise. During
that five- to six-year period, if we lose that curatorial expertise
it will take decades to get it back. Arguably that might mean
that some public-facing services, where the expertise can be built
up more quickly, are the sort of things that will be cut in the
short term. I think that's regrettable, because one wants to see
a good balance between what we do for the collections for the
long term and what we do for the public in the short term. I think
that may be an inevitable consequence, that our public programmes
will be less vibrant over the next few years as a result of the
cuts.
Mr Clare: National
museums have, of course, the strength of depth. They have a great
many different experts and they can assemble expertise between
each other. We already have an expertise deficit, though in regional
museums and museums outside London. I referred earlier to the
partnerships that are essential to the sustainability of those
museums. This includes fundamentally the scholarship, the curatorial
expertise, and so forth. We have evidence presented to us just
recently by the Art Fund, who are benefiting a great many collections,
of course, with their funding. A substantial number of the bids
to the Art Fund for money for collections outside London, in other
words from non-national museums, are turned away through inexpert
submission, which is pointing squarely at the curatorial capacity
outside national museums. So we are going to need to consider
a new model for maintaining expertise. Some nationals are already
working closely with higher education, which I think is a very
powerful model, where not all expertise has to be organic within
the museum. It can't be. You do need collections specialists and
people who understand the collection, but you can add scholarly
value through partnership with HE (Higher Education), and I suspect
we need more of that.
We also need, in the regional sense, and this
is something Renaissance will do, funding for the big important
museums, but also development funding for the others so that the
rest can catch up with the best. That is certainly the design
of Renaissance, which includes, at its heart, building up this
scholarship and curatorial expertise. But it's a major risk otherwise,
because it's tempting for a museum of any scale to go the Disney
route. In my old museum, the National Maritime Museum, we knew
we could do a show on pirates any time and you would get a queue
of people at the door. It's not very good for the reputation ultimately.
So you do need to have the quality of curatorial capacity, so
that you don't fall into the Disney "pile them high, stack
them deep" approach, which museums need to be beyond.
Chair: Or dinosaurs in
your case, I imagine.
Dr Dixon:
Indeed.
Q286 Alan Keen:
Have you been given any real indication by the Treasury how long
the cuts are going to last before they forecast they can start
the work? I ask this question very seriously, because I asked
the Department of Health how much it's going to cost to cease
all the PCTs, and they didn't have the foggiest idea. So I can't
imagine you have been given much indication. You're just guessing
at it, we have to make cuts now and we don't know how long they
go on for. Or have you been given some indication? It would help,
wouldn't it, if you knew that you have to mothball for a certain
period of time. I know it's not a science, economics.
Mr Clare: You asked
specifically, has there been any assurance from the Treasury?
The answer is no, there hasn't. It's interesting though, working
as we do with so many local authorities across the country, that
various of them have different approaches to this. Some of them,
through their area, where they see their industries growing, where
they see their population income levels perhaps growing under
new investment, are more bullish than others. There are clearly
local authorities where that is not the case. So it's not an even
picture, and it's not even a north/south picture because there
are places of great deprivation in the south too.
I think that area of confidence in the future
needs a political answer, coupled with what is the economic vitality?
I don't think our sector should walk away and say, "Well,
until the politicians and the economists have sorted it out we
have nothing to do." I do think it's important that the sector
owns part of its own solution, and if you look at, for example—we're
talking collections—the costs that we're all putting into
collections sheds across the country is horrendous, and there
isn't a way, at the moment, of gripping that because each of the
many organisations that own and run museums are sovereign. They
either have trustee boards that have their own independent view,
or they are perhaps owned by local government, or now, increasingly,
they are in a trust status, which is a good approach if it's done
for the right reasons, but it does give them an autonomy of decision
making. So there isn't at the moment a strategic approach to this,
and we've long advocated that there should be. I suspect Government
may well be listening to this now because it has to be done.
Dr Dixon: National
museums are long-term organisations by their very nature, so we
do think very hard about long-term sustainability. I think we
recognise that, yes, we are in for a difficult period. I think
we have to have confidence in what we can do outside of our public
funding. I said earlier that the growth rate in our own self-generated
income has been at a much faster rate than government funding.
