National Museum of Costume
The final item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-4468, in the name of Claudia Beamish, on Scotland’s national museum of costume.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament expresses concern at the proposed closure of the National Museum of Costume in Dumfries and Galloway; notes that the museum’s operator, National Museums Scotland (NMS), is conducting an internal consultation on the proposal; understands that NMS has commented saying that it can no longer afford to operate the site due to the twin pressures of reduced public funding and reduced income associated with the recession; believes that the closure of this five-star rated tourist attraction, which provides nine jobs and attracts 15,000 visitors a year, would be detrimental to the tourism industry in Dumfries and Galloway, and considers that, to maximise the opportunities for people to engage with their culture, it is important that attractions showcasing Scotland’s cultural heritage are located in communities across the country.
17:04
I welcome the opportunity to lead the debate and I wish, in so doing, to record my thanks to the save our Shambellie campaign and to the members who have signed my motion, and to acknowledge the representatives who have got behind the campaign at local, Scotland and United Kingdom levels.
The issue strikes at the heart of our aspiration to celebrate Scotland’s rich cultural history and to ensure that it can reach and connect with as many people as possible. This evening, I want to talk about why I believe the museum’s closure runs counter to that aspiration; about the interdependence of the tourism industry in Dumfries and Galloway; and about the need to have a full and open consultation to try and find a positive solution.
The proposals to close the national museum of costume arose somewhat out of the blue in early October. National Museums Scotland has told us that its decision has been influenced
“by the twin financial pressures of reduced public funding and reduced income”
from other sources. Members are all too aware of the financial situation that the country finds itself in, as are our constituents. We all know that difficult decisions have to be made, but the Scottish Parliament has—especially when those decisions are made by organisations that rely on public money for their existence—a duty to analyse them. I do not believe that the answer to balancing the books of NMS lies in the budgetary equivalent of sacrificing a limb.
Among the aims of National Museums Scotland is to ensure that its collections reach and connect with as many people as possible, as I said. Quite rightly, part of that process involves partnership working with local museums and groups across the country. Although I welcome and encourage that valuable aspect of NMS’s work, it is not the whole story. Alongside the cultural value of the collection it houses, I believe that Shambellie house has a physical value as a permanent anchor for NMS’s work outside the central belt. Such anchors against centralisation should be encouraged, not withdrawn.
We are told that the cost per visitor stands at £23.06. That figure counts the 9,500 visitors who visit the museum itself, but ignores the further 6,250 estimated annual visitors to the shop and cafe. With those people included, the public subsidy comes to £13.93 per visitor.
As the save our Shambellie campaign has pointed out, recent investment in the relaunch of the museum of flight in East Lothian and the museum of rural life in East Kilbride has seen visitor numbers rally. A similar approach at Shambellie could surely boost visitor numbers and income, thereby demonstrating that the site is viable.
The campaign brings together strong voices in the region’s tourism sector: the Dumfries and Galloway Chamber of Commerce, Destination Dumfries and Galloway and the Association of Dumfries and Galloway Accommodation Providers. The sector brings in around £270 million a year to the local economy, supporting almost 6,000 jobs directly and a further 1,300 indirectly.
All three organisations in the SOS campaign emphasise that, although the 15,000 visitors that Shambellie attracts might represent a small number relative to the numbers of people who visit other NMS properties, they are hugely important to the region’s tourism sector. Those businesses and jobs do not exist in isolation; there is a strong interdependence between the visitor attractions, the markets, the cafes, the bars and the accommodation.
James Wilson, a constituent who operates self-catering accommodation in Rockcliffe on the Solway coast, wrote to me to highlight his efforts to promote Dumfries and Galloway. He said:
“It is absolutely vital for small businesses like ours that Dumfries and Galloway has a diverse and quality offer for culture and the arts. We have been long term supporters of the Museum at Shambellie House, regularly bringing friends and family to visit, and recommending the facility to our visitors.”
Gordon Mann, chief executive of the Dumfries and Galloway Chamber of Commerce and chair of Destination Dumfries and Galloway, who is in the gallery tonight, has stated:
“Closure now following one of the toughest tourism seasons the region has had would be a body blow to the industry sending out all the wrong signals.”
Despite the impact that closure could have on the wider tourism industry in the region, the voice of the businesses that stand to be affected has not had a chance to be heard. That lack of public consultation is a key weakness in the case for closure, and I am keen to see National Museums Scotland revisit it.
