Museum charges plan is the ‘thin end of the wedge’
By Plans to charge for temporary exhibitions at Bristol’s museums are the “thin end of the wedge” and show “complete disregard” for the city’s cultural heritage.
That was the message from the man who scrapped charges for Bristol’s museums 11 years ago, in response to recommendations passed at the full council meeting last night.
Paul Smith: Scrapped museum charges
Privatisation, trust status, a public/private trust and community or local authority partnerships are options included by an independent select committee which was set up to examine the future of the museum and archive service.
The recommendations were passed on Tuesday and will now go before the Liberal Democrat cabinet for approval.
But Paul Smith, Labour’s prospective parliamentary candidate for Bristol West, told Bristol24-7 he was shocked at the ‘Ryanair’ plans – a reference to incremental charging of services in a bid to slash costs, which has been introduced by Tory-run Barnet council in North London.
“I think they are softening up the people for widening charges across a range of council services and increasing what they can charge inside the museums.
“It’s absolutely fundamental that museums should be free for all. They are part of the wider education service and reflect the cultural heritage of the city.
“The plans show a complete disregard for Bristol’s cultural heritage. It’s small-minded and penny-pinching.”
Councillors maintained last night they wanted to keep free admission for museums. Deputy leader Simon Cook told the Evening Post that “if it’s a choice between a fantastic exhibition coming to Bristol and having to charge in order to achieve that, then I think we should look at that”.
Mr Cook cited the example of Glasgow, where the service was managed by a non-profit company – making 90% of the city collection available to the public, compared to 60% in Bristol.
But Mr Smith – former Chair of Leisure at the council – said that a charging system was liable to put off people from visiting museums, adding that when charges were removed from museum entry in 1998 the number of visitors doubled.
When asked whether raising finance from museums was a reasonable way of reducing the pressures on council budgets in other areas, he said the amount raised would be “tiny” in relation to the overall costs.
“When we were charging (for museums), it raised £50-60,000 a year. This is neither here nor there. Even if they raised £200,000 it makes no difference to, for example, the £4m social services budget deficit.”
Simon Cook is just being silly now, at the last election he promised in leaflets to stop development of the greenbelt while secretly meeting to guess what – promote development on the greenbelt and to reduce bus fares even though his cabinet had already agreed (but embargoed) a decision to increase bus fares on the park and ride services. If he told me it was sunny I would put my mac on.
I scrapped museum charges he is starting to bring them back – actions speak louder than words.
Paul Smith's comments are deliberately meant to be scaremongering and distort what the Select Committee report actually says. The suggestion to look at charging is strictly limited to temporary exhibitions and not to the permanent collection. This is common practise in London and elsewhere. I also made the point at the Council debate that the Lib Dem administration would never introduce charges for entry to our museums to see the permanent collections.