26 October 2005
David Lammy, Minister for Culture, keynote address to Museums Association Conference
I am delighted to be here today and it is a great privilege to be Minister for Culture at a time in which Britain's creativity and cultural heritage is thriving. Since taking up post in May I have been struck by the range and quality of museums' contributions to so many aspects of life in this country.
I regret that museums played so little a part in my early life. It wasn't until I was studying at SOAS and became a regular visitor to the British Museum that I really came to appreciate the singular role of museums in addressing issues of identity, history and almost every facet of life. More recently I have seen the fantastic work that Bruce Castle Museum is doing in my own constituency in Tottenham, working to engage local communities. I want everyone in this country and in particular young people, to be able to participate in such activities and to have the exposure to museums that I never had growing up.
Everyone here today understands the capacity museums have to contribute to enjoyment, to inspiration, to learning, to research and scholarship, to understanding, to regeneration, to reflection, to communication and to building dialogue and tolerance between individuals, communities and nations. All of those go a long way to improving the quality of life for people in this country and beyond. And I am sure that the 37% of people in this country who have visited a museum in the last 12 months understand museums' contribution to improving the quality of their lives.
But what about the other 63%? What are we doing, and what more can we do, to encourage them to visit, engage with, work for and appreciate the role of museums? If we are serious about broadening access to our collections and institutions – and I am very serious – then we need to work in partnership to reach those 63%. For those museums which are publicly funded (and I recognise that is most though not all museums) from universal taxation, we have a duty to aspire to universal access. I want every person in this country to be a champion for and a user of museums. In a fragmented, less deferential, more mobile, more diverse society where globalisation affects us all, the role of museums as places for reflection and understanding is more important than ever.
The central theme I want to address today is partnership. For all the successes of the museums sector – and I will come back to those in a moment - I think the key to even greater success and to wider recognition of museums' contribution to Britain and the world is more and stronger working in partnership.
We are too often in this country quick to criticise, to accentuate the negative and leave success unacknowledged. I firmly believe that the museums sector is one of this country's success stories, and I want to work with you to reinforce and extend that success. Of course there are challenges and problems ahead, and we should not shrink from them, but let me take a moment to acknowledge the successes I have seen at first hand over the last five months, and to identify the reasons I believe this is the most encouraging time for museums in the last 100 years.
First, we now have a stunning array of iconic buildings, both new and refurbished, in which our collections are housed across the country. For this, of course, a great deal of credit must go to the Heritage Lottery Fund. The hundreds of millions of pounds they have invested in the physical fabric of our museums has in many cases arrested the decay of those buildings, shored up the leaking roofs and created terrific, welcoming, inclusive spaces of a quality that give our collections, museum staff and public what they deserve. In partnership with architects, designers and their local communities, those buildings and the public spaces they inhabit have become more pleasurable places in which to spend time, and they have reinstilled a sense of civic pride.
I would give credit also to the enlightened Councillors of all political hues in local authorities across the country who have recognised the power of museums, libraries, archives and other cultural institutions to strengthen their local communities, stimulate regeneration and foster community cohesion.
And while I am on the subject of improving the buildings and spaces in which our collections are housed and exhibited, I should also recognise the immense contribution that private and corporate donors make to our museums. From the Wolfson Foundation, which works in partnership directly with my Department and matches our capital investment pound for pound, through Gulbenkian, Jerwood, Esmee Fairbairn, Getty and Paul Hamlyn, to the Clore Duffield Foundation which has provided funding for education spaces in museums all over the country, the philanthropic commitment of so many individuals, charities and businesses in this country, and indeed abroad, deserves all of our thanks. And possibly more than any single institution, we should recognise what is surely the pinnacle of selfless altruism, the anonymous donor!
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Another reason for optimism and celebration is the successful introduction of free entry to our national museums and galleries, and more recently to our university museums. We know that in 2004, nearly 6 million more visits were made to England's formerly charging national museums and galleries than in the year before entry charges were dropped (2000). This is a 75% increase in four years. Even Tesco would look enviously at that return. Some Jeremiahs will express anguish that six million more visits does not necessarily mean six million more visitors. And while there was always a risk that some element of this increase would be due to some people visiting more often, I do not see that this in itself is a bad thing. Of course I would like everyone in the country to visit and to benefit from our museums, but that does not mean those who already visit and want to do so more often should have their visits curtailed.
