MA Multimedia Journalism: Dissertation

Manchester Metropolitan University Faculty of Art and Humanities Department of Journalism, Information and Communications

‘The role of the museum is in danger of being devalued in society’

Katie Elizabeth Calvert MA

Dissertation submitted in part-fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Multimedia Journalism September 2017

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I. Acknowledgements

A huge thank you to everyone who has supported me whilst I have been writing this dissertation, without whom it would not exist.

Particular thanks go to my parents for their unconditional love and support, and for making me the person that I am, you have never stopped believing in me; to my mother, for the many hours she has spent proofreading; to my university lecturers, especially Deborah, Ellie and Mandy; to everyone who I have interviewed; and, finally, to Chris, for your support, your love and, for looking after me, in particular cooking me my tea, so that I could carry on studying!

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II. Abstract This dissertation presents an exploration of the importance of museums within British society, with a view to what society stands to lose when they close. It aims to answer this through a series of features examining how museums are funded and function; how the funding cuts are affecting museums and challenging their status in society; and how, socially and economically, museums are a great benefit to society. It has been important to write about and illustrate a wide range of museums in order to fully understand what a museum is and measure how many museums may potentially be affected by these funding cuts. Formal and informal interviews have given an authoritative insight into the purpose of the museum and the emotive issues which surround it. Supported by statistics, it is possible to conclude that museums can, and do, represent an integral part of society, but that funding is vital for museums if they are to continue to play a part in their local community. In addition, the perception of a museum remains one that is still viewed as relating to the white, middle-class, educated elite. To determine a clearer picture of just how many museums are affected and to enable a change in the perception of the museum, a much wider study involving many more museums would need to be undertaken.

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III. Author’s declaration

I declare that the work in this dissertation was carried out in accordance with the Regulations of the Manchester Metropolitan University. The work is original except where indicated by special reference in the text and no part of the dissertation has been submitted for any other degree. The dissertation has not been presented to any other University for examination either in the United Kingdom or elsewhere.

Signed:

Date:

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Table of Contents

I. Acknowledgements

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II. Abstract

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III. Author’s declaration

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Chapter One Introduction

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Chapter Two Background and Context with literature review

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Chapter Three Research Methods

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Chapter Four Findings

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Chapter Five Conclusion

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Chapter Six ‘Opener’

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Chapter Seven ‘Funding Profile’

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Chapter Eight ‘Safe Spaces’

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Chapter Nine ‘Regeneration’

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Chapter Ten ‘Hidden Museums’

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Reference List

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Bibliography

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Word Count: 19,642

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Chapter One Introduction

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From a very young age, museums play a part in many people’s lives, whether beginning on a school trip or during a summer holiday to escape the rain. Twenty years ago, New Labour introduced the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), replacing the Department for Heritage. According to Chris Smith, the Culture Secretary at the time, “heritage looks to the past. We look to the future" (Jeffries, 2007:online). Under his tenure, free entry to museums was introduced. But this bold period of ‘Cool Britannia’ has given way to recession and austerity, putting greater pressure on local authorities to decide where their reduced government funding will go. The 2010 Spending Review, under the coalition government, began an increased period of funding cuts to the culture sector, leading to museum closures. Whilst museums are still closing, and communities are being deprived, enthusiasm and support in the media, and by the public, appears to have waned.

However, the impact that they can make on society and in the local community that they serve is invaluable. Yet people do not appear to be aware of this or aware of why this is happening. Whilst cuts to other sectors, including the NHS or education, can be considered more serious than those to the culture sector, the fact that museums work alongside these vital sectors and do important work does need highlighting, especially during this increased period of political and social instability.

The following five features aim to show exactly what museums do and answer the four objectives.

The initial aim has been changed slightly, to broaden the viewpoint and prevent bias. Whereas, the first aim initially discussed challenging funding cuts, this has been reworded to ‘what society stands to lose when they close or charge an entrance fee.’ Free entry has been discussed in the opener piece, but more focus has been placed on the impact of the museums, rather than the importance of retaining their free status. The focus centred more on their role, why they should remain and how this could be achieved for each particular institution.

With regards to the objectives, these have largely been answered and remain relatively unchanged. Within each feature, ‘Objective 1’ is explored, but it is within 7

the ‘Hidden Museums’ feature that clearer differentiations can be made, with focus on local authority, independent, regimental and historical, and university museums.

The ‘Funding Profile’ focuses predominantly on one museum, giving a clear example of a local museum under threat, whilst the ‘Regeneration’ piece examines how one museum can impact favourably on the local economy, and includes references to other examples.

‘Objective 3’ is separated into two features. ‘Safe Spaces’ and ‘Regeneration’ clearly demonstrate how museums impact on society. Socially, in the case of ‘Safe Spaces’ and economically, in that of ‘Regeneration.’

Again, the objectives often run concurrently in the majority of the features.

‘Objective 4’ finds its focus in the ‘Funding Profile’. However, both the ‘Opener’ and ‘Safe Spaces’ clearly explore the affect that funding cuts are having.

‘Objective 2’ is explored throughout. There are references to the different ways that museums are funded, often with clarity for each museum discussed. With such a broad variety of museums profiled, it has been difficult to fully explain how each functions on a day-to-day basis. Many work differently, some more successfully, whilst others are in the process of learning, and each day can produce different challenges.

In this dissertation, each feature works in a subsequent order, with the ‘Opener’ piece introducing the reader to the idea of the important part that museums play and the difficulties they are facing, ending on a more light-hearted feature about just four of the many hidden museums across England. All are geographically diverse, being in Yorkshire, Cheshire, Shropshire and London.

Whilst the other three features could be read in any order, the ‘Funding Profile’ is placed second, followed by ‘Safe Spaces’ and, finally, ‘Regeneration’. This order fell into place naturally, with funding and economics book ending the socially driven feature.

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Aim An exploration of the importance of museums within British society, with a view to what society stands to lose when they close or charge an entrance fee.

Objectives 1. Explore what a museum is, with examples 2. Demonstrate an understanding of how museums are funded and function on a day-to-day basis 3. Demonstrate how museums positively impact on society, both socially and economically 4. Discuss the funding cuts affecting museums and how this is challenging their existence and status in society

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Chapter Two Background and context with literature review

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The public sphere is often viewed as vital for a democratic society. The museum is one of those public spheres that form part of a democracy. In Britain it is a safe space for contemplation and reflection, and open debate on a variety of topics.

Whilst this has been a long held view, the role of museums in our community has altered, as society changes.

According to Kostas Arvanitis, a Senior Lecturer in Museology at the University of Manchester, museums were once much more embedded in what people might want to experience in the museum. Nowadays, they have to justify their existence and “be more relevant to the concerns and interests of local communities” if they are to continue to be funded by the public purse. The fact that many museums are funded by local authorities means that they are painfully vulnerable to any funding cuts. The museums not funded this way feel pressure to prove their worth in order to gain funding from external organisations, such as Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) and Arts Council England.

The museum, as an inclusive space and universal educator, can have many roles in enriching the lives of its community. In this way it can prove its worth. However, to do so often requires extra funding. This funding, over the last seven years, has been slowly depleted, due to austerity measures first imposed by the coalition government after the 2010 Spending Review. The main aim of this dissertation and the angle taken is to show how the funding cuts are devaluing the part that museums play in society. To counter the funding cuts and demonstrate the value of museums, the features focus on the important roles that museums play in communities and why they must continue to do so.

When these funding cuts hit the cultural sector back in 2010, the media responded swiftly. Bold headlines detailing the damage that would be inflicted, included ‘Arts funding cut 30% in spending review’ (The Guardian, 2010:online) and ‘BBC Manchester museums ‘shocked’ by government cuts’ (BBC Manchester, 2010: online). This initial furore has given way to disengagement, which is understandable given the headline grabbing crisis that the NHS faces or the thousands of teachers leaving the education system. However, some of the ways in which the museum is 11

proving its worth, is through its work with these and other sectors. Because of the role it can play and the impact it can make on these sectors, it is important for the public to recognise this. Journalism is a tool to achieve this and these features can, hopefully, act as a means to highlight the plight of the museums.

One of the strongest proponents for the arts and culture, in a national sense, is The Guardian. It also dominates the online news market, taking fifth place amongst the top 10 most popular online news outlets (The Guardian, 2016). Newspaper sales for The Guardian may be falling, as are many across the industry (The Guardian, 2017), but its audience is far reaching online. Importantly, what the newspaper and its supplements publish, will always appear online. ‘The Long Read’, which is featured in their newspaper and in a dedicated section online, demonstrates how a publication can successfully make long feature articles, once only seen in print, engaging to online readers more used to shorter articles that are quick to read. To add to this, they publish a wide range of supplements, which all carry feature articles. The downside to choosing The Guardian as the publication with which to print these features, is its demographic. Throughout this set of features, the aim has been to showcase the inclusive nature of the museum, even though research has clearly indicated that they are still viewed as the domain of the white, middle-class, educated elite. The Guardian’s demographic is predominantly ABC1 (Statista, 2017), consumers who are better educated with higher paid jobs than those in lower social and economic groups (Cambridge Dictionary, no date). However, The Guardian’s audience is also progressive, with 6.9 million ‘Guardian culture’ readers per month.

In comparison, ‘Guardian Fashion’ attracts 541,000 monthly readers (The Guardian Advertising, no date:online).

The literature surrounding the importance of museums is widespread in journals.

Titles such as ‘The Changing contribution of cultural heritage to society’ (Museum International, 2011), ‘The Social benefits of heritage’ (Museum International, 2011), and ‘Museums, man and society’ (Museum International, 1981), demonstrate that museum professionals take the issues surrounding museums seriously. However, whilst these are available in the public domain, it is arguable how many people will have actually sought them out to read and educate themselves. The media, both 12

print and online, holds a special place for educating the masses on relevant topics.

Interestingly, following on from the 2010 Spending Review, The Guardian was one such publication to increasingly highlight the problem of drastic funding cuts to the culture sector. However, as previously stated, this dominance in the public eye has quickly dissipated. The public has a right to be told that museums are more than frivolous commodities and understand the role that they could continue to have in the future, if they are able to prosper.

In Museum of the Future, Ute Meta Bauer describes how the museum “is both local and international...it is a key landmark” (2014:32) and “it is more than a tourist attraction; it plays an important role in the community,” (2014:32), giving further clarity to the aim of this dissertation. Alongside this she describes how they “enable one to look back in history, to look both backward and forward” (2014:32) indicating that as an institution it can be at the epicentre of a community, since, according to Klaus Biesenbach, “the museum should be the place in every city where all inhabitants congregate, have an excuse to talk about important things” (2014:45).

Quotes such as these by museum professionals, began the initial research of how to construct the opener piece and convey the importance of museums. This study made it imperative to contact a museum academic with expert knowledge, which was achieved through contact with Arvanitis. The Museums Association was a very relevant website to discover and scour information for the opener piece and to impact other features with their statistics. Their ‘frequently asked questions’ page succinctly answered brief queries, such as the number of museums in the country and the many different types of museums (Museums Association, no date). As the world’s first museum association, they are a trusted organisation.

Over last few years, the media has been dominated by the Syrian civil war, and one of the most interesting pieces of literature to arise from this was the global sadness at the destruction of ancient artefacts. “Alongside the massive, rising death toll in territories controlled by the Islamic State, one of the major casualties has been a trove of ancient treasures that are part of the Middle East's cultural heritage” 13

(Poggioli, 2016:online). It may seem a divisive comparison to make, since the devastation of Syria is in no way similar to Britain, except for the way in which people attach themselves to history and meaningful objects. The literature around this informed the belief that museums and history do play a very important part in lives across the globe and are a means of bringing people of different backgrounds together in a safe space.