Earlier this month, I had the opportunity, with other South Scotland members of the Scottish Parliament, to meet the Cabinet Secretary for Culture and External Affairs, Fiona Hyslop, and I enjoyed what I think was a constructive discussion on the issue. Following that meeting, the MSPs who were in attendance wrote jointly to the board of NMS to add our weight to the calls from Dumfries and Galloway Council and Dumfries and Galloway Chamber of Commerce for a decision to be postponed for 12 months to enable wider engagement with local communities and businesses.
That would give NMS time to reflect on the views of those who stand to be affected by the proposals and it would provide a breathing space in which to consider options. A wider consultation would allow different organisational and management structures to be fully explored. For example, a problem that has been identified with Shambellie house is the lack of physical space for the full costume collection. Given the size constraints, could not there be a case for retaining the site but using it for a permanent schedule of rolling exhibitions? There are also opportunities to expand the use of the house as a picturesque location for private events.
During our discussions with the cabinet secretary, I was heartened by her acknowledgement of legitimate concerns, particularly in relation to public consultation. The issue has attracted support from across the chamber and I welcome the cross-party efforts to make progress. I also welcome the work that has been done by my colleagues on Dumfries and Galloway Council, Tom McAughtrie and Davie Stitt, and by my Westminster colleague Russell Brown, whose web campaign has attracted support. Finally, I welcome Alex Fergusson’s amendment to my motion, to which I was pleased to add my support.
Shambellie is an important part of the tourism landscape in Dumfries and Galloway, and there is real support for safeguarding its future. The challenge now is to turn the warm words into action.
I call the constituency member, Alex Fergusson. You have four minutes.
17:12
I commend Claudia Beamish warmly both for lodging the motion and for prevailing on her business manager to ensure that it came before Parliament timeously. It was important that it did so, and I am delighted to take part in the debate as the constituency member for Galloway and West Dumfries, within which Shambellie house lies.
The BBC’s south of Scotland website today headlines the debate’s taking place this evening. In doing so, it points out that the proposal to close Shambellie has
“provoked cross-party concern about the possibility of closure and its potential impact on the economy of Dumfries and Galloway.”
I want to spend the time that is available to me looking at both halves of that sentence.
First, the issue has “provoked cross-party concern”. Claudia Beamish rightly mentioned that, but I cannot emphasise enough how true it is. From the word go, back at the beginning of October, the degree of cross-party support among MSPs on the issue has been quite remarkable for both its consistency and strength, to the extent that, most of us having met individually with NMS director Gordon Rintoul, five of us then met jointly, as Claudia Beamish pointed out, with the cabinet secretary, following which we jointly signed a letter that was sent individually to each trustee of NMS in advance of their meeting next week. I hope that that degree of inter-party and cross-party co-operation does not go unnoticed by those who are responsible for taking the decision on Shambellie.
It does not stop just with us MSPs. As I highlighted in the amendment to Claudia Beamish’s motion, to a man and woman Dumfries and Galloway Council, Dumfries and Galloway Chamber of Commerce, VisitScotland and other stakeholders, such as ADGAP, are totally united in asking NMS to think again. That is not, I emphasise, to reverse its proposal immediately, because we recognise the very great pressures that NMS, like other organisations, is under, but to give us all a breathing space—a period of grace, if you will—within which we can look sensibly at the many alternative management models that could, although not necessarily would, point the way towards a sustainable future for Shambellie house.
Anyone who is not acquainted with Dumfries and Galloway might ask why we need a future for what is basically an old house that employs only a few people and which closes every winter, anyway. That brings me to the second part of the BBC’s sentence—the part about the
“impact on the economy of Dumfries and Galloway”,
which Claudia Beamish quite rightly highlighted. As anyone who lives in that part of the world will know, the local economy is extremely fragile, and within it each small enterprise tends to feed off the others. The closure of one instantly has a major detrimental impact on the others. As Claudia Beamish has, I have had many emails from constituents who are enormously concerned about the impact that closing Shambellie would have on their fragile enterprises.
We live in an age of consultation, and it is NMS’s failure to undertake a local open consultation before announcing the closure that has caused most concern to all of us and to the local stakeholders. That needs to be put right, and it can be. It can be put right by ensuring that we are given time—I suggest a year—to explore the very real options that exist for partnership working, innovative thinking and radical solutions that could ensure a future for Shambellie. Thus far, we have been denied the opportunity to do so.
