The People’s History Museum (PHM) in Manchester reopened last year after a £12.5m redevelopment with the tagline: “There have always been ideas worth fighting for.” A year later the museum has a battle of its own – to create a sustainable model for its future in the face of public spending cuts.
The person leading the fight is Katy Archer, who became director in August last year, replacing Nick Mansfield, who had been the head of the museum for the previous 21 years.
The PHM receives about 70% of its income from the public sector, with the largest chunk coming from the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities. The grant is under review and the museum will know the outcome any day now.
“I am used to working in the independent sector and am not afraid of organisations having to raise money and think creatively about how to do that, as that was very much part of my last role,” says Archer, who joined from the National Centre for Citizenship and the Law (NCCL), an educational charity that is the sister organisation of Nottingham’s Galleries of Justice Museum.
“But the impact of coming to an organisation that has always had public sector funding, which is now being taken away bit by bit, is a little more challenging than I anticipated.”
The museum also gets money from Manchester City Council, which is implementing huge spending cuts, and from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).
The museum will get some DCMS funding for the next few years but this will disappear altogether by 2015 as the PHM is one of the seven non-national museums that the department for culture is hoping to find new sponsors for.
Looking to the future
For Archer, the speed of the changes in funding will be crucial, particularly with regard to the support from the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities.
“I am happy that we will be able to develop the way we operate as a business to be more entrepreneurial and think differently about the funding we get,” she says. “If I have three to four years to do that, then great, but if I have a few months, it is going to be a slightly different answer.”
Dealing with actual and potential budget cuts has taken up a lot of Archer’s time. This, combined with running the museum on a day-to-day basis and getting to know the city, the museum and its stakeholders, has not left much space for anything else.
“It is quite an uncertain time and I would have liked to have been further on with my vision of where the organisation is going and my thoughts about what we can do with this fantastic resource, but it feels like we are having to be quite reactive. We are having to focus on the bottom line.”
The museum did receive a shot in the arm last month when it was included on the ten-strong longlist for the £100,000 Art Fund Prize. A shortlist of four museums will be announced in May with the winner revealed on 15 June.
Archer’s previous employer, the Galleries of Justice, was the first winner of the £100,000 prize in 2003 (the award was then known as the Gulbenkian Prize). She joined the Nottingham museum in 2005 as the learning and access manager and worked her way up to become the director of the NCCL.
Before the NCCL, Archer worked for the National Railway Museum in York, the Royal Engineers Museum in Chatham and Leeds Museums and Galleries.
“The progression I’ve made has partly been about being in the right place at the right time, but it’s also to do with hard work and flexibility, as I’ve moved across the country.
“All of those moves have added something to my understanding of the sector and my understanding of what is important to me about museums and where I feel I can make a difference. But I would say that my time in Nottingham had the biggest impact on my career.”
Flexible working
Archer says that she benefited from the Galleries of Justice being an independent museum that had the flexibility to let her work in a number of different roles. She was helped by Tim Desmond, the chief executive of the NCCL and the Galleries of Justice Museum.
“Tim was really supportive and gave me the opportunity to move through the organisation and to do things like the Clore Leadership Programme,” Archer says.
“I really benefited from him giving me that opportunity and not being afraid of letting me develop and progress. I did some really interesting work and learned a lot about an independent organisation that has to be commercial and entrepreneurial in its thinking. It had its ups and downs, but it was really exciting, dynamic and fast moving.”
Archer hopes this dynamism and entrepreneurial spirit will help her find new ways for the PHM to raise money and survive the forthcoming cuts. And she is convinced that the museum has a lot to work with.
“When I visited the museum just after it had opened I was blown away by the quality of design, the content and the story that it tells, which I think is really relevant to people’s lives,” Archer says. “It has the opportunity to do something really interesting around people engaging with ideas, issues and democracy and empowering people to do something and take action.”
Lots of Archer’s work at the NCCL involved working with organisations outside the museum sector such as the Home Office, the police and the Probation Service.
Her time there also gave her the chance to get involved in work that had a real social impact, whether that was addressing youth crime or anti-social behaviour. At the PHM, she has already had a meeting with a foundation that works with at-risk 13-19-year-olds in Manchester.
Making a difference
“Those are the kind of audiences I am used to working with,” she says. “I am trying to identify partner organisations who are doing that type of work who would benefit from having this museum as a resource but would also benefit from our story, which is about how people can affect change and make a difference to their own lives, and also to wider society. There are opportunities there and I would like us to do more of that work.”
Archer is worried that this type of activity can be pushed to the edges in an environment where resources are scarce. But she says her time in Nottingham proved that this did not have to be the case.