Further informing this piece was the literature surrounding free museums. This had been a key factor in the proposal, but it had given way to the importance that museums play in society, rather than focusing on creating free entry for all museums. Whilst Britain is unique in its role as a purveyor of free entrance to museums, the subject is far from simple. As Dr Stephen Deuchar states, “a great many UK museums do already charge for basic admission to see their collections: these are usually the ones that don’t receive any public funding. Some local authority and/or Arts Council-funded museums offer free admission and others do not...The spectrum, then, is broad.” (2015:online) There is the belief, by some, that if museums charged an entrance fee then monetary issues would be solved. But this is a misconception according to Stephen Deuchar. “In fact, charging at the door can have two immediate consequences: it can discourage many people from coming in at all, and so visitor numbers are invariably much smaller than they otherwise would be, and, of course, it simply reduces the amount of money that visitors have left in their pockets to spend in the shop or café.” (2015:online) Clearly, each museum must be looked at separately to decide whether charging an entrance fee or not is the correct course of action for them.

Literature discussed in the proposal led to the question, who are museums perceived to represent, becoming a topic of discussion with interviewees. Whilst Barrett, in Museums and the Public Sphere, discussed museums as “open, democratic institutions for and of “the people”” (2011:1), Watson, in Museums and their communities, argued that “they [museums] are understood to represent those who have privileges in society i.e. the educated, the relatively wealthy, those who are in control either through their status, such as museum owners, governors, trustees, professionals and consultants, or through their direct political power, such 14

as elected councillors” (2007:10). It has been important to discuss this through both formal and informal interviews and recognise this issue in the features, however, the hope is that they demonstrate Barrett’s inclusive viewpoint.

Some of the most important and illuminating literature studied was that which informed the ‘Safe Spaces’ feature. Daniel Baumann’s belief that museums should “provide challenges, knowledge and pleasure” (2014:38) and Zoe Butt’s remark that museums “should provide spaces for contemplation and participation. Both are fundamental to the experience of culture” (2014:54), were both echoed by interviewees.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing is a concise report put together by a considerable group of important individuals, who highlight the culture sectors impressive evidence for helping to improve a person’s wellbeing.

They question “why the arts, as an enrichment of human experience, have, until now, largely been neglected” (2017:p.4). This point of view enhances the outlook of this dissertation that museums, as part of the culture sector, have not been clearly recognised for the important role that they can play in society. Further to this, the report addresses how “the arts can be enlisted to assist in addressing a number of difficult and pressing policy challenges” (2017:p.5). These include, but are not inclusive of, “helping frail and older people stay healthy and independent”; “enabling patients to take a more active role in their own health and care”; “enhancing mental healthcare”; and “mitigating social isolation and loneliness” (2017:p.5). The ‘Safe Spaces’ feature touches on a number of these points.

There a number of other studies that also informed this feature, including The Happy Museum Project and the Five Ways to Wellbeing. The former re-imagines the museum’s purpose as a steward of people, place and planet, in order to create a more sustainable future. This was an extensive study that still continues today. The Five Ways to Wellbeing, although not directly related to museums, highlights how museums can take on this idea of wellbeing and incorporate it into their existence.

The fourth way is ‘Learn’, which states that “continued learning through life

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enhances self-esteem and encourages social interaction” (2010:online). As a learning space, the museum can contribute to that.

Press releases were a useful tool for the ‘Regeneration’ feature. The Hepworth Wakefield has carefully detailed its many successes over the past seven years. A press release dated 28 September 2011 boasts of “a sensational summer for the Hepworth Wakefield” and of “attracting visitors from across the world as well as from Yorkshire and other parts of the UK” (2011:online). This particular press release further details many figures including visitor numbers and the amount, on average, spent by each visitor. Another press release includes the statement that “The Hepworth Wakefield has become one of Britain’s most successful art galleries” (2012:online), whilst their media pack for 2016 features an entire section called ‘Wakefield Regeneration’. Within this, they explain the role that the gallery has had in regenerating the area including “contributing £20 million to the local economy” and “the gallery has helped to secure significant private sector investment to restore the listed mills and warehouses” (2016:online). They believe that “the reputation and success of The Hepworth Wakefield has shown the value of cultureled regeneration” (2016:online), something which the local council are in agreement on. They explain that “Wakefield could become the ‘creative hub of the North” (2016:online).

Although this literature is biased towards that particular museum, there have been a number of other studies that demonstrate just how successful, and sometimes unsuccessful, museums can be in creating regeneration. Back in 2008, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, an independent organisation working to inspire social change through research, policy and practice, published a report on whether museums can be a potent force in social and urban regeneration. One key point made examines how “economic regeneration can vary greatly, depending on the nature of the communities, what investment regenerating authorities are prepared to make in museums, and town planning” (2008:online). Also included are a number of case studies which attempt to provide answers.

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A further study looks at the conditions for the effectiveness of museums in urban regeneration (2009:online). As well as looking at successes, such as Tate Modern London and Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, it details failures. This piece of literature directly impacted the ‘Regeneration’ feature through its use of successful and unsuccessful examples of museums as a force to regenerate an area.

Since much of the ‘Funding Profile’ was informed by a formal interview, it was important to discover information on losses incurred by local museums due to funding cuts. These came in the form of local and regional newspaper articles in Lancashire, for example, where five museums have closed (Lancashire Post, 2016), and Birmingham, where “it is feared nine centres could face the axe” (Birmingham Mail, 2017:online). Although not academic, these online news outlets addressed how local areas are responding to funding cuts to their cultural sectors.

Barrett, in Museums and the Public Sphere, asks an important question. “To what, and to whom, are they [museums] relevant?” (2011:1). Much of the academic literature recognises the open, inclusive space that museums can be, and are. But much of what is openly available and easily accessible to the public is failing to succinctly make this case and change perceptions. If the community they serve is unaware of the vital role the museum can play, then museums are in danger of being devalued in society. These features hope to expand on the knowledge that is already out in the public domain, by making a strong case for their necessity to the public and to prevent any further funding cuts.

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Chapter Three Research methods

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Both qualitative and quantitative research methods have informed this dissertation.

Qualitative research was completed through a series of interviews, whilst, for quantitative research statistics were used to back up evidence and opinions.

Research Skills for Journalists (2016), by Vanessa Edwards, details eight different forms of interview. Quite a few were irrelevant for this dissertation, including ‘sport interview’, ‘key player’ and ‘celebrity’. The majority of interviewees were experts in the subject of museums. Vanessa Edwards explains that this type of interview “requires considerable preparation” and that “one of the biggest challenges when speaking to expert interviewees is the depth and complexity of their knowledge” (2016 p.132). This is true of the expert interview which took place with Kostas Arvanitis, whose background and knowledge tended to answer more than was required, requiring plenty of editing for the reader to understand. Because of this, the interview was useful for a number of features.

Case study interviews were also undertaken. Whilst the interview questions were never relayed to any of the interviewees, it was useful to let them know of the subject matter that was to be discussed with some background. Edwards says it is worthwhile sharing some information in advance for this type of interview since “it can help them [interviewee] to marshal their thoughts and express their ideas in advance” (2016 p.132). Edwards also advises that to get great material “take someone to a location that’s relevant to your story” (2016 p.132). In order to ‘colour’ each feature, the majority of interviews took place within museums. Ruth Quinn, Museum Assistant at the Mental Health Museum in Wakefield, answered questions whilst walking around the museum space, before giving a tour of the exhibitions on display. Wendy Gallagher, Arts and Health Coordinator at The Whitworth Gallery in Manchester, did very much the same in the ‘Beyond Dementia’ exhibition. Likewise, an interview with Ann Denham, Chair of the Friends of Tolson at Tolson Memorial Museum, took place in the museum that she is trying to save.

The interview with Ann Denham helped form a profile piece on Tolson Museum, highlighting the plight of the local museum and the impact that it has on the 19

community. The initial idea of a funding profile piece had been to contact a donor.

Besides difficulties with contacting the relevant individual, a profile on Tolson was deemed to be more relatable. Denham, as a local resident, with an in depth knowledge of Tolson, and as a former councillor, was a solid choice of interviewee.

To balance out her thoughts and knowledge of what was, and is, happening to Tolson, contact was made with the local council, Kirklees. Comment was received via a PDF of council minutes, rather than by interview, but this sufficed when no further contact could be acquired.

The basis of the ‘Safe Spaces’ feature also changed, having initially been solely focused on mental health. A personal take by someone other than the writer had been hoped for; however, this contact eventually opted out and declined to take part for their own personal reasons. This coincided with the discovery of the ‘Beyond Dementia’ exhibition at The Whitworth. It became appropriate to broaden the article in order to discuss two very relevant topics, and further highlight the positive impact museums can have on society. These interviewees, Wendy and Ruth, were also helpful in passing on relevant studies, including the Happy Museum Project and The All Party Parliamentary Group for Arts, Health and Wellbeing.

Only one interview was conducted via telephone, due to distance and time. Isabel Wilson, Senior Manager for the Collections & Museum Programmes at Arts Council England, was contacted after a previous contact in the organisation was unavailable. The rest of the interviews were face-to-face and formal.

In order to select all of the above interviewees, a spreadsheet was completed.

Within this spreadsheet, columns listed employment titles, contact addresses, when contact had been made, replies, and if any follow up contact had been made. This type of preparation was essential for making sure that the high volume of potential interviewees was contacted.

Informal interviews took place with museum volunteers and employees when visiting museums to carry out research. These included The Jewish Museum, The Greater Manchester Police Museum and Archive, Stockport Museum and The 20

Huddersfield Art Gallery. In total, ten museums across Yorkshire, Manchester and Cheshire were visited for this type of research purposes. This was undertaken for a number of reasons. To begin with, museums were visited at different times of the day, and on different days in order to observe visitors. This study is clearly too narrow to get a true representation but it helped to initiate the research process, leading to informal interviews with staff and volunteers. These informal interviews provided information on the various ways that museums are funded, the many ways that they operate and a greater understanding of the many types of museums, from local authority to university. These informal interviews have not necessarily informed the feature articles directly, but they have added further depth to the research. The exception to this is the ‘Hidden Museums’ feature, where research and informal interviewing of staff and volunteers was required to take place in the museum, experiencing the surroundings in order to write a review of each of these hidden gems across England.

Some potential interviewees could only comment via email. The Museums Association answered some questions via this method, and unfortunately, The Hepworth Wakefield was only available via email. Jessica Kendal, a Visitor Experience Assistant at the gallery, was the only individual available. As an employee and a local, she was able to give both points of view. The ‘Regeneration’ piece was initially focused entirely on the gallery, but due to the difficulty of getting a strong interview, the piece was broadened to discuss more of the north south divide in the culture sector.

For the few that could not be contacted at all and no reply was received, social media was used as a tool to discover if comment had been made about the relevant subject matter. This was successful with the Labour MP for Huddersfield, Barry Sheerman. He posted a video in support of Tolson Memorial Museum on Twitter, which has been referenced in the ‘Funding Profile’ feature article.

The interviews and primary research in museums created the main focus for the features. Quantitative research in the form of statistics has helped to flesh out the features and back up thoughts and opinions. Statistics on visitor numbers and the 21

economy were vital for the ‘Regeneration’ feature. In order to fully understand the divide between the North and the South of England, in economic terms, and between London and the North, statistics make those points even clearer.

