Issues around partnerships with sport organisations were cited as a barrier to delivering sporting exhibitions by thirty-three per cent of respondents to the author’s survey. To understand more clearly, the thoughts of governing bodies in terms of
84 Grundy, L. Sussex Heritage. Response to the author’s survey. April 10th 2012.
85 Anonymous. National Maritime Museum, Cornwall. Response to survey by the author. March 12th
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sport specific museums and the heritage of their sport in general, the author conducted a survey and subsequent conversations with those working in sports governing bodies and clubs.86 Responses to the survey were low and the author only succeeded in attracting five submissions to the survey, even though many different routes were used to reach people working in sporting organisations. This suggests that an interest in the heritage of the sport is not immediately important to sports organisations, and as a result the completion of a survey about heritage was not viewed as a valuable use of their time. However, the responses which were returned do provide an indicative picture of the views of sports organisations to heritage. The findings suggests that although there is an interest on the part of people who work within the sports sector in the heritage of their sport, they are unclear about what actually constitutes heritage, and how to begin to collect, preserve, and display their heritage. Figure 21 illustrates the responses given by representatives of sporting organisations to the question “To what extent does your organisation view sporting heritage as important?”
86 See appendix IV.
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Figure 21: Views of Sports Sector Staff Towards the Heritage of Their Sport
Source: Author’s research
Therefore, although sport governing bodies tend not to be the catalyst for the creation of sport specific museums, this is not because the heritage of the sport is unimportant to them. The response from England Athletics is an example of this “we believe strongly in raising the profile of the historical importance of the sport”.87 However, when questioned in more depth about the current activity delivered by the organisation in terms of heritage, only two of the respondents had a member of staff with a specific remit attached to heritage, and the same two organisations had been involved in some level with a sporting heritage project.88 Similarly, two of the organisations which responded did not know where the collections relating to their sport were held or how to access them. It is evident, therefore, that people working within sporting organisations have an interest in the heritage of the sport and a belief that it is important, but that the activity and resources of the organisations are not indicative of this.
Further discussions with representatives elicited a variety of reasons for being prevented from taking a more active involvement in their sporting heritage as illustrated in figure 21.
87 Anonymous. England Athletics. Response to the author’s survey. April 10th 2012.
88Anonymous. England Athletics. Telephone Conversation with the author. April 25th 2012; Anonymous.
British Gymnastics Association. Telephone conversation with the author. April 15th 2012.
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 Response percentage
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Figure 22: Barriers Preventing Sports Sector Staff Engaging with Sport in Museums
Source: Author’s findings
This suggests that time and resource restrictions placed on staff working within sports organisations, coupled with the pressure to deliver results based on present day participation targets, prevents them from allocating the required amount of resources, whether financial, temporal, or logistical, to support the heritage of their sport. The findings demonstrate that barriers to sports organisations to properly support their own heritage include a lack of knowledge and understanding about how to protect collections and make them widely accessible; the need for better support from heritage organisations; and opportunities to learn about the sporting heritage collections associated with their specific sport. Irrespective of the interest placed in sporting heritage by the sport governing body, there was an agreement that the natural organisations to care for the collections are museums. In addition, the respondents agreed that the primary pressure preventing them from sufficiently supporting the heritage of the sport was the general day-to-day pressures of the organisation and the need to meet targets set out by cultural policy towards active participation in sport. Consequently, the heritage of the sport is not a priority. The cultural policy directives concerning sports governing bodies are linked predominantly to fulfilling objectives based in the present. This means, that in order to ensure sustained funding, these organisations must ensure they meet the targets set down by their funders. If the targets are predominately linked with the ability to meet targets which relate to participation in sport, then it is likely that the majority of the effort of the organisation will be focussed in this way. Although sport specific museums could
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 Percentage of respondents
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also engage new audiences and support this increased participation, the gap that exists in the knowledge of those of work in sports governing bodies between the concept of heritage and the reality of heritage is so great, that the link is often not made in the fast paced need to meet imminent target deadlines. Therefore, it is only natural that these organisations concentrate on this activity, however much they may understand the importance of their heritage. Thus, the responsibility of collecting, preserving, and providing access to the nation’s sporting heritage, is ultimately held by those charged with narrating the story of the past, museums, and this is where the impetus and funding for sport in museums should be found.
