Rowing museum needs ‘significant restructuring’ to stem losses

The River & Rowing Museum in Henley is exploring alternative business models in a bid to become sustainable and ensure its future.

A statement issued by the museum, which opened in 1998, said it has been struggling financially for some time. Despite good progress being made on increasing visitor numbers and a new stable income stream from leasing office spaces to local businesses, it said “significant restructuring” is required.

According to the museum’s most recent accounts, it recorded a deficit of £911,374 in 2023/24, which it said was a notable improvement on the previous year (2022/23) and the budgeted loss.

The museum has previously received financial support from Arts Council England through the government’s Culture Recovery Fund to the tune of £303,000.

Sustainability ‘remains out of reach’

“Ever since opening its doors in 1998, the museum has attempted to balance its revenue generating capability with the expenditure necessary to maintain a substantial landmark building and a collection of 30,000 objects spread across five galleries and storage facilities,” a statement issued by the museum to the Museums Journal said.

“Recently, good progress has been made on increasing visitor numbers and a stable income stream has been established from leasing office spaces to local businesses.

“However, the stark reality is that even these improvements don’t match expenditure and despite recent investment in the building and the commercial model, sustainability remains out of reach.”

“Therefore, the responsible course of action for the foundation is to now cease the current operation in a considered and managed way, which preserves the public benefits in the assets we hold – namely our building, collection and charitable funds.

“Accordingly, the trustees have made the difficult decision to explore new options, whilst the foundation still has the financial capability to make considered choices.”

Posting on Instagram on Saturday (01 March), director of the museum Steve O’Connor stressed that the museum remains open.

“We are most certainly open. We need to make some really significant changes over the coming weeks and months in order to see if we can stem those losses and increase our income and if we can’t, ultimately closure could be on the cards at some point, because you can’t continue to operate that way.

“But for the moment we are open.”

Last month research found that three in five small museums fear closure amid worsening financial challenges. In a survey conducted by GoDaddy of museums with annual visitor numbers under 100,000, two-thirds (64%) said the rising cost of living had led to falling attendance.