Small change

A CHILD plays with an antique cash register in a room arranged like an old pharmacy. Elsewhere a man dressed as an Anglo-Saxon explains an array of tools. “The early English were clean, tidy and smart,” he says, wielding a little comb carved from horn. It is a busy Sunday at the Museum of Nottingham Life. But from this month the museum will be open only to pre-booked tours and school trips. Nottingham City Council is slicing £20m ($32m) from its 2012-13 budget. The local museum was a natural target.

Cuts in state funding have many museums tightening their belts. But small ones are especially vulnerable, as their size gives them little room for manoeuvre. Several local-history museums have been forced to shut down entirely—including, most recently, the Malton Museum of Roman artefacts in North Yorkshire. Others face staff cuts, shorter opening hours, higher entrance fees, reduced programmes, shifts in management and even relocation. Lincolnshire councils have handed over two local-history museums—the Church Farm Museum in Skegness and the Grantham Museum—to charities that are staffing them with volunteers; the collection of a third Lincolnshire museum can now be seen in the local library in Stamford.

“We're really struggling,” says Steve Kirk, who gives his time at Church Farm, an open-air farming museum. The volunteers are still learning how to apply for grants, and the council has offered little help. But he is determined that the collection not be “boxed up and stored in some container in Lincoln”. Visitor numbers are rising, he adds. The museum just needs a way to collect more of their money.

When councils find it hard to maintain basic services, many think poky little museums are plausible sacrifices. But these cheap, family-friendly attractions are often a source of local pride. They are especially popular now that fewer people can afford to go away for holidays. Though cuts in service can be reversed when times get better, it is hard to reopen a museum that has been shut down. Plans to close and sell the Red House Museum in Gomersal in West Yorkshire—a site with important connections to the writer Charlotte Brontë (pictured)—were met with such fierce opposition that the local council recently decided to introduce new entrance charges instead.

Some councils are choosing to place their museums in a trust. This lets them relinquish much of the responsibility for managing and funding the institutions while giving museums more freedom to raise money from other sources.

Yet councils should heed the experience of the Wedgwood Museum in Stoke-on-Trent. Following the collapse in 2009 of Waterford Wedgwood, the museum's managing trust became liable for a £134m pension-scheme shortfall. The trust has since gone into administration, and the museum's collection will be sold to help meet pension obligations. Forewarned, local governments in future may try to set a legal firewall around museum collections.

The key is thinking strategically, says Mark Taylor, director of the Museums Association, a national group. Hasty cuts in hours or staffing may make it harder for a museum to cover its costs, as venues often rely on foot traffic—in shops, cafés or near the donation basket—to raise money. Decisions should reflect the way the museum is used: fees could be introduced in popular months, hours reduced in leaner ones. As those tidy Anglo-Saxons might say, there are lessons to learn from history.

Correction: The original version of this article stated that Waterford Wedgwood, which collapsed in 2009, was the corporate parent of the Wedgwood Museum. This is wrong: the two were entirely separate entities. We apologise for the mistake.