It cannot be right that NMS’s facilities become just an asset of the central belt. I cannot help but notice and point out that the flagship of those facilities here in the heart of Edinburgh is absolutely free for all who wish to enter it. We have just one request: give us some more time to take a long hard look at the proposal. If Shambellie house has to close, so be it, but it should not do so before all interested parties have had an opportunity to explore every last prospect of keeping it up and running.
17:16
I, too, congratulate Claudia Beamish on securing the debate. I welcome the degree of cross-party consensus that has been shown on the issue and the willingness of members across the chamber to work together to resolve it. In my opinion, partnership working is the solution to the situation that we are discussing.
I thank the cabinet secretary for meeting South Scotland members the other week and for writing to the board of NMS to make it aware of our concerns and of the partnership approach that has been called for by the delegation from Dumfries and Galloway Council and the local chamber of commerce, which met NMS recently.
As members have said, Shambellie is important as part of the national collections and as a visitor attraction in Dumfries and Galloway in its own right. We all understand the financial pressures that are affecting every public body, but it is precisely these hard times that make the partnership approach essential. We need to look at why Shambellie is so little known, what more it could offer and how it could be promoted. If we can help Shambellie to survive in hard times, it will surely thrive and flourish as our economy strengthens and returns to growth.
As a region, Dumfries and Galloway is accustomed to enticing people to make the relatively lengthy journey to see what it has to offer. The region also has experience of holding seasonal exhibitions that are of national significance, such as the justly praised Monet exhibition that was held in Kirkcudbright in July and August of 2005. That exhibition attracted 60,000 visitors in two months, which is four times the number of visitors that Shambellie attracted in its entire season last year. With the right material and support, Dumfries and Galloway Council and an organising committee of volunteers pulled off an exhibition of major significance that exceeded everyone’s expectations.
Moreover, Kirkcudbright has hosted high-profile exhibitions every year since 2000, and the local organising committee—Kirkcudbright 2000—has had the support of the National Galleries of Scotland in doing so. In particular, Kirkcudbright has hosted successful exhibitions covering the work of the Glasgow girls and the Glasgow boys, many of whom had links with the town and drew inspiration from it and its surroundings.
There is no doubt in my mind that Dumfries and Galloway can deliver. The Kirkcudbright experience demonstrates that Dumfries and Galloway has the capacity to succeed at such enterprises, which is why I support the efforts of Dumfries and Galloway Council, the local chamber of commerce, the Association of Dumfries and Galloway Accommodation Providers and Destination Dumfries and Galloway to work with NMS and find a suitable future for Shambellie.
I believe that we can boost Shambellie’s profile locally and nationally, thereby increasing visitor numbers and income. We could use Shambellie for many of NMS’s loan and visiting exhibition activities in the region, as well as maintaining its role as Scotland’s national museum of costume. We could also use it as a venue for events, in the same way that other national museums are used. What is required is the innovation and drive that people in Dumfries and Galloway might like to wear lightly, but which resulted in those 60,000 visitors to Kirkcudbright town hall over two months in 2005.
For that to happen, however, the NMS needs to get round the table with Dumfries and Galloway Council and the other local bodies to which I referred, and to work to take forward that vision and make it reality.
NMS has a serious offer from local players who genuinely want to help, even though their own budgets are under real pressure. Not only that, they are local players that have a track record in overcoming distance and obscurity to net visitor numbers that anyone could envy.
I also wrote recently to the cabinet secretary about the ownership issue of Shambellie house. In her reply, the cabinet secretary stated that the house comes under the property of Scottish ministers and that, should the NMS decide to close the museum, it will become the responsibility of the Scottish Government to maintain it and keep it secure.
Although the decision on Shambellie is for the trustees of National Museums Scotland to make, I hope that they are willing to enter into real partnership working in Dumfries and Galloway and to give us time to consider the options, not just to save Shambellie, but to enhance and improve it for the future.
17:21
I congratulate Claudia Beamish on securing the debate on an issue of considerable importance to Dumfries and Galloway and I also express my support for Alex Fergusson’s amendment.
Shambellie is not in my constituency, but I was surprised that the first I learned of plans to close the national museum of costume at the end of the season on 31 October was when I received an email earlier that month from one of the nine members of staff there who is to be made redundant. I was shocked to learn of the imminent closure of this important visitor attraction in Dumfries and Galloway in that way and with so little notice. Other members of the community—Claudia Beamish has mentioned many—including the Dumfries and Galloway Chamber of Commerce, were equally taken aback by the short notice and the lack of consultation with anyone outside the board of NMS.
