Prospects for the museum sector in Northern Ireland are, in the words of the Northern Ireland Museums Council’s (NIMC) chief executive, Chris Bailey, “pretty bleak”.
In November, the Department for Culture, Arts and Leisure (Dcal) published its draft budget for 2015-16, mooting cuts across the board, leading the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) to launch a public campaign to protect its budgets.
The following month, Tim Cooke, the director and chief executive of National Museums Northern Ireland, (NMNI), resigned for “personal reasons”, amid a climate of reduced budgets and fluctuating visitor numbers.
From April, 11 “super councils” will replace the 26 existing councils across the country. This will have a knock-on effect on Northern Ireland’s 38 Accredited local museums, many of which are council funded. The super councils’ exact structure is still being finalised, and many museums are unclear as to which department in the new authorities they will be in.
A Dcal review of arms-length bodies, yet to be published, is looking at proposals to merge the NIMC with the NMNI.
And there are fears that Dcal, as the smallest government department, may not survive. It has lost more than £10m since 2011-12 and faces a proposed cut of £10m from its £99.5m budget in 2015-16. There is speculation that the department may be scrapped and its functions subsumed into education or social development.
An uncertain future has led to the strategic horizon being shrunk, says Bailey, whose own organisation faces a £30,000 cut to its £260,000 budget in 2015-16. There is an issue about how to get back to three- to five-year planning, he says, and a lack of direction and long-term perspective without that.
Damian Smyth, the ACNI’s head of literature and drama, believes the uncertainty could continue over the next three years and beyond. It could be a 10-year winter, he says, and the cuts have already led to a year-on-year haemorrhaging of ideas, vision, resources, planning and personnel.
Dcal’s draft budget explicitly blames the cuts on the “year-on-year erosion of the block grant by a Tory-led British government”. But where the cuts originate is irrelevant to the people on the ground, says Smyth.
Although culture is rhetorically regarded as important, he says, politicians are timid about paying for it, pointing to the irony of a political culture that talks of the importance of the past and of identity, while at the same time the tools for allowing society to deal with those issues “are being thrown out of the window”.
Some hope
Despite the cuts, there are some hopeful developments. In November, Historic Royal Palaces received £1m in match funding towards the renovation of Hillsborough Castle in County Down, Ulster Museum opened its modern history gallery and Enniskillen Castle in County Fermanagh was awarded a £2.4m Heritage Lottery Fund grant towards its restoration. Work on a new maritime museum in Derry is also due to begin this year.
It may look bleak, but, as Bailey says: “We mustn’t lose sight of the fact that change also inevitably brings opportunities.”
National Museums Northern Ireland
Arts Council of Northern Ireland
* Reduced during year by 4.4% to £12.2m
** Draft budget
In November, the Department for Culture, Arts and Leisure (Dcal) published its draft budget for 2015-16, mooting cuts across the board, leading the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) to launch a public campaign to protect its budgets.
The following month, Tim Cooke, the director and chief executive of National Museums Northern Ireland, (NMNI), resigned for “personal reasons”, amid a climate of reduced budgets and fluctuating visitor numbers.
From April, 11 “super councils” will replace the 26 existing councils across the country. This will have a knock-on effect on Northern Ireland’s 38 Accredited local museums, many of which are council funded. The super councils’ exact structure is still being finalised, and many museums are unclear as to which department in the new authorities they will be in.
A Dcal review of arms-length bodies, yet to be published, is looking at proposals to merge the NIMC with the NMNI.
And there are fears that Dcal, as the smallest government department, may not survive. It has lost more than £10m since 2011-12 and faces a proposed cut of £10m from its £99.5m budget in 2015-16. There is speculation that the department may be scrapped and its functions subsumed into education or social development.
An uncertain future has led to the strategic horizon being shrunk, says Bailey, whose own organisation faces a £30,000 cut to its £260,000 budget in 2015-16. There is an issue about how to get back to three- to five-year planning, he says, and a lack of direction and long-term perspective without that.
Damian Smyth, the ACNI’s head of literature and drama, believes the uncertainty could continue over the next three years and beyond. It could be a 10-year winter, he says, and the cuts have already led to a year-on-year haemorrhaging of ideas, vision, resources, planning and personnel.
Dcal’s draft budget explicitly blames the cuts on the “year-on-year erosion of the block grant by a Tory-led British government”. But where the cuts originate is irrelevant to the people on the ground, says Smyth.
Although culture is rhetorically regarded as important, he says, politicians are timid about paying for it, pointing to the irony of a political culture that talks of the importance of the past and of identity, while at the same time the tools for allowing society to deal with those issues “are being thrown out of the window”.
Some hope
Despite the cuts, there are some hopeful developments. In November, Historic Royal Palaces received £1m in match funding towards the renovation of Hillsborough Castle in County Down, Ulster Museum opened its modern history gallery and Enniskillen Castle in County Fermanagh was awarded a £2.4m Heritage Lottery Fund grant towards its restoration. Work on a new maritime museum in Derry is also due to begin this year.
It may look bleak, but, as Bailey says: “We mustn’t lose sight of the fact that change also inevitably brings opportunities.”
Grant-in-aid (£m)
National Museums Northern Ireland
- 2011-12 14.50
- 2012-13 13.50
- 2013-14 12.97
- 2014-15 12.76*
- 2015-16** 10.83
Arts Council of Northern Ireland
- 2011-12 14.13
- 2012-13 13.06
- 2013-14 12.50
- 2014-15 12.30
- 2015-16** 10.93
* Reduced during year by 4.4% to £12.2m
** Draft budget
