Blog: Behind the scenes at museums
by Shelagh Young, Engagement Lead, David Hume Institute
2nd September 2022
If you've been dreaming of saving on your energy costs by swapping a wintry day under your duvet binge watching box sets for time spent sitting on a hard bench surrounded by dinosaur bones or mediaeval quern stones, bad luck, it's just not happening.
No sooner had museums been added to the list of suggested warm refuges from the cost of living storm, up pops the Museum Association to dust off one of today's rarest artefacts - the simple truth. A lot of museums and heritage centres won't be open as often as usual because they can't afford their energy bills either.
This matters.
Not just because a huge number of people need more than imaginary warm spaces as a defence against the dark parts of winter but because museums are incredibly important to the economy.
Alongside providing jobs they help drive tourism.
The National Museum Director's Council states that 40% of visitors to the UK cite culture as their reason to visit, and 43% visited a museum or gallery while in the UK.
They come to see the fascinating antiquities and that doesn't include us. But all old things need to be well looked after. If you've ever spent a night in the mildewed sheets of a damp caravan or thumbed the flyblown pages of a wrinkled vintage paperback you will already know that climate control is fundamental to the healthy preservation of stuff, not just people.
Shorter museum opening hours cut some costs but climate controlled museum storage is a sophisticated and costly business which cannot be turned off without posing an existential threat to the heritage industry.
Alongside uncapped unaffordable energy bills, which have reportedly risen by 400% for some institutions, museums are seeing a reduction in donations and visitor numbers, both signs of growing public belt tightening. Without additional support we have to ask how long it will be before the cost of merely preserving collections, let alone enabling anyone to see them, outstrips the sector's ability to afford it?
In a week in which health experts are warning that cold homes will damage the lung and brain development of children, it might seem odd to champion investment in the preservation of things. But a healthy economy including the arts, culture and heritage industries, is integral to maintaining public health. There is no better future to be built from ignoring the whole in favour of its parts.
Energy industry privatisation was likened to selling off the family silver. Looking at current energy industry profits, they’ve already turned our lost legacy into gold. Some would point to this as a sign that the private sector really does do the energy business better than public ownership ever could.
Whatever your view, it is surely far from ideal to forge ahead with policies that risk leaving many of the remaining national heirlooms too damaged to generate any income at all.
For an insight into how people in Scotland are feeling about the rising cost of living take a look at the latest edition of our quarterly Understanding Scotland: economy research.
