Council introduces entry charge at Museum of Oxford despite objections

Oxford City Council has voted to introduce an entry charge at the Museum of Oxford.

From January, visitors will pay £4 for a standard ticket or £2 for concessions to enter the local history museum, which currently operates on a “pay what you can” model following a £2.8m refurbishment in 2021.

The new ticket price will include audio guide hire, which costs £3 at present.

The fee is intended to “maximise the benefits of the museum and secure its longer-term sustainability”. It comes at a time when the council’s budget is tight and footfall at the museum has fallen.  

Alex Hollingsworth, the cabinet member for planning and culture at the council, said the museum had been “undergoing a challenging time following the pandemic”.

He said: “We hope that by bringing in a small entrance fee, this will help visitors to have a more meaningful experience at the museum, while we continue to provide an informative and fun experience.”

However the plans have been criticised by local stakeholders. Layla Moran, the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, has described the entry fee as  “deeply disappointing”.

The Museum of Oxford Development Trust, which raises funds for the development and support of the museum, is also opposed to the charge. Writing on LinkedIn following the cabinet meeting, trustee David Juler said that there were “many reasons for why I, and fellow trustees, believe this is a mistake specifically for the [Museum of Oxford]”.

Juler said the plan carried “more risk than reward” and called for a “completely different approach to the one proposed”.  

Juler said one of his main concerns was that “after a £3m redevelopment, the museum was not designed in content, layout, vision etc. to be a charged for space. If it had been, it would look and feel very different”.

He highlighted that the majority of museums in the city “are free to enter, are larger, have bigger reach and marketing budgets and teams, etc” and said consultants had previously warned that charging will likely reduce visitor numbers by half.

Juler said the charge would be “setting [the museum] up to fail”.

“The wonderful River and Rowing Museum closed this year, it was a charged for site,” he said. “It is vastly different to [the Museum of Oxford], however to think that charging will resolve the challenges faced is absurd. The budget constraints for the museum are fabricated by the council. Rather than looking at what would be needed to run a successful museum, they are looking at the deficit for a department or area.”

He added that charging would be at odds with the “values and mission of the museum” and would create barriers for local people.

“We are supposed to be for the communities of Oxford, often overshadowed and unheard,” he said.

Juler said: “To me, an investment in the philanthropic activity of the museum, alongside an investment in marketing, is a far more productive move. It takes time to develop and build relationships to be successful – charging only provides an additional barrier to the types of funders who want to support community engagement, particularly within a local authority-run museum.”

A petition calling on the council to drop the plans has been signed by nearly 700 people.

The petition states: “This year the museum is celebrating its 50th year and during this time the museum has gone from strength to strength and is now a welcoming, friendly and free place which is full of an exciting range of social history objects, stories and interactive displays…

“The people of Oxford and its visitors should not have to pay to learn about their own history. Introducing an entrance fee will discourage many people from visiting the museum and, of course, will hit the poorest hardest.  

“Please sign this petition and help to persuade Oxford City Council to keep this gem of a museum free to the citizens of Oxford and to our many international visitors.”

A number of other civic museums have introduced entry fees this year in response to rising costs, including the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum in Coventry, which has brought in a standard fee of £5 for residents and £9 for non-residents, and Chelmsford Museum, which recently launched a new membership scheme and admission fee of £4.