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May 2010 – a new government

While Britain took some time getting used to the fact that we now had a coalition Government, the arts sector began to brace itself for what was, inevitably, going to be a tough few months.

June 2010 – initial cuts
Almost as soon as the new Government came to power they announced what seemed like major cuts to the arts sector. The first £2 billion to go included £73m from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) budged, which immediately slashed

  • £2m from library modernisation work
  • £2m from Find Your Talent
  • £45m from the BFI Film Centre
  • £2.5m from their digital archive access sub-project
  • £17m from the Stonehenge visitor centre

The Arts Council also faced initial cuts of £23m, which included £6m of public engagement work, £1.6m from ‘Creative, Culture and Education’ and ‘Arts and Business’ and an initial £0.4m from their operating costs.

People were initially quite taken aback by the cuts, but soon realised that the new Government’s agenda was to cut deeper and harder than this. The sector braced itself for the major Treasury announcement of the year – the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) which was set for October.

July 2010 – Abolition

At the end of July it was announced that the Government intended to abolish the Museums Libraries and Archives Council (MLA). The organisation, which is funded through the DCMS, will wind up its activity by April 2012.

The first question everyone was waiting to ask was where the essential services that the MLA provides will be diverted.

Mark Taylor, the director of the Museums Association, said at the time, “It is important that we have a strategic body with museums as one of its principal functions, rather than a minor department in another quango.

“We need to know before the Comprehensive Spending Review where the strategic museum function is going to be within the DCMS.”

August 2010 – coming together

In August it looked as if the solidarity of the heritage sector would carry us through some difficult times, as everyone tried to put on a brave face.

A group of around 70 museum and gallery directors gathered at Tate Modern to hear how a combination of Arts Council and local authority funding cuts were seriously undermining the gains that had been made by the cultural sector in the last ten to fifteen years. While it wasn’t an overly positive message, it sent a message to Government that the sector was not going to take the cuts lying down.

Given the general downward mood of the sector during the summer of 2010 the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) decided to put out some good news. They announced more money would be available for major projects and that there would be greater flexibility in the fund application process during the tough economic times.

The allocation for major projects is therefore increased annually from £20 million to £30 million from 2011 onwards. And they have removed the second round submission deadlines so that applicants looking for funds can work to timetables that suit their project, rather than having to shoehorn their work into the HLF’s programme and can have more time to find match funding for their projects.

At the time the HLF said, “We know heritage can play an important role in economic recovery and we are looking at other ways we can help our customers continue to deliver excellent projects.  We are also urging any new applicants to be realistic about the amount of grant they will need, given the current challenges.”

August also heralded the news that during the previous economic year, museums and galleries in the UK had generated £1 billion in revenue from overseas tourists. VisitBritain said they knew this from the results of the International Passenger Survey. We now know, for example, that of the 30 million inbound visits in 2009, around 7.7 million said they had visited a museum and a further 4.2 million had been to an art gallery during their stay.

The same report said that the busiest time for foreign visit is July to September, while the period from January to March is the quietest. This is perhaps useful for those museums and galleries expecting to open new attractions this summer, or in 2012 in time for the Olympics!

And while we are thinking about money, it’s worth noting that of the top ten visitor attractions in London, only two have an entrance fee - the Tower of London and St Paul’s Cathedral.

London's top ten most visited heritage attractions: Source: VisitBritain

  1. British Museum, 5,569,981 visits (-6.1 per cent)
  2. The National Gallery, 4,780,030 (+9 per cent)
  3. Tate Modern, 4,747,537 (-2 per cent)
  4. Natural History Museum, 4,105,106 (+9.8 per cent)
  5. Science Museum, 2,793,930 (+3 per cent)
  6. Tower of London, 2,389,548 (+11 per cent)
  7. National Maritime Museum, 2,367,904 (+15 per cent)
  8. Victoria and Albert Museum, 2,269,880 (+10 per cent)
  9. National Portrait Gallery, 1,961,843 (+6.4 per cent)
  10. St Paul's Cathedral, 1,821,321 (+8 per cent)

September 2010 – there may be trouble ahead

By the end of the summer the national museums had not yet heard what direct funding cuts they would be facing in the CSR. But there was a general air of pessimism in the sector, especially in the job market.

The V&A intranet featured a message saying that staff pay would be frozen for the next 2 years. The Natural History Museum, among others, also put a halt on all non-essential external recruitment, choosing to only fill vacancies internally.

October 2010 – the cuts!

The Comprehensive Spending Review was announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequor in the House of Commons on 20 October.

You can watch the 45 second segment of the speech here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11586544

Rather than simply announcing a blanket cut across the department, Geroge Osbourne decided to cut the £2 billion budget in a number of different ways.

Spending was cut by 24% overall. Capital spending was down by 32%, and administration at the central government department was cut by a massive 41%. That means many central civil service employees will lose their jobs.

He did, however, maintain a commitment to the free entry to national museums and also agreed that the new wings at the British Museum and Tate Modern would both still go ahead. National museums are, therefore, facing a slightly reduced cut of 15% in real terms.

Other cuts
The full detail of the cuts, and how they are to be rolled out over the next few years, can be studied here: http://www.museumsassociation.org/download?id=187234. It’s clear that the national museums (and the British Library) got off quite lightly with a 15% cut.