The third main reason for optimism about museums in this country is the Renaissance in the Regions programme. By the end of the current spending cycle we will have invested £147 million in the programme. I have seen the benefits of the programme at first hand and I hear increasingly that whereas seven years ago the talk was of decay and decline, that investment is now making a real difference on the ground. Museums and collections are being revitalised all over the country, and a corner has been turned. I appreciate there is still some way to go, and I share the desire of those who want to spread the benefits beyond the Hub museums to the wider museum community. I think it was right to begin with the Hub museums, but I know that thanks to elements of the Renaissance programme such as the funding of Museum Development Officer posts, and the establishment of Subject Specialist Networks, the wider community is already benefiting from Renaissance.
I want to raise the visibility of the Renaissance programme among funders and other stakeholders, and to draw attention to its benefits for museums and the public. By next May, when I will have been in post for a year, I will have visited Renaissance projects in every region of England. Having seen how the Bruce Castle Museum in my own Constituency is an asset for the whole community, I am very keen that it and local museums like it all over the country should share in the Renaissance of the sector. I recognise this will require greater financial investment, and we will all need to work together to make the strongest possible case if that investment is to come from the taxpayer. But it will also require strengthened partnership working between MLA, the Renaissance Hubs, the Regional Agencies, the Museums Association and a whole range of national and regional stakeholders to realise and embed the benefits of the Renaissance programme over the long term.
When my Department published its consultation paper on the role of museums in the 21st century earlier this year, there was a deliberate focus on the future. I believe, as I know all of you do, that museums have as much to tell us and inspire us about the present and the future as they do the past. But I sense this is not a view yet wholly shared by the public at large. We know from studies that too many people view museums as simply being focused on the past. I don't actually agree with George Bernard Shaw, who said that "we learn from history that we learn nothing from history". We know that there are museum professionals all over the country who use their collections to connect the past and the future, to bring the past to life in inspiring ways, and to create a resonance with every issue of interest to the public today.
At this critical time, when society wrestles with issues of identity, faith, tolerance and understanding, museums have a vital role to play in fostering, supporting and informing public debate in those and other areas. Extremism of any form is more likely to prosper in the absence of informed debate. When the quality of the public debate is enhanced, as with, for example, the British Museum's Africa 05 programme, or the Natural History Museum's work on biodiversity, we as a society all benefit.
In all areas of learning, both formal and informal, museums are playing a key role in educating the public. From early years projects with Sure Start, through supporting and enhancing the school curriculum, from working with vulnerable young people at risk of exclusion, to supporting higher education, family and lifelong learning, I am hugely impressed with the quality and impact of the work of museums. Most of this is already undertaken in partnership with a broad range of organisations, but this is where I believe there is yet more to be achieved.
I should also recognise the centrality of collections to the role of museums. The Government is occasionally criticised for focusing on the importance of access and education in museums rather than on their role in protecting collections and cultural assets for the nation and for the benefit of future generations. I have no difficulty in reconciling those roles, just as I have no difficulty in acknowledging both the intrinsic and instrumental benefits of cultural engagement. And those people who waste time and energy in trying to delineate a false dichotomy between access and excellence should recognise that our best museums have no difficulty in providing both access and excellence for the widest possible audiences.
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Collections should be made dynamic, available and intelligible for as many people as possible. That is why I welcomed the publication of the MA's Collections for the Future report. Several commentators remarked on the degree of common purpose between the MA's report and my Department's consultation paper – Understanding the Future. I see that as more than just serendipity. It points to a shared sense of priorities and a common desire to make more of our collections available to more people. I look forward to working in partnership with the MA and many of you in realising those shared aspirations and making the case for greater investment.
So let me just summarise some of the reasons to be cheerful about the state of the museums sector in this country :
- Iconic buildings, both new and refurbished, supporting regeneration, civic renewal and the enhancement of our public spaces
- Free entry to our national and university museums, and increasing audiences as a result
- Renaissance in the Regions now delivering real benefits across the country after decades of decline
- Museums providing education and lifelong learning available to everyone in society
- Museums playing a healthy role in fostering and supporting non-partisan public debate on contemporary issues.
- Museums continuing to protect collections and cultural assets for future generations.
- World class exhibitions which feature among the cultural highlights of the year, and which increasingly tour beyond London to all parts of the country.
And time prevents me from rehearsing the great contribution to research and scholarship, conservation, or the economic impact of museums, including tourism. But let me just mention one other point which has struck me repeatedly as my Ministerial role involves me in EU and international business. In so many areas, British museums are world leaders and are held in tremendous regard both by your peers abroad and by foreign Governments. Museums have a key role to play in terms of cultural diplomacy and promoting understanding on the international stage. Here again, working in partnership with institutions like the British Council will help to reinforce and strengthen your position.
