Could nationals offer a new way of delivering a renaissance in the regions?

Tristram Hunt's piece in The Guardian on the increasing polarisation of the free national to the charged local museum is a talking point I have been interested in seeing aired since the coalition took power and stated that free national museum would remain a priority (albeit an increasingly smaller number) during the term of the government.

In principle, the idea of free national museums is a good one - make the museum free, and more people will come, which means more people are enlightened by the museum experience and their associated value and worth: great!  But not great if this doesn't work.  Tristram's piece shows that the audience profile for nationals hasn't changed substantially, so has offered greater access to already engaged audiences - hmm, the free museum starts to read like a middle class subsidy, ek!

At the same time, when schools are faced with the challenge of deciding which cultural venues to visit, and with a coach not costing much more for a day hire to London than down the road to the local museum, the national is a much easier sell to the parents (who are already digging deep into their pockets for these trips) with the 'wow factor' of a trip to the British Museum or V&A.  In essence the extra cost of the coach can be covered through the repositioning of the free entry national against the charged entry at the local museum.

This is not to say that people don't visit local museums, and schools can't be persuaded to use their local museum and local collections over that of a national, but that in itself comes at a cost - outreach, education, marketing and freelance staff all brought into post to herd the local masses through the local rather than national door.

So, what does the above have to do with the post title?

Well, for one, with the demise of the MLA, and an uncertain future for museum development under the ACE model being developed, it feels the time is right for museums to begin to muster themselves and at least present a new model and way of working - in partnership - to support the continued development of the sector (and importantly the sustainability of the sector).

Whilst I agree in principle with what Tristram has written, I do still feel that there is more to the argument that just adding a charge onto nationals: how can a charge, balanced with a reduced government grant, be used to support regional museum development?  For me, the ideal world would be a form of commissioning model between the nationals and the regions, in other words, becoming the 'core' museums that for many, the hubs never were.

My vision of a national commissioning model would look something like this:
Charge for national entry (a fiver sounds fair, as Tristram suggests)
Still apply a government grant at 50% of current levels
Apply a 'thresehold' at which any money over and above that thresehold, generated through admissions, is put into a national development fund
Create a set of commissioning themes (possibly aligned to the Generic Social Outcomes model)
Use the fund to allow (non national) museums to apply for grants to support strategic, nationally agreed, development agendas, or other agreed outcomes
Develop and sustain the sector

This process puts the onus on nationals to be a leading and guiding hand in supporting the national development and sustainability of the sector, it weans nationals of the government purse, slightly, and puts an emphasis on museums to develop along structured, nationally agreed routes, which can't be bad for all involved, can it?

At the heart of this vision, is the idea that whilst the MLA was and is an important organisation for museums across the country, it could be argued that its failing was that it could never pull the sector together as a whole, as the hubs were tasked with achieving, as they were never commissioners but more mediators and leaders of the sector (not for).

So to finish this off, the maintaining of nationals as free institutions puts all other museums - especially those within a certain radius of a national - on the back foot, unable to become entrepreneurial organisations that central government so desires, and at the same time, losing the 'saftey net' that the MLA provided in terms of strategic direction and resource.  So, could nationals offer a new way of delivering a renaissance in the regions?  This writer thinks so, if a little difficult on the palate for many to begin with...