Furthermore, the same can be said for mental health and dementia statistics, which were imperative for demonstrating the extent of these issues and how museums can be an important factor in helping alleviate them in the community. Kirklees funding cuts to Tolson Museum coloured the ‘Funding Profile’. Without these statistics it would be difficult to understand just how much under threat a local museum, such as Tolson, is, and just how drastically funding is being cut.

The Museums Association was helpful for detailing how many museums have closed since 2010, and in which areas, as well as being a good basis for many of the topics being discussed. These basic facts have been important elements of research to give credence to this journalistic work.

Added to all of this, studies by a number of institutions, including the Museums Association, Arts Council England and all-party parliamentary groups were read to give further background and, also, to see what information was already out in the public domain. How many of these wordy documents have been read by the general public is open to speculation, however.

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Chapter Four Findings

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Of the key findings that came to light, some were as expected and were required to write the features; others were surprising and changed the course of advanced planning.

Apart from statistics, the majority of the key findings were discovered in the interviews that took place. These firsthand accounts often led to further discoveries. Kostas Arvanitis, Senior Lecturer in Museology at the University of Manchester, discussed the role that museums play in society. He surmised that museums are “now are trying to be more relevant to the concerns and interests of local communities, much more than they used to be, and that was particularly because they needed to justify their presence, their existence to those communities, the deal was if museums are to be funded by the public purse, why should they be prioritised over other institutions or other areas of social life.” He agrees that this has been happening over the last 20 years, since New Labour were elected. Prior to this “the historical museum, even 30 or 40 years ago, [wasn’t] expected to have that kind of role in society, it was much more embedded in what people might want to experience in the museum.” Kostas’ academic background and intense knowledge of the industry, leads credence to the understanding that museums do play a part in communities and that, with further closures, communities may be deprived. As Kostas also says, “they are part of society, rather than outside of it.” As one of the first interviews, this supported the ‘aim’ of the dissertation. His opinion sets out the basis for the exploration of how important they are in society, before moving onto the ‘Objectives’ particularly ‘Objectives 3 and 4’. Does the role museums play in society positively impact on society and will funding cuts challenge the museums existence in society?

Fundamentally, the museum, is often described as a building in which artefacts are displayed. During the course of research, it has been important to discover how else a museum can be described. A key finding, and a surprise, was that communities don’t have to come to the museum; the museum can be brought to them. From the Jewish Museum in Manchester, volunteers will visit schools to give talks about the museum. They stated that they had seen a drop in school visits over the last couple of years, which came as no surprise since funding has been cut in education.

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However, amongst other museum professionals that were spoken to, these education funding cuts had not been noted as a problem. Schoolchildren are not the only ones who can benefit from outreach work. The museum also conducts tours within the Jewish community, again using volunteers, on condition that the group brings their own mode of transport. These include ‘Beyond the Bagel’, a tour of Jewish food, and ‘Jewish Experience’, which involves experiencing the Jewish way of life by visiting venues such as clubs and synagogues. Whilst there is a lot to learn inside the museum, there is the added benefit of being able to take the museum story out into the community.

Besides this community outreach, an even deeper societal benefit can be found in the work that museums do with hospital patients. The Mental Health Museum in Wakefield, which was a surprise discovery, works closely with service users, those individuals with mental health issues staying in the hospital or as out patients, where the museum is situated. Not only did the museum consult with these patients when the museum was reopened in 2014, they have since continued to work closely with them, taking the museum and programmes of events out to them.

As Ruth Quinn, the museum assistant, explained, “we’ve put together a series of activity boxes which make up our informal learning programme, they’re loosely based on heritage but they’re more based on wellbeing,” which they will take out to the service users. This is especially vital because “for some people, at their stage in recovery, visiting a museum all about the history of mental health, might not be the best thing for them. The museum shows the dark and light but there is a lot of heavy history in there which might be quite difficult for some people, so we wanted to create some activities that could boost well-being.” This clearly illustrates ‘Objectives 1-3’ well and it is a prime example of a uniquely placed museum. Its dayto-day running is different to the traditional museum and it demonstrates the positive impact it can have on society.

The Whitworth Art Gallery’s outreach work also identifies closely with these objectives. Wendy Gallagher, Arts and Health Coordinator at The Whitworth Gallery, works closely with the local hospital. Over the past eight years she and her team have worked with stroke victims, cancer patients and the elderly, with their 25

most recent project and legacy involving dementia sufferers. Importantly, Gallagher explained what the work had taught them and how they had improved this service.

“It was very difficult when we were parachuted in on a particular day, on a particular afternoon trying to work with patients.” They have been able to amend this with funding from the hospital. Rather surprisingly, when considering the strains on the NHS, “the head of nursing recognised the value that the art brought to the environment of the patients, and moved some of her funding [to create 10 posts].” These therapeutic activity coordinators are there every day, all week, getting to know the patients better. The Whitworth trains them to deliver the programmes. Ultimately, with this work, including the ‘Beyond Dementia’ exhibition, which informed one of the features, the aim is not only to create a project, but to leave a legacy.

Further to this, the detail with which Gallagher explained the ‘Beyond Dementia’ exhibition led to it becoming a main focus of the ‘Safe Spaces’ piece and relates directly to ‘Objective 3’, demonstrating clearly how museums impact positively on society.

Gallagher summed up these key discoveries of the importance of museums and how they impact on society positively. “It’s important for organisations like ourselves to do outreach work because you can do fancy marketing but to be honest its rude, it’s just basic manners if you want a new group to come that may have issues around not feeling confident, or it’s the transport [you have to get the museum out to the community].” It is clear from this that Gallagher and The Whitworth recognise the impact they can have on the community, but they must not simply expect the community to come to them, they see their role as existing within the community.

Having discussed free entry in the ‘aim’ and since funding is a fundamental issue, clearly pointed out in ‘Objectives 2 and 4’, a discussion about free entry and whether it should be universal was undertaken with all the interviewees and museum professionals that were approached. The findings were not clear cut.

There was a general agreement that free entry was a good thing, particularly for 26

local museums, but that, for those with a more businesslike approach which one would not visit regularly, an entry fee was fine. Furthermore, evidence and opinion pointed towards the fact that abolishing free entry does not necessarily bring in more money and vice versa. In the summer of 2016, The Jewish Museum trialled free entry. Normally they charge a small fee, which gives you free access for the rest of the year. Whilst visitor numbers increased, they didn’t necessarily spend any more money, and funding remained roughly equal. This theme ran throughout a number of the features, but it also meant that less focus was placed on the ‘aims’ statement, ‘what society stands to lose when...they charge’, and instead the focus was more on ‘what society stands to lose when they close.’

There was also universal agreement with interviewees and museum professionals that museums are still viewed as places for the white, middle-class, educated elite.

Whilst none of the objectives directly relate to this point, it was important to discuss them because these features aim to show the importance of the museum in a society that is diverse and, therefore, show the museum’s inclusiveness. The hope is that these features go some way towards establishing their inclusivity.

To keep these features relevant to today and retain this relevance into the future, research was carried out on the potential effect Brexit could have. Financially, the result is not encouraging; hence it has been briefly discussed in the opener as it relates to ‘objective 4’. When questioning some interviewees, their answers were understandably vague, given the fact that the exact outcome is currently unknown.

In the future, this could become a pivotal finding to discuss in a set of articles once Brexit has been implemented and the results of it have had time to settle.

Regarding statistics, key findings were discovered about mental health, dementia and the regeneration of Wakefield, triggered by the development of The Hepworth Wakefield. The discoveries around mental health and dementia were of no surprise; however, they were vital for the ‘Safe Spaces’ feature and for informing ‘Objective 3’, by demonstrating why museums are important socially. However, the statistics surrounding The Hepworth Wakefield were a welcome surprise. In a

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rundown Northern city, it is refreshing to see how art and culture can directly impact the local economy, which also answers ‘Objective 3’.

Having made the decision to profile Tolson Museum, a local authority museum in Huddersfield, it was a surprise to discover that its closure was not as imminent as had been portrayed in the media. However, the aim of the feature to discuss the funding cuts befalling the museum and how this could affect the local community (‘Objective 4’) did not significantly alter, since the possibility of future closure remains. But it was an important revelation to discover that the story was more complicated than had been initially thought.

Furthermore, was the belief by Arvanitis that museums are not as under threat as they may appear. “I don’t see them going anywhere as an institution, whether some museums close or not that happens all the time, museums open and close all the time, and yes there are periods of time when more museums close down than they open.” This view could disregard the whole point of the dissertation, but it is one viewpoint in a multitude of others, and he is not incorrect to surmise that museums will not disappear as an institution simply because of funding cuts. He appears to regard the situation as temporary, even though this has been occurring for over seven years. The ‘Opener’ feature makes clear that of the 2,000 plus museums that exist, it is still a relatively small number of museums, 64 to be precise, that have closed since 2010. Research has revealed, however, that many, even if they do not face imminent closure, do still face many pressures, and it is worth exploring these pressures and the impact museums make on society, socially and economically (‘Objective 3’), to illustrate what could be lost if closures do continue.

However, in contrast to this, through an interview, it was discovered that the Arts Council England and the Museums Association were in the process of putting together a guide on how to ethically and legally close a museum. This clearly shows that the possibility of closure is a worry to museum professionals. Isabel Wilson, Senior Manager of the Collections & Museum Programmes at Arts Council England, further recognised the possible negative implications it could have, “we don’t want

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it to be used as a handbook on how to shut down somewhere easily... has to be very carefully branded and carefully described.”

Finally, an understanding of the various different types of museums fed well into ‘Objective 1’ and the ‘Hidden Museums’ feature. This variety, within the fifth feature, created an interesting piece and a summary to the previous four features.

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Chapter Five Conclusion

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From the beginning of this dissertation, the aim has been to highlight the importance that museums play in society, and fulfil the objectives. By showing the social and economic impact of the museum, through relevant topics, this has been achieved. In addition, museums are very varied institutions, and, according to Kostas Arvanitis, Senior Lecturer in Museology at the University of Manchester, “there isn’t a museum in the world that is designed in the way that people use it.

One needs to accept that, embrace it, and move forward.” But a number of different types of museums, including university museums, art museums, local authority, independent and heritage museums have been discussed across all of the features. It has been important to keep in mind the museum sphere throughout all of the features and never venture too far from the current discussion that museums are closely involved in, including government cuts and Brexit.

This dissertation has generally avoided ethical issues, but it was important to deal with the ‘Safe Spaces’ feature sensitively, due to its subject matter. This created more issues when, originally, a personal account was to be used. Ultimately, the interviewees from the museums had a clear understanding of how to deal with this sensitive matter and all snippets of personal account came from the author.

Obtaining the correct contacts was potentially the most difficult aspect, creating a change of direction for some of the features. However, this has not prevented the features from answering the objectives and creating worthwhile articles. More time may have prevented this difficulty and the most important lesson learnt is to make contact with the relevant individuals on an immediate basis.

This subject matter will stay relevant for some time. Societal divisions are not disappearing in the near future, nor are the funding cuts. The most relevant topic at present is Brexit and an increase in hate crime across the country. The result of Brexit is some way off and how this will affect museums is still unknown, but it should be explored. Furthermore, the role museums can play in the local community to prevent further societal divisions and to help educate individuals should continue to be highlighted and discussed. They can only do this, however, if funding cuts do not become worse. It will be interesting to see the outcome of the 31

funding cuts and austerity, which the government has undertaken, and whether the museum will ultimately revert back to the trusted and well respected institution that it was 20 years ago.

Change is inevitable and, whilst all institutions and resources are constantly under review, each taking its turn in the spotlight, museums remain an invaluable, important resource to society and are as relevant today as they have always been.