“It can be your core work and can be financially rewarding. Hopefully, there are opportunities for us to get involved in different partnerships and funding arrangements that mean we can do that work and it is an area of growth and is not going to threaten some of the other stuff we do as an organisation.”
Despite the gloomy economic outlook in the UK, Archer feels it’s an interesting time to be at a museum that charts how working people have fought for their rights. As public sector funding cuts start to bite, protest and activism are on the rise.
“The museum has this radical edge and represents that alternative side and the story that people have fought for some of the rights we have today,” says Archer.
“Some of those things around cooperation and people working together to achieve a common good look like they will become more and more important. It is interesting that people are becoming a lot more passionate and returning to active engagement, which we haven’t maybe had for a while in this country.”
Archer has already had conversations with colleagues about the recent student protests over tuition fees and how the museum can document this. The challenge is how to support work such as this while creating a new financial model for the museum that deals with the funding cuts.
In 2003 Archer returned to Yorkshire to become an education officer at Leeds Museums and Galleries, where she was responsible for learning provision at Abbey House Museum and Armley Mills Industrial Museum.
Archer then moved to the National Centre of Citizenship and the Law (NCCL)/Galleries of Justice in Nottingham. She started as the learning and access manager and was the director of the NCCL by the time she left in 2010 to become the director of the People’s History Museum in Manchester.
Archer has an MA in museum studies from the University of Leicester and is an associate member of the Museums Association. She has also been a trustee of the Group for Education in Museums.
The collections were then in storage until the Greater Manchester authorities made a funding offer. A new trust was created and the museum reopened in 1990, initially at 103 Princess Street.
In May 1994 new museum galleries were opened in the Pump House. The museum was known as both the National Museum of Labour History and the Pump House People’s History Museum. In 2001 the museum decided to use one name to embrace the whole organisation: the People’s History Museum.
In 2007 the museum closed for a £12.5m redevelopment, which was completed in February 2010 and was supported by a £7.5m Heritage Lottery Fund grant. The PHM is a charity and has 15 trustees. It employs the equivalent of 25 full-time staff. Its revenue for 2009-10 was £1,009,989.
Its main funders are the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (c£450,000 a year), DCMS (c£200,000), the Higher Education Funding Council for England (c£100,000), the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (c£100,000) and Manchester City Council (c£100,000).
The person leading the fight is Katy Archer, who became director in August last year, replacing Nick Mansfield, who had been the head of the museum for the previous 21 years.
The PHM receives about 70% of its income from the public sector, with the largest chunk coming from the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities. The grant is under review and the museum will know the outcome any day now.
“I am used to working in the independent sector and am not afraid of organisations having to raise money and think creatively about how to do that, as that was very much part of my last role,” says Archer, who joined from the National Centre for Citizenship and the Law (NCCL), an educational charity that is the sister organisation of Nottingham’s Galleries of Justice Museum.
“But the impact of coming to an organisation that has always had public sector funding, which is now being taken away bit by bit, is a little more challenging than I anticipated.”
The museum also gets money from Manchester City Council, which is implementing huge spending cuts, and from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).
The museum will get some DCMS funding for the next few years but this will disappear altogether by 2015 as the PHM is one of the seven non-national museums that the department for culture is hoping to find new sponsors for.
Looking to the future
For Archer, the speed of the changes in funding will be crucial, particularly with regard to the support from the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities.
“I am happy that we will be able to develop the way we operate as a business to be more entrepreneurial and think differently about the funding we get,” she says. “If I have three to four years to do that, then great, but if I have a few months, it is going to be a slightly different answer.”
Dealing with actual and potential budget cuts has taken up a lot of Archer’s time. This, combined with running the museum on a day-to-day basis and getting to know the city, the museum and its stakeholders, has not left much space for anything else.
“It is quite an uncertain time and I would have liked to have been further on with my vision of where the organisation is going and my thoughts about what we can do with this fantastic resource, but it feels like we are having to be quite reactive. We are having to focus on the bottom line.”
The museum did receive a shot in the arm last month when it was included on the ten-strong longlist for the £100,000 Art Fund Prize. A shortlist of four museums will be announced in May with the winner revealed on 15 June.
Archer’s previous employer, the Galleries of Justice, was the first winner of the £100,000 prize in 2003 (the award was then known as the Gulbenkian Prize). She joined the Nottingham museum in 2005 as the learning and access manager and worked her way up to become the director of the NCCL.
Before the NCCL, Archer worked for the National Railway Museum in York, the Royal Engineers Museum in Chatham and Leeds Museums and Galleries.
“The progression I’ve made has partly been about being in the right place at the right time, but it’s also to do with hard work and flexibility, as I’ve moved across the country.
