Kim Streets has seen a lot of changes since she joined Museums Sheffield in 1991 but the past few years have been a real rollercoaster, with more down than up.
She became chief executive of Museums Sheffield in April 2012. Being in charge of museums in Steel City, as Sheffield is colloquially known, has required some tough decision-making.
There was a period of upheaval after the organisation failed to become one of Arts Council England’s Major Museum Partners, which would have brought in about £4.2m over three years. The museum service had formally been a hub under the Renaissance in the Regions scheme.
Losing out on the new funding plunged the museum service into a financial crisis that saw Streets’s predecessor Nick Dodd leave as part of a restructuring programme that led to 44 voluntary and compulsory redundancies out 107 staff.
But the museum was able to redeploy some staff so the redundancies came to a total of 38.
“It was quite tumultuous,” Streets says. “We looked at absolutely everything at the same time as restructuring the organisation and restabilising the finances. It was a huge period of change but I think we have come through that and we feel stronger and much more robust in lots of ways.”
Some of the pain was lessened by Museums Sheffield receiving more than £500,000 from the arts council to help the organisation manage the transition from losing regular Renaissance money. It has also gained Strategic Support Fund money from the arts council worth more than £1.2m over three years.
But its financial position has been further undermined in recent years by a series of cuts in the amount of money it receives from the city council.
Museums Sheffield operates three venues: the Millennium Gallery, Weston Park Museum and the Graves Gallery, plus an out-of-town collections centre. It has not closed any of these but it has inevitably had to do less and opening times have been cut.
“It is the volume that is the difference,” Streets says. “Our learning team went from 23 to three; with that change you obviously can not do the volume that you did. It’s the same with exhibitions; we are doing fewer exhibitions and they are on for longer.”
Streets has been working hard on revenue generation, including increasing income from retail, corporate hire, donations and sponsorship. Focusing on key stakeholders, particularly the relationship with the city council, has been important as well. She has also sought advice from other museum services in the region, including Barnsley, York, Hull and Leeds.
“What was really helpful was chatting to John Roles [the head of museums and galleries in Leeds] about how he has built connections with Leeds City Council,” says Streets. “He was so generous in sharing his expertise, but really frank about it as well, which I needed to hear.”
Business links
Streets has also been building closer links with the business community. Much of this has been done through the contacts of Museums Sheffield chairman Gordon Bridge, who has worked for three local manufacturers.
“The government and the arts council talk a lot about philanthropy but it is easier said than done,” Streets says. “It is all about relationships and what we have been doing with Gordon’s contacts is building those relationships and hearing from business about what we might need to do to engage with them in a meaningful way. I am finding myself with lots more 7am meetings.”
Early morning business breakfasts are a far cry from Streets’s early career at Museums Sheffield where she started as an assistant keeper of social history. She says this was a good way to get to know the city and to understand how its museums worked.
“At that time we did a bit of everything. It was before museums had a communications teams and often, as curators, we did our own press releases, talks and learning sessions. It was multi-tasking but it was a really good way of understanding all the different components of the job.”
Streets grew up in Selby, near Leeds, and came to Sheffield to study, although at the time she was not planning a career in museums. She ended up doing a history degree almost by accident and gradually became interested in museums through volunteer work at Kelham Island Museum, which is part of the Sheffield Industrial Museums Trust.
A curator called David Bostwick, whom Streets describes as “passionate, knowledgeable and can-do”, was a particular inspiration.
“He was very good at inspiring people and encouraging them to recognise that their story really mattered in Sheffield,” Streets says. “For me, as a kid who came from a background where going to museums was not part of what my family did, I could see how going to museums could be relevant to you no matter who you are, whether you come from a background where galleries, museums and theatres are part of your family life or not.
"You could see there was a relevance there and that is what I think got me excited and made me want to get a job in museums – I got a taste for something that was really quite special.”
Sheffield life
Streets also quickly grew to love Sheffield, even though it felt “dark, dingy and a bit sad” when she first arrived in the mid-1980s, a period when steel factories were shutting down and the mining industry was in chaos.
“It felt friendly and very safe and I grew to love the area that I stayed in as a student,” she says. “It’s still that way – people call you love and duck, there is something very nice about that.”
People say that Sheffield is a series of villages and Streets says there is something in this, with each community having a different identity that makes up the city as a whole.
Streets got to know many of the areas while she was a social history curator and went out and about to develop exhibitions and talk to people about objects they wanted to donate.
She has had a number of different roles in her 21 years at the service but the £17m redevelopment of Weston Park in 2006 was a particularly exciting time and helped cement her view about the importance of directly involving people in collections and the stories around them. Streets says the project manager, Sally Manuireva, played an important part.