NMS has provided a list of reasons for taking that decision. However, neither the board nor the director has seen fit to ask local people what the museum means to them or for their views on how visitor numbers might be increased. My colleague Councillor Tom McAughtrie is one of the representatives of the Abbey ward on Dumfries and Galloway Council, in which Shambellie resides. He has suggested, for example, that introducing a day ticket that gives admission to three attractions in the area—Shambellie, the Corn mill and Sweetheart abbey—could boost visitor numbers to all three attractions. However, it seems that there has been no attempt to seek innovative solutions.
Claudia Beamish has demonstrated that the cost per visitor to Shambellie is not very different from other NMS facilities as a whole. Indeed, Shambellie costs less than 1 per cent of the total NMS budget, so why pick on Dumfries and Galloway? The importance of tourism to Scotland has been demonstrated this very week by two Government-led debates on tourism, and tourism is especially important to rural areas such as ours. We have a terrific tourism offering in Dumfries and Galloway—landscape, food, culture and heritage. Why close the part of the NMS collection that is situated in our area?
Instead of applying a creative approach to identify how the facility might be promoted and expanded—we have heard a number of excellent suggestions in the debate and I am sure that there are more to come—the approach of NMS has simply been to cut. It has cut without consultation with staff, and without consultation with the local community or local tourism operators and businesses. Would NMS have done that if Shambellie was situated in the central belt or even in the Highlands rather than in Dumfries and Galloway? We in Dumfries and Galloway suspect not.
Ministers say—and it is true—that this is an operational matter for NMS and that they cannot intervene. However, NMS will receive almost £21 million in revenue and capital support from the Scottish Government this year. Recently, we have seen the chairman of a further education college resign under pressure from a Scottish Government minister. I am not asking the culture secretary to exert any pressure of that nature, but I wonder whether she could perhaps exert a little pressure to try to persuade the NMS board to think again and to preserve Shambellie—at least for the next 12 months, as suggested by Dumfries and Galloway Council—to preserve the jobs that it supports, and to work to canvass fresh and innovative ideas for a sustainable future.
17:24
I congratulate Claudia Beamish on securing the debate.
The national museum of costume is situated in a rural corner of Scotland, but it is undoubtedly of national cultural importance and therefore it deserves to have a platform in the chamber. With the threat of closure that hangs over Shambellie house, party differences have been cast aside in favour of a united front by parliamentarians throughout South Scotland. Cross-party meetings with National Museums Scotland officials, including Mr Rintoul, and the Cabinet Secretary for Culture and External Affairs, and co-authored letters represent the depth of feeling that exists on the proposal to close Shambellie house.
The justification that I have routinely heard in favour of the proposal is that there are low visitor numbers to the museum, and that there is high operational spend per visitor and reduced public funding, but there is little mention of how important the siting of a national museum is to the small surrounding communities of Lochfoot, Glencaple and, of course, New Abbey, which has a population of fewer than 100 people. If the national museum of costume is removed from the area, a crucial element will be removed from those communities.
The sparsity of population spread in Dumfries and Galloway means that leisure and tourist pursuits in the region are largely interconnected. For example, a tourist’s visit to Shambellie house may coincide with a visit to the artist town of Kirkcudbright and the book town of Wigtown. I fear that the closure of Shambellie house may impact on other cultural pursuits in Dumfries and Galloway and on local businesses in New Abbey that rely on visitors to the village.
As the proposal comes just over a year after National Museums Scotland completed the £47 million refurbishment of its flagship museum in Edinburgh, there is understandable concern among many of my constituents about a centralist agenda among officials at NMS. That is reinforced by figures that suggest that spending on Shambellie house represents just 0.68 per cent of National Museums Scotland’s annual budget, and that only an additional 44p per visitor is spent on Shambellie house visitors compared with the average for visitors to other facilities. That does little to dissuade people from thinking that Dumfries and Galloway is being neglected.
I have met NMS officials twice, and fully appreciate that, in an age of reduced public funding, various difficult decisions will need to be made, but the decision in question should not be one of them. Dangling the carrot of roving exhibitions throughout the region will not prove to be a sufficient replacement for a museum that has been anchored in the area for 30 years. That is an intriguing prospect, but that should not come at the expense of Shambellie house, and there is little detail to consider.
