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An Action Framework for Museums
A Museums Action Framework - The Scottish Executive Response
The proposals made here therefore, do not compromise wider consideration of key issues in the broader context. Rather they will contribute to long-term improvement in the sector by focusing on some significant aspects that can be taken forward immediately and within identified resources.
Progress will be made towards this improvement through focused work in the following broad areas.
1. The creation of a regional development framework
The purpose of the framework is to develop the capacity and sustainability of the cultural heritage sector through active partnerships: across local authority boundaries; between local authority and independent museums; enabling a new level of productive interaction with the Nationals and providing opportunities for museums to link into, and be part of, other initiatives within developing regional partnerships. In particular:
A network of regional museum development officers with some strategic project funding will be created. These officers will work across local authority boundaries, at an appropriately senior level to ensure effectiveness and influence, developing capacity and skills through regional public/voluntary/private sector partnerships.
They will take on a general role of developing the local presence of museums - as educational and cultural facilities and as visitor attractions.
They will help local museums to plug into the processes of community planning. They will be points for the development of funding proposals and education.
Through their connections to each other and to central support from SMC and the Nationals they will promote benchmarks for quality and ensure access to relevant expertise.
In developing the capacity of regional 'clusters' they will enable the improved interface between the Nationals and non-nationals, e.g. by developing the infrastructure to host national loans.
This follows an SMC proposal, but it is also reflected in the NMS response that regional partnerships should be created, and in discussion with VOCAL (The Voice of Chief Officers of Cultural, Community, and Leisure Services in Scotland). Many of the other submissions from the sector advocated strategic regional partnerships and networks as a way forward to address a number of the issues of capacity and development under all four of the headings consulted on.
Scottish Executive funding for the framework will take the form of a Challenge Fund with the minimum level of bureaucracy and prescription, though bids will be expected to demonstrate expected outcomes, and clear targets for monitoring progress. The Executive seeks to enable maximum ownership from the partnerships themselves so the exact nature of the bid will depend on the priorities of each partnership, which will be expected to encompass independent and local authority museums in the region. The partnerships will manage posts and some strategic project funding and the lead body can be either an independent or local authority partner.
Partnerships will be invited to bid within a range of broad strategic 'themes' drawn from the consultation. These will be explained fully in guidance to be issued with the call to bid from the Executive but will include such examples as:
the development of regional cultural tourism
regional workforce development
regional partnerships between museums and non-museum organisations
joint regional initiatives
maximising the educational potential.
The Scottish Executive Regional Development Challenge Fund will offer a maximum of 100,000 per annum over three years to each partnership to support posts, administrative support, and strategic project work. Executive funds bid for will be matched by a 25% contribution from each partnership to ensure regional and local commitment over three years.
The exact groupings will be decided by the partnerships themselves, but the guidance will indicate that between 6-10 partnerships across Scotland are envisaged. It is recognised that some partnerships will be more immediately able and ready to bid than others. First off the blocks will be those who already have sufficient relationships and capacity to pull effective strategic bids together but these will help to demonstrate the benefits and provide examples of process and good practice. Others may take longer to group and bid and SMC will have a role to be proactive with potential partnerships that need help to gel.
The Executive will issue invitations to bid and guidance in the autumn 2003 for an April 2004 start, and in subsequent years to allow for local funding timetables. SMC will provide administration for the process.
2. The nationals to adopt a greater role in support of the non-national sector
NMS and NGS have, for many years, provided advice, expertise, and other assistance to the non-national sector. These activities are much valued and NMS has identified in its recently published new vision that there is significant scope to manage such activity more coherently and effectively. NGS are taking similar steps. This will largely be in provision of advice on collection management, collection care, and subject specific expertise.
Capacity to co-ordinate and ration the demand on this national pool of expertise - not all of which is located in the nationals themselves - will require some hierarchy of collections - or items in collections. The Audit does not provide enough on this without further work in developing a strategy. The development of a set of criteria for prioritising will be required to make this proposed resource workable. Such criteria will be a useful development with wider application.
In its response to the consultation NMS has proposed a more clearly defined national role for itself as a source of advice and expertise and also as a key player in the creation of strategic partnerships which build capacity. In its strategic objectives for its Corporate Plan period 2003-07 it undertakes to communicate this shift of focus through marketing activities, strategic and operational working, partnerships, and staff training and development.
With the help of key partners, the Executive will identify existing and planned research, and if necessary commission further research, to articulate the enriching role heritage plays in the lives of Scottish people, the value they place on it, and to find reliable measures for the most significant cultural, economic and social impacts of museums. This responds to a suggestion in the SMC submission and the ECS Committee paper. There has been relatively poor external advocacy of the sector and a difficulty in promotion based on evidence. A sound evidence base for assessing the importance of a rich cultural heritage to Scottish people in all their diversity, and consequently to social and economic agendas in both central and local government is overdue. It could underpin the sector's development, support its case for investment in quality and access to excellence, and provide baselines for future assessment of growth and sustainability.
This will be particularly timely in the light of proposals for wider consultation over the coming period on cultural policy, structures and funding at both Executive and local authority levels put forward by the 'Partnership for a Better Scotland' document, and local authority organisations.
3. The Executive will set out a view of the future of the three industrial museums currently funded directly from the Strategic Change Fund
The Executive's support to the three industrial museums that benefit from the present emergency package is time limited to finish in 2003-04. Transitional planning for moves out of Strategic Change Fund support is being worked on in consultation between the Executive and the museums. A longer-term approach to sustainability is being developed by each of these museums to move toward alternative future arrangements. These arrangements will be different in each case.
The Executive has commissioned a consultancy to review future options for the conservation and exhibition of certain internationally and nationally significant items of Scotland's maritime heritage. These items are at present in the care of the Trustees of the Scottish Maritime Museum. The review has taken into account the resources likely to be available locally and nationally, imminent or concurrent developments nationally and locally, and relevant time-scales. It has advised on practical proposals to safeguard and make accessible the maritime heritage within those constraints and opportunities and discussion between the Executive and the Trustees is continuing.
The Executive will consult further with key partners to establish a view on the future care and accessibility of industrial heritage that is of recognised national importance to Scotland.
4. The Strategic Change Fund
The existing funding of industrial museums is taken from the Strategic Change Fund. The Executive will redirect part of the resource presently engaged in the Strategic Change Fund to the Regional Development Challenge Fund and to support for other work arising from this action framework from 2004-05 onwards. The Executive considers that the repositioning of this resource to fund the developments put forward here will give it more precise and overall strategic purpose, lasting impact, and confirm it as a continuing resource to the sector as a whole.
In conclusion
The Scottish Executive recognises the dedication and commitment of the people - paid staff and volunteers - who work at every level to safeguard and provide access to the cultural heritage of Scotland. We are grateful to all those who responded so eloquently to the consultation exercise.
Those aspects of the submissions which have contributed to our understanding of the sector's views on the bigger structural and funding issues, not dealt with here, will not be lost. They will be considered, and further views sought, in the context of the wider look at cultural policy, structures, and funding arrangements that is committed to in PABS. Such a 'bigger picture' consultation was itself one of the requests that recurred in the submissions from the museums sector to this exercise.
The framework described in this response from the Scottish Executive provides for focused and immediate action, achievable within existing resources, to address specific and significant issues raised in the consultation. It does not pre-empt the outcomes of a wider review, but it does enable developments to begin which will contribute to the long-term capacity building and sustainability of the sector as a whole and have lasting effect.
The Scottish Executive
August 2003
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