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A 6,500 signature petition and international protests from forty international museum directors, including Tate's Maria Balshaw, have prompted Antonin Stanek, the Czech Culture Minister, to step down. Stanek had fired Jiri Fajt, director of Prague’s National Gallery, and Michal Soukup, head of the Museum of Art in Olomouc, in a move that was widely condemned as being politically motivated.

Kingston Council has warned that the theatre's £265k annual funding will end by 2022 and criticised its “uncommercial” programme of events, saying “we think they can act more commercially and become more efficient in the way they are run."

Sidney and Matilda Gallery and Social Club is applying for planning permission to develop a former paper factory in the city centre as a mixed-use gallery space and private arts members club.

In a letter to Small Business and Consumer Minister Kelly Tolhurst, the industry body’s CEO Michael Dugher urges that the crowdfunding website PledgeMusic be referred to the Competition and Markets Authority after it failed to find a buyer. Last week, the platform’s founder Benji Rodgers confirmed in a blog that the company was headed for administration.

By investing to make the nine council-run sites into better visitor attractions, the organisation reached 1.7 million  people - a 23% increase on last year, and almost five times as many as in 2004 when records began.

The museum, which exhibits local artwork and historic artefacts related to waterways and boating, has implemented "various cost-cutting measures", but the charity's trustees have now called in the receivers as they "do not want the position to get any worse.”