Some retain their original character, but many more have grown and adapted to modern expectations of them. Others have been custom built to fulfil those expectations and to create new opportunities around them.

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Chapter Six ‘Opener’ feature article

The cultural chaos of the funding cuts to museums – why museums are integral to society

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When Isis captured the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, in the summer of 2015, no one could have imagined the scenes of sheer devastation that were about to unfold. The world could only stand by and look on as Isis militants destroyed temples and statues, some dating back more than 1,000 years. People questioned why the world could collectively express such sincere sadness at the annihilation of objects in equal measure to the chemical gassing of thousands of Syrian children.

Undoubtedly, the massacre of children is monstrous and morally outweighs the destruction of mere artefacts, yet these artefacts held the histories of long-dead Syrians and were the embodiment of their ancestry.

Britain is worlds apart from these events in Syria. The destruction, in minutes, of a history built up over thousands of years is difficult to understand. With so much of its rich and vibrant history gone, tourists to Syria, and Syrians themselves, are left only with memories and photographs to evoke past glories.

This devastation bears little comparison to the funding cuts befalling Britain’s museums and galleries. But there is a parallel here, since funding cuts could lead to a vast amount of the history and knowledge in our British museums being, not irretrievably lost, but unavailable to the public. The pain and sadness expressed by the world at Syria’s loss, suggests the importance of preserving our history, and what better space than within the museum sphere. As Alistair Brown, Policy Officer at the Museums Association (MA), says, “they preserve, protect and promote the nation’s collective memory, knowledge and history.”

It is estimated that there are around 2,500 museums in the UK, ranging from National Museums and local authority museums, to independent and university museums. The world’s oldest museum dates back to 530BC, in Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq. In the UK, the Royal Armouries at the Tower of London was opened to the public in 1660, making it the oldest museum in Britain. But the common concept of museums today relates back to the introduction of the public museum in the Victorian period. Opened in 1860, Vernon Park Museum was the first public museum to open in Stockport, and featured virtually everything that there was to see in the world. Local MP’s James Kershaw and Benjamin Smith, who 34

founded the museum, held the strong Victorian belief that they could contribute to the development of the town by providing an institution that would improve health, education, and the moral and religious outlook of the people. They were convinced that the museum was the best way to do this. Over the course of the next hundred years museums changed very little. According to Kostas Arvanitis, a Senior Lecturer in Museology at the University of Manchester, the role of the museum has changed only recently. “We are now taking for granted that museums are for society, that museums are for the community, but that’s not what it used to be,” Arvanitis says.

“If we go back in history, even just 30 or 40 years ago, museums weren’t expected to have that kind of role in society, it was much more embedded in what people might want to experience in the museum.

“It is now common place for museums to create and offer things that target specific parts of society, or they try to cater for audiences that are local, or that have a vested interest in the museum.

“They try to get both existing visitors and also new audiences, which is so they can make the case that they are a part of that society, rather than outside of it.”

A lot of these changes have taken place since the creation of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), in July 1997, under New Labour, following on from their landslide victory just two months previously. At the time, the creation of this department emphasised the importance of the cultural sector politically, economically and socially. Yet fast forward 20 years to 2017, when people are either celebrating or deriding New Labour, and our culture and heritage, both locally and nationally, are in danger of being totally disregarded.

For almost a decade now, austerity has brought crippling funding cuts to local authorities, which means that cuts to the cultural sector are a depressing inevitability. The MA, the oldest museums association in the world, has been documenting the health of the museum sector since 2011. Their 2017 analysis has noted that 64 museums have closed during this period, the majority as a result of reduced public funding. That’s despite the fact that almost half of all museums 35

report a year-on-year increase in visitor numbers. Added to that, staffing levels are uneven across the sector, with 26% of local authority museums and 55% of National Museums reporting staff cuts.

It’s easy to look at those figures and deduce that they aren’t too shocking or important when compared with the cuts facing our education or healthcare systems. Undoubtedly, museums aren’t in the centre of the same sort of crisis befalling the NHS. But the benefits that museums, when managed correctly, can bring to their local community and to their surroundings can be tenfold. “The potential for museums to contribute across a range of public policy agendas – culture, science, education, tourism, immigration, hate crime, international trade and diplomacy, health and social services – is substantial,” says Brown. By benefitting members of the community around them they can benefit many groups such as hospital patients, schoolchildren, the old and the lonely.

The museum isn’t simply a building, within which a few collections are exhibited, remaining static for years, seeped in that traditional museum smell, old and musty.

Instead, as defined by the MA, they “enable people to explore collections for inspiration, learning and enjoyment [that] collect, safeguard and make accessible artefacts and specimens...for society.” This fluid interpretation means that museum professionals can reach out to the community without remaining in the museum space. Visiting patients and taking the museum into the classrooms can make the museum inclusive for all. But all of this costs money.

Since 2001, National Museums, those which are owned and operated by the state, have been free, and many others have followed suit. But since the onset of austerity, whether or not museums should remain free has continued to be debated.

Wendy Gallagher, Art and Health Coordinator at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, thinks they should be free. “We [the Whitworth] are all free so I’m for making these places more accessible because otherwise it just brings in elitism.”

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Isabel Wilson, Senior Manager for the Collections and Museum Programmes at Arts Council England, doesn’t think charging would solve the funding issue. “When I’ve seen museums put charges in place it often hasn’t solved the problem, so I think that it’s better that these are public collections and they belong to the people.

There are other ways to generate income – charge for temporary exhibitions, for instance.

“It’s much harder to build that sense of people thinking of it as a really important community asset that they can use regularly if they’re paying every time they go in.”

Yet she recognises that of those that do charge, they are often the ones with more of a developed businesslike approach. “Somewhere like the Black Country Museum in the Midlands where you have a really good visit and it’s very consistent.

You’re getting a high quality visit but it’s probably not somewhere that I’d go to on a [regular] basis. But if I was a local mum and there was a toddler group at my local museum...then I think it’s really important that it’s free,” says Wilson.

But Arvanitis thinks it isn’t only this financial aspect that is the reason for the closures. “I don’t see them [museums] going anywhere as an institution. There are periods of time when more museums close than they open. But the big National Museums, where their importance is articulated in a different way than it is articulated for a local museum, leaves the local museum at risk of being closed down.

“The financial situation is just the temporary context, it also has to do with how we articulate and understand the meaning of [museums] and the importance they have for our societies,” says Arvanitis. “Bigger museums will always continue to exist because they’re big; they have a long history and so on. But we need to communicate to local society and central government, who become the deciding factor on what happens to a museum, why they are important.”

Articulating its importance means speaking to all demographics, but amongst everyone I spoke to, there was universal agreement that museums haven’t yet lost their white, middle-class, educated elite tag. Whilst making a museum free of 37

charge is an incentive to encourage people from different socio-economic backgrounds to visit and participate in their activities, research suggests that this alone isn’t solving the issue. Gallagher is confident that outreach work is the way forward. “It’s important for organisations like ourselves to do outreach work...and get collections out into the community.

“You can do all the fancy marketing that you want, but, to be honest, it’s rude,” she says. “If you want a new group to come that may have issues around not feeling confident or [issues with] transport...you have to get the collections out into other venues and build rapport.”

Wilson places some blame on museum collections and what’s on show. “It’s a really sad indictment if a museum is in a multicultural community but it hasn’t responded to that through contemporary collecting, building relationships and community engagement.”

At the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, Beyond Borders examines the identity of the South Asian subcontinent, post-colonialism through the medium of textiles. It teaches people about the British Empire, immigration and how intrinsically linked so many cultures are, right here in Britain. Focusing on the issues of fragmentation, displacement, authenticity and post-colonial identity, the museum space is a window for the uneducated into a controversial part of British history, whilst also beautifully reimagining these cultures in the present day.

Parallels can be felt in today’s society, when feelings about immigration numbers are at an all time high. Exhibitions like these show the museums’ capacity to engage with a range of nationalities and backgrounds, and without them whole sections of history could be all too easily whitewashed or consigned to the rubbish bin.

That doesn’t mean that the museum sphere is perfect in its acceptance of its past. Arvanitis thinks that too many museums present themselves as the colonial institution that they were back in the 19th century. “I applaud museums that are critical of their own histories, but not many museums do or don’t do it as much as they perhaps should.

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“But museums can diversify their audiences; they are just not big enough to be noticed immediately, even in a period of 10-15 years. It is about long term changes,” he says.

He thinks one of the difficulties of their lack of diversification is that some are still trying to identify their audience. “It is very difficult for the museum to be for all.

They were seen as places for experts, or by experts for experts. Now museums are trying to personalise their offer to specific segment of audiences. But the more you try to personalise or customise your offer to a particular audience, the more you are at risk, potentially, to exclude other audiences.

“But I would say in practice it isn’t as dangerous as it looks. If you go to a museum that is designed for a particular audience at least you can define that. Even if that particular museum doesn’t speak to you in a way that you would have liked, at least you can understand where it is coming from.

“There isn’t a museum in the world that is designed in the way that people use it.

One needs to accept that, embrace it, and move forward.”

If museums are able to be inclusive, it appears even more strikingly important that they remain intact for everyone to enjoy, especially during a particularly volatile couple of years, both politically and socially. Official figures identified that, following on from the 2016 Brexit result, hate crime increased by 41%. Although arguments for the referendum were divisive, other factors such as an increase in the terrorism threat by so-called Islamic State, unemployment and a lack of social housing could also be to blame. Much is made of the potential implications for public services, but the UK’s museum sector is the envy of the world, so it is also worth considering the impact that Brexit could have on this sector.

According to the MA, the financial impact is likely to be substantial. This isn’t news to anyone who’s read about the potential economic woes that will befall many British industries and sectors. This is due in part to the loss of EU culture, education and research funding streams, including the €1.4bn Creative Europe Programme. Reducing free movement could also have a negative effect on creative 39

talent and visitor numbers. However, museums can play an important role in helping to build new links and bridges with international partners, a belief held by the MA. Wilson thinks it’s important that museums continue to think in global terms.

“The way museums will describe what they do; often it’s about presenting it as a museum to the world and a world in the city that it’s in. There’ll always, I hope, be global stories that we want to communicate.”

Whilst leaving the EU may hinder some museums, there is still hope for those museums that have failed in the past. Calderdale Industrial Museum reopened on the 9th September after closing 17 years ago. Major refurbishment by a team of volunteers has ensured their industrial past has been reinstated within the museum sphere.

And some museums are reaching targets earlier than expected. Hull is this year’s City of Culture and its museums are seeing the benefit of this prestigious title with 1 million visitors smashing the predicted target already. This is despite previous funding cuts within the cultural sector of the city.

But where does the future of museums lie? Arvanitis thinks that museums have worked for too long as standalone institutions. “I’m very much in favour of the kind of mergers that are happening right now in different places where you have a theatre and a library and a museum coming together.” White agrees. “Trends that we are seeing [include] more combined arts venues.”

She also thinks the way that we engage with TV and online material could impact the museum sphere. “I don’t yet know how museums will respond to that sense of people wanting to engage very much on their own terms. Digitally they can in terms of how things are themed, in order to draw out content.” But as stated by the MA, many local authority museums across the UK still have poor websites and digital communications, due to a lack of funding and skills.

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Predicting the future is impossible. What is certain, as many reports suggest, is that the impact that museums can have, and are having, on society right now is striking. “Museums are thinking increasingly about wider agendas that they can deliver on, such as dementia support or wellbeing...which are national priorities,” says Wilson.

