A ticking time bomb for Scottish museums

Although the funding crisis playing out in the museum sector spans the whole of the UK, it looks different in each nation.

Museums in Scotland have not seen quite the same headline-grabbing events as those in England, where several councils have come perilously close to financial collapse; instead the challenges facing the Scottish sector have been slow-burning. But the situation is undoubtedly serious.

One professional has described the current outlook as the “final phase” of the pandemic’s impact on the sector: with relief funding now dried up and the Holyrood government embroiled in its own difficulties – having just appointed its third first minister, John Swinney, in less than 18 months – museums feel they have been left adrift to grapple with a long tail of challenges left behind by Covid.

Swinney recently axed the role of culture minister, with the museum sector now reporting directly to culture secretary Angus Robertson.

Like everywhere in the UK, visitor numbers remain lower than before the pandemic, particularly the valuable overseas market, which has had a knock-on impact on earned income. Soaring inflation, meanwhile, has eaten into budgets for revenue and capital spend.

The sector in Scotland also faces unique challenges. The government’s “fair wage” stipulation, which means any organisation in receipt of public funding must pay the Real Living Wage to all staff, is a welcome progressive boost for the underpaid museum workforce, but it has not been without consequence.

There is a feeling in that the policy was introduced with no acknowledgement of the funding crisis facing many organisations and little consideration as to what extra support might be needed.

Cutting back

Some museums have had to cut back on core staff and capacity, leaving them unable to develop new endeavours that might help their financial situation; others have been unable to access government grants or run apprenticeship schemes because they cannot offer the wage.

These issues highlight another challenge facing the sector: Scotland’s museums have no equivalent to Arts Council England’s national portfolio, which provides regular core funding over a longer period.

With Scottish museums lacking the capacity to apply for short-term project funding, some grant streams targeted at the sector are, in fact, undersubscribed – despite the huge demand for more investment. Meanwhile smaller, non-Accredited museums often have little or no access to funding.

This all comes in the context of reduced public funding across the board. The Scottish government was heavily criticised last year for imposing a 10% cut on Creative Scotland, which affects museums and galleries such as Glasgow Women’s Library, the Collective in Edinburgh and North Uist’s Taigh Chearsabhagh Trust.

After years of static funding –amounting to a cut in real terms – the government also reduced support for non-national museums this year, including Museums Galleries Scotland and the Scottish Maritime, Mining and Fisheries museums, whose capital funding was cut by 15.1% to reflect the “changing profiles of capital projects”.

The Scottish government says it has little room for fiscal manoeuvring and blames Westminster for an inadequate funding settlement; it predicts that its current resource spending requirements could exceed funding by £1bn this financial year, and by £1.9bn in 2027-28. However, it has pledged to invest at least £100m more annually in culture and the arts by the financial year 2028/29.

The central government squeeze is compounded by local government cuts, which are increasingly severe thanks to a combination of austerity, inflation and a 15-year council tax freeze.

Glasgow City Council is facing a funding gap of £107m over the next three years, which will have a knock-on impact on Glasgow Life, the trust that runs the city’s museums and has already been forced to make many museum posts redundant. Dundee City Council has made almost £20m in cuts, and came close to shutting several venues this year, including Broughty Castle.

“Core services are failing and where there’s not strong advocacy for them, they will be closed,” says one museum insider.

The challenges are not confined to local authority-dependent museums. Scotland’s eight university museums have had their grant pot from the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) cut from £1.2m to £883,200 this year.

The SFC also withdrew funding for the four university institutions in Scotland that do not hold Recognised collections of national significance. “We are alarmed by the scale of the cuts now being made without consultation or impact assessment,” wrote university museum staff in a letter to the SFC.

Severe financial distress

Meanwhile, several of Scotland’s industrial museums, which have been particularly hard hit by the cost-of-living crisis due to their high fixed costs, are in severe financial distress (see box).

Industrial museums face existential crisis

The unique nature of Scotland’s industrial museums, which care for collections of large machinery and complex heritage buildings, means that the sharp rise in utility bills and maintenance costs has had a magnified impact.

With visitor figures still lagging behind pre-pandemic levels, this has created a “wonderful maelstrom of difficulties”, says David Mann (left), director of the Scottish Maritime Museum and chair of charity Go Industrial, which advocates for Scotland’s industrial museums. Some of Go Industrial’s members fear they may become insolvent by the end of the year.

The charity is in talks with the government to find solutions to the crisis – but Mann urges museums in a similar situation to seek help and support sooner.

“We’re having support, but it would have been great to have these conversations six to 12 months ago,” he says. “Museums need to be open and transparent about the difficulties they are in to get support more quickly.”

Many museum workers feel that because the sector is continuing to succeed on the surface, politicians and the public may not be aware of the scale of the problem.

Glasgow’s Burrell Collection was the Art Fund Museum of the Year in 2023 – at the same time as the institution was making significant job cuts. And despite Dundee Contemporary Arts being one of the nominees for the 2024 award, director Beth Bate warned last year that the centre was in “unimaginable financial precarity” and could close.

The Museums Association’s (MA) recently published manifesto calls for everyone to have the right to access to museums, as well as for new public investment across the UK. Museum leaders say a new funding model is needed.

“Reductive arguments around funding often ignore the basic fact: the museum model is rarely an efficient way to make money,” says Matthew Bellhouse Moran, director of the HMS Unicorn museum ship in Dundee and an MA representative for Scotland.

“For us, success is not best measured in profit but through healthier and happier communities – a benefit often delivered at an astonishingly low cost. If profit-driven business is struggling with rising costs, how are museums meant to cope? After 20 years of steadily shrinking budgets, museums that have adapted have become leaner, better-run organisations. And yet we still face closures and cuts.

“Collectively, we must improve our ability to demonstrate, measure and report the tangible benefit to both community and economy – beyond the balance sheet – to advocate for our necessity and our slice of the pie.”

Years of falling budgets have left Scotland’s civic museums in a fragile position

A decade of declining budgets has placed our civic museums in a fragile position. Services have been hollowed out, recruitment freezes are putting strain on staff and the communities these museums serve are impacted as engagement programmes are reduced or stopped.

The Scottish Funding Council’s recent, sudden decision to stop vital funding to four of Scotland’s university museums – and to reduce all others by 20% – will halt excellent collaborative work.

Our smaller, non-accredited museums and galleries have little or no access to funding.

All of these museums need support, not just for funding but for advice and to develop their skills and practice to secure financial resilience.

Museums Galleries Scotland receives just £1m in grant funding from the Scottish government for 450 museums and galleries, which is inadequate to meet the sector’s needs and ambitions.

There is a strong commitment within our sector to making museums a better place to visit and work in.

Despite the challenges, our colleagues are prioritising this important work, such as the many who are participating in Delivering Change, an anti-oppression programme.

There is growing activity in museums working with source communities to repatriate looted or unethically acquired items in Scottish collections.

Furthermore, the sector is recognising and addressing the inequalities within the workforce through programmes such as Modern Apprenticeships and prioritising paying at least the Real Living Wage.