City council budget cuts and the proposed closure of three museums will “obliterate” culture in Bristol, campaigners have warned. Performing arts trade union Equity says plans to shut Blaise Museum, Georgian House and Red Lodge, along with ending all funding from the local authority to cultural organisations from 2027, will leave the city as a “cultural desert”.
Councillors also expressed alarm at the proposals, branding them “nuts”, during a meeting of the finance sub-committee where a raft of options to save money to help the council balance its books were debated. Bristol City Council leader Cllr Tony Dyer (Green, Southville) said the plan was to temporarily close the three museums, whose visitor numbers are a tiny fraction of those of M Shed and Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, and mothball the collections while work took place to explore other ways of running and funding them.
He said all existing grant commitments for cultural groups would be honoured but the money would be phased out over the next three years, ultimately saving £635,000 a year. Bristol resident Rachael Fagan, from Equity, told the meeting that the cuts would be “devastating” for thousands of freelance arts workers and that the proposals represented the “complete abandonment of any culture funding” in the city.
She told the sub-committee: “Culture is for the chop in Bristol. Don’t bother moving here from London or Paris, Bristol City Council is openly hostile to what you do.
“The culture cuts that you’re putting forward will absolutely obliterate the future of culture for any generation coming after this.” Equity UK president Lynda Rooke, who also lives in Bristol, said: “The question you must ask yourselves is, does Bristol want a cultural desert?
“Such proposals risk going that way and cuts mean jobs will disappear and the creative workforce will be forced to leave the city and search elsewhere for opportunities. It’s pie in the sky if you think some knight in shining armour is going to come riding through and offer substitute funding – it doesn’t exist.”
Sign up to receive daily news updates and breaking news alerts straight to your inbox for free here.
She said the amount of annual savings that would be made by closing the museums were “meagre” – £64,000 for Red Lodge, £39,000 for Blaise and £29,000 for Georgian House – compared with the total proposed budget cuts of £43million. Cllr Tim Kent (Lib Dem, Hengrove & Whitchurch Park) said: “There must be better options than just saying we are going to lock the doors on the museums.
“That doesn’t make the costs go away for those buildings or having to look after those collections. The idea that we will not reopen those museums is totally unacceptable.”
Sub-committee member Cllr Rob Logan (Labour, Filwood) said: “It seems like such a small saving considering the cultural damage that will be done. Something I dislike is a saving before a plan.
“What we all want to do is to have a strategy for the direction, so in this case a strategy for historic houses, to say should we own them in the first place, what should we do with them, who should look after them, how long should they be open? It feels nuts to close them while we come up with a plan.
“Could we achieve a similar saving by keeping them open less than they are now but not closed because the fact that we have to provide heating and security, it just seems nuts to have them open for zero days?” Cllr Jonathan Hucker (Conservative, Stockwood) told the meeting on Thursday, January 16: “Given it’s a relatively small saving, it’s something that would be very difficult to support.
“Of all the different things listed in the document, the closure of the three museums I find to be particularly unpalatable and I would like to see those taken out. I’m not convinced that given there would be costs to mothballing the museums that it would really be worth closing them.
“I’m aware that the city has an art collection worth £134million, and if we sold five per cent of that, you could be talking about £6million or £7million. I would rather see that looked at than museums closed.”
Cllr Patrick McAllister (Green, Hotwells & Harbourside) said: “On the cultural investment programme, Bristol has such a vibrant, strong and important cultural scene. I would worry we would risk damaging the city’s economy by a greater value than what we are proposing to save from this.”
Cllr Dyer said: “This isn’t stopping anybody who is currently getting funding – that continues. What we won’t do is award any additional funding.”
He said the three museums earmarked for closure were only open two-thirds of the year and then only four days a week. Cllr Dyer said Blaise Museum had 18,000 visitors a year and both Georgian House and Red Lodge between 8,000 and 9,000.
“To put that into perspective, M Shed and Bristol Museum & Art Gallery receive 700,000 visitors per year,” he said. “So clearly we need to look at how we operate these museums.
“We are not looking to sell off any of these properties, in fact for the Georgian House and Red Lodge we cannot sell them off, they have title restrictions that prevent them being sold or redeveloped for other purposes. Blaise Castle estate could potentially be sold off or renovated or redesigned in some way but that would be much further down the line if we were to take that course of action.
“The cost and savings include security and in some cases heating costs because there are no plans to move out the collections because this is essentially a mothballing exercise to give us time to come up with solutions. So the cost of moving the collections has not been budgeted for and would probably significantly outweigh the savings that would be made.
“The purpose behind this is to build enough time to continue the work we are doing looking at alternative ways of funding and promoting the museums.” He said one option could be to charge an entry fee, although the meeting was told this would not save as much money as the option to close them.
The sub-committee’s comments will go to the strategy & resources committee on February 3 to agree a draft budget for a vote at full council on February 25.
No intrusive adverts, pop-ups or distractions! Just our brilliant content presented in the best way possible.
Get your free one-month trial by visiting the ‘Premium’ tab on the BristolLive app now (auto renews annually at £19.99).
If you haven’t got it already, get started by downloading our app here on iPhone or here on Android. If you already have the app but can’t see the ‘Premium’ section, you’ll need to check for the latest update. More info here.