Vox pop

“‘What’s good for the economy is good for the soul’, this is the message about the arts – including museums – that needs to ripple through the whole of society today.

Separating the arts into being a private matter of individual taste and only for those that understand culture serves to create arts as distinct from society.
The ‘arts ripple effect’ where the vibrancy and creativity of the arts attracts economic investment in places, creates thriving communities, and brings a wellbeing benefit to individuals is a strong argument for investment.

It is this argument that has resulted in the 5% settlement for the department for culture. However, this is a case that still needs to be made over the years to come.”


“I don’t yet know for sure what the settlement from government is, and it can be dangerous to listen to rumours.

I’m sure that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) will have argued in favour of maintaining funding for museums in particular, and the arts in general, but it’s Treasury that has to make the call.

If it is true that the forthcoming cuts won’t be as big as we were warned to plan for, then well done department for culture, that’s better news than we feared.

However, cuts are never, in truth, good news, and in my mind I always calculate on the one hand how many jobs are threatened by budget reductions; and on the other hand what will be the impact of cuts on the service we are able to provide to the public?”


“Although 5% will be painful on top of the savings we have all had to make over the last four years, it really is the best we can expect in the current climate.
I’m more concerned about the further year-on-year reduction in local authority funding on top of this cut, and how difficult it is to raise income in any attempt to fi ll the gaps while losing core resources.

The arts and museums sector still needs to do a lot more to change the way it works to have any chance of resilience in the future. We can’t paper over the cracks anymore, there is a need for more radical solutions as well as keeping our advocacy campaigns confident. We all know we can offer so much to social, education and economic agendas locally and nationally, and we need to keep demonstrating that!”


“Sadly, the answer is yes. However, the implications for those in receipt of DCMS money are substantial. With an average of cumulative 25% cuts, English national museums are approaching a tipping point where drastic and irreversible action is inevitable.

Money in grants from Arts Council England will be reduced and the numbers of major partner museums may be threatened from 2015 onward.

But the real issue is funding from local authorities. The pressure and expectations on local authorities is in inverse proportion to their funding, and non-statutory services such as culture will really suffer. For local authority museums just a 5% cut would be a blessing. They will be hit much harder. In this case we can expect museums to close.”