It currently appears that the world is going through an unprecedented amount of volatility. Here in the UK, immigration, the NHS and Brexit are never far from our screens or our newspapers. These issues are dividing us and hate crime is on the increase. We can’t think forward without thinking backward and learning from the past. The collective memory, as preserved in our museums, is important to many of us. Museums occupy a vital place in the UK’s cultural, social and economic life.

Over the course of the next four days discover what benefits the museum can bring to us and what can be done to preserve and help them fulfil their role in our modern society.

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Chapter Seven ‘Funding Profile’ feature article

How the local museum is fighting back

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‘Welcome to Tolson Memorial Museum’ is the announcement, in the middle of an impressive, circular domed entrance hall, leading into the main hall, its red walls and splendid staircase flooded in daylight. Cast your eyes upwards, where the balcony corridor of the first floor allows the high glass roof to cast light into the heart of this former home, adding to the proud grandeur of this local history museum, close to the centre of Huddersfield.

I visited this museum many times as a child. Inside, it was a little haven, with a park to play in once the sunshine came out. Although grand, the interior is not too imposing and retains the feeling that it was once a family home. Its stone pillars and small carvings give some clue to the history within its walls; its entrance is open and inviting making it a very attractive museum to visit. It’s designed to feature local history, from the prehistoric period through to Huddersfield’s famous textile past and includes The Bird Room curated by Seth Lister Mosley in 1925. This room of ornithology, and other examples of taxidermy, left a lasting impression on me as a child when I’d stand back in awe and fear, waiting for the head of a fox to turn, or a bird to look directly at me. Even today, I can only stand at the door, to keep a safe distance. More gruesome exhibits include the display of half animals. Breathtaking and innovative, when they were purchased in 1924, these animals, skeleton on one side, complete on the other, are still an education and source of fascination, especially to younger visitors. The Tolson half pig even has its own Twitter page @TolsonHalf_Pig Alistair Brown, Policy Officer at the Museums Association (MA), believes that museums are loved and trusted institutions. “The MA believes that everyone in the UK should have access to a high quality museum in their area. However, radical changes to public funding are putting the survival of some museums at risk and threaten the public in some areas with little access to museums.”

Recently the future of Tolson, and the future of many museums under the control of the local authority, Kirklees Council, has been under threat from funding cuts. Shock media headlines, such as ‘Future of Tolson Museum looking bleak’ and

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‘Axe falls on three Kirklees museums’, paint a depressing picture, but in reality the story is more complicated.

Ravensknowle Hall was built in the 1850’s by John Beaumont, a local textile baron, before eventually passing into the hands of Legh Tolson. In 1917, Legh decided to give the house and the gardens to the people of Huddersfield as a memorial, after the death of two of his nephews on the battlefields of the First World War, hence it was renamed the Tolson Memorial Museum. Following on from the opening of the park in 1921, the house became available to the community and general public in 1922. Since then, almost 100 years have passed, and the museum has become a staple of the community. But these civic museums are under threat, now more than ever.

Isabel Wilson, Senior Manager for the Collections and Museums Programmes at Arts Council England believes that “the phase of the civic museum has grown. You have a museum that was set up on the back of industrialisation and civic pride, a purpose built, temple like building, with a real sense of it being part of the infrastructure of a town. [These towns] are really feeling under pressure.”

Arts Council England released its latest National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs) in June. The results were promising. For the first time museums and libraries have been entered into the portfolio, with a total of 72 museums joining. But the portfolio is still dominated by other cultural institutions, and little will be going towards smaller, local museums. The MA expects that the number of museum closures will rise over the next few years, stating Kirklees as a prime example.

Kirklees Council has cut museum funding from £1m to £531,000. This time last year, Kirklees could boast of being home to five museums, one with strong links to the famous literary heroine, Charlotte Brontë, who was a frequent visitor to Red House in the 1830’s. Two have been saved for the foreseeable future, Oakwell Hall and Bagshaw Museum. A further two have now closed including Red House, immortalised as ‘Briarmains’ in Charlotte Brontës novel ‘Shirley’. Alongside these, the council also announced the closure of Tolson but according to Ann Denham, a

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former local councillor and now chair of the Friends of Tolson, it’s too expensive in the current climate for them to close it any time soon.

“According to their [Kirklees Council] figures, it’ll cost half a million to close it,” Denham says. “Well they haven’t got half a million and they haven’t got a building to take the contents to.” But might selling the building be an option to make their money back? “They can sell it but the money from the sale will have to go to a charity, because this was given to the people of Huddersfield, a charity commission wouldn’t let them keep the money.”

As complicated as it may be, some museums do have little option but to close, and 64 have already closed their doors for the last time since 2010. To help with this sensitive subject the Arts Council and MA have recently published a guide on museum closure. The aim is to show how to close a museum ethically, legally and responsibly. But Wilson does recognise the potential problems this could bring. “It has to be very carefully branded and carefully described. We don’t want it to be used as a handbook on how to shut somewhere easily,” she says. It’ll be intriguing to see how people respond to this. Because of their strong community focus, museums are an emotive issue, an established part of local society and a retreat for many.

Formed five years ago, The Friends of Tolson are working hard to prove Tolson’s value to the local authorities. Denham had been a Kirklees councillor for 20 years and, on stepping down, she decided to take on a new challenge, setting up and chairing the Friends. Not that she fully understood what it entailed. “When I started five years ago I had no idea of the fact that the cultural services would be cut from £1m to £500,000. I just thought we would be selling it to the community, but I didn’t realise all of the financial implications of doing this.

“It has been up and down. The last year has been very hard because the staff haven’t known whether they’re going to have jobs or not,” says Denham.

She berates the shock tactics that the media has been using with bold headlines using descriptive language such as ‘axe and bleak’. “People say to me ‘Oh its closing 45

isn’t it?’ Not it isn’t! We have to contend with that [the media] constantly, which is really why we have to keep on showing people what we are doing.”

The Friends of Tolson are volunteers for the cause, but they are also part of the local community and understand what is required. “We want to promote it as the museum of Huddersfield, because Huddersfield is a large town, with a strong history, especially in textiles and engineering, and we want to make sure that this isn’t lost,” Denham says. It isn’t only the contents that are important; the building too is an important aspect for the Friends. “We also want to preserve this house, and this is quite important actually, because they [Kirklees Council] have been discussing letting the house go and moving the museum to the town centre. But this house represents the success of Huddersfield in the industrial revolution in the 19th century.”

They began this promotion almost instantly. At present, they have a monthly cake and tea meeting, on the second Wednesday of every month, they always have a programme of talks and one of the most popular events is the Victorian Christmas fair. “We all dress up for the Victorian fair. It’s massive now; we had over a 1,000 people come through the door this Christmas. It’s become a big, local event,” says Denham.

As always, Christmas is a crowd puller and they want to continue to bring in local people and build on this success. “We want to create things that we think will be interesting to the local community,” she says.

The majority of the exhibits at Tolson focus on the period in which the house was built. The Victorian era features heavily and includes a Victorian children’s bedroom, with well crafted toys. I always wanted to sit astride the big, beautiful rocking horse or play with the intricate dolls house. The replica Weaver’s Cottage, recreated within Tolson, also fascinates and educates as you crane your neck to see where the wooden ladder in the single room dwelling leads. A visiting child wondered aloud if it could lead to the toilet? Luxury indeed for a 19th century weaver.

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Yet according to the council, one of their reasons for deciding to keep Oakwell Hall open is that it represents the 17th century. Denham disputes this. “Tolson represents the 19th century, which is as important to preserve as things that are older. People have to understand, that the cloth we’re wearing was developed here, developed in the houses and the barns here, because they couldn’t make much money out of farming, so they were entrepreneurs and developed an alternative industry using the wool.”

Kirklees Council, however, is still adamant that the museum site will close in the future. “It is proposed that Tolson Museum and Huddersfield Art Gallery should continue to deliver services until plans for a new Huddersfield Museum and Art Gallery have been fully developed. This is so that museum services can still be accessed in South Kirklees during development,” says Paul Kemp, Kirklees Service Director for Economy, Regeneration and Culture.

The Friends of Tolson do, however, have support from their local MP, Barry Sheerman. Via a Twitter video he said, “it is a very important museum for Huddersfield. I’m fighting with a very good group of campaigners in this town to save this museum, to keep it for educational and recreational purposes. It’s going to be a hard fight...but we’ll do it” Unfortunately, Kirklees aren’t the only ones that are making such drastic cuts.

Lancashire County Council has cut its museum budget from £1.3m to less than £100,000, forcing the closure of five museums, including a cotton mill museum that featured in the Oscar-winning film, The King’s Speech. Whilst in Birmingham, the Birmingham Museums Trust has warned that up to nine centres could face the axe, after the city council said they planned to make £500,000 funding cuts.

But Tolson is slowly but surely bringing itself up to speed and exploring other avenues. Denham says that they’ve noticed how the museum is a good place for health and wellbeing. She adds that their tea and cake session attracts individuals from all walks of life, including disabled people, advised by their doctors to get out into the community. Without the staffing and resources available to larger museums, it’s a slower process and any exact figures illustrating just how valuable it 47

is for the more vulnerable in our society aren’t available. But it is refreshing to see the need to be inclusive recognised in smaller organisations.

Sustained through a mixed model of funding, including local authority funding and donations, the museum has in recent years received funding to make improvements which link beautifully with the museums beginnings. Three years ago Heritage Lottery Fund awarded them £100,000 to create a Heritage Memorial Garden.

“We wanted something to commemorate service personnel who had died in conflicts since 1945, because there isn’t anything else in Huddersfield [for them],” Denham says.

Stone sculptor Peter Maris worked with schoolchildren to create a new sculpture, featuring a timeline of conflicts since 1945, and seating for reflection in the memorial garden. The resulting piece of sculpture is a stunning work of old meets modern. From the Palestine War up to the more recent war in Afghanistan, much has changed historically, but war remains just as brutal. The sculpture is simplistic in shape, with thought provoking carvings of schoolchildren and service personnel laying bright red poppy wreaths. The poppies spring up across the garden, a series of five of them are laid on the ground, the name of each war etched in the stone. It’s a stark reminder of what it represents, but with a beautiful edge, allowing you to pause for a second whilst you reflect and take each in.

This lottery fund award also allowed them to create a performance area, to bring in more visitors, and to set up a website. It’s important to recognise that without that money, the garden wouldn’t have been created and the community would lose out. This is just one example of how one grant can facilitate and create other ideas and projects, in order to help a museum modernise and expand.

According to the MA, one in 10 museums report that they do not have their own website and are not using social media. Denham has had to teach herself these skills. The setting up of the website has enabled the Friends to do more independent self promotion of the museum. Currently on their website and on 48

Facebook, Denham is highlighting a hundred items a year from the museum. She is currently on 83, with the 100th to be released, poignantly, on 11th of the 11th.

“There are a lot of plusses for keeping it open...we’ve been established for five years and we’re established at the heart of the community,” she says. But the estate requires £4.2m to be spent on it, £3m of which will be for the house alone.

Their next phase is to put together a business plan. “We have a lovely group of people but we’re just amateurs, there’s no solicitor, no architect,” Denham says.

“So I’ve found an architect who is a specialist in old buildings. He’s prepared to give his time to be on a committee that can look at how we can put an alternative view [forward].

“We know they’re not going to close in the next two to three years... but we’ve just reached a point when we must get expertise in. We’ve done so much, we’re not just sitting and talking about it, but now we need to show Kirklees that there is an alternative view to closing it.”

Museums, such as Tolson, are succeeding in fundraising and in increasing their earned income, but without enough funding and without the necessary staff and expertise, this process takes longer. They require even more time and investment to keep the momentum going, in order to keep local history available for everyone.