The pre-eminence of our cultural institutions is reflected in two initiatives being taken forward under the UK's current Presidency of the European Union. In responding to the opportunities presented by new technologies, it is widely accepted that Europe's museums and other cultural heritage institutions have an important role to play in today's knowledge society. New technology has changed the way we seek and exchange information in the 21st Century. The most widely used search engines are not great arbiters of substance. Online access to museums can help users to distinguish between knowledge and truth. Providing collections in a digital format is a very effective way of widening access and empowering citizens to interact with them in a creative way. These users include the creative industries, academics and researchers and children. Wider use of ICT must be a key element of any universal cultural offer, in particular for young people.
It makes sense for EU Member States to co-ordinate policies and programmes as we make our collections available online, in order to deliver better value for money and more effective services for users. This work began in 2001 with an action plan developed under the Swedish Presidency. Subsequent cooperation led to much good work in important if unheralded areas such as best practice technical guidelines. I am grateful to MLA for representing the UK skilfully in this arena and, with the agreement of our EU partners, I will be launching a new Digitisation Action Plan for Europe on 16th November at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery as part of our UK Presidency programme.
Another area in which we are leading the EU debate is on the international mobility of collections. The UK's Indemnity scheme is widely seen as the gold standard across and beyond Europe. I am keen that we respond to European enlargement by broadening the club of museums which benefit from international loans, and I believe our Presidency will encourage other EU Member States to take practical steps towards developing and strengthening their own indemnity schemes. By leading the debate on these issues in Europe, we strengthen the ability of our cultural sector to engage in the international arena, and with the prospect of deepening cultural exchanges with China, India and other developing countries we aim to develop a more coherent foreign policy for culture over the next twelve months. Here again, this work needs to be a partnership between Government and the sector itself.
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So let me turn now to the challenges facing the sector. These reflect the views expressed in responses to our consultation document – Understanding the Future.
The first and in many ways the most important is about people - the need to reform the museums workforce so it is fit to address the challenges of the 21st century. This covers everything from who and how you recruit, to how those people are trained, retained and developed, broadening their individual and collective skills base. There are some basic issues about everyone in the museum having an outward-looking perspective, being able to engage with the public and other stakeholders. There are issues about leadership (and here I would welcome the progress made by the Clore Leadership Programme under Chris Smith), and about how the sector can make even better use of the volunteers who already make such an enormous contribution to the sector already. I welcome the arrival of the new Sector Skills Council for the Creative and Cultural Industries, and their announcement today of a Task Force to develop and support Creative Apprenticeships. I am pleased that the museums sector will be strongly represented on the Task Force by David Fleming of the National Museums Liverpool.
Let me also say I recognise that the issue of low pay is one of real concern across the sector. You will not expect me to wave a magic wand at this, nor to say anything which is contrary to the Government's public sector pay policy. But I would say that I welcome the Museums Association's pay guidelines as a pragmatic step towards addressing this issue. I realise the guidelines are still in draft form, and I hope the sector as a whole will engage constructively in refining and finalising them over the months ahead.
In terms of workforce diversity, all the figures I have seen make pretty grim reading, and in the case of London the situation is totally unacceptable. How can you as a sector possibly be drawing on the widest available talent base, when the workforce in no way reflects the diversity of the society you serve? I happily acknowledge the progress the sector has made in diversifying its audiences – though there is still much more that needs to be done on that front – but that does not mean there should be any less effort made to address the complexion of the workforce. As I noted earlier, most of the sector is funded through universal taxation. That being the case, there can be no excuse for not drawing on the full pool of talent available to work in your museums.
I welcome initiatives such as Diversify and Inspire, and I wholly support the work Yolande Beckles is doing through the Global Graduates programme. I also recognise the work that the National Museums are doing under Sandy Nairne's leadership to address issues around cultural diversity. But at the moment the collective impact of these initiatives is barely scratching the surface and it is too often only addressed with project funding rather than the core funding which should be targeting this issue. At the present rate of change it will be decades before we see real change in the diversity of the workforce at all levels. We cannot wait that long and I want to see this issue being tackled with a real sense of urgency across the sector.
The cultural sector should be leaders in the field of diversity, so when I find that it is actually lagging behind the police, the NHS and local government, I feel there must be something wrong.
Other challenges facing museums are shared with the wider cultural sector and society as a whole. How should museums respond to the changing complexion of society, to multiculturalism and the legacy of Empire? Or to the impact of globalisation, increased tourism, terrorism and the revolution in IT? I don't have time to address these in full today, but here again part of the response must be to strengthen partnership working with others facing the same challenges. In this regard I would welcome more partnership working across the cultural sector.