One would hope that we can continue that and close something of
the funding gap. We also operate of course within the philanthropic
sector. There is much talk about whether philanthropy can make
a contribution in that area, an increasing contribution in that
area. Indeed, that is something that we are of course all progressing
very actively. But, the reality is, yes, we are probably in for
four difficult years at least. I think some of us believe we shouldn't
be confident at the end of the four-year period that suddenly
money is going to be falling out of the trees. I believe that
won't be the case. Indeed, our funding allocation letter makes
it very clear that the out years of the plan are subject to the
economic circumstances at that time. So operating a national museum,
we're in three different areas. We're in, the commercial sector
and the charitable sector, as well as the public sector. We have
to do as well as we can in all three areas over the next four
years and beyond.
Mr Clare: Chairman, this is an
interesting area. Looking forward now at other forms of investment,
after the Olympics we know the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) will
have access to greater funds. That is a very powerful tool. Our
advice right now to regional museums is start planning for that
because it's a very short time off. HLF has been magnificent for
museums, 60% of their funding goes into museums, and it's good
that they've also recently invested both in conservation and in
the training and development of staff. Most recently it was with
some innovative new grants. We are very pleased to see that. Ministers
have agreed in principle that Renaissance will operate more closely
with HLF in the future, and I think that is to be welcomed as
a step forward, because there is going to be resource there, coupled
with the thought that if the recovery from recession proceeds
as is currently being predicted, a number of companies that are
already cash rich will be back on the list of people who might
give, and so we also need a much more fluent approach to fund-raising.
That again is a capacity that's good in national museums, less
good the further away you go from the nationals and into the regions,
so it seems to me a priority. I notice that in the Arts Council's
report today on their reaction to their funding settlement, they
are saying that Arts & Business will cease to receive any
state funding from 2012, and will have its funding halved between
now and then. I think that's probably right to incentivise, but
we need to get behind what follows it and support the Arts Council
in what that is, because we need some joined up approaches to
philanthropy.
Q287 Damian Collins:
I would like to go back to something that Dr Dixon mentioned earlier,
and develop some of the points that we have just discussed, and
that's with regards to the research capabilities at the Natural
History Museum. Given that everyone is in an environment where
budgets are constrained, do you think that the Natural History
Museum requires its own research capability? You have over 300
scientists who are researching issues around biodiversity and
climate change; is that work you need to do yourself or could
you not access research done by other people?
Dr Dixon: We see
our collections and the expertise we have around those collections
as part of the nation's science infrastructure, and scientific
collections can be used—not just our own scientific collections—to
address a whole range of current issues. So I do think it's important
that we retain research expertise. I think also our national museums,
certainly the Natural History Museum, are pre-eminent on an international
stage. It would be, in my view, a great shame if we lost that
pre-eminence because we did not protect the things that make it
a great institution. The research that we do does make it a great
institution relative to the other great natural history museums
around the world. So I think it is important that we retain that
expertise. It's not locked up just within our own institution.
I said earlier, we get a great deal of research use of our collections
from other institutions and, indeed, we do a lot of research within
the museum in partnership with other organisations, particularly
in the higher education sector.
Q288 Damian Collins:
Do you restrict access to your collections, to researchers, and
people from the outside who want to access what you have?
Dr Dixon: No. If
they have a bona fide research interest and the collections can
answer those questions, then they're entitled to access.
Q289 Damian Collins:
I see the role that the museum plays in supporting research that
people are doing, and if people have access to everything that
you have, or your own researchers don't have unique access to
elements of the collection, then why can the museum not play a
role as a guide to what it has and let people from outside, from
Imperial College down the road or wherever, come in and access
your collections and do that research for you?
Dr Dixon: The answer
to that is that they do, and without that expertise about the
collections, the collections would not be so accessible for those
external users. We have been proactive in thinking about the cuts
that were coming and have announced a series of reductions in
our research expertise already, to widespread dismay among the
scientific community, who regard it as absolutely important that
we retain that scientific expertise to make those collections
accessible. As a case in point, we announced a consultation on
a reduction of our expertise in micropalaeontology, and this is
an area that is of great interest to the extractive industries,
and received over 1,300 contributions from the research community
about how vital it was that we retained that expertise to make
those collections accessible.