Nowadays a lot is made of modernisation, especially in the museum sector.

Museums, if they are to survive, must keep up with the times. But museums are also displaying history, and the past, and to do this means carefully merging the past, the present and the future into a space that is stimulating, exciting and welcoming. Following a 40% budget reduction for local government since 2010, smaller, local museums like Tolson are working hard, using local support and the little funding that they have, to advance what they can show to their community and beyond. But they need time and resources to do this. Representing the community doesn’t mean having a cafe to rival the best or interactive screens in every exhibition space, but they must listen to what is needed. Listening is key, something which Denham says the council needs to do more of, and then, just 49

maybe, fewer local museums will have the ominous threat of closure looming over them, allowing them to continue to be a vital and integral part of their communities.

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Chapter Eight ‘Safe spaces’ feature article

The museums role as a safe space for all

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The straight jacket was there, as was the padded cell, and the horror stories relating to electroconvulsive therapy, formerly known as electric shock treatment, featured strongly. But instead of the revulsion I’d feared, the overall feeling of this museum was refreshingly honest and informative.

The Mental Health Museum in Wakefield is tucked away behind Pinderfields Hospital, on the site of the Fieldhead Hospital. It is relatively new, having replaced the Stephen Beaumont Museum, a well-loved but old-fashioned museum which, being from a different era, didn’t always deal as sensitively with mental health as it should have done.

It is an exceptionally emotive and unique museum. Ruth Quinn, the museum assistant, admitted that for those service users that are hospital patients, since the museum works closely with the Hospital, visiting a museum all about mental health during a particular period of recovery, might not be too helpful. Admittedly, I was apprehensive before my visit. I find all genres of museums interesting but something about this one was unnerving. Back in 2011, I suffered with anxiety for the first time. To be honest, ‘it’ never truly goes away even if ‘it’ isn’t always permanently present. At the time, it was devastating but it has since been a real eye opener. In the years that have followed much has been written about this condition and the subject of mental health as a whole. As a society our understanding and acceptance of mental health is improving, but, despite that, potential triggers can fill me with dread. And a museum that could remind me of those feelings? Well it didn’t exactly sound appealing.

There has long been an acknowledged link between the creative industry, wellbeing and mental health, but in recent years museums have been exploring this in more depth. Opened in 2014, the main aim of the Mental Health Museum is to break down the social stigma surrounding mental health. “One of our key missions is to break down stigma, by putting mental health on display you can have those conversations about mental health,” Quinn says. “Because stigma, a lot of the time, comes from things people fear or don’t understand, this museum discusses the history of mental health from the early 1900’s to the present day. In doing so you 52

kind of understand why people have this idea about what mental health is and what mental health institutions are. If you look at the past and at asylum history and the terminology used to describe people you can see where that stigma started.

“People can discuss mental health in this space because it’s a safe space to have those conversations.”

Museums as safe spaces for people from all walks of life has been a long held view but one that has only been publicly discussed in recent years. Wendy Gallagher, the Whitworth Art Gallery’s Arts and Health Coordinator, describes museums as safe spaces because of their non-threatening nature. “I think they are places where you can be political in a non-threatening way, you’re not siding on one way or another, it’s a place to open up for discussion, dialogue, where you can bring people from all sorts of backgrounds together. And the artworks and museum objects can be a vehicle to talk through very, very difficult issues but in a safe environment.”

As long as I can remember, museums have been a part of my life. When I was a child, it was a place of light relief during sad periods of family illness and bereavement. They’ve been a source of happiness, imagination and reflection. The National Portrait Gallery in London became my go to place of sanctuary when I lived alone in London at the age of 22. Moving to London was a dream come true. But moving 190 miles away from family, living on my own for the first time, with few friends around me, brought those ugly feelings of anxiety to the surface on more than one occasion. London is the epicentre for the arts and my visits didn’t even scratch the surface of what was on offer. On visiting them, I found a deeper appreciation for what they stood for and a greater respect for learning to love and enjoy museums from a young age.

Anxiety comes in all shapes and forms and it undoubtedly doesn’t discriminate.

Combined with depression, anxiety is the most common mental disorder in Britain, according to the Mental Health Foundation, with 7.8% of people meeting the criteria for a diagnosis. Austerity has brought heavy financial cuts to local government, including funds to aid mental health. It’s a postcode lottery as to 53

where these cuts are made, with up to £5m expected to be cut from five regions.

This is despite a high profile campaign ‘Heads Together’ featuring Princes William and Harry, pushing the agenda out into the public domain even more. Museums, whether showcasing a period in time or celebrating someone remarkable or simply featuring the mundane have an excellent ability to stop time and provide that moment for reflection.

People find different ways to cope and to manage their own mental health issues. Quinn believes in the therapeutic value of the museum. “Engaging with art has proven therapeutic value, and increasingly museums are valuing wellbeing,” she says. The Happy Museum Project has looked at how the museum sector can respond to the challenge of creating a more sustainable future. Within that framework, the project recognises that an awareness of a good, happy society offers a chance to reimagine the purpose of the museum. They have worked with a number of museums to test out these theories, including Derby Museums.

Along with the University of Derby, they worked together to demonstrate the positive impact of community participation. Funded by the Project, their studies showed that stress levels were lowered by taking part in creative activities within the museum setting. Researchers measured participant’s blood pressure and heart rate over a three week period, as well as collecting saliva samples to measure levels of the stress hormone, cortisol. Andrea Mercer, Senior Manager of Audiences and Communities at Derby Museums said: “When the data came back, the researchers found the activities did cause an immune system boost in participants as cortisol levels dropped.” Making is now at the heart of the museum, which has three workshops offering creative and practical activities for visitors.

The University of Leicester, which has a long history of museum studies, produced a report in 2014, on the impact that museums have on health and wellbeing. They discovered that museum collections can encourage positive wellbeing, address health issues and, importantly, promote health and wellbeing.

Health and wellbeing are also closely linked to the community. Outreach programmes, where museum professionals take what they have to offer out into 54

the community, have been ongoing projects for a few decades now. But their significance is only recently being realised, with some art spaces employing individuals to take on this role in a full time capacity.

One such museum doing this is The Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. Over the past nine years, under her role as the gallery’s Arts and Health Coordinator, Gallagher has put together a number of partnerships with organisations including Stroke Association, Age UK and Autistic Society.

Over the last four years, they have been working on a project titled Beyond Dementia. “We started with a pilot programme called ‘Coffee, Cake and culture, which was informed by ‘Meet me at MOMA’ [Museum of Modern Art in New York].

It is about art appreciation for people living with dementia,” Gallagher says.

She explains that ideas can come from both her team and from the community.

“We were asked and invited by the hospital to do some work with patients on the complex health needs ward. Many came in because of other conditions, but had a diagnosis of dementia. For them it was very distressful, which could then present a whole range of behaviours that could be quite difficult to manage in the hospital setting.”

They took a team of artists, looked at what would work, and what wouldn’t, to create a whole set of resources called the ‘Forget Me Not’ resources that can be used in the hospital environment. This work has culminated in an exhibition cocurated with a Manchester based dementia group called Fabulous Forgetful Friends.

Having worked with the gallery for a number of months, the exhibition looks to explore how to live well after a diagnosis of dementia. Housed in the Collections Centre at the back of the imposing brick red building, looking out onto a tranquil garden space, it highlights the need to recognise dementia through the eyes of the sufferer.

“What’s great about this exhibition is that rather than it just being the curator’s voice, the voice of authority that can perhaps put some people off creating their

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own personal meaning, instead it’s all of these individual voices of the people who selected the works and why they selected them,” Gallagher says.

Dementia sufferers created artworks to curate alongside existing artwork in the gallery. ‘Perception’ explains one feature of the illness that I hadn’t considered even though I have firsthand experience of dementia. It explains that dementia causes the sufferer’s perceptions of the world around them to change, such as the fact that shiny surfaces may appear wet. It made the important point that this can lead to mistakes and misperceptions, which may lead to a person saying or doing things that do not make sense to others. But this isn’t ‘delusional thinking’ as many will mistake it for; rather it is a result of damage to the visual system. What they see is true to them, just as what we see is true to us. When my grandma was suffering from dementia, the confusion and pain was never hidden from me. But whilst I have never judged her for what she went through or blamed her for the gap I’ve felt at not having a grandma, it was difficult to see her become frustrated and aggressive, often due to her visualising things that weren’t how we perceived them. I have never admitted it but delusional was the word I have come to associate with it. Now I can admit how wrong that is. Who is to say what is ‘normal’?

According to the Alzheimer’s Society, there are currently 850,000 people living with dementia in the UK, with the number expected to rise to 1m by 2025. If current rates continue, by 2052, this number will have risen to 2m. There isn’t a cure, but research carried out by the Alzheimer’s Society suggests that delaying the onset of dementia by five years, particularly through the stimulation of the mind, 30,000 lives would be saved per year.

It has been more than twenty years since I came face to face with dementia, but today many more will undoubtedly be touched by this condition. Beyond Dementia not only works to dispel myths that surround the disease, but it aims to leave a legacy, something which the museum has been working to do across the community for some time.

“Although the programme here has finished, the group are now carrying on Beyond Dementia into the community, and we’re supporting it,” Gallagher says.

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“They’re putting in a funding application for the Arts Council, but they have managed to find some funding to keep them going until October. Once a month, they come here and show us what they’ve been doing, and we’ll trigger off other ideas with them. So there has been a legacy. But it’s continuing in a different way so that it’s sustainable.”

I wonder what programmes like this could have done for the quality of my grandma’s final years. My mum, my grandma’s daughter, tells me that she loved art. “She wandered the countryside drawing plants and flowers, as a child. And later on she enjoyed embroidery and she could create a garment without a pattern. She was very creative.” She was also fortunate to be surrounded by love and care but there was very little support for my family back in the early 1990s. “Apart from the diagnosis, which gave little information, the only advice was to put her into care and stop trying so hard.”

It also takes a lot of staff to make this type of community engagement work.

“People can be on very different points on their journey of dementia, and it is about being able to manage that. Some weeks they can come and you may not be aware that they’re living with dementia, then the following week you certainly will be [aware],” Gallagher says. “To make the experience one they can benefit from...one to one [support] is what is really needed.” The Whitworth is lucky to have that sort of expertise and funding to hand, which, unfortunately, many museums will not have.

Everyone taking part in these programmes learns something, including the museum professional. “One thing I’d do differently in the future is I’d have a separate session for dementia suffers and their carer’s, to give the carer respite but to also give the sufferer a voice so that the carer isn’t always trying to answer for them,” Gallagher says.

Yet there is a lot of positivity to take from it all. Gallagher succinctly explains why programmes and exhibitions like these are so important. “Cognitive stimulation therapy, engagement with the arts, being active citizens, all can delay the progression, but, more importantly, it can enhance their quality of life. And in doing 57

so it has a ripple effect because dementia doesn’t just affect that person living with it, it affects the whole family and the networks around them” But she has a word of warning for museums undertaking on this community based work. “I think museums, galleries, and other cultural venues, if they’re embarking on this type of work, especially with vulnerable people, it shouldn’t just be seen as a project because then it can do more damage than good.

“Within the group’s dynamic, relationships are formed and for these particular people who are perhaps more fragile, it is very important that we look at what comes afterwards before entering into this,” Gallagher says.

“It’s not just an exhibition, it’s a whole programme.”

Quinn emphasises this point. “Museums need to be one step ahead of the game.

Museums are very good at wellbeing but community engagement needs to be true community engagement and not just work with a community for a short period of time to do an exhibition, then just leave. It is a challenge for museums to keep that relationship going and funding is a challenge because you need money to do these projects.”