During my discussions, I have asked Dr Rintoul whether NMS has fully explored all the avenues. If visitor numbers are too low, how can we boost them? Is Shambellie house being marketed in the correct fashion? If costs per visitor are indeed too high, are there not ways to tackle that matter without the drastic choice of a full closure? All those questions need to be answered, and they are worthy of further exploration. That is all the more reason why I support Dumfries and Galloway Council’s calls for a 12-month stay of execution at least.
Dumfries and Galloway Chamber of Commerce and Gordon Mann in particular deserve great credit for sustaining the save our Shambellie campaign and keeping us parliamentarians regularly updated.
The debate has been excellent and passionate, and there have been notable contributions from all members who have spoken. I am sure that there will be more to come. The cabinet secretary can surely be left in no doubt about the value of the national museum of costume to Dumfries and Galloway and she must now, of course, work with NMS officials and everybody else to ensure that it is retained.
17:28
I, too, congratulate Claudia Beamish on securing the debate, and echo the sentiments of my colleague Aileen McLeod and those that other members across the chamber have expressed about the importance of all parties demonstrating willingness to work together to resolve the issue. I also thank the cabinet secretary for recognising the importance of Shambellie house to the south-west region by chairing the meeting that has already been mentioned, which brought together elected members and representatives of the management of National Museums Scotland.
I note, too, the strongly worded letter that the cabinet secretary sent to the museum’s board of trustees conveying our local concerns. Of course, the cabinet secretary cannot and should not directly intervene in operational decisions. I know that only too well because, when I sat on the committee that scrutinised the recent National Library of Scotland Bill, Opposition members rightly made it clear that they did not want ministers—now or in the distant future—to have any say at all in matters that could be perceived as being even remotely curatorial. That said, I was pleased that the cabinet secretary acknowledged the strength of local feeling at the meeting, and I was pleased to hear her tell the meeting that National Museums Scotland should come up with a better offer for Dumfries and Galloway. I will focus on what that better offer might be.
Charles Stewart inherited Shambellie house from his father in 1962. He had, by that time, collected more than 6,000 costume pieces over the course of three decades. Fearing that the large Victorian house would be expensive to maintain and that his treasured collection would be dispersed after his death, Stewart concluded that by offering his house and collection to the then Royal Scottish Museum he could save both. He did that successfully but, as we have heard, in recent years visitor numbers to Shambellie house have not been as high as they could be.
Static collections can suffer from declining visitor numbers, and we need to keep changing the offering in our museums and galleries to keep up the public’s interest. We could explore that during the stay of execution that has been suggested, and I make a small suggestion of my own. We already have a famous brand in National Museums Scotland. Following the relaunch of the national museum of Scotland in Edinburgh last summer, a series of interviews throughout Scotland showed that the overall awareness of National Museums Scotland had risen substantially from 59 per cent to 78 per cent of the adult population. It is a great brand, and great brands open satellites. We have seen that in the Bilbao Guggenheim, the Centre Pompidou-Metz, the Tates of Liverpool and St Ives, and the Louvres that are coming to the northern French town of Lens and Abu Dhabi. The Victoria and Albert—the world’s leading museum of art and design—will soon come to Dundee. As other members have said, Shambellie house could be the hub for visiting exhibitions in the region. A satellite would be a nice idea, and that is why I am putting it forward. I am aware that we live in constrained times, but a year’s grace would give us the opportunity to explore all sorts of options.
Our national collections are precious and say much about Scotland as a country and a culture, and that story needs to be told in every corner of our nation. National Museums Scotland states that its prime purpose is to hold the national collections that it manages in trust for the people of Scotland in perpetuity and to enable access to them for as large and as broad an audience as possible. Closing the national museum of costume at New Abbey flies in the face of enabling access for as broad an audience as possible.
National Museums Scotland claims that it operates on the basis of four main values: being creative by using innovation and thriving on good ideas; being generous; being collaborative; and being forward thinking. I say to it, “Prove it.” National Museums Scotland has had plenty of innovative ideas thrown at it, both tonight and in discussions with local MSPs, Dumfries and Galloway Council, the local chamber of commerce, the Association of Dumfries and Galloway Accommodation Providers and Destination Dumfries and Galloway. I echo the cabinet secretary’s call to send a strong message to National Museums Scotland that it must come up with a better offer for Dumfries and Galloway.
