Читать книгу Museum Practice - Группа авторов - Страница 73

Renaissance was designed to respond to the state of England’s regional museums. By the 1990s many of the country’s largest regional museums were suffering from ongoing funding cuts, leaving them unable to meet the expectations of their users. In 2000, Chris Smith, then Secretary of State for Culture, convened a Regional Museums Task Force to look into the problems facing regional museums, and to propose solutions for their future development. Their report, Renaissance in the Regions: A New Vision for England’s Museums (2001), proposed that regional museums could be:

 an important resource and champion for learning and education;

 promote access and inclusion encouraging social inclusion and cultural diversity, acting as focal points for their local communities, and providing public spaces for dialogue and discussion about issues of contemporary significance;

 contribute to economic regeneration in the regions;

 collect, care for and interpret (on a foundation of research and scholarship) the material culture of the UK and use it to encourage inspiration and creativity;

 ensure excellence and quality in the delivery of their core services.

(RMTF 2001, 21)

In order to achieve that the Task Force proposed an innovative structure, with a “hub” for each of the nine English regions, made up of a group of the largest and most significant museums. Each museum remained the responsibility of its existing governing body but the structure created a channel for significant funding contributions from central government, something which had been recommended in various reports since the 1920s but which was now to be achieved for the first time.⁵ The report not only highlighted funding difficulties but also demonstrated how relatively small sums of government investment could create a real improvement in the number of people who could be reached by better services. Furthermore, the hubs would be working together to improve museums across the whole region.