Sandy Nairne director, National Portrait Gallery
"Targets are not ruining museums; however they should not dominate them and they should not dominate the management of them. Museums are trying to do things well and be accountable - in that context targets make sense.
But if you are target-obsessed it is highly unlikely that you'll be a successful manager or have a successful organisation. Targets work where you don't have too many. You have to differentiate between organisational objectives and numerical targets - the number of visits tells you only roughly how successful the experience is.
The successful use of targets means the appropriate use of targets and recognising their limits."
Sara Selwood head of department of cultural policy and management, school of arts, City University
"It depends on the museum and what you mean by ruining them. It also a matter of what the targets are, how meaningful they are and to whom.
If you had museums with no targets there would be real problems about how museums are funded and by how much. However much the profession might want museums to simply be seen as valuable in their own right, it will be a problem if fewer people visit them.
One of the reasons that museums are so visited is that they a very visitor-orientated. This probably came about as a result of the government encouraging them to generate more income back in the 1980s and more recently to increase access. It's an over-simplification to say targets are ruining museums."
Roy Clare chief executive, Museums, Libraries and Archives Council
"What gets measured gets done and that's true across all kinds of activities. There has been a continuous policy thread since 1997 of national strategy being delivered locally. Funding agreements and targets have got much better over time. The funding agreement when I left the National Maritime Museum was an appropriate way of accounting for spending a £15m grant.
Where we've got more to do is in investing in research and evidence. Too frequently we hear that a programme has been a success because people came; but that's not good enough - we have to find out why they came. Research and evidence are our key priorities."
Emma Chaplin heritage and museums officer, Cheshire County Council
"In truth, local authority museums are not weighed down with centrally imposed performance indicators in the way that some services are.
The real issue is whether these targets are of any use in terms of improving services or advocacy. In this they are certainly limited - they count numbers (and at last recognise Accreditation) but not where museums add value in areas such as learning, community cohesion and regeneration - exactly where most high level local authority priorities lie.
In Cheshire we are piloting local targets for cultural services around increased skills, knowledge and self-confidence amongst users.
Targets aren't ruining local authority museums but the ones we have aren't the right ones to help us move forward."
"Targets are not ruining museums; however they should not dominate them and they should not dominate the management of them. Museums are trying to do things well and be accountable - in that context targets make sense.
But if you are target-obsessed it is highly unlikely that you'll be a successful manager or have a successful organisation. Targets work where you don't have too many. You have to differentiate between organisational objectives and numerical targets - the number of visits tells you only roughly how successful the experience is.
The successful use of targets means the appropriate use of targets and recognising their limits."
Sara Selwood head of department of cultural policy and management, school of arts, City University
"It depends on the museum and what you mean by ruining them. It also a matter of what the targets are, how meaningful they are and to whom.
If you had museums with no targets there would be real problems about how museums are funded and by how much. However much the profession might want museums to simply be seen as valuable in their own right, it will be a problem if fewer people visit them.
One of the reasons that museums are so visited is that they a very visitor-orientated. This probably came about as a result of the government encouraging them to generate more income back in the 1980s and more recently to increase access. It's an over-simplification to say targets are ruining museums."
Roy Clare chief executive, Museums, Libraries and Archives Council
"What gets measured gets done and that's true across all kinds of activities. There has been a continuous policy thread since 1997 of national strategy being delivered locally. Funding agreements and targets have got much better over time. The funding agreement when I left the National Maritime Museum was an appropriate way of accounting for spending a £15m grant.
Where we've got more to do is in investing in research and evidence. Too frequently we hear that a programme has been a success because people came; but that's not good enough - we have to find out why they came. Research and evidence are our key priorities."
Emma Chaplin heritage and museums officer, Cheshire County Council
"In truth, local authority museums are not weighed down with centrally imposed performance indicators in the way that some services are.
The real issue is whether these targets are of any use in terms of improving services or advocacy. In this they are certainly limited - they count numbers (and at last recognise Accreditation) but not where museums add value in areas such as learning, community cohesion and regeneration - exactly where most high level local authority priorities lie.
In Cheshire we are piloting local targets for cultural services around increased skills, knowledge and self-confidence amongst users.
Targets aren't ruining local authority museums but the ones we have aren't the right ones to help us move forward."
