Editorial
Time to rethink how lottery money is spent
The government’s recently published white paper on culture shows a photo of the Booth Map Room at the Museum of London. The photo follows Ed Vaizey’s foreword, in which the minister for culture and the digital economy describes “how culture can be used in place-making”.
The poverty maps created by researcher and social reformer Charles Booth show how London was a deeply divided place at the end of the 19th century. The streets are depicted in one of eight colours to represent their social character, ranging from the lowest class to areas that housed mainly wealthy upper-middle and upper-class families.
The government’s white paper says “everyone should enjoy the opportunities culture offers, no matter where they start in life”. But as austerity bites ever further, what will the government’s white paper do to help those communities whose access to culture is being threatened by budget cuts?
Vaizey mentions Shakespeare a lot – eight times, in fact – in what feels like a rather narrow view of what culture can be. The bard even seems to have an answer to funding shortfalls. “When we look at new models for funding, we find that our experience with Shakespeare shows us the way,” he writes, referring to Barking’s outdoor production of The Merchant of Venice, which has been crowdfunded.
Museums are among the many cultural organisations that have been experimenting with this method of fundraising for some time, but it is not a model that is going to transform the sector.
Vaizey rightly points to the impact that the lottery has made by funding many new and refurbished museums, galleries and historic buildings. The Museum of London received £11.5m from the Heritage Lottery Fund to create its Galleries of Modern London, which opened in 2010 and include the Booth Map Room. The museum will be seeking financial support for its planned move to a new site at West Smithfield, a project that has an estimated £130m-£150m construction budget.
But away from the high-profile capital projects, some new thinking about the way lottery money is spent might provide some of the solutions to the funding crisis that many museums and other cultural organisations face.
The poverty maps created by researcher and social reformer Charles Booth show how London was a deeply divided place at the end of the 19th century. The streets are depicted in one of eight colours to represent their social character, ranging from the lowest class to areas that housed mainly wealthy upper-middle and upper-class families.
The government’s white paper says “everyone should enjoy the opportunities culture offers, no matter where they start in life”. But as austerity bites ever further, what will the government’s white paper do to help those communities whose access to culture is being threatened by budget cuts?
Vaizey mentions Shakespeare a lot – eight times, in fact – in what feels like a rather narrow view of what culture can be. The bard even seems to have an answer to funding shortfalls. “When we look at new models for funding, we find that our experience with Shakespeare shows us the way,” he writes, referring to Barking’s outdoor production of The Merchant of Venice, which has been crowdfunded.
Museums are among the many cultural organisations that have been experimenting with this method of fundraising for some time, but it is not a model that is going to transform the sector.
Vaizey rightly points to the impact that the lottery has made by funding many new and refurbished museums, galleries and historic buildings. The Museum of London received £11.5m from the Heritage Lottery Fund to create its Galleries of Modern London, which opened in 2010 and include the Booth Map Room. The museum will be seeking financial support for its planned move to a new site at West Smithfield, a project that has an estimated £130m-£150m construction budget.
But away from the high-profile capital projects, some new thinking about the way lottery money is spent might provide some of the solutions to the funding crisis that many museums and other cultural organisations face.