sponsored museums, who had previously charged for entry, dropping their admission fees. In “exchange” for this, the department would increase its funding (HoC 2002, summary 4). A special VAT rebate scheme was introduced in 2001 for museums and galleries offering free access. The introduction of free admission was incremental: free admission for children was introduced in April 1999; for the over-60s in April 2000, and for everyone in December 2001. Free admission to university museums followed in August 2005.
Perceived effect
DCMS’s press releases presented free admission as a spectacular success on the basis of visit numbers at the formerly charging museums having escalated.
Alongside Lottery funding, which enabled existing museums and galleries throughout the UK to be extended and extensively refurbished, free admission contributed considerably to the increased profile of British museums: the policy itself has become iconic. For the arch spin-doctor of New Labour, Peter Mandelson, the government got off to a good start by keeping to campaign commitments and implementing quick wins, which included announcing free entry to museums.
DCMS’s reporting on free admission has, however, been opaque. It has compared visit numbers against a baseline indicative of the situation before entry charges were scrapped, but it also presented aggregated visit numbers, and converted visits into visitors. Although free admission clearly prompted millions of extra visits, by a larger percentage of the population (HoC 2002, evidence p. 33 para. 79), the department has never publicly reflected on whom was encouraged to visit, and whether or not they were its original target audience. Ministerial statements, nevertheless, implied that DCMS’s strategy was working to plan claiming that free admission has democratized the nation’s treasures making them accessible to all; that the removal of such barriers as admission charges was a clear rebuttal to those who had said that people were not interested in “serious” culture and learning. The figures were said to disprove the contention that the initiative was all about the same people visiting more often: that half of all visits were by “new visitors” – “new visitors” being defined as those who had not visited in the previous 12 months.
Yet, other reports suggested that DCMS’s target audience for free admission, originally identified as those whom the department initially classified as C2DEs (the half of the population comprising skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled manual workers, state pensioners etc., with no other earnings) did not necessarily account for the increases in visit numbers.6 Within a year of the introduction of universal free admission, it was apparent that while attendance was increasing across all social groups, the most significant rises in visit numbers were among those who had always been well represented amongst museum and gallery visitors (Martin 2002). The same kind of people were still going, and the profile of a typical population of museum visitors remained relatively stable. Indeed a government inquiry, National Museums and Galleries: Funding and Free Admission, concluded that “Emerging trends and previous research indicate that free admission on its own is unlikely to be effective in attracting significant numbers of new visitors from the widest range of socio-economic and ethnic groups” (HoC 2002, para. 60). DCMS’s 2003–2006 agreements with its sponsored museums and galleries, as well as with MLA regarding Renaissance-funded museums, required an overall increase of 8 percent between April 2003 and March 2006 by adult visitors in socioeconomic group C2DE. Each museum would undertake specific activities depending on its own circumstances. DCMS’s 2006 Annual Report declared this target as having been met. The 2007 target was to increase the number of people from priority groups (defined as those with a social disability, people from lower socioeconomic groups and ethnic minorities by 2 percent). But, its 2008 Annual Report reported slippage across arts, museums and galleries, and historic environment. Evidence drawn from DCMS data, including its monthly museum visit figures, suggests that many of DCMS-funded museums experienced difficulties in increasing their numbers of adult visitors from socioeconomic group C2DE. This may, however, highlight some of the problems with the department’s methods of data collection and its clarification of the definitions used which produced a number of anomalies. The apparent decline in the percentage of C2DE visits also reflects the fact that prior to 2005/2006, a number of the museums had included under 16-year-old C2DEs in their performance indicators, although these were specifically meant to refer to people of 16 and over. The totals for 2005/2006 have been adjusted to exclude children.
Strictly speaking, it is impossible to read across the data that the department has collected or to assume consistencies. Given the number of caveats that apply, it could be argued that this data is incapable of demonstrating trends in attendance by target groups to museums and galleries. However, the consistent data generated after the mid-2000s, indicates that the percentage of visits by adults from social groups NS-SEC 5–8 has marginally declined since 2006/2007. This suggests that free admission has not succeeded in attracting the groups for whom it was originally intended, which raises questions about the integrity of the most basic performance indicators; government’s concerns with efficiency and value for money; its seriousness about evidence-based policy; and its commitment to extending access to the many, not just the few.
It is, perhaps, significant that under the Coalition, free admission is now considered central to the position of museums in the UK visitor economy. The UK is home to three of the five most visited art museums in the world, all three of which are free: the British Museum, Tate, and the National Gallery (Art Newspaper 2011, 24), and nearly 60 percent of visitors to the UK visit the free DCMS-sponsored museums. By 2010/2011 there were 17.7 million overseas visits to DCMS-sponsored museums (ONS 2010), accounting for over one-third of all visits.
Conclusions
Labour bequeathed a public realm that shone. They renovated, restocked and rebuilt schools, hospitals and clinics, arts and sports venues, parks and museums. JK Galbraith once talked about private affluences and public squalor; now there are plenty of the former, despite the recession, but much less of the latter. Public spaces no longer felt second best or the shabby poor relations of commerce. Sober academics talked of a renaissance of England’s northern cities, and you could say the same of Glasgow and Belfast. For years to come, civic buildings will stand as monuments to the Labour era …
But… the social state we are in now is not much different from 1997. The broad judgment has to be that not enough altered in the fabric of our country, given Labour’s commitments on equality and fairness. The country remains strongly defined by class, regional disparity, inequality and individual and business under-achievement.
Toynbee and Walker 2010, 297
Money evidently wasn’t everything. Seen against its objectives, the effectiveness of recent museums policy initiatives is questionable. The plethora of policy directives over the past 20 years may have been as functionally related to the growth of the economy as it was to a belief in the ethos of the public sector. The greater transparency of the terms of government’s engagement in museums policy opened the door to more detailed criticism. In retrospect, museums, and culture in general, were of less importance to New Labour than its rhetoric suggested. The flourish of autobiographies published around the time of the 2010 election devote little space to the subject.
And how important was New Labour policy to museums, museum professionals, and museum practice? The short answer is that it was of considerable importance if it brought paychecks with it. So for the 60 or so National or Hub museums that received direct funding from DCMS or via MLA, understanding and keeping abreast of policy was essential. But many hundreds of museums were also indirectly touched by government policy. The resources put into Museum Development Officers and Subject Specialist Networks, for example, reached deep into the sector. It also influenced the Heritage Lottery Fund and therefore all those who applied for a grant.
Policy certainly endorsed the actions of those museums – or more specifically, those museum leaders – who sought a wider
