In 1991, the British Conservative Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, stepped down from her post and John Major became successor. Despite significant issues within the party on subjects relating to Britain’s involvement in Europe and the 1991 Gulf War, the Conservatives were re-elected under the premiership of Major in 1992. Major’s government had a focus on placing Britain “at the very heart of Europe”18 which engaged his policies with the competitiveness agenda, a focus on ensuring British people were well skilled and educated to allow Britain to compete economically on an
16 Glasgow, M. ‘The concept of the Arts Council’. p.262. in Keynes, M. Eds. Essays on John Maynard Keynes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1975.
17 Evans, G. Cultural Planning: An Urban Renaissance. London: Routledge. 2001. p.89; Garber, M. Patronizing the Arts. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2008. p.56.
18 Baltimore Sun, the. At the very heart of Europe. Online. March 31st 1991. Accessed January 31st 2014.
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1991-03-13/news/1991072039_1_united-germany-thatcher- monetary-union
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international stage.19 One of the most significant actions delivered by the Major government was the creation of the Department for National Heritage (DNH) in 1994. The DNH established the role of culture as an important element of government policy for the first time. The next section will explore the reasons which led to the creation of the DNH, and the resulting activity delivered by the department which influenced museums and sport in museums.
5.3.1 The Department for National Heritage (DNH)and the National Lottery
After the general election in 1992, John major created the DNH and brought together all activity associated with the arts, culture, heritage and sport under one ministerial lead.20 Major (1999) asserts that the DNH was necessary to demonstrate the value of these sectors to society and to demonstrate the role of government in these activities, rather than persist with the traditionally held view that they were non-essential and not specifically in need of large amounts of funding.21 The fact that the DNH also included sport policy is significant in that it had finally been recognised as a part of Britain’s culture. Major (1995) proclaimed that “Sport is a central part of Britain’s national heritage”22 and, as such, placed it firmly alongside activity delivered by museums, the arts and, for the first time, media policy. Sports policy itself had been continually moved around government for many years, and initially Major had moved it from the Department of Environment to the Department of Education and Science in 1992. Major’s personal interest in sport and culture fuelled the creation of the DNH, and he continued with a resolute argument for its existence during early turbulent months when it was branded as a subject of fun and ridicule by the popular press, and by members of his own cabinet.23 These early perceptions demonstrate that as recent as twenty years prior to this study, sport and culture were not readily accepted as activities associated with government funding and policy.
19 Raco, M. Building Sustainable Communities: Spatial policy and labour mobility in post-war Britain.
Bristol: University of Bristol Press. 2007. p.156.
20 Houlihan, B. and White, A. The Politics of Sport Development. London: Routledge. 2002. p.78. 21 Major, J. John Major: The Autobiography. London: HarperCollins. 1999. p.404.
22 Department of National Heritage. Sport: Raising the Game. London: Department of National Heritage.
1995.
23 Sargent, T. It was 20 years ago today…DCMS blog: Online. April 11th 2012. Accessed January 31st 2014.
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The creation of the DNH coincided with Major’s formation of the National Lottery, and the DNH was essential in the management of this new scheme for funding cultural activity in Britain. Major had identified a significant funding gap in the development of British culture, and the creation of the National Lottery provided a momentous opportunity to ensure substantial new investment towards the cultural sector. The National Lottery was established in 1994 to provide monetary support for British cultural activity.24 Major was clear that this new investment was to represent new funding, and at no time should replace any existing subsidized activity.25 In his speech to the English Heritage conference in 1994, Major was clear that the main aim of the National Lottery was to halt the decline of British cultural activity and decrease the gap between Britain and other countries in terms of cultural output.26 This again, demonstrates that the lack of priority, interest and investment prior to the 1990s in cultural activity in the UK.
The National Lottery is still popular at the time of writing and operates on a system whereby the public buy a ticket for the chance of winning a stake of a future lottery prize. The proceeds of the ticket sales are then allocated through twelve arms-length bodies to fund activity on the ground.27 These twelve arms-length bodies include the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) which exists specifically to support the nation’s heritage, including museums, archeology, and the built environment.28 Consequently, cultural providers and organisations are able to bid to these bodies for funding to support their activity or capital projects. This meant that from 1994, for the first time, all British museums had access to a specific funding body which they could approach to ask for investment in both capital building projects and further project development. As a result, museum projects which would have otherwise been halted at inception stage were able to develop. This ensured that museums were no longer limited to the mainstream delivery of day to day activity as set out in their original mission statements, but could explore new and alternative ways of working. In addition, it
24 Major, J. Mr Major’s Speech at English Heritage Conference. 1994. Online. Accessed January 31st 2014.
http://www.johnmajor.co.uk/page1131.html
25 Ibid. 26 Ibid.
27 National Lottery. Funding. London: National Lottery. Accessed June 1st 2014.
http://www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk/funding
28 Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). About Us. London: HLF. Accessed June 1st 2014.
