ACE: 29 into 16 doesn’t go
The controversial choice of the 16 partners has left large areas without major grant funding
Now the dust has settled on Arts Council England’s (ACE) announcement of the final 16 Renaissance major grant partners, a clearer picture is emerging on how the panel made those difficult choices.
With a cut of 15% to shoulder – leaving a maximum £2m a year to hand out to each regional partner up to 2015 – the arts council’s rationale for selecting the winners from the 29 applicants was bound to cause controversy.
There was good news for services in London, Oxford, Cambridge and Manchester, but large areas of the country have been left without major grant funding.
No applications from the East Midlands were eligible, and bids from consortia in Colchester, Stoke-on-Trent and Hampshire also lost out.
Arguably, the biggest shock came in Yorkshire, where both Museums Sheffield and Hull Museums were turned down, despite big services and Designated collections.
As a former lead hub partner, Museums Sheffield stands to lose about 45 staff and £800,000 from its annual budget. It plans to appeal ACE’s decision, having missed out on £68,000 National Portfolio funding from the organisation last year.
The failure of the Renaissance bid led to an outcry from Sheffield politicians, and caused ACE to issue a statement explaining why the city had lost out to Leeds and York.
It said: “The museums offer in Yorkshire is particularly strong… we made difficult choices, against the principles and priorities that we had published in advance.”
Museums Sheffield’s feedback from ACE about its application provides insight into how bids were assessed.
The feedback, which the trust published online, shows that while Sheffield’s engagement with audiences and provision for children and young people were rated “outstanding”, it was less successful in meeting other criteria, such as leadership and diversity (“strong”), resilience (“met”) and excellence (“strong”).
ACE’s decision-making reflects the fact that excellence (particularly in relation to collections) appears to have been prioritised above public benefit, despite the latter being identified as a fundamental goal by regional institutions themselves in a Museums Association survey last year.
David Fleming, director of National Museums Liverpool and one of the architects of the original Renaissance programme, says the major partner portfolio shows that ACE has moved away from what was an “underpinning principle” of the scheme when it was established a decade ago.
“The programme’s initial aim was to create a web of excellent museum provision, not pockets of excellence,” he says. “I would like to have seen the process preceded by an analysis of variable population need rather than applications coming in based on excellence.”
Fleming says the new funding model leaves many cold spots, particularly in areas with high socio-economic deprivation, such as Hull, and rural areas with little museum provision.
He adds that people who live in places such as London are already “super-served” by museums and cultural activity.
Vicious circle
Other critics are concerned that, if the criteria continue to be prioritised in this way, museums that lost out now will fall too far behind the required standards to make viable bids when the next funding round opens in 2015.
ACE hopes that additional annual Renaissance streams such as the £15m strategic support fund and £3m museum development fund will go some way towards closing any geographical gaps, though the money will undoubtedly be spread much more thinly. Major partner museums are prohibited from applying to either fund.
In its first year, 2012-13, the strategic support fund will largely provide transitional funding to former hubs that missed out on major grant funding. Museums Sheffield says it will use this to cover the costs of honouring pre-booked exhibitions, scaling back services and making staff redundant.
Applications for subsequent strategic support funding will open in the autumn. Meanwhile, the museum development fund, which aids knowledge sharing and resilience, is to commit support over a three-year period and will be open for applications until 7 March.
West Midlands museum development officer (MDO) Glynis Powell says ACE’s approach to museum development is a “welcome retreat from short-term thinking”, but warns that moving existing responsibilities away from major partner museums too quickly could bring “messy collisions”, particularly where MDOs had built up local knowledge and connections.
In spite of the inevitable disappointments, ACE’s new museum portfolio is regarded as reasonably well balanced, given the tricky circumstances facing the sector. But for many unsuccessful major grant applicants, the next three years will bring a considerable reversal of the progress made over the past decade.
With a cut of 15% to shoulder – leaving a maximum £2m a year to hand out to each regional partner up to 2015 – the arts council’s rationale for selecting the winners from the 29 applicants was bound to cause controversy.
There was good news for services in London, Oxford, Cambridge and Manchester, but large areas of the country have been left without major grant funding.
No applications from the East Midlands were eligible, and bids from consortia in Colchester, Stoke-on-Trent and Hampshire also lost out.
Arguably, the biggest shock came in Yorkshire, where both Museums Sheffield and Hull Museums were turned down, despite big services and Designated collections.
As a former lead hub partner, Museums Sheffield stands to lose about 45 staff and £800,000 from its annual budget. It plans to appeal ACE’s decision, having missed out on £68,000 National Portfolio funding from the organisation last year.
The failure of the Renaissance bid led to an outcry from Sheffield politicians, and caused ACE to issue a statement explaining why the city had lost out to Leeds and York.
It said: “The museums offer in Yorkshire is particularly strong… we made difficult choices, against the principles and priorities that we had published in advance.”
Museums Sheffield’s feedback from ACE about its application provides insight into how bids were assessed.
The feedback, which the trust published online, shows that while Sheffield’s engagement with audiences and provision for children and young people were rated “outstanding”, it was less successful in meeting other criteria, such as leadership and diversity (“strong”), resilience (“met”) and excellence (“strong”).
ACE’s decision-making reflects the fact that excellence (particularly in relation to collections) appears to have been prioritised above public benefit, despite the latter being identified as a fundamental goal by regional institutions themselves in a Museums Association survey last year.
David Fleming, director of National Museums Liverpool and one of the architects of the original Renaissance programme, says the major partner portfolio shows that ACE has moved away from what was an “underpinning principle” of the scheme when it was established a decade ago.
“The programme’s initial aim was to create a web of excellent museum provision, not pockets of excellence,” he says. “I would like to have seen the process preceded by an analysis of variable population need rather than applications coming in based on excellence.”
Fleming says the new funding model leaves many cold spots, particularly in areas with high socio-economic deprivation, such as Hull, and rural areas with little museum provision.
He adds that people who live in places such as London are already “super-served” by museums and cultural activity.
Vicious circle
Other critics are concerned that, if the criteria continue to be prioritised in this way, museums that lost out now will fall too far behind the required standards to make viable bids when the next funding round opens in 2015.
ACE hopes that additional annual Renaissance streams such as the £15m strategic support fund and £3m museum development fund will go some way towards closing any geographical gaps, though the money will undoubtedly be spread much more thinly. Major partner museums are prohibited from applying to either fund.
In its first year, 2012-13, the strategic support fund will largely provide transitional funding to former hubs that missed out on major grant funding. Museums Sheffield says it will use this to cover the costs of honouring pre-booked exhibitions, scaling back services and making staff redundant.
Applications for subsequent strategic support funding will open in the autumn. Meanwhile, the museum development fund, which aids knowledge sharing and resilience, is to commit support over a three-year period and will be open for applications until 7 March.
West Midlands museum development officer (MDO) Glynis Powell says ACE’s approach to museum development is a “welcome retreat from short-term thinking”, but warns that moving existing responsibilities away from major partner museums too quickly could bring “messy collisions”, particularly where MDOs had built up local knowledge and connections.
In spite of the inevitable disappointments, ACE’s new museum portfolio is regarded as reasonably well balanced, given the tricky circumstances facing the sector. But for many unsuccessful major grant applicants, the next three years will bring a considerable reversal of the progress made over the past decade.