The limitations facing those working in sport with regards to sporting heritage is actually comparable to those limitations effecting museum professionals, and demonstrates a severe shortage of finances and resources in general in the field of sporting heritage. One-hundred per cent of the respondents said they would like to work with museums to ensure a greater importance is placed on sporting heritage and ensure that their sport collections are protected for the future. Although none of the respondents stated that they felt that the responsibility for sporting heritage lay with museums, the responses given suggest they felt it did. The skills used to collect, preserve and provide access to heritage are held by museums, this was a clear opinion of those working in sports organisations. However, they felt that the sports sector had a role to play in supporting any activity associated with their sporting heritage.
4.9 Conclusion
Therefore, although there has been little discussion within the literature of the existing practice of sport specific museums, and even less so, of how and why non-sport specific museums use sporting collections, it is clear that there is both significant interest, activity, and enthusiasm from within the museum sector in relationship to the topic of sport.
Sport specific museums, on the whole, accommodate the collections amassed by private collectors. These individuals recognised a value in sporting objects and
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preserved them for future study at a time when the museum sector was uninterested in both everyday culture and the topic of sport, this in itself is no different from the development of museums in general. However, although the number of sport specific museums increased as the focus of the museum world shifted towards the representation of popular culture, the subject of sport was still not recognised as a relevant subject for museum display. The topic was not ostracised from museums at first purely because it was viewed to be an activity with a low culture status, in fact, the earliest museums of cricket, tennis and horse-racing can all be considered to be representative of high culture. Therefore, the exclusion of sport from museums was connected with an attitudinal prejudice towards the position of sport as a cultural topic. This led those interested in, and concerned about, the collections sporting heritage, to campaign for the creation of sport specific museums. The disjuncture between sport and culture is still present within both the cultural and museum fields as evidenced in this chapter and further still in chapter five.
Furthermore, the financing of sport specific museums both in the first instance and in the long-term, is largely provided by the sport industry itself, in contrast to museum collections representative of other industries which are largely funded by the public purse. The findings explored in this chapter assert that although the DCMS funded the NFM between the years of 2003 and 2009, no other funding has ever been allocated towards the activity of sport specific museums from central government. This suggests that sport is valued less highly than other topics for museum display which receive DCMS funding. The evidence also suggests, though, that this lack of interest is not shared by local authorities which frequently fund sport specific museums to deliver additional activity in line with cultural policy objectives. Therefore, local authorities recognise that the work of sport specific museums warrants the use of public funding and thus supports wider social outcomes. Indeed, the objectives of sport specific museums reflect the objectives of the museum sector as a whole, that is, to collect, preserve, and make accessible their collections to, and with, as wider public as possible. The absence of consistent public funding to support this activity then, suggests an attitudinal barrier towards sport on the part of cultural policy decision makers.
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In terms of non-sport specific museums, the evidence provided in this chapter asserts that the gradual increase in the use of sport in museums is primarily led by the ability of sport to attract new and different audiences to museums. The reasons museums aspire to attract these audiences is due to the ideological perception of museum staff as discussed in chapter two which aims to ensure the greatest number of people are able to access museums, but equally concerned with the directives given through cultural policy, discussed in the next chapter, and linked to funding. Museums recognise that the subject of sport can attract these non-traditional audiences, a term explored further in chapter six, and how sporting exhibitions can support the museum achieve its objectives, particularly if their funding is drawn from public sources. However, a significant barrier which affects the delivery of sporting exhibitions is funding limitations. This means that although many museum staff aspire to the use of sport within their museums, the money to support such activity is difficult to find. This again suggests cultural policy decision makers have yet to understand the role of sport in museums to deliver these wider cultural objectives and provide the necessary finances accordingly.
In addition, although London 2012 progressed the use of sport in museums exponentially, there is still a significant knowledge gap about sporting collections within the wider museum sector, and a persistent belief on the part of some, then, that sport is still not a relevant subject matter for museums. The lack of funding creates a vicious circle where there is no space for collections, insufficient finances, or adequate staffing of museums which means although exhibitions may take place, the evidence of the effect of these exhibitions is not gathered to build a better argument for the role and value of sport as a subject matter for museums. However, the Toon Times project demonstrates that where museums work in partnership with sporting organisations and their local communities, and are creative about the streams of funding they apply for, funding exists to support short-term projects at the same time as embedding long-term workforce development within their organisations. This funding does not support the infrastructure of sport in museums, but it does offer a range of opportunities to evolve our understanding of sport as a subject matter for museums.
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Therefore, the findings presented within this chapter demonstrate that the funding provided for sport in museums is inadequate, even though there is evidence to suggest that using sport in this way supports the delivery of cultural policy objectives. Therefore, the next chapter will define and investigate the development of cultural policy between the years of 1997 and 2012, to provide a clear understanding of the position of sport in museums within this context.
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