Q290 Damian Collins:
But in terms of the remit of this inquiry, looking at funding
of arts and heritage, one might be tempted to say, "Well,
that's all very well but why don't they pay for that work if they
think it's so important?" Why should it be coming out of
budgets that are therefore—
Dr Dixon: Because
it is part of the nation's science infrastructure. The fact that
our funding comes via the Department of Culture, Media and Sport
in its entirety is something of an historical accident. If you
go back decades, then our funding would have come from a number
of different sources, including funding specifically to support
the scientific expertise in the organisation. It's a matter of
convenience now that the grant just happens to come in a single
block via DCMS.
Mr Clare: I think
there's a broad point behind this which connects with my—I
didn't mean to sound anti-Disney, I'm anti-Disney in museums—behind
that point, in that the scholarship lends the authority. So the
academic base, which is founded on research, is of critical importance,
and certainly from my background, as the Director of the National
Maritime Museum, we accented research to the extent that we created
the new archive, which will open next year, the Sammy Ofer Wing.
That was based on the appreciation of the collections as scholarly
resources. It is fundamentally important to a decent museum that
we know much more about the items we have. It's quite interesting
that, as an example, in 2005, when we undertook research into
Nelson's letters, one might have been forgiven for thinking that
after 200 years there is nothing new to discover. But that research
that was led by the now late Dr Colin White, turned up 1,000 letters
that had either not been published, or not been published without
amendment, in Victorian times, that were new and fresh. That was
just one example of countless ones I could offer. So, research
is important, fundamentally important, and particularly ways to
connect research into regional museum collections where they don't
have the luxury of the scientific scholarship, and other forms
of scholarship, at their fingertips, which is why the partnership
is so important.
If I may, Chair, just mention university museums
in this context because they are at potentially very great risk.
Some of the best known not so, but there are more than 20 of them,
and those less well known in the smaller institutions will be
at risk because of the pressure of funding in higher education.
Of course, there is no direct responsibility from DCMS for university
museums, but they now represent a really important part of the
total firmament of museums, including in this scholarship and
partnership. So I think university museums merit particular attention
because we're not at all comfortable that their future is assured.
Clearly in the bigger universities they will cherish and look
after them, but it's the smaller ones that concern me.
Q291 Damian Collins:
I hear what you're saying, but I think it's a legitimate subject
for debate: when resources are very limited, should our national
museums—they obviously require experts who can help understand
and manage the collections—be facilitating research or should
they be paying for it and originating it themselves?
Dr Dixon: If you
look at the funding of UK science, certainly through Research
Councils UK (RCUK), there is an assumption that certain sorts
of expertise are retained within our national capacity and not
paid for by RCUK, so taxonomy and systematics is what the Natural
History Museum is based on, and the collections of course are
the tool that makes taxonomy and systematics accessible. Taxonomy
and systematics are absolutely crucial for understanding the animal
and plant world, and indeed all sorts of legal responsibilities
fall upon a myriad of institutions within the UK about correctly
identifying animal and plant products. At the moment, the way
that the funding of science works, there is an assumption that
the expertise is based in the Natural History Museum, and it doesn't
need to be paid for elsewhere, so I think you have to look at
the big picture in this instance, and not perhaps the local perspective
of arts and heritage funding.
Q292 Damian Collins:
But, in the big picture, is your view, if you weren't doing this
work, it wouldn't be done?
Dr Dixon: I completely
agree. In fact the House of Lords Select Committee on Science
and Technology has looked at this issue a number of times in the
last decade, and determined that we have insufficient taxonomy
and systematics expertise at present, so to cut it still further
would be a significant issue.
Mr Clare: Chairman,
I think it is also a matter of regret that DCMS will not be funding
a chief scientific adviser post in future. The post that was created
was a result of some work that Dr Dixon led, which demonstrated
a need of scientific advice in the Culture, Media and Sport Ministry.
Not only that, but that it should be connected with the social
research into the positive outcomes that are feasible through
the investment that is made in culture and sport. I think it's
regrettable that we're going to lose traction in both of those
areas unless we can find another way to carry it out, and it's
not clear what that might be yet.
Q293 Damian Collins:
I think we understand where you are on that issue, so I'll move
on to something else I wanted to raise, which is picking up on
the remarks that were made from Alan Keen's questioning on the
role of philanthropy and business support for the arts and culture.
