Cost-of-living crisis

The cost-of-living crisis continues to impact museums across England, and the situation is expected to get worse before it gets better, according to a new report.

Funded by Arts Council England and produced by South West Museum Development, the Annual Museums Survey gathered data on 700 accredited non-national English museums. It found while visitor numbers in 2022/23 were higher than the previous year, they were down 18% on pre-pandemic levels.

Museums also reported increased expenditure of 10%, mainly on energy bills, materials, staff costs and travel. At the same time, visitor spending was down overall and some organisations had also experienced a drop in donations.

After a slight increase in reported income during 2020/21 and 2021/22, overall income for museums dropped by 3% in 2022/23.

The report found museums attempting to balance the need to generate more revenue by increasing ticket prices with a desire to keep admission fees low to encourage visitors.

Respondents said schools were struggling to fund museum visits for pupils, especially the transport costs. The report concluded that museum visitor demographics and behaviour are increasingly difficult to predict.

The cost-of-living crisis has also significantly impacted museum staff and volunteers, according to the survey, as some employees departed for higher-paid jobs or moved to new roles closer to home.

Seasonal staff and lower-paid positions in retail, catering and cleaning proved challenging to hire, while some volunteers returned to paid jobs or could not afford to travel to perform their roles.

Despite this, the number of volunteers increased last year by 11%, only 5% fewer than pre-pandemic levels.

Victoria Harding, Programme Manager at South West Museum Development, said: "A range of factors, such as free entry and geography, have influenced the degree to which museum visitors have returned to pre-pandemic levels.  

"However, across the sector, irrespective of how successfully museums have generated increased income through a variety of new, or enhanced, ways this progress is outstripped by the increase in expenditure reported by 64% of museums."
 

Wildcard Theatre Company has announced its closure after eight years of operation, citing financial difficulties. 

“Having taken this time to consider our options after the closure of our Wildcard Studios at the end of last year, we feel as a collective we’re not in a position to achieve our aims as effectively and dynamically as we previously have in the current financial climate,” the company said in a statement.

“This has led to the difficult decision to close this wonderful chapter in our lives. It will take us a few months to complete this process.”

Wildcard Studios, the company’s four-storey West End venue offering subsided rehearsal space and free study space, was launched in 2019 and closed at the end of last year.

During its three years of operation, the space engaged with over 1,200 individual companies and artists and had more than 4,000 booking, despite restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the company said.

Wildcard Theatre Company was formed in 2015 by a group of graduates from the Oxford School of Drama with a mission to champion unknown talent.

It eventually evolved into a charity that “aimed to engage new audiences and provide a home for emerging artists”, the statement said, as well as developing “stories that promoted positive social change”.

The company “will no longer be creatively contributing to the theatre landscape” but will be working with the Pleasance Theatre to set up a Wildcard grant in support of their Associate Artist scheme.

More information about the grant is expected to be released in the coming months.

The National Trust (NT) has reported spending a record £179m on conserving its historic buildings and collections last year.

In a report published before the NT’s annual general meeting in November, the organisation detailed some of the rising costs it has had to contend with over the past year, including the doubling of its energy bill to £11m. 

Despite the challenging economic landscape in 2022-23, the NT’s workforce increased in contrast to 2020-21, when the closure of its buildings during the pandemic led to the loss of 1,700 jobs.

Last year, the NT funded 13,245 hours of work on delicate historic collections and spent £25.6m on “significant acquisitions”.

The organisation also saw a boost in visitors at pay-for-entry venues. At the same time, membership rose slightly from 5.71m in 2021-22 to 5.73m in 2022-23, with the cost of individual membership increasing by 16.5% to £84 a year.

As well as record spending, the NT received record amounts in bequeathed legacies last year, topping £70m.

Hilary McGrady, the NT’s Director General, said: “The record funds we dedicated in the last financial year reflects the NT’s enduring commitment to the beautiful historic places in its care and the nation’s enthusiasm for this.

“We were able to make this significant investment during a particularly difficult economic environment, with rising costs and continued recovery from the pandemic, thanks to the millions of people who supported our cause.”

A commercial contemporary art gallery in central London has closed due to "mounting debts" made worse by Brexit, inflation and a drop in sales.

FOLD, which was founded 15 years ago by Kim Savage, has gone into voluntary liquidation and all future exhibitions have been cancelled.

Savage said that "mounting historic debts, the fallout from the pandemic lockdowns, Brexit, inflation and a general downturn in sales" had resulted in the "sudden decision" to close the gallery.

FOLD was initially a project space in Hackney, east London when it first launched in 2008.

The gallery moved to Clerkenwell and then Fitzrovia eight years ago.

Savage added: "I am deeply saddened to make this announcement and really have tried my utmost to avoid this and to make it work, but I am afraid now the tank is empty".

Increases in the cost of theatre and live music performances have contributed to record inflation rates for recreation and culture, Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures show.

Data published today by the ONS shows the UK's inflation rate stayed at 8.7% in May - the same rate as in April - and down from a peak of 11.1% last year.

The ONS said that while falling prices for motor fuel was one of a number of areas that contributed to downward pressure on inflation, this was counteracted by increases in others.

It cited rising prices for recreational and cultural goods and services as being among the "largest upward contributors".

The annual inflation rate for this category in the year up to May 2023 was 6.8%, up from 6.4% in April.  

It represents the highest level of inflation for recreational and cultural goods and services since the ONS began recording figures in their current format in January 2006. The last time it was higher was in August 1991 when annual price rises were recorded at 7.2%.

The ONS has attributed some of the rise to cultural services, where average charges for live music events and theatre admissions rose this year having fallen a year ago.

A music festival in Essex has been cancelled due to escalating production costs.

The BBC reports that artists including Bastille, James Bay, Clean Bandit, Texas and Freya Ridings were due to perform at the Hideaway Festival at Crix near Chelmsford.

A statement put out by the organisers said they had encountered "numerous challenges", including escalating production costs and the prevailing cost of living crisis. 

"Despite our best efforts, we are unable to meet the costs associated with delivering a top-quality event on such a large scale," the statement said.

"We also did not feel that it was the right choice to pass on expenses onto our valued customers and raise ticket prices further. Consequently, we have had to cancel this event."

A music and arts festival in the grounds of a historic country house in Perthshire has been cancelled due to poor ticket sales.

The organisers of the Otherlands Music and Arts Festival at Scone Palace, Perth also cited rising production costs and the loss of grant funding as reasons for pulling the plug on three-day event planned for 11-13 August.

Describing the decision as "devastating" and "heart-breaking", they said in a statement they were "absolutely gutted that we could not make the festival a reality this year".

The statement continued: "An independent festival comes with a whole host of challenges and despite doing everything we can, we are unable to deliver the show to the high standard it needs to be, and therefore it is no longer viable to continue".

The announcement comes as the Association of Indepedent Festivals says the costs associated with putting on an event are becoming "untenable" for indepedent festivals.

This year would have been the second outing for the festival, which took place for the first time in August 2022.

The festival has committed to refunding all ticket holders within 14 days.