Lottery success
“What she did very successfully was to put audiences at the heart of the project and to galvanise the teams around the vision that this would be a place for people and people would learn about their history,” says Streets.
“Because that galvanised us it was possible for us to cross over and to break down all those barriers about what curators do and what the learning team do and to reposition that.”
When Manuireva left to join National Museums Scotland, Streets got the job of director of learning and knowledge. Now she has the top job at Museums Sheffield her love of the city and her commitment to its museums should help her survive the challenging times ahead.
And things do seem to be looking up – Museums Sheffield recently found out that it had gained a first-round pass from the Heritage Lottery Fund to work up a £697,000 bid for a grant to revamp galleries at Weston Park Museum.
And this year it will present a number of big exhibitions, including one that will mark the centenary of the outbreak of the first world war, a touring Victoria and Albert Museum show about how Britain changed during the second world war, and an exhibition at the Graves Gallery on the work of Polish émigré artists who fled mainland Europe during the war.
“The thing that we have managed to hang on to, and I’m really proud of that, is that the quality of what we do is really excellent,” Streets says. “Yes, we are doing less, but the quality is really good, and there are some lovely things in the programme.
“I would not deny that there are challenges ahead, budget wise, like any other city, but I feel like we have gone through quite a big change and that sense of needing to revisit, review and make some changes has made the foundations stronger.”
Kim Streets replaced Nick Dodd as the chief executive of Museums Sheffield in April 2012. Before that she was the director of learning and knowledge.
She represents Museums Sheffield on the University of Sheffield’s Cultural Engagement Group; Sheffield Contemporary Art Forum; and the city’s Cultural Consortium.
Streets first joined Museums Sheffield in 1991 as an assistant keeper of social history and was later the head of curation.
Museums Sheffield operates four sites: Millennium Gallery; Weston Park Museum; Graves Gallery; and an out-of-town collections centre. The venues attracted more than 1.1 million visitors in 2012-13.
The organisation now employs about 78 staff and had an income of £4.9m in 2012-13.
In December last year Museums Sheffield won a first-round pass from the Heritage Lottery Fund to work up a bid for a grant to revamp galleries at Weston Park.
The initial development grant is for £49,500 and Museums Sheffield could receive up to £697,000 for delivery if its second stage bid is successful.
It has received an Arts Council England Strategic Support Fund grant of £1.2m for 2012-15
She became chief executive of Museums Sheffield in April 2012. Being in charge of museums in Steel City, as Sheffield is colloquially known, has required some tough decision-making.
There was a period of upheaval after the organisation failed to become one of Arts Council England’s Major Museum Partners, which would have brought in about £4.2m over three years. The museum service had formally been a hub under the Renaissance in the Regions scheme.
Losing out on the new funding plunged the museum service into a financial crisis that saw Streets’s predecessor Nick Dodd leave as part of a restructuring programme that led to 44 voluntary and compulsory redundancies out 107 staff.
But the museum was able to redeploy some staff so the redundancies came to a total of 38.
“It was quite tumultuous,” Streets says. “We looked at absolutely everything at the same time as restructuring the organisation and restabilising the finances. It was a huge period of change but I think we have come through that and we feel stronger and much more robust in lots of ways.”
Some of the pain was lessened by Museums Sheffield receiving more than £500,000 from the arts council to help the organisation manage the transition from losing regular Renaissance money. It has also gained Strategic Support Fund money from the arts council worth more than £1.2m over three years.
But its financial position has been further undermined in recent years by a series of cuts in the amount of money it receives from the city council.
Museums Sheffield operates three venues: the Millennium Gallery, Weston Park Museum and the Graves Gallery, plus an out-of-town collections centre. It has not closed any of these but it has inevitably had to do less and opening times have been cut.
“It is the volume that is the difference,” Streets says. “Our learning team went from 23 to three; with that change you obviously can not do the volume that you did. It’s the same with exhibitions; we are doing fewer exhibitions and they are on for longer.”
Streets has been working hard on revenue generation, including increasing income from retail, corporate hire, donations and sponsorship. Focusing on key stakeholders, particularly the relationship with the city council, has been important as well. She has also sought advice from other museum services in the region, including Barnsley, York, Hull and Leeds.
“What was really helpful was chatting to John Roles [the head of museums and galleries in Leeds] about how he has built connections with Leeds City Council,” says Streets. “He was so generous in sharing his expertise, but really frank about it as well, which I needed to hear.”
Business links
Streets has also been building closer links with the business community. Much of this has been done through the contacts of Museums Sheffield chairman Gordon Bridge, who has worked for three local manufacturers.