“All of those moves have added something to my understanding of the sector and my understanding of what is important to me about museums and where I feel I can make a difference. But I would say that my time in Nottingham had the biggest impact on my career.”
Flexible working
Archer says that she benefited from the Galleries of Justice being an independent museum that had the flexibility to let her work in a number of different roles. She was helped by Tim Desmond, the chief executive of the NCCL and the Galleries of Justice Museum.
“Tim was really supportive and gave me the opportunity to move through the organisation and to do things like the Clore Leadership Programme,” Archer says.
“I really benefited from him giving me that opportunity and not being afraid of letting me develop and progress. I did some really interesting work and learned a lot about an independent organisation that has to be commercial and entrepreneurial in its thinking. It had its ups and downs, but it was really exciting, dynamic and fast moving.”
Archer hopes this dynamism and entrepreneurial spirit will help her find new ways for the PHM to raise money and survive the forthcoming cuts. And she is convinced that the museum has a lot to work with.
“When I visited the museum just after it had opened I was blown away by the quality of design, the content and the story that it tells, which I think is really relevant to people’s lives,” Archer says. “It has the opportunity to do something really interesting around people engaging with ideas, issues and democracy and empowering people to do something and take action.”
Lots of Archer’s work at the NCCL involved working with organisations outside the museum sector such as the Home Office, the police and the Probation Service.
Her time there also gave her the chance to get involved in work that had a real social impact, whether that was addressing youth crime or anti-social behaviour. At the PHM, she has already had a meeting with a foundation that works with at-risk 13-19-year-olds in Manchester.
Making a difference
“Those are the kind of audiences I am used to working with,” she says. “I am trying to identify partner organisations who are doing that type of work who would benefit from having this museum as a resource but would also benefit from our story, which is about how people can affect change and make a difference to their own lives, and also to wider society. There are opportunities there and I would like us to do more of that work.”
Archer is worried that this type of activity can be pushed to the edges in an environment where resources are scarce. But she says her time in Nottingham proved that this did not have to be the case.
“It can be your core work and can be financially rewarding. Hopefully, there are opportunities for us to get involved in different partnerships and funding arrangements that mean we can do that work and it is an area of growth and is not going to threaten some of the other stuff we do as an organisation.”
Despite the gloomy economic outlook in the UK, Archer feels it’s an interesting time to be at a museum that charts how working people have fought for their rights. As public sector funding cuts start to bite, protest and activism are on the rise.
“The museum has this radical edge and represents that alternative side and the story that people have fought for some of the rights we have today,” says Archer.
“Some of those things around cooperation and people working together to achieve a common good look like they will become more and more important. It is interesting that people are becoming a lot more passionate and returning to active engagement, which we haven’t maybe had for a while in this country.”
Archer has already had conversations with colleagues about the recent student protests over tuition fees and how the museum can document this. The challenge is how to support work such as this while creating a new financial model for the museum that deals with the funding cuts.
Katy Archer at a glance
Katy Archer started her career in 2000 as an explainer and project developer at the National Railway Museum, York. She then moved to the Royal Engineers Museum in Chatham, Kent, as its education officer.In 2003 Archer returned to Yorkshire to become an education officer at Leeds Museums and Galleries, where she was responsible for learning provision at Abbey House Museum and Armley Mills Industrial Museum.
Archer then moved to the National Centre of Citizenship and the Law (NCCL)/Galleries of Justice in Nottingham. She started as the learning and access manager and was the director of the NCCL by the time she left in 2010 to become the director of the People’s History Museum in Manchester.
Archer has an MA in museum studies from the University of Leicester and is an associate member of the Museums Association. She has also been a trustee of the Group for Education in Museums.
People’s History Museum at a glance
The People’s History Museum (PHM) originated from the Trade Union, Labour and Co-operative History Society. In the 1960s the society formed a small collection and, between 1975 and 1986, ran a museum in Limehouse Town Hall in London. The collections were then in storage until the Greater Manchester authorities made a funding offer. A new trust was created and the museum reopened in 1990, initially at 103 Princess Street.
In May 1994 new museum galleries were opened in the Pump House. The museum was known as both the National Museum of Labour History and the Pump House People’s History Museum. In 2001 the museum decided to use one name to embrace the whole organisation: the People’s History Museum.
In 2007 the museum closed for a £12.5m redevelopment, which was completed in February 2010 and was supported by a £7.5m Heritage Lottery Fund grant. The PHM is a charity and has 15 trustees. It employs the equivalent of 25 full-time staff. Its revenue for 2009-10 was £1,009,989.
Its main funders are the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (c£450,000 a year), DCMS (c£200,000), the Higher Education Funding Council for England (c£100,000), the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (c£100,000) and Manchester City Council (c£100,000).