17:33
I, too, congratulate Claudia Beamish on securing the debate and recognise the MSPs who represent constituencies in the south of Scotland and the list members for the region who have worked so co-operatively in support of the national museum of costume. I also commend my friend and colleague Russell Brown MP for his hard work in that regard, as well as the local councillors for the area who care deeply about the issue.
To me, Shambellie house, the national museum of flight and the national museum of rural life are as important to our understanding of our culture and history as the national museum buildings that are located here in Edinburgh. Indeed, one could argue that, to be truly national and to do justice to its name, our national museum requires to have collections distributed throughout the country.
Museums and galleries can be as important to our tourism offering as scenery and weather. In fact, with weather as varied as ours, many tourists plan their holidays around the wet weather option that a museum or gallery can enjoyably be. Shambellie house therefore has great potential. The building itself is interesting, the gardens and grounds are an attraction and the cafe is a welcome oasis. Perhaps, as we heard, Shambellie house needs help to realise its full potential through better marketing.
The collection, or at least the part of it that is available to view, is a must for anyone who has an interest in clothes and accessories or in the social history of our country. The staff have been creative and imaginative in organising the exhibits in a small space but, as we heard, the exhibition is fairly static. I realise that visitor numbers are relatively low, but “relative” is the operative word in a part of the country that is working hard to promote its appeal as a tourist destination.
I do not blame NMS for the situation that Shambellie house faces. Perhaps it could have consulted better and taken its plans forward less precipitately. However, it is reacting to the funding situation that it faces. I simply suggest that a little more creativity and thought should be put into the plans.
Could NMS think about using the winter season to host exhibitions of its other treasures? Could colleagues in the national collections work together to use Shambellie as a venue for ready-made exhibitions, which might previously have been on show in Edinburgh? Aileen McLeod was right to mention the Monet exhibition and the Glasgow girls and Glasgow boys exhibitions of previous years. The exhibitions had appeared in Glasgow and were taken off the shelf. Taking an exhibition off the shelf is not easy and involves much time, effort and money, but it can be done with great success, as we heard.
Paxton house, the family home of our former colleague John Home Robertson, houses a magnificent collection of 18th century men’s costumes, which are thought to have been worn by Patrick Home at the court of Frederick the Great. Could Paxton and Shambellie work together to complement each other’s collections, linking east and west? The idea could be considered.
A year’s stay of execution is a sensible suggestion from members and I very much hope that MNS—I mean NMS; I never get that right—can be assisted in finding a way to preserve Shambellie house, not just for Dumfries and Galloway, important though that is, but for the rest of the country.
17:37
I thank members for their speeches. It has been most helpful and interesting to hear their comments and to hear about the strong views that I know are held in Dumfries and Galloway. I heard those views at first hand from local MSPs when I convened the meeting with them on 7 November.
As members said, the potential closure of the museum of costume is an operational decision for the National Museums Scotland board of trustees, which operates at arm’s length from ministers. As Claudia Beamish, who secured the debate, will acknowledge, the debate is timely, because the board of NMS next meets on 23 November. I stress that no final decision has been made.
I am very much aware that there is strong feeling about and strong cross-party support for the campaign, as Alex Fergusson said.
Members acknowledged that we must maintain the operational independence of our national collections—the point was well made by Joan McAlpine.
I appreciate that there is a good deal of concern about the potential closure of the museum of costume. That is why I welcome the discussions that NMS has held with local members. We have been able to discuss the challenges that the museum’s continued operation presents and other options in Dumfries and Galloway for access to the national collections. I appreciate the constructive nature of the cross-party discussions that I have had and am having with local members. I wrote to the NMS board to make them aware of MSPs’ views.
The key question is how we get more than 10,000 paying visitors into Dumfries and Galloway. Joan McAlpine was right to say that we need to consider how to improve the offer that Dumfries and Galloway provides. We need to work collectively to secure improvement.
I should let members know that I met with the chair and the director of NMS on 14 November to hear directly their views on the future of the museum of costume and NMS activity in the area. From that meeting, I know that the NMS board is taking public responses to the proposed closure seriously and looking actively at alternative activity in the area. I will send the board the Official Report of the debate as further input to its deliberations.
NMS has operated a site at Shambellie for 30 years. From discussions with NMS, I know that it has a strong commitment to providing access to national collections across Scotland. Whatever the final decision on the museum of costume, the NMS board has emphasised its continuing commitment to supporting activities in Dumfries and Galloway. In the debate, we have said that there needs to be an improved offer regarding NMS’s activity.