“The government and the arts council talk a lot about philanthropy but it is easier said than done,” Streets says. “It is all about relationships and what we have been doing with Gordon’s contacts is building those relationships and hearing from business about what we might need to do to engage with them in a meaningful way. I am finding myself with lots more 7am meetings.”
Early morning business breakfasts are a far cry from Streets’s early career at Museums Sheffield where she started as an assistant keeper of social history. She says this was a good way to get to know the city and to understand how its museums worked.
“At that time we did a bit of everything. It was before museums had a communications teams and often, as curators, we did our own press releases, talks and learning sessions. It was multi-tasking but it was a really good way of understanding all the different components of the job.”
Streets grew up in Selby, near Leeds, and came to Sheffield to study, although at the time she was not planning a career in museums. She ended up doing a history degree almost by accident and gradually became interested in museums through volunteer work at Kelham Island Museum, which is part of the Sheffield Industrial Museums Trust.
A curator called David Bostwick, whom Streets describes as “passionate, knowledgeable and can-do”, was a particular inspiration.
“He was very good at inspiring people and encouraging them to recognise that their story really mattered in Sheffield,” Streets says. “For me, as a kid who came from a background where going to museums was not part of what my family did, I could see how going to museums could be relevant to you no matter who you are, whether you come from a background where galleries, museums and theatres are part of your family life or not.
"You could see there was a relevance there and that is what I think got me excited and made me want to get a job in museums – I got a taste for something that was really quite special.”
Sheffield life
Streets also quickly grew to love Sheffield, even though it felt “dark, dingy and a bit sad” when she first arrived in the mid-1980s, a period when steel factories were shutting down and the mining industry was in chaos.
“It felt friendly and very safe and I grew to love the area that I stayed in as a student,” she says. “It’s still that way – people call you love and duck, there is something very nice about that.”
People say that Sheffield is a series of villages and Streets says there is something in this, with each community having a different identity that makes up the city as a whole.
Streets got to know many of the areas while she was a social history curator and went out and about to develop exhibitions and talk to people about objects they wanted to donate.
She has had a number of different roles in her 21 years at the service but the £17m redevelopment of Weston Park in 2006 was a particularly exciting time and helped cement her view about the importance of directly involving people in collections and the stories around them. Streets says the project manager, Sally Manuireva, played an important part.
Lottery success
“What she did very successfully was to put audiences at the heart of the project and to galvanise the teams around the vision that this would be a place for people and people would learn about their history,” says Streets.
“Because that galvanised us it was possible for us to cross over and to break down all those barriers about what curators do and what the learning team do and to reposition that.”
When Manuireva left to join National Museums Scotland, Streets got the job of director of learning and knowledge. Now she has the top job at Museums Sheffield her love of the city and her commitment to its museums should help her survive the challenging times ahead.
And things do seem to be looking up – Museums Sheffield recently found out that it had gained a first-round pass from the Heritage Lottery Fund to work up a £697,000 bid for a grant to revamp galleries at Weston Park Museum.
And this year it will present a number of big exhibitions, including one that will mark the centenary of the outbreak of the first world war, a touring Victoria and Albert Museum show about how Britain changed during the second world war, and an exhibition at the Graves Gallery on the work of Polish émigré artists who fled mainland Europe during the war.
“The thing that we have managed to hang on to, and I’m really proud of that, is that the quality of what we do is really excellent,” Streets says. “Yes, we are doing less, but the quality is really good, and there are some lovely things in the programme.
“I would not deny that there are challenges ahead, budget wise, like any other city, but I feel like we have gone through quite a big change and that sense of needing to revisit, review and make some changes has made the foundations stronger.”
Kim Streets at a glance
Kim Streets replaced Nick Dodd as the chief executive of Museums Sheffield in April 2012. Before that she was the director of learning and knowledge.
She represents Museums Sheffield on the University of Sheffield’s Cultural Engagement Group; Sheffield Contemporary Art Forum; and the city’s Cultural Consortium.
Streets first joined Museums Sheffield in 1991 as an assistant keeper of social history and was later the head of curation.
Museums Sheffield at a glance
Museums Sheffield operates four sites: Millennium Gallery; Weston Park Museum; Graves Gallery; and an out-of-town collections centre. The venues attracted more than 1.1 million visitors in 2012-13.
The organisation now employs about 78 staff and had an income of £4.9m in 2012-13.
In December last year Museums Sheffield won a first-round pass from the Heritage Lottery Fund to work up a bid for a grant to revamp galleries at Weston Park.
The initial development grant is for £49,500 and Museums Sheffield could receive up to £697,000 for delivery if its second stage bid is successful.
It has received an Arts Council England Strategic Support Fund grant of £1.2m for 2012-15