In the documents and the written evidence that your organisation
supplied it says, "The American model of reliance on private
funding brings a degree of compromise". I just wondered if
you could expand on that. Are you concerned that the more private
giving there is, the more Disneyfication there is of our museums,
aside from obviously the wonderful animatronic T Rex at your museum.
Dr Dixon: I am
going to remind myself what exactly we said in this respect.
Dr Coffey: Section 8.
Damian Collins: Section
8, bullet point 3.
Dr Dixon: I think
the point here, which I tried to make earlier, is that we operate
within three different funding environments. Clearly public sector
funding of national museums is incredibly important. In fact,
if you look at the role of great national institutions like that
they don't work without public subsidy. That's a given and we
all understand that. There is a great deal of talk at the moment
about the role that philanthropy might play. In fact, I think
as a sector, we've done extraordinarily well in the last decade
or more in terms of leveraging Government funding in finding private
money to develop big projects for the national museums. Again,
I can quote the figures from my own institution a bit more readily
than for some others. Our Darwin Centre, which opened in September
last year, was a £78.5 million project, but we were able
to deliver that with only £10.7 million of direct Government
funding.
So I think we'd be pretty good at leveraging
philanthropic giving. It is clear that to expect there to be a
major step change in the way that philanthropy supports great
national institutions is not going to be something that happens
overnight. It's going to require a great deal of development.
I think it will require something by way of tax incentives over
and above what we have at the moment. I think we have to recognise
that perhaps if we look to the American model as an ideal, that
is a very different cultural environment. The culture of charitable
giving in North America is not what it is here at the moment,
and I don't think we will get to that position quickly.
Q294 Damian Collins:
I understand that and I think it's a perfectly legitimate debate,
if you see the American model as an ideal model, about how quickly
or realistically we can reach that point—a number of people
have come before us and have raised those concerns—but within
your written evidence there is a suggestion that it might not
be desirable even if we could get there, and that there's a limit
on the amount of private involvement you would want ideally in
the running of a major institution.
Dr Dixon: I think
typically, where organisations have developed strong philanthropic
giving, it tends to be in peaks and troughs and to support one-off
items, either capital developments or particular programmatic
developments. So to regard it as a constant consistently rising
contribution to our income, I think would be problematic. I think
clearly other areas of self-generated income, our own commercial
developments and work with the corporate sector, are other areas
that we can look at, but I wouldn't regard philanthropy as the
magic bullet, as it were.
Mr Clare: I think
that's right. The mixed economy approach is important and the
further again away from London the more important that gets. As
an example of some innovative funding streams, Luton Cultural
Trust, which embodies both the library service and the museum
service, has an income stream through Luton Airport. As an independent
trust it can also attract sponsorship in a way that a local authority
museum can't, because people don't give to local authorities on
the whole.
Up in Norfolk, in Sheringham, there is a very
small museum on the coast called the Mo, which has a business
partnership with the wind farm creators just offshore. That's
an extremely good way of achieving sustainability at the price
of a small space to explain to the public why the wind farm is
there and what it does. That's the kind of innovative approach,
which in small settlements can do wonders. But the major local
authority owned important museums outside London are not there
yet. It's very hard to get either philanthropy or commercial sponsorship
into them. But York Library
Service showed that it can be done with the right kind of people
because, on the whole, people give to people. They managed to
get Aviva to part with some money to support their adult learning
programme in York libraries, which remains the only example of
commercial funding into a local authority owned service.
Q295 Damian Collins:
Going back to the word that was used in written evidence, which
was "compromise". With your remarks, Mr Clare, about
Disneyfication, do you both believe there is a danger that with
more private giving you end up with more exhibitions being put
on, because that's what people want to go and see, rather than
the ones that have the greatest intellectual merit?
Dr Dixon: I am
not sure I answered your question completely enough on compromise.
I think looking to the American model, where many of the great
institutions in North America are funded by large endowments,
I think that's the sense in which we were saying "compromise"—to
be reliant on large endowments with a variable return on those
investments due to economic circumstances is, I think, the point
that we were trying to make by using the word "compromise".
If you're incredibly reliant for your operating costs on income
from endowments, and the investment environment changes dramatically,
then you can see a great deal of your operating income wiped out.
So I think the balanced model between philanthropic giving and
support from the charitable community or from public funding or
commercial development, is a good model for national museums that
gives us some resilience to a number of different situations that
are outside of our control.