With the right amount of funding and participation, it still may be too easy to suggest that museums can solve mental health issues and health conditions. But the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing inquiry report does conclude that the act of creation, and our appreciation of it, provides an individual experience that can have positive effects on our physical and mental health and wellbeing. With so many studies out there, and, more importantly, so many personal stories of the museum as a safe space, not only for discussion but to help with personal issues, there’s little doubt that the museum isn’t only a place to admire objects, artefacts and art, it is a place to be yourself.

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Chapter Nine ‘Regeneration’ feature article

The North South divide, riding out the recession – how one museum defied the critics

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Southerners will point out that it starts at the Watford Gap, Northerners call the Midlands the south, but wherever you draw the line, it’s clear that the north south divide remains as strong as ever.

With London at its epicentre, the south has greater employment possibilities and a higher standard of living. According to the Office of National Statistics (ONS), employment growth in the North of England began three years later than in southern regions. It is true that, even if you exclude London from these figures, the south still performs better. During the coalition government George Osborne was a strong advocate of the so-called Northern Powerhouse, using improved transport links and devolved powers to improve cities in the North. Devolved power has been achieved, but the controversial HS2 rail link is still unresolved.

Inevitably, London has seen the greatest increase in employment, up more than 14% since the start of the recession. London is also home to some of the best and brightest museums and art galleries that Britain has to offer, and they are fortunate to be generously funded by the public purse. A report published last December by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) said that, whilst it welcomed signs of a shift towards regions outside of London, not enough was being done to even out the distribution.

The Arts Council England currently spends almost half of its £1bn grant in aid to London. This year, they announced a shift in their national portfolio funding between London and the rest of the England, from a ratio of 40:60 to 47:53. When philanthropic income is harder to generate outside of London, surely even more funding, not less, should be spent on the rest of England?

Isabel Wilson, Senior Manager for the Collections and Museum Programmes at Arts Council England, agrees that more could be done. “It is disproportionate in the North; it really is a mixed picture nationally. [Museums in the North] are really feeling under pressure.” She says that they are “feeling our way in terms of how best to support [them]. For us it has been quite a lot of being round the table and trying to broker discussions.”

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Since 2010 the North has seen the greatest number of museum closures with more than 25 closing, leaving whole communities in danger of losing vital links to their unique culture and heritage.

Kostas Arvanitis, Senior Lecturer in Museology at the University of Manchester, believes that you don’t need to do an in-depth analysis of the divide “you can just see from the figures and the numbers in terms of investment.” He thinks infrastructure is the key to success. “It’s about long term infrastructure and sustainable solutions that will lessen the gap rather than simply putting investment here or there.”

With the correct sort of infrastructure in place, museums can play a key part in making people want to live, work, visit or invest in a place, according to the Museums Association (MA). But the North needn’t be described as a cultural wasteland. Opened in May 2011, during the middle of a recession and the beginning of austerity, The Hepworth Wakefield is named after Wakefield born sculptor Barbara Hepworth. Like many female artists, her work has often been overshadowed by her male contemporaries. Now that The Hepworth is an internationally renowned art gallery, The New York Times stated that “Yorkshire has reaffirmed its position on the global arts map”, her name has been elevated alongside that of many other artists The Hepworth has championed.

With a facade constructed of pigmented concrete created in-situ, The Hepworth Wakefield appears to rise from the River Calder, along which it sits, echoing the many shapes and forms found in Hepworth’s sculptures. Designed by David Chipperfield Architects it has no definitive front or back, and sources the majority of its heating and cooling from the river’s flow. The interior is modern and well designed. High, open, well lit rooms are perfect for the display of large sculptures needing the space around them to be viewed with appreciation from all angles.

In the past, the imposing building that many would associate with Wakefield, was its bleak, high walled prison, where a number of high profile, high risk prisoners are incarcerated. Now, Wakefield is fast becoming well known for another stark, concrete building, which, instead of being a scar on the landscape, blends, 61

highlights and invigorates its surroundings. Visitors are intrigued by the, initially, brutalist building and its unique qualities continue to attract vast numbers all year round.

Project development was first begun by Wakefield Council in 2003 and its construction began some four years later after the relevant funding was secured. It then opened the year after the 2010 Spending Review, a year which signalled the start of the mass of funding cuts to the culture sector that are still ongoing today. As the largest art gallery to be constructed in the country since the Hayward in London, over 40 years ago, it was built as part of a regeneration masterplan by a progressive Wakefield Council, who recognised the benefits of investing further in the arts.

After just a few months of opening, the leader of Wakefield Council, Cllr Peter Box, was confident enough to say, “The Hepworth Wakefield has put the City on centre stage.”

The regeneration of 10 acres of Wakefield riverside began in 2009, with the creation of new offices and work space, safeguarding 500 jobs and the development of affordable housing. Phase two was completed two years later with the opening of The Hepworth. And now the third phase is finally in the process of being completed, with Rutland Mills, which sits adjacent to the gallery, being sold to City & Provincial Properties PLC. The developer is responsible for Tileyard Studios, a creative media hub based in central London. To choose Wakefield as a ‘Northern extension’ of their cultural brand, gives an indication of the vital part that the gallery may be playing in the regeneration of Wakefield.

Arvanitis questions the definition of regeneration. “We need to be very critical of how we define the notion of regeneration, is it financial, does the local economy improve, do more people go and live in the area, or do different people come and live in the area, and does it create demand for new housing.”

Previous examples of galleries and museums being used as instruments of regeneration include the Tate Modern in London and the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Their principal aim was to encourage the regeneration of the cities in which each is located. Both were considered risks, but both have been 62

successful in their aims. However, to assume that they alone boosted the economy is too presumptive. Other factors were undoubtedly involved, including distance to other amenities, how popular these were and the part that they too played in regenerating the area, as well as transport links, both locally and internationally.

The building of a museum isn’t always guaranteed to kick start the regeneration of an area. Other museums haven’t been as successful in their aim to regenerate a city, including examples ranging from Newcastle and Sheffield, across to Herford in Germany, and back to Leon in Spain.

According to Arvanitis, studies of these examples show that “just by planting an art gallery or a museum in a place that is considered not very popular, it doesn’t create change in the way we might think about it; it attracts people but not necessarily how we might want to attract them.” But these examples give future developers something to work from. “Because of previous examples of the Tate and of Bilbao there is now much more critical thinking of how one might go about developing these regenerational plans,” he says.

Certainly, if you cast your eye over reviews of the gallery, whilst the majority are very positive, it scores 4.5 stars out of 278 Google reviews, some question how well it really can generate extra income for the city. The fact that it is situated just out of the centre of the town may discourage some locals from visiting and others visitors from spending time within the city. To walk from the city’s main train station or Trinity Walk shopping centre, would take you approximately 25 minutes. Some visitors would find this distance unacceptable. However, the city’s other train station, Wakefield Kirkgate, which has very recently had a makeover, is a mere 10 minute walk away or there is a free city bus operating Monday to Saturday, between 9:30am and 3pm.

Despite its distance from the centre of the city, undoubtedly, statistics gathered

by The Hepworth Wakefield and the local council do indicate that it is having a positive impact. Within the first four months of opening, The Hepworth reached 250,000 visitors, far surpassing its initial estimation of 150,000 in its first 12 months.

Cllr Box had this to say, “The Hepworth Wakefield continues to surprise and delight 63

everyone who visits. The fact that we have now topped 250,000 visitors in just over four months speaks for itself The Hepworth is something that everyone in this district can be justly proud of. Its reputation is growing all the time. The economic effect is being felt throughout the district as visitors take in the city and other attractions.”

Six years on from its opening, Jessica Kendal, Visitor Experience Assistant at The Hepworth Wakefield, says it is continuing to build an internationally important programme alongside an award winning public and family engagement programme. “ The learning programme continues to reach out to local schools and communities and engage them in the Arts as well as the heritage of the area,” Kendal says.

According to the gallery, it has helped secure private sector investment in the district totalling £1bn. And visitor numbers clearly indicate the potential for extra revenue. It is estimated that the gallery has helped to contribute over £20m to the local economy, whilst £7m worth of art has since been added to Wakefield’s Permanent Art Collection. This includes artwork bequeathed by Tim Sayer. The former BBC news writer, who has spent 50 years collecting art that covers every inch of his home, has agreed to leave all of his 400 plus pieces of art to The Hepworth, making it one of the largest bequests to any regional British museum in history. It will go on show in the gallery for a temporary exhibition later on in the year, before one day joining the permanent collection.

To add to a triumphant year for the gallery, The Hepworth Wakefield won Art Funds Museum of the Year, beating competition from the Tate Modern, one of London’s most popular museums. A further incentive is that The Hepworth Wakefield forms one part of what has become known as the ‘Yorkshire Sculpture Triangle.’ Just seven miles away is the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP), an international centre for modern, contemporary art, set in acres of 18th century parkland, and, itself, a winner of this prestigious award in 2014. The Henry Moore Institute, together with Leeds Art Gallery, forms the third part of this triangle. “With our close proximity to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park there has been an increases in

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local and international visitors to the area, increasing tourism figures to this part of Yorkshire,” says Kendal.

Yorkshire, and Wakefield in particular, is playing an impressive role in the presentation of contemporary art in Britain and this, in turn, is playing an enormous part in the regeneration of the West Riding of Yorkshire.

Previous fears that it would be a costly mistake have been unfounded. The Hepworth Wakefield has established itself as one of England’s most important art galleries. The fact that it has flourished here, rather than in a larger, more prominent city such as Leeds, a mere 10 miles up the road, shows what a positive impact the right museum, in the right place, can have if it is well planned and well presented.

The Hepworth Wakefield and its supporting Triangle can’t, on their own, defeat the north south cultural divide. When it comes to debating who has the more important museums, the majority of the prominent museums still abide and thrive in London, but it is hoped that The Hepworth Wakefield can be a catalyst for creating a culture led regeneration across the UK. As well as attracting in visitors from afar, it is also a space for local people, who can now enjoy contemporary artwork on their doorstep, and the opportunities it affords for education and relaxation. Visitors of all ages can take part in many activities from sculpting to sewing. They can enjoy and take pride in this grand and imposing addition to their city.

Kendal can see the benefits from a local resident’s point of view, too. “As a local resident, I have seen the impact the gallery has had on Wakefield as a city with regards to the money put into developing what is on offer, locally.”

These cultural attractions will pull people into West Yorkshire, and so The Hepworth is playing a vital role in attracting regional, national and international tourism to the area, and promoting the regeneration of the City of Wakefield. How successful other places in the north can be, is yet to be seen. But, ultimately, it gives Wakefield and the rest of Yorkshire something to shout about.

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Chapter Ten ‘Hidden Museums’ feature article

Hidden Museums

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Drop the Tate galleries into any conversation and many will be able to join the discussion, or school holidays may have included taking the children to the Natural History Museum, but there are hundreds of other museums that you won’t have heard of, but should.

The following looks at an eclectic variety of museums, including local authority, university, independent and heritage site museums, all providing thought provoking insights, education and fun places to visit.

Heritage Quays, University of Huddersfield With origins dating back to 1880, a £2.7m redevelopment project saw the Lapworth Museum of Geology reopen in 2016 and be shortlisted for the Museum of the Year in 2017, eventually losing out to The Hepworth Wakefield. Run by the University of Birmingham, this isn’t the first time that a university museum has been close to winning the national prize. Back in 2010, the Ashmolean Museum, the world’s first university museum, was also a runner up.

