Читать книгу Museum Practice - Группа авторов - Страница 74

In the 2002 Spending Review, the gover nment allocated £70 million to the Renaissance program, about one-third of that recommended by the report. In order to demonstrate what the impact of full funding could be, the Task Force recommended that it should be implemented in phases. The government agreed and tasked Resource (subsequently MLA) with the management and delivery of Renaissance.

In the first phase, three hubs (North East, South West, and West Midlands) were given the majority of the money they needed to implement the Renaissance vision and the other six received small sums of money for development and planning. The government allocated further funding for Renaissance in the Spending Review of 2004. Although this was again less than the sum requested (only 60 percent of what was needed), it did mean that significant funding could be allocated in a second phase to the other six hubs.

The regional museum hubs have developed business plans according to MLA guidelines. All have an obligation to increase visits, particularly from non- traditional museum users and to extend their work with schools. In other respects, the hubs pursued priorities they had identified for their region. In particular this allowed them to develop areas other than simple audience increases, including strategic reviews to identify how museums can be sustained in the future, as well as collections management and workforce development.

Regional museum hubs are the main strand of Renaissance but the program has many other elements. For example, more funding has been made available for museum development officers to support smaller museums, enabling more officers to be employed and boosting the budgets of existing services. Renaissance has also provided funding for the Museum Association’s Diversify program (encouraging minorities into museum careers) and its Effective Collections initiative; and for Subject Specialist Networks, one of the ideas in the Renaissance in the Regions report. Indeed, Renaissance has worked in partnership with virtually every museum sector initiative since 2002 and has been, with the HLF, the mainstay of museum development for nearly 10 years.