Scotland’s museums spared worst as cuts bite the arts in 2023/24 budget

Scotland’s museums have been relatively sheltered from cuts affecting the wider arts and culture sector in the Scottish Government’s draft budget for 2023/24.

The arts funding body, Creative Scotland, is holding crisis talks this week after receiving a 10% funding cut to its grant-in-aid – but there was standstill funding or modest increases for museums in the indicative budget, which was announced last week.

Funding for cultural collections – the pot that includes National Museums Scotland and the development body, Museums Galleries Scotland – will fall by 2.3% to £87.9m next year, but this drop is related to decreases in the capital budget.

Revenue funding for National Museums Scotland will rise by 9.5% to £26m as a contribution towards public sector pay policy and other rising costs, while National Galleries Scotland will see its budget up 9.8% to £18m.

Museums Galleries Scotland is to receive the same core grant of £2.4m as it did in 2022/23 – amounting to a real-terms cut when soaring inflation is taken into account. However there will be a modest increase to its capital budget, which includes grants programme funding, to support work on the Empire, Slavery and Scotland’s Museums scheme.

The Museums Association’s policy officer, India Divers, called for further investment to help the museum sector cope with the cost-of-living crisis. She said: “This is a challenging time for museums as they face the perfect storm of long-term impacts from the pandemic combined with rising energy bills. Now more than ever we need further investment in culture and heritage to ensure that museums can continue to support their local communities and provide fair pay to their staff.”

The £7m cut to Creative Scotland, which supports freelance artists and sectors such as theatre, film and orchestra, could have a “devastating and potentially irreversible” impact on Scotland’s culture sector, Andy Arnold, the artistic director at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow, told The Scotsman over the weekend.

It comes just months after Iain Monro, the chief executive of Creative Scotland, warned parliament that one on four arts organisations were at risk of going bust this winter due to the cost-of-living crisis and the long-term impacts of the pandemic.   

The funding body has described the cut as “extremely disappointing”, but said it acknowledged the “challenging financial environment affecting all parts of public life and the difficult decisions the Scottish Government is making”.

The board of Creative Scotland is due to hold crisis talks this week to consider the implications of the budget. It is exploring the option of using National Lottery funding reserves to maintain standstill funding for its Regularly Funded Organisations in 2023/24.