Museums in a context of austerity: mixing commercial imperatives and professional values

Tools

Rex, B and Eckersley, P ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9048-8529, 2025. Museums in a context of austerity: mixing commercial imperatives and professional values. In: 'What next?': Political Studies Association 75th Annual International Conference, Birmingham, 14-16 April 2025.

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

Local museum services in the UK, particularly in England, have experienced substantial cuts in funding since 2010 (Rex and Campbell, 2022). Councils have adopted various approaches to try to cope with fiscal constraint by generating more revenue in order to plug funding gaps. These include renting out museum buildings for private events and charging entrance fees to visitors. Such initiatives may conflict with many of the professional values and ethics that underpin museum and cultural services.
Drawing on interviews in six English local authority areas, we document the types of activity that museum services are implementing to generate income, explore how professional ethics influence these choices, and discuss what these changes tell us about how museum services are changing in response to financial pressures. In particular, we examine how staff negotiate conflicts between commercial drivers and professional values, focusing especially on their judgement of what constitutes appropriate income-generating activity and how their potential agency to innovate is constrained by both professional principles and the overarching fiscal context. At the same time, we suggest that the lack of a clear ‘rule book’ that sets out what is and what is not appropriate can also generate substantial emotional labour, as staff seek to navigate and decide for themselves whether to introduce a particular income-generating activity.

Item Type:	Conference contribution
Creators:	Rex, B. and Eckersley, P.
Date:	April 2025
Identifiers:	Number Type 2432789 Other
Divisions:	Schools > Nottingham Business School
Record created by:	Jeremy Silvester
Date Added:	08 May 2025 08:35
Last Modified:	08 May 2025 08:35
Related URLs:	Publisher
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/53553