Use your local museums or lose them
I read John Harris’s article on the demise of local museums – notably The People’s Story Museum in Edinburgh – with a smile (British history is being destroyed before our eyes – and it has nothing to do with culture wars over statues, 6 October). The smile was of fond recollection from someone who worked as an Edinburgh council museum attendant around 1996-97, including many hours at The People’s Story. Sadly, in all my time there, I rarely saw a great upswell of interest from the very working class of the city in the exhibits that celebrate their own history.
It wasn’t like that at every museum or venue I worked at over that year. The Museum of Childhood further up the Royal Mile? Mobbed (old toys tend to be a big draw). Ditto the City Art Centre on Market Street – high-end travelling exhibitions always ensured a good turnout. But The People’s Story’s local intake was patchy at best. Same for Huntly House Museum (as was) across the road. The nadir was my time at the Queensferry Museum in South Queensferry – also to be closed – celebrating the history of the town and the Forth Bridge outside the window. Attendance figures barely made double figures some days.
Now, against the backdrop of a council tax freeze, it’s inevitable that cuts will come at local level. But if folks want to maintain local history, they need to do more than sign petitions or fulminate at the injustice of it all. Turn up, support these places, maybe even donate to them. Or lose them for ever.
Colin Montgomery
Edinburgh
• John Harris says museums and galleries are short of money. Yes, museums in the regions have been cruelly cut, but the money going to museums in London in the last 10 years is unbelievable: London Museum £437m; Tate Modern £260m; V&A East and V&A Warehouse an estimated £100m; Sainsbury Wing £85m; British Museum Storage £64m; Courtauld Gallery £57m; National Portrait Gallery £41m; Imperial War Museum £40m; Young V&A £13m.
And this is before we price in the refurbishment of the British Museum, which is expected to cost at least £1bn. As Melvyn Bragg said in 2013: “London is simply eating up resources, which are limited, and is therefore starving the rest of the country.” No change there then.
David Kennedy
Menston, West Yorkshire
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