Some more thoughts on community museums, looking at Wireless in Wales and Denbigh.  The enthusiasm of Wireless in Wales’ committee and volunteers is great, and it’s becoming increasingly necessary.   Anyone working in the heritage industry knows that the last few years have been tough. To some extent, devolution has worked well for both Scotland and Wales, where we’ve been cushioned from the very worst of the cuts – it’s been observed by someone I’ve worked with that local authority museums’ services in England have undergone a “massacre”.  Jobs being lost, museums closed, volunteers now being the order of the day.  Of course, we couldn’t escape this forever, and local authorities here are scaling back.  From a professional standpoint what is happening down in Carmarthenshire is worrying. 

The proposed Heritage Act, that Huw Lewis says will be coming in towards the end of 2014 or early 2015 cannot come soon enough, and we’ll all have to do our best to shape the resulting legislation.  It looks like heritage or museums services will be made statutory, but that could mean (i.e. probably will) that the unitary authorities will only have to provide one heritage/museums officer rather than have a dedicated county museum.  At the moment there is no such statutory protection. 

 

So what is the impact on community museums?  It seems that they will be filling the spaces left by the local authority museums once the axes have been sharpened.  It does raise the question of what the model for the professional heritage industry will be by 2020 – a few specialists in national museums and large heritage organisations giving advice to small community museums that operate on a purely voluntary basis?  Local authority museum officers responsible not for any sites they operate themselves, but working all out supporting the independents?   It could easily be.  Senior officers in local authorities are not heritage specialists and have no idea on the range of issues and targets that the councils are involved with.  I do remember when we looked at that in Denbighshire, and the only core council responsibility that we genuinely had nothing to do with was flood prevention!  Education, environment, health and lifestyles, yes.  It’s because of this that the Advocacy Toolkit will be necessary.  In forming (and in the case of politicians informing) the Heritage Act we’re going to have to spend much more effort on advocacy, and much more time too – not that we have any more time with the mounting backlog in collections and increasing our education, exhibition and events programmes to increase footfall and try to justify our existence.

Denbigh is an interesting place to see the community museum developments.  There is a group, of which I’ve been involved on the periphery, trying to create a Denbigh Museum.  There used to be one, in the Library, but it lost accreditation and closed.  The items are currently in the care of Denbighshire Heritage Service, but apart from occasional exhibitions in Denbigh, they are not on show.  Several buildings have been inspected as possible sites for a new museum, but it will be raising the money that will be the hard part, or course.  The will to do this is there, as are the people, the collections are waiting to be displayed, there is enough curatorial help available to get the museum up and running – for them now is the time for their advocacy to hit its stride.  Wireless in Wales is lucky to have a space in Canolfan Iaith in Denbigh with Popeth Cymraeg (Welsh Unlimited) due to the links between them that already existed.  Although a smaller concern than the proposed Denbigh Museum (of which its collections might one day form a part, although it would be nice to see it retain some independence) it does show how enthusiasts, properly constituted, with the right help, can source funds and develop their collections management and display expertise and work in partnership to create a going concern.

The main concern for the industry as a whole is whether this will be the model that all local authorities will look to in the next couple of years before the Heritage Act makes them get their houses in some sort of order.  This isn’t a criticism of these community museums, but it would be a damning shame if only the nationals and they were left.