News – High costs threaten touring

Report calls for greater strategic investment to help develop touring exhibitions and their audiences.

More investment is needed if touring exhibitions are to fulfil their potential for delivering both audiences and professional development, according to a new report published by the Touring Exhibitions Group (TEG) following a two-year national research programme to investigate current and emerging practice in exhibition touring. Amongst a wide range of findings, audience development was identified as the primary motive for programming touring exhibitions, and the report concludes that the process of touring is effective at helping national organisations to reach wider audiences whilst at the same time enabling them to learn from smaller or regional venues about targeting specific social or cultural groups. Receiving venues were found to benefit from the profile that national exhibitions bring, pulling in larger visitor numbers and new audiences, enabling them to trial new types of programming, and creating opportunities for their staff to learn new ways of working.

But despite the perceived value of touring exhibitions, it is widely held that touring tends to be organically or opportunistically developed, and that too often exhibitions are packaged and sent out in response to enquiries once a show has opened. A lack of strategic overview is thought to be leading to an imbalance of content, including a flooding of the market in visual art shows. TEG is now calling for significant investment in regional museums in order to create an infrastructure which can support public collections reaching every corner of the country.

Higher levels of strategic investment in touring exhibitions are proposed as a solution to overcoming some of the perceived barriers to more widespread exhibition touring, especially the high costs involved. The research, funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, reveals that even large organisations with dedicated touring teams at best break even from their touring activities, and whilst hire fees may cover the direct costs of transport, packaging, insurance and exhibition materials, they rarely cover staff time and organisational overheads. Although receiving venues are in a position to benefit because hire fees fail to represent the real cost of an exhibition, many of them, especially local authorities venues, are unable to programme effectively because of minimal exhibition budgets. In particular, the costs to small and regional museums in meeting government indemnity standards are thought to be too high. Rural venues require exhibitions which are simple to install, cost effective, and have some marketing and education support; and the report calls for major strategic and grass-roots work in Scotland to bring the potential for touring back up to realistic levels. The report specifically highlights the challenges faced by rural venues forced to work with challenging budgets and dense workloads.

Calling for cross-sector support for the reports recommendations, TEG Vice-Chair Andy Horn said, At a time when major stakeholders of visual arts and heritage policy are working together to identify complementary areas, touring exhibitions must be part of those discussions or lose an opportunity which may not arise again for many years. We would welcome the opportunity to work with other national organisations on policy relating to touring.