‘Tangible action’: ACE and DCMS set out details of long-awaited plan for England’s museums

Arts Council England (ACE) and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) have started work on a new Museums Plan for England – a strategic vision for the sector that will cover the coming decade.

Delegates at the Museums Association's (MA) annual conference in Birmingham this week heard new details of the plan in a session led by Emmie Kell, the director of museums and cultural property at ACE, and Alice Dowswell, the deputy director of creative places and libraries at DCMS.

Kell told the conference that the title of the session, Shaping the Future Together, “isn't just a strapline”.

“We really mean it – it's the principle that is underpinning the entire programme,” she said.

“The future of museums in England will not be determined by one single organisation, it will be shaped by thousands of decisions made by museums, local authorities, funders, the government, communities, volunteers, trustees, partners, and audiences, and the museums plan is an attempt to create a shared sense of direction amidst all of that complexity.”

Kell acknowledged that many delegates attending the conference had been advocating for a museum strategy for a long time.

“I'm excited that now we are able to turn this long-held desire into tangible action,” she said.

The aim of the new “shared framework” will be to align policy, investment and collective action across the sector, rather than provide a strategy for any one organisation or type of museum.

An independent Museums Plan Taskforce, working with the sector, ACE and DCMS, will oversee the process.

Meanwhile, strategic inquiry groups will explore five proposed themes: public value and future audiences; collections, care and infrastructure; resilience, investment and operating models; people, skills and leadership; and place, partnership and devolution.

The work follows a recommendation in the recent review of ACE by Labour peer Margaret Hodge, which called on the arm’s-length funding body to work with DCMS and the museum sector to develop a strategic framework and long-term plan for museums.

It will be the first time England’s museum sector has had a single government-backed national strategy for museums equivalent to those in some other policy areas, the conference heard.

The Mendoza Review of England’s museums in 2017 was the “closest thing to a sector-wide strategic assessment”, said Kell. “But it was fundamentally a review with recommendations rather than a shared strategy for delivery.

“So whereas the Mendoza Review asked what does the sector need and how should governments support it, the museums plan is asking something different… it is asking what kind of museum sector do we want to see in England over the next decade, and what actions will help us to get there?”

She added: “It is not primarily a diagnostic exercise. Instead, it is an opportunity to create a long-term shared framework that can help guide decisions across the sector over time.

“In other words, we are moving from understanding today's challenges towards thinking about tomorrow's possibilities.”

Six principles underpinning the Museums Plan

• The plan will establish a shared long-term direction for museums in England;
• museums of every type and size, as well as the public, will have opportunities to shape it;
• engagement will be transparent – ACE will explain what they have heard, what is being taken forward, and why;
• the plan will align investment and spending priorities, but it is not a funding programme or spending review bid;
• it will be sector-led by an independent museums plan taskforce;
• publication is the beginning of a long-term programme of implementation, not the end of the work.

Transformation

The speakers shared the findings from preliminary consultation undertaken over the summer using the Government Futures Toolkit, which gathered views and insights from museum-sector representatives and leaders.

That consultation highlighted the interconnected nature of the challenges facing museums, including severe financial pressures, workforce capacity and the sustainability of current collections management models.

Kell said: “Many museum leaders believe the sector needs to become clearer and more confident about what museums are for, and museums feel their distinctiveness is not always understood.”

The consultation found that workforce challenges are becoming critical, with the sector “experiencing significant capacity pressures and risks losing talent, expertise and future leaders”.

Other themes included the growing importance of co-creation and shared decision-making, the need to embed digital transformation and AI more fully into museum practice, and the potential for museums to contribute more to civic, social and economic outcomes.

There was a strong feeling among museum leaders that fundamental transformation of the sector is needed, according to the consultation.

“There's a real desire for transformation, not incremental change,” Kell said. “Museum leaders are calling for bold generational thinking, including new funding approaches, partnerships and a reimagining of what museums can be.”

Museum leaders also highlighted emerging trends such as museums' growing role as social infrastructure supporting wellbeing, education and community cohesion; a shift from growth towards resilience as a strategic priority; and increasing collaboration through shared services, storage and regional partnerships.

They also identified a number of potential future developments, or “weak signals”, including greater community ownership and governance of collections, more active disposal and redistribution, and young people taking on formal decision-making roles within museums.

The five proposed strategic inquiry groups will explore these issues in greater depth, bringing together evidence and expertise from within and beyond the museum sector, as well as different perspectives on possible futures.

Kell said the aim is not to predict the future, but to “test assumptions, explore different possible futures, and identify priorities and choices that are robust across a range of different scenarios”.

Open recruitment for members of the groups is expected to begin shortly. This will seek representation from museums of different sizes and types across England, using data from the Annual Museum Survey to help ensure a representative range of participants.

Timeframe

Workshops will take place in person and online in early 2027. The programme will include a separate element of public engagement, while evidence from ACE's Community Voice Project, which is exploring what people value in their local communities, will also inform the process.

The aim is to publish the Museums Plan in autumn or winter 2027, following a year of consultation and development.

During the session, delegates raised questions about how the plan would be supported.

Sharon Heal, the director of the Museums Association, said a meaningful strategy needed to be accompanied by investment.

In response, Dowswell said: “This won't be a spending review bid or a kind of specific funding package. But yes, we expect it to shape spending priorities and spending context and the kind of way that we use it to signal what we think is important.”

She added: “How that should be funded is really important, and we also think that it needs to look at other sorts of funding and how those can come together and how we do that in a meaningful and sustainable way.”

Dowswell acknowledged the difficult financial circumstances facing museums. “It's about how we make the case for the things and what they can achieve and what is important,” she said.

Sector views

Following the session, Kell summarised the views of delegates, which were shared during the session via the polling platform, Menti.

Relevance was the most common future museums capability cited by delegates, said Kell, who said the data showed that “museums need to keep responding to changing public needs”. Many delegates also called for adaptability and courage.

Asked about their challenges and hopes for 2036, delegates repeatedly raised low pay, burnout and insecure work, indicating that “thriving museums depend on valued, stable and diverse teams”.

Meanwhile, collections care and infrastructure also came up as “both an urgent challenge and a hoped-for improvement, with better storage, access and responsible disposal seen as linked”.