Kirklees is well endowed with high quality museums, libraries and art galleries, but the very survival of these historic institutions now hangs in the balance.

Only one thing is certain – because of swingeing funding cuts to local government they will not continue in their present form.

Some may not survive at all. As Clr Graham Turner, the Kirklees Council cabinet member with responsibility for museums and galleries, says, there are signs that further austerity measures are on the way.

Clr Graham Turner

“The noises from Central Government are that there may be more cuts to come,” he said. “But we are having to work on what we know now and that’s a cut of £491,000 by 2017/18 for running the (cultural) service.

“We face a 40% cut in our overall budget so the status quo is not attainable and the service has to take its share of cuts. We have to do things differently. We might have to look at different organisations for finance and get expertise from outside our organisation.”

Volunteers, he says, could be one of the keys to securing the future.

Clr Turner added: “We have some fantastic volunteers now and the work of volunteers is vitally important. It’s a sad fact of life that people are going to have to do more for themselves.”

A number of options may be presented for consideration although it has not been revealed exactly which will go before the full council later this year.

One possibility, recently highlighted by York Art Gallery which reopened after an £8m refurbishment, is to charge for admission to publicly-owned museums and galleries. York has introduced a £7.50 entrance fee for both locals and visitors.

The Museums Association has said that charging for entry is on the agenda of many local councils up and down the country as they struggle to find ways to raise revenue. At the moment only the Red House in Gomersal and Oakwell Hall at Birstall make a charge in Kirklees although the country park at Oakwell is free to all.

Oakwell Hall and Red House Museum
Oakwell Hall and Red House Museum

However, as the retired assistant director of cultural services for Kirklees Council, Brian Haigh. points out: “The cost of collecting admission (charges) can be greater than the income generated and visitor numbers will plummet. I have never thought that paying was a good idea for museums and art galleries. They are places where you can keep going back on a regular basis. For example, I’ve been to see the Tom Wood exhibition at Huddersfield Art Gallery and I shall try and go again because you can’t take it all in at one visit. Free admission encourages better use of the facilities.”

John Rumsby, former curator at Tolson Museum and retired collections manager for Kirklees, agrees: “Most of the visitors to local museums are local people who like to pop in and out. Introducing charges will mean that you are running the service for fewer people, which is inefficient.”

Huddersfield Library and Art Gallery.
Huddersfield Library and Art Gallery.

He puts the blame for Kirklees’ dilemma squarely onto the shoulders of the Government which he says is “anti-local government.”

He added: “Kirklees can’t be blamed for this, it is national government policy and I feel very strongly about it. We have a group of people who are extremely rich themselves in a party financed by the London financial sector. Why would they care about a museum in Huddersfield?

“National government is trying to get rid of local services. I would not want to be a councillor having to choose between closing libraries and museums and social services.”

However, closing museums may not be an option.

Inside the weird and wonderful Tolson Museum - take a tour of some of the stranger exhibits

As Mr Rumsby says: “As I understand it all the museums in Kirklees were given to the town under various terms which makes it difficult for them to be closed or sold off. At one point there was an attempt to sell off Dewsbury Museum but the council discovered that it couldn’t.”

Clr Turner says the council will be looking at different, new funding streams from business, heritage organisations, merchandising and even the introduction of cafes.

As he explains: “All local authorities pre-2008, before the American banks bankrupted the world, weren’t commercial organisations. Now we need to be more commercially savvy and this represents a culture change. Cafes, for example, will form part of the review, but these will require investment and that’s why partners would be helpful. The old ways of the council just supplying services are not with us any more.”

There are, he says, no simple solutions to the problem. But council taxpayers need to understand that difficult choices will have to be made as all services are being affected by the cutbacks.

Clr Turner added: “People don’t realise some of the things we do because they don’t use our services. But there might come a day when they need dementia care or respite relief. Adult social care and children’s services use up a huge amount of our budget. We have 1,300 or more statutory duties that are legally binding on us. It would be unfair and unjust if we were to have a state-of-the-art art gallery and we couldn’t provide care for the elderly.”

Dewsbury Museum
Dewsbury Museum

However, Clr Turner says he is eager to preserve as much of the area’s history and culture as possible.

He added: “We have to keep an eye on the fact that Kirklees is a wonderful place, ideally placed when the economy re-starts and the promised Northern Powerhouse arrives and is in the M62/M1 corridor with a fantastic workforce and skill base. But we have got to make it a place that people want to live in and our cultural offer needs to be balanced. We have a fantastic heritage and we have to think about how we want to present that and preserve it with the money we have.”

Visitor numbers to Kirklees’ museums and art galleries for the past year stand at over 226,200, a fall of nearly 94,000 from 2011/12 but similar figures to 2013/14. The decrease was attributed to reduced opening hours and a further challenge faced by the council is how to encourage visitors into its cultural facilities.

Clr Turner believes it may be time to look at other models of public engagement.

He said: “Perhaps, for example, we need to go out to the public and into schools with mobile stands and use items from the archives to make memory boxes to help dementia sufferers. I’m happy to talk to anybody out there who has any ideas that could help develop and protect our services.”

As former curators, both Mr Rumsby and Mr Haigh say that under-funding museums and galleries leads to a spiral of decline with staff unable to mount new exhibitions and draw in visitors.

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What should happen to Kirklees' museums?

“A museum is not just a building that needs to be looked after and repaired,” said Mr Rumsby. “It has collections that need to be cared for properly and it needs qualified, expert staff who can answer questions and curate displays. Over the last few years the number of museum staff has reduced and reduced and that makes the museums less effective.”

Mr Haigh agreed: “There has been no investment in the museums and there aren’t enough people to have exhibition programmes. I ran one at Bagshaw Museum during my time there. Most of our exhibitions didn’t cost anything in terms of funding, but we had the staff to put them on.

“There is the scenario with the libraries that only Huddersfield and Batley will survive. It could be the same with the museums and art galleries and only Oakwell and Tolson will remain.”