The Scottish Government is committed to investing in Dumfries and Galloway, and Elaine Murray was slightly off the mark when she questioned that commitment. Most recently, we provided £100,000 to the Dark Sky Observatory. Through winter festivals funding, we are supporting the big Burns supper in Dumfries. Creative Scotland, Historic Scotland and EventScotland continue to support development in the region. Indeed, Creative Scotland has provided £2.2 million to projects, organisations and individuals in Dumfries and Galloway since 2010.
Members may also know that I was instrumental in saving the Crichton campus and that I was Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning when £27 million was allocated to the new Dumfries and Galloway College and library. I am personally committed to supporting the region.
NMS has been clear with me that the cost of operating the museum at Shambellie is a challenge for it. I understand that income from visitors to the site covers less than 10 per cent of the site’s operating costs. As a result, it requires a much higher level of subsidy per visitor than any other NMS site.
In this tough financial climate, with deep cuts in public spending that are being imposed by the United Kingdom Government, the Scottish Government has protected funding for the arts and culture as far as possible. I have been keen to protect the Scottish Government’s grant to NMS against a background of significant cuts in the current spending review. The grant in this financial year has been protected from any cuts. NMS will receive a 0.5 per cent core grant reduction in 2013-14, which is a much better position than that of other organisations in the sector.
I recognise the challenging general financial climate faced by NMS, such as rising costs in utility bills in its large estate. As with all public bodies, it is rightly implementing the living wage for lower-paid members of staff. A rising core cost base and a lower income from the public purse mean that NMS, like most public bodies, needs to increase income from other sources and look seriously at how it lives within its means. There are constraints with Shambellie house: the building has small rooms and there have been only two weddings in seven years, despite marketing and publicity drives.
Will the cabinet secretary give way?
I will take an intervention in a minute.
Patricia Ferguson is absolutely right that we should look at creative solutions. I caution that winter opening might compound the requirement for subsidy, but she made some very good suggestions that the board will be able to examine when I give it a copy of the Official Report.
I gently suggest that if Shambellie house had only two weddings after seven years of promotion, it could have perhaps promoted the possibility a little better.
At portfolio question time today, I asked the cabinet secretary whether she would welcome an extension to give us time to talk about the radical solutions that we have all referred to today. I am not asking her to intervene in the NMS’s decision-making process, but would she welcome such an extension? It would be welcome if she did.
I would welcome a greater opportunity for time for consultation on a better offer for Dumfries and Galloway. I will not tie the hands of the NMS board as to what that timeframe might be, because, as we discussed at our meeting, the key period will be what is anticipated as being the normal April opening. I would welcome the opportunity for time for consultation, but I leave that to the board and its decision making. Members should remember that the board meeting is in only a few days’ time.
I recognise the concern about the potential impact on the local tourism industry of the museum’s closure. Although the figures of 10,000 paying visitors and 5,000 visitors to the cafe comprise a small percentage of the total numbers of visitors to NMS sites—as several members have said—and are certainly lower than those for other key tourism sites in Dumfries and Galloway, I recognise the museum’s importance to the local area.
I strongly encourage local parties to work together with NMS to consider alternative solutions. Joan McAlpine’s idea for an NMS gallery that would involve a wider perspective rather than focusing simply on costumes is very good and is worth looking at. It is important that we strengthen the cultural tourism offer in Dumfries and Galloway and provide access to the national collections.
The NMS director, Dr Rintoul, is inviting council representatives to meet him at Shambellie house next month with a view to discussing the potential for developing a partnership to provide greater access to the national collections through other means, and I am sure that he will report on that.
Finally, there is the question of the house itself. As Aileen McLeod pointed out, and as I confirmed in my reply to her, the house is the property of Scottish ministers. If the NMS decides to close the museum of costume, it will become the Scottish Government’s responsibility to maintain Shambellie house and keep it secure. In that case, I would absolutely be open to considering suitable proposals for the use of the site from the local community or the wider Dumfries and Galloway region, within public finance rules.
I am grateful for the opportunity to debate the matter and to set out the Scottish Government’s position. The final decision on the museum’s future rests with the NMS. However, I know that the NMS remains committed to exploring options to improve access to its collections for the people of Dumfries and Galloway, and I will continue to be happy to facilitate and take part in those discussions.
Meeting closed at 17:46.