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meant that ideas for museums which may not have been granted funding through other routes were now feasible, as long as the business case reinforced the need for the museum itself. In terms of sport in museums, this meant the opportunities for funding to create sports museums themselves were now possible.
Concurrently, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, European research began to demonstrate that lifelong learning was the key to economic stability and growth.29 Consequently, John Major’s Conservative government began to take significant interest in lifelong learning agenda’s and the opportunity for informal learning providers, such as cultural organisations including museums, to deliver learning programmes began to arise. As a result, in 1996 the DNH commissioned a research report into the potential of museums to deliver learning opportunities. The resulting report, A Common Wealth, provided a bench-mark on which was formed the next fifteen years of museum policy.30 The next section establishes the background to A
Common Wealth, the main findings of the research, and what this meant for museums in England.
5.3.2 A Common Wealth
The DNH commissioned David Anderson, the then Head of Education at the Victoria and -Albert Museum, in 1996 to examine the educational role of museums, specifically in terms of delivering government policy in respect to learning and audiences.31 Anderson established a steering committee to inform the research and this included educators, museum professionals, and government policy advisers, allowing him to address the issues from the viewpoint of museums, government and education. Anderson and his team explored the potential for museums to support learning and the barriers preventing such activity taking place consistently across the country. The findings were outlined in the resulting document A Common Wealth and argue that
29 Commission of the European Communities. Growth, Competitiveness and Employment: The
Challenges and Ways Forward into the 21st Century. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the
European Communities. 1993.
30 Anderson, D. A Common Wealth: Museums and Learning in the United Kingdom. London:Department
of National Heritage. 1997.
31 Ibid. p.iv. Anderson’s steering committee comprised museum education professionals, a couple of
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museums are essential learning venues within the UK. Anderson builds his argument on the theories of theorists Vygotsky, Bruner, Kolb and McCarthy and Gardner, along with his practical knowledge of the museum sector to demonstrate that museums, unlike formal learning settings, have a greater propensity to appeal to varied learning styles and learner approaches, and therefore support a greater number of people. Additionally, Anderson asserts that museums are ideal environments for people and communities to learn, share, and explore and provide different types of learning experience for different people. He argues that there is huge potential for museums to support learning agendas:
Museums at their finest are educational institutions of immense expressive power and authority. They communicate with us across boundaries of language, culture and time, and suggest comparisons which illustrate our experience of the present … Through museums we have direct contact with peoples of all ages and cultures, experience the unimaginable variety of the natural world and expand our understanding of what it means to be human.32
Anderson argued that museums are essential mechanisms to support lifelong learning and audience development. However, he also asserted that although museums were well placed to deliver education and audience development opportunities, significant development needed to take place to ensure the infrastructure was in place to support increased, consistent education activity across the sector. While the attitudes of museum staff were changing, and everyday history was being positioned as a focal point of museum delivery, Anderson highlighted that limitations within the workforce in understanding audiences meant that staff were not necessarily equipped to understand how to deliver appropriate activities in line with their new found objectives.33
The idea of museums as learning environments though was not a new concept. In 1928 Miers, for example, argued that museums provided the ideal opportunity to deliver learning provision.34 Despite similarities with Miers’ report sixty-eight years earlier,
32 Ibid.p.xii.
33 Ibid. pp.4-5; p.29.
34 Miers, H. A Report on the public museums of the British Isles (other than the national museums).
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Anderson’s report seems revolutionary because he used learning theory rather than subjective opinion to underpin his argument, and his assertion that museum environments provide unrivalled opportunities for learners of all ages to explore, engage and be inspired by material culture, was certainly unique. Prior to Anderson’s report, the museum profession had concentrated on delivering formal education programmes. Consequently, A Common Wealth demonstrated to the DNH that museums were extremely well placed to deliver learning opportunities for all ages, but to be successful there would need to be significant investment and support to the sector in the first instance. However, before the Major government could implement changes based on the findings of A Common Wealth, a general election was held in the UK and New Labour took control of the countries administration in May 1997. The next section will explore how A Common Wealth affected the cultural policy delivered by New Labour in connection to museums, and the other influences which affected the development and progress of the museum sector towards a focus on audiences and appealing to new and different audiences.