  • Chatham Historic Dockyard will lose 20% of its funding (it presently charges an entry fee and will have to continue this in the future).
  • English Heritage’s funding will be cut by 26% and its grant programme by 38%
  • Funding previously directed to The Design Museum will be slashed by 65%
  • Arts Council funding for administration will be cut by 83%
  • English Heritage has to cut half of its administration budget

DCMS on the move
As part of the cost saving exercises, which had to begin in earnest, the DCMS planned to move out of its Cockspur Street headquarters by the end of the financial year. They are most likely to share an address with the Department for International Development on Buckingham Palace Road.

The space they are moving to is smaller but, given than there have to be a lot of redundancies, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem for them.

No merger

Some commentators in the sector had supposed that English Heritage, the HLF and some other bodies may have been merged together by the coalition Government in a spirit of enforced cooperation. But the Culture Minister Ed Vaizey announced in October that this would not happen. Instead, he said: “We have decided not to proceed with a merger of heritage and architecture bodies in this Bill. However, DCMS has asked English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund, as a matter of urgency, to identify and reduce any overlap of activities.”

The results of this are yet to be announced but it is thought that around 200 jobs will go at English Heritage.

November 2010 – the hands-off approach

Later in the year it was announced that DCMS intends to relinquish control and sponsorship of non-national museums starting from April 2011.

As part of its four-year business plan, the department said it will no longer hold on to power at a national level.

The museums affected are the Design Museum; the Geffrye Museum; the Horniman Museum and Gardens; the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester; the National Coal Mining Museum for England; the National Football Museum; the People’s History Museum; and Tyne and Wear Museums.

This must have come as a blow to two of these museums which are currently in the process of relocating. The Design Museum is part way through the process of planning its move from its Thames-side location to Kensington while the National Football Museum is moving from the home of the Preston North End FC to the former Urbis building in the centre of Manchester.

Kevin Moore, director of the National Football Museum said the loss of funding would not affect the creation of the new museum in Manchester or lead to redundancies. However, he warned it would affect educational and social inclusion programmes across the country.

The move means that DCMS will scrap sponsorship of museums which, the Government says, “should be the responsibility of local communities”. This has prompted outcries from the heritage industry, suggesting that the Government is encouraging local volunteers to take the place of trained museum professionals as part of the ‘Big Society’ agenda. We will wait and see what implication the funding changes have as the money starts to be withdrawn from April 2011.

Philanthropy

While the DCMS business plan is removing money from the sector, it also hopes to “implement measures to facilitate fundraising by cultural and charitable institutions”. This includes agreeing a framework with national museums for creating charitable trusts by March 2011 and “implementing new framework and establish trusts” by March 2012.

In addition, the business plan outlines plans to boost the Big Society and charitable giving. By the end of last year, DCMS had brought together proposals with the Cabinet Office and the Treasury to “incentivise more social investment, philanthropy and giving, including a strategy to boost giving from private individuals to cultural institutions, incorporating insights from behavioural science”.

Arts Council funding model overhauled

After taking stock of their cuts, the Arts Council have said how they intend to make their savings of £457m over four years.

Arts & Business will receive no core funding after 2012 and the Arts Council itself will have to save 50% in its own administration costs by 2015.

The amount of money available for regularly funded organisations (RFOs) will be cut by 14.9 per cent in real terms by 2014-15, while there is nearly 7 per cent in across-the-board cash cuts in 2011-12.

RFOs will now have to go through an application process.

The Arts Council has realised that around 100 of the 850 organisations are likely to lose funding over the next five years as a result of the changes. All existing RFOs can apply for funding under the new system, but new organisations will also be eligible, with decisions made on the basis of strategic priorities.

Other changes to funding include more flexible funding terms and tailor-made funding agreements with individual organisations.  ACE chair Dame Liz Forgan said: "These are severe cuts, made worse by the fact that around 80 per cent of them have to come in the first two years of the settlement.

"We are determined to lead the arts through this tough period, using all our knowledge, expertise, and brokering skills, and drawing on the resourcefulness and imagination around us.

On another occasion she said, “Salami slicing our portfolio of organisations would never have been an appropriate long-term response, regardless of our settlement. We want to build a portfolio where organisations, large, medium and small, are able to prosper as well as survive.”

December - what about the MLA?

With news of the financial cuts to the sector dominating the news the sector could not forget that the MLA was still in the process of being disbanded. The full process of removing the MLA from service will take until April 2012.

Responsibility for important work with regional museums and libraries is likely to transfer to Arts Council. This still needs to be agreed by the Arts Council’s National Council and a budgetary plan will also need to be put in place.

It is expected that the Arts Council will take on responsibility for:

  • management and delivery of the Renaissance in the Regions programme
  • museums and libraries development work including museum accreditation and designation
  • a number of statutory cultural property functions, including export licensing for cultural objects and the associated Export Reviewing Committee, the Government Indemnity Scheme and the Acceptance in Lieu scheme.

Additional funding of over £46m each year from 2012/13 will be available to deliver this work, with an additional £1.3m of funding going directly to the British Museum to run the Portable Antiquities Scheme.

The future of advocacy work in the field of archives is currently undertaken by the MLA is still being considered.

Author:
Steve Slack is a writer and researcher in the heritage sector
www.steveslack.co.uk