Mr Clare: I would
agree with that. It's a mixed economy approach. I wouldn't describe
it as a compromise. I think it's an important multiple funding
stream approach. If you like at Tyne and Wear museums, for example,
up in the northeast, they have a number of funding streams for
all their partner museums, which does support their sustainability.
Clearly, they suffer the same pressures as everybody else but
at least they have a fighting chance of balancing books.
Q296 Damian Collins:
Two very short questions, if I may. Do you think there is scope
for having more touring elements from the national collections
or the national museums to regional museums, whether it be an
entire exhibition that has been on display in London that could
be moved in part or whole, or just elements from national collections
that are stored in London, to go on display in the regions?
Mr Clare: We certainly
would welcome all forms of partnership with national collections,
and there are lots of examples of great shows, some of which started
outside London and then came to London. The George Romney show
that opened in the Walker in Liverpool, for example, went after
that to the National Gallery—a good example of how something
can be triggered. It got rave reviews at the Walker too. The National
Portrait Gallery is a wonderful gallery but it has quite a small
special exhibition space, so in the Walker the Romneys really
could breathe. It's a good example of that partnership, and I
referred earlier to the one that took place in Colchester. There
are many of these, but they are not cheap to do. Because of the
fixed core costs of national museums, when they are under funding
pressure it's one of those areas of discretion that trustees inevitably
look at quizzically. But they can be sponsored, and it's important
that we have an accent on collaboration, which enables great works
to be seen outside London as, for example, some Stubbs were loaned
from the National Gallery to Leeds 18 months ago—fantastic
show, which attracted a local Stubbs owner to loan his work for
the same show. That does build capacity, but cost is one of the
issues.
Dr Dixon: I completely
agree. It happens a lot now, it happens through exhibitions derived
from the nationals going on tour. It works in a myriad of partnerships
between national museums and local museums and, of course, there
is a huge loan programme between national museums and local museums.
I agree with Roy completely. It does require a certain amount
of funding and, as I said earlier, programmatic activities are
likely to be among the first casualties in a real terms cut. But
I think we see how important it is among national museums to support
local museums, and I think this is an area that we will be looking
at very actively.
Q297 Damian Collins:
Finally, Mr Clare, you mentioned the Heritage Lottery Fund's support
for museums around the country. This is a question regarding building
infrastructure costs of museums, particularly regional museums.
Do you think there is a danger that while a lot of this investment
has been very welcome it has created some museums and new museum
exhibition spaces which are difficult for the local economy to
sustain and support, and which may have been over-ambitious in
their initial inception, no matter how well meant that was?
Mr Clare: I think
optimism bias is a key issue and in some of the investment, particularly
the early investment, there was greater optimism than is perhaps
justified. But I don't resent any investment in museums in any
part of the country. It is important that the business case is
robust and well founded and, unfortunately, not all of them have
been. But there have also been some fantastic examples where that
investment has repaid many times over the reach into audiences
that either can't travel to London, or for whom London is a very
long way, who have access to not only a great space, which is
owned by them locally, but also a space that can then show under
incumbent indemnity rules at national standard.
We do need more spaces like that in the right
places, and I think it's a business case judgment, case-by-case.
But I know that the closer relationship that we are advocating
between Renaissance and HLF is designed to achieve a greater co-ordination
of perception, so that where one kind of investment, perhaps by
HLF, is complemented by another, namely Renaissance. Of course
the important third element is what is the local funding like,
and evidence of that. I think that new approach that this Coalition
Government has endorsed in principle is a powerful one if we can
take it forward.
Dr Dixon: I agree,
there is a lot of evidence out there. The Millennium Commission
funded a number of large developments across the UK. We now have
enough evidence of how those performed against their business
plan to feed into future thinking. I'm a great believer in lessons
learned. I think we do need to look at the lessons learned. The
HLF itself is working quite actively on how it takes learning
from big and small projects that it's invested in, and how to
spread that knowledge to potential recipients of future grants.
Chair: I think that's
all we have. I thank you both very much.
Dr Dixon: Thank
you.
Mr Clare: Thank
you.
1 Note by witness: and galleries Back
2
Witness correction: This has actually been calculated by Visit
Britain and not Arts & Business [http://media.visitbritain.com/News-Releases/Britain-s-museums-and-galleries-generate-1billion-for-the-economy-b31.aspx] Back
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