I feel we sometimes make too much of the distinctions between museums, libraries, arts and heritage. Of course there are distinctions, but these are rarely of great concern to the public at large. I would rather reinforce the areas of common ground across the cultural sector and to develop a more coherent narrative for culture which we can deploy to our collective benefit when talking, for example, to local government, or to the Home Office, for whom the distinctions between museums and the arts are arcane and inconsequential.
Similarly, with one eye on next year's Comprehensive Spending Review, I believe we will all be better equipped to demonstrate to the Treasury why public investment in culture should be reinforced if we have a coherent narrative and can demonstrate the impact and outcomes of current spending across the cultural sector.
I appreciate it is a real challenge to keep pace with the structural changes in central and local Government. Initiatives such as Local Area Agreements, Comprehensive Performance Assessment, Beacon Councils and Cultural Pathfinders are all too mystifying to many people in the sector. Similarly the roles of Regional Development Agencies, Regional Skills Partnerships and Regional Cultural Consortiums need to be better understood. As funding is increasingly devolved from Westminster and Whitehall to regional and local level, those partnerships will be key to future success.
In the education world too, structures and funding mechanisms are evolving, and museums need to keep pace with those changes. The risk of not doing so is to be excluded from potential funding sources. You can't have missed the publication of the Schools White Paper yesterday, and coming hard on the heels of the 14-19 White Paper, the Skills White Paper and the Youth Green Paper it is not easy to know what all that means for museums or future funding streams. What are the implications for museums of the New Relationship with Schools, or Every Child Matters, or the Extended Schools programme?
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However, this is where the strengthened partnership of MLA and the Regional Agencies will help. Individual museums need not feel they must grapple with all the changing structures alone – the Regional Agencies are now equipped to do so on their behalf. This is where partnership working within the sector is in everyone's interests.
Other challenges facing the sector include a range of issues in relation to aspects of cultural property. Yesterday we published guidelines to all heritage bodies on the acquisition of cultural property. These guidelines will give museums, libraries and archives access to advice which will ensure that they can continue to expand their collections safe in the knowledge that they are doing so legally and ethically. They were drafted by a sub-group of the Illicit Trade Advisory Panel, chaired by Maurice Davies, and I would like to thank Maurice and those involved for their advice and expertise.
While we will continue to maintain a robust position on issues of restitution and, in partnership with Trustees and others, to exercise sensitive stewardship over the collections in our museums, there are two areas where particular sensitivities require slightly different treatment.
On Nazi-era Spoliation, I am pleased that we will soon be publishing a consultation paper on the substance of future legislation to allow museums to deaccession items for which there are legitimate claims from that era.
And on Human Remains, I am pleased that we were able to legislate in a way which balances the respective interests of both museums and the descendants of the communities affected. I had a fruitful meeting with my Australian counterpart recently, in which she expressed gratitude for the sensitivity with which the UK museums sector has responded to this issue.
You would not forgive me if I tried to ignore the challenge of maintaining a coherent and proactive approach to collecting and funding acquisitions in the present economic climate. I do recognise that it is hugely difficult for museums to compete in an increasingly competitive environment. In this context I would recognise the achievements of the National Art Collections Fund and the National Heritage Memorial Fund in enabling so many objects and works of art to be saved for the nation which would have gone abroad without their interventions.
I regret I have no easy answer to this problem, and all the signs are that next year's Comprehensive Spending Review is unlikely to offer much comfort on this front. On the question of tax relief for gifts to museums and galleries, I must of course point out that such issues are a matter for the Chancellor of the Exchequer. If you were minded to offer him thoughts on the implementation of Sir Nicholas Goodison's recommendations or other aspects of tax relief I am sure he would be pleased to hear from you.
And still on the subject of future challenges, I must mention London 2012, as I hear some expressions of apprehension that hosting the Olympics poses some sort of threat for the cultural sector. I know Jude Kelly addressed your conference on Monday and I hope she reassured you on this point. The Olympics presents far more of an opportunity than a threat for culture. It will be the greatest possible showcase to present all that is best about Britain. Our museums and galleries must be part of that, and the sector will be fully involved in the planning of the cultural festival and other elements of the Olympic programme.
So in closing, let me be clear that as Minister for Culture I want to champion museums in all arenas, with my colleagues in Government and with opinion-formers across and beyond the cultural sector. Now that we have received and analysed the responses to Understanding the Future, my Department will take forward the next steps. We will be publishing a summary of the responses early next month. I want then to bring together a group of our key partners to help us clarify our joint priorities and identify where we can make most difference to the future strategic direction of the sector. In doing so, I believe we will illuminate more of the achievements of museums and the people who work in them, and enable the sector to be strengthened for the 21st Century.
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