Military museums to diversify - Museums Association

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Military museums to diversify

A fall in MoD funding is forcing military museums to look at how to boost footfall and to develop new revenue streams. By Patrick Steel
Patrick Steel
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As the Ministry of Defence (MoD) scales back its funding, military museums are having to find new revenue streams and ways in which to broaden their audiences.

Andrew Lloyd, who was appointed the director of the Army Museums Ogilby Trust last month, says austerity and outreach are the two principal challenges that are facing army museums.

Following a review in 2012, the MoD plans to reduce the number of regimental museums it funds from 69 to 36 by 2030, with the first withdrawals in 2017-18, although Lloyd believes the timescale “may speed up”. Many military museums are also reliant on local authority funding, and face issues as councils cut back.

Regimental museums are increasingly looking at retail, catering and how to increase footfall. But as Bryan Snelling, the executive director of the Gordon Highlanders Museum in Aberdeen, points out, many are only just starting to implement changes.

The issue, says Lloyd, is how to reach those people who are not familiar with a regiment’s history – it is no longer good enough to fill cabinets with muskets and uniforms, you have to tell the story in a “more vital way”.

Maggie Appleton, who takes up a new role as the RAF Museum’s chief executive next month, would agree with this sentiment and, in part, her remit is to position the museum as a place about “the inspirational stories of RAF people”, rather than just as an aviation museum.

It is interesting in this context that Imperial War Museums – a national museum that receives grant-in-aid from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport rather than the MoD – shies away from describing itself as a military museum. A spokeswoman says: “We don’t really see ourselves as a military museum. We are a social history museum.”

There is a misconception, even within the museum sector, that military museums exist to recruit people, says Janice Murray, the director general of London’s National Army Museum, and there is a section of society that does not want to engage with any museum dealing with the military or war.

Lloyd thinks some regimental museums are considered an important recruiting tool by the MoD in areas of the UK where they are the only army presence.

But to survive, they need to do more to improve their resilience, remain relevant, and be an important part of communities, he says.

For Appleton at the RAF Museum this is, in part, about looking at the museum’s social impact and making the work it does with people with autism and dementia, and its apprenticeship scheme for young people, central to what the museum does.

At the National Army Museum, which is closed for redevelopment until 2016, it is about engaging people more personally, with an emphasis on digital media.

Digital is now a key part of the strategy, says Murray, and through digital learning, the museum hopes to move from being a single physical site to a nationwide provider of learning and outreach.

Snelling says that at the Gordon Highlanders Museum, which will lose its MoD funding in 2017, diversification into venue hire, retail and catering means that public funding now accounts for only 3% of its revenue.

“The bottom line is that the museum makes a profit most years,” he says.



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