According to the University Museums group there are approximately a hundred university museums in the country that are regularly accessible to the public, with a further 300 that are used mainly for academic research and teaching. One of these public facing university museums is Heritage Quay, situated on the canal quayside.

Based in the Schwann Building of the University of Huddersfield, it opened in 2014.

Easily accessible and open all week, the atmosphere is welcoming, calm and modern.

University museums are owned and managed by the universities but funding is often required from elsewhere. Between 2013 and 2017, just over £1.5m from the Heritage Lottery Fund, along with university funding, has been spent to transform its archives into state of the art archives, which enables time travel through 200 years of local history. The University and its partners have long been the custodians of this history, which includes politics, sport, industry, performing arts, music, and education. Funding has enabled them to store, keep safe and make available these 67

treasures. Because this is the whole point of Heritage Quays, the archives assist students in their work but they are also accessible to the public.

It is possible, via a small window, to see some of the 1.8km of electric shelving that stores 100 plus collections within a perfect microclimate technically designed to remain permanently at the optimum temperature and humidity. The ‘Oversize Store’ room, viewed through another small window, holds larger, awkwardly shaped archives such as large photos and maps. Its largest object is five interconnecting flags from the Rugby Football League Archives, which were spread across Wembley Pitch before the 2010 Challenge Cup between Leeds and Warrington. These flags, which cover 20x13 metres, contain hundreds of handwritten messages from fans, players and famous names outlining what the 113 year old cup meant to them.

These archival rooms can be viewed by the public on the 'Through the Quayhole' tour which is a free drop in tour on the first Wednesday of the month at 1pm and the third Saturday at 11am. Alongside this, three programme groups comprising of volunteers have collaborated in the development of a series of events, workshops and activities. And, of course, the current exhibition ‘Nonconformity’ gives casual visitors something to digest whilst also displaying some of the 300,000 plus archival material including books, photographs and video.

Within the museum there are rooms featuring desk and computer space for quiet study, and all of these elements together incorporate the university museum mix of reflective study and the inquisitive visitor.

One of the curators was on site to explain that they are currently putting together a ‘Holocaust survivors’ archive downstairs, beneath the present gallery, with the help of local people with personal knowledge.

Unfortunately, the end of the Heritage Lottery funding is in sight and it is uncertain yet how funding will continue. But with so much archival material informing visitors, acting as a study resource for students and as an advertisement

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for prospective students, this hidden gem, like so many university museums, will hopefully remain open for some time.

Opening hours Monday

8am–8pm

Tuesday

8am–8pm

Wednesday 8am–8pm Thursday

8am–8pm

Friday

8am–8pm

Saturday

9am–5pm

Sunday

10am–4pm

Free entry Web: heritagequay.org

Hat Works A long red-brick chimney punctuates the skyline, the words ‘HAT MUSEUM’ embellished downwards, a letter at a time.

Stockport has a long millinery history. Back in the 19th century and early 20th century, the smell of wet rabbit fur and sulphuric acid was rife among many local families. A thick fog filled the factories and workers would leave with rabbit fur stuck to their hair. F Engels in his 1844 book ‘The Condition of the Working Class in England’ described Stockport as “notoriously one of the darkest and smokiest holes in the whole of the industrial area, and particularly when seen from the viaduct, presents a truly revolting picture.”

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Thankfully, today, Stockport can no longer be described in this way, but the Hat Works, a local authority museum, displays a fascinating insight into a hidden bygone industry. Whilst much of the industry has left the area, it lives on in the museum.

The inviting entrance walks you straight into an eclectic shop. But, for a small entrance fee, the gems of this museum can be found below the entrance level.

First, you arrive in the Hatting Info Lounge. Much of this floor is typically curated in the style of many local history museums. Display cabinets, drawers to peek inside and a children’s area. The Hatting Info Lounge sits apart from this, with videos about the history and manufacturing of hats, a helpful way to engage visitors. A collection of hat books and papers can also be viewed by appointment.

Although the curation of this floor space is typical of local history museums, it doesn’t appear staid, and 360 degree cabinets give the viewer an all round look at the exquisite craftsmanship that goes into hat making. Each cabinet is titled, displaying a different genre of hat. ‘Top That’ features the biggest top hat I’ve ever seen; whilst ‘They think it’s all over’ plays on Kenneth Wolstenholme's famous commentary in the closing moments of the 1966 World Cup, hence this is the sporting cabinet.

The children’s area is especially inviting. Huge cushions, books and plenty to play with, including giant buttons, all sit under a sign reading: ‘Please look after your grown-ups. Make sure they don’t wander off; help them to play safely; make sure they try on at least one hat; encourage them to tidy up when they’ve finished playing; read them a story; have fun!’

A dressing up corner is provided, made all the more jazzy by the full-length mirror and red carpet encircled with lighting. Round the corner, past the reserve collection, which has been specially curated to be on display, behind glass, boxes piled high, is ‘Make a hat to take home.’ Here, seating for all ages, with paper provided and large print instructions painted on the wall encourages visitors to really immerse themselves in the hat making process, albeit rather differently from the traditional method, and leave the museum wearing a paper Pirate Captain Hat. 70

This traditional method can be seen downstairs. The Bow Garret, Planking Kettle and Hatters Cottage are all recreated, and there is a machinery gallery that is operated for guided tours. To tell you more about this industry would be to tell you too much before your visit.

The Hat Works is far more expansive than it looks from the outside, and it deserves its dominant position on Stockport’s skyline. Local history museums are a staple of many towns and communities. A hidden one like this, is always a story that deserves to be told.

Opening hours Monday

Closed

Tuesday to Saturday 10am to 5pm Sunday

11am to 5pm

Bank holidays

11am to 5pm

Admission Adult

£5.00

Concessions (ages 60+ and students)

£3.75

Children under 16 with a paying adult

Free

Annual passes, ideal for families, and multi site passes for Hat Works, Staircase House, Bramall Hall, and Stockport Air Raid Shelters are also available.

Web: stockport.gov.uk/topic/hat-works

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Shrewsbury Castle and Shropshire Regimental Museum To showcase historical subject matter dating back to 1755, the dark wooden panels and beams inside a huge, imposing hall is perfect for the Shropshire Regimental Museum.

Shrewsbury Castle, built in the 11th century during the reign of William the Conqueror, is as picturesque as it sounds. Visiting on a wet September day, the entrance to the grand hall is an assault on the senses. The smell of history and the mass of visuals, flags and banners adorn the exposed stone walls. As with all castles, a steep, narrow, uneven staircase takes the visitor up to the first exhibition, ‘Modern Army Display’. Up here, you can peek through traditional windows crisscrossed with lead, looking out onto immaculate lawns, with a decorative floral display commemorating World War One. Some areas of the museum do need modernising and updating, particularly an information area featuring stands with older televisions. Today’s visitors would expect an area featuring interactivity neatly displayed on walls. However, there is plenty of interesting, concise information, including maps showing where British Troops are stationed across the globe, food stuffs, and imagery galore. It is a Pandora’s box of military paraphernalia.

The best, most evocative part of the museum is the view across the Great Hall. A grandiose, historically well preserved area featuring mannequins in uniform, their military red distinctly outlined as you imagine them standing to attention or preparing to charge at the given order.

The rest of the exhibition covers this Great Hall and continues downwards onto the ground floor. A traditional museum shop, full of little knick-knacks and excellent second hand military books, was manned, on my visit, by two older gentlemen.

These were locals who are proud of this heritage and willing to give up their time for their passion. They were eager to share the joy that they felt about this museum with the public.

72

An addition to these displays is a short, steep staircase, set near to the shop.

Easy to miss, this final exhibition in a small room, details the castle itself.

The Regimental Museum was first opened in 1985, with restoration taking place following a terrorist attack in 1992. The Castle itself has stood on Shropshire soil for far longer, opening as a museum in 1926. These buildings hold many hidden secret corners, so it is rather fitting that the castle exhibition was almost missed. The display is short and sweet, but after the mass of military history and the information that you’ve already digested, that’s all you need.

Opening hours Spring from February 20th to May 26th open 10:30am to 4pm, except on Thursday and Sunday; however, open Easter Sunday 10:30am to 4pm Summer May 27th to September 10th open 10:30am to 5pm, except on Thursdays, Sunday opening hours are 10:30am to 4pm Autumn September 11th to December 16th open Closed during Winter Admission Adults (18+)

£4.00

Senior Citizen (of State Pension Age) £3.00 Children

£1.00

Under 5's and former members

free

of the Shropshire Regiments Web: shropshireregimentalmuseum.co.uk

73

Migration Museum Stumbling upon another hidden museum in Lambeth, whilst looking for The Migration Museum, was unexpected, but not completely unlikely in a city well known for its museums and culture. The voices of boisterous children could be heard loudly as they enjoyed the pop-up museum created by the London Fire Brigade, the high ceilings of the former factory building echoing every sound.

A sharp left led to a climb up a dark staircase. Indicators of the museum, in the form of personal migration stories, could just be seen on the wall. The impact of moving thousands of miles from your birthplace was felt almost instantly, when, at the top of the stairs, the despair of a man, slumped and solemn dominated your viewpoint. This man had found a new home, but didn’t feel he belonged and was plagued by the constant worry that, some day, a knock on the door would take him back to the place he’d escaped from.

The Migration Museum is situated above the events of the downstairs museum and is more of a single exhibition space than a traditional museum. It puts on regular temporary exhibitions, which does mean that it has to close for periods of time in order to dismantle and create new exhibitions.

From now until the 27 February, ‘No Turning Back: Seven Migration Moments that Changed Britain’ looks at Britain’s history of migration, turning the clock as far back as the expulsion of the Jews in the 13th century. This is a particularly relevant topic as British people try to redefine their relationship with the rest of the world following the 2016 Brexit result.

The personal stories of Clive Bayley’s relationship with the East India Company, set up by Queen Elizabeth I, which set in motion an upheaval that would lead to a globalised world and the British Empire, are immensely touching and far more relatable than reading a tedious history narrative. This exhibition is peppered with personal viewpoints, with easy to read stand out introductions and is inclusive of all age groups.

74

This space isn’t a permanent one for the museum, and the hope is that they will be able to move and expand on what they have already created. The exhibition included a number of full length, captioned photographs. In one, Suryakala and Ajit had this to say: “I don’t think British society fully realises the effect Britain had in India. I’m sure the politicians are aware that what happened was shameful, but I’ve never heard an apology”.

The Brexit referendum has reignited ugly divisions left bubbling on the surface for too long. ‘True Brits’ demand apologies for the pressures migrants are said to make on the welfare state and an end to immigration. But, more than anything, this exhibition shows, not only the people that migrated to this country, but it highlights and details those British that have moved to other countries and the destruction that they have caused to the world. It is a stark reminder that Britain is far from blameless in creating divisions across the globe. However, it isn’t all depressing.

Granted, it does look at British migrant history rather disapprovingly, something which many museums, and the part they may have played, fail to do, but the space shows the triumphs that can be created by this melting pot of people of different backgrounds to a country. Museums like this are needed to redress the balance and destroy preconceptions. Museums like this must be discovered and fought for.

Opening hours Monday

closed

Tuesday

closed

Wednesday

11am-5pm

Thursday

11am-5pm

Friday

11am-5pm

Saturday

11am-5pm

Sunday

11am-5pm

Free entry Web: migrationmuseum.org 75

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Yorkshire Post. (2017) Is The Hepworth Wakefield Britain’s best gallery? 5th May. [Online] [Accessed on 10th August] http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/analysis/is-the-hepworth-wakefieldbritain-s-best-gallery-1-8526765 89

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