Museums and Heritage Awards 2009

 

The Bursa experience was followed on Wednesday night by the British Museums and Heritage Award ceremony, held in Church House in Westminster, very close to the Houses of Parliament. Church House is located in Dean's Yard – the Dean referred to here being the Dean of Westminster School, whose students were playing cricket on the green when we arrived.

 

I love this place. It is a quiet, secret location upheld by exclusive traditions in the heart of trafficky Westminster. The last time I had visited the school was for Easter Service a few years ago, with a very good friend of mine who walked in and simply asked the porter if we could stroll around. I pay homage to Nigel’s charm. More recently, I was here to support the London Marathoners reaching their grand finale in St James’ Park.

 

The bustle of tourists traipsing to (through?) the Abbey, peers walking to Parliament, police patrolling along the security fencing, protestors (currently it is Tamil protestors camping out against the Sri Lankan government) on Parliament Square, the circling traffic of buses and cars, the noise from the bridge, Nelson Mandela’s statue, Cromwell on horseback… the grounds are a haven of tranquility in the middle of the city. I loved the evening walk in the cool quiet of the night - this is a picture of the Cenotaph on Whitehall, with a couple of black cabs.

The evening was surprising. A small museum in Luton – which I think of as an airport destination, a mix of low cost late night flights and bleary eyed early morning buses – reaped the main award. This is the Stockwood Discovery Centre. I cannot comment on the museum experience, apart from noting the new museum opened to the public in July 2008, having received about £5m from main funders HLF and the EU. What strikes me, though, and is relevant to this blog, is that it is managed by the Luton Cultural Services Trust.

 

I have had a few conversations with European colleagues recently who express interest in the Trust form of governance – a recent addition to British management structures for the sector. The Trust model is an appealing one. It allows local councils to download the resource intensive cultural assets they own, to partners who are established as a company limited by guarantee with exclusively charitable purposes. This is the most common case, as adopted by Luton. Since sustainability is the key word, Trusts are often coupled with a trading arm, established for the purpose of all the services that are not part of the Trust’s charitable objects, ie profit making.

 

The transition is never easy – amongst senior professionals present yesterday evening, the new Herbert in Coventry and the Rotunda Museum in Scarborough both sought Trust status (or the local councils did), and both lost their CEOs, the drivers behind the museum redevelopments. Change requires sacrificial victims – but does this also mean that museum experts feel so uncomfortable within a new Trust scenario that they leave / feel forced to leave their jobs?

 

Here I am, muttering and mumbling…