National Assembly for Wales

Diolch yn fawr iawn. And Lisa.

Hello. I'm Lisa Ollerhead. I'm the director of the Association of Independent Museums, or AIM. Thank you.

Thank you very much. And Mark.

Hi. My name is Mark O'Neill. For these purposes today, I'm former head of Glasgow Museums.

Lovely. It's lovely to have all of you with us, and we have just over an hour—I think we have an hour and a quarter—with you this afternoon. Please don't feel that you all have to answer every single question, but if anyone would like to come in on particular questions then indicate, please. And if it's all right, we'll go straight into questions.

Can I check, Lisa and Mark, was there anything that you would like to add on this? Mark can't hear us. 

I can now. Maybe I could step back and do an overview of the experience we've had in Glasgow and in Scotland more widely. We too see charging for exhibitions as part of a much wider income-generation strategy. We've charged for exhibitions for at least 40 years, since I moved to Glasgow. I'm not from around here, as you might have guessed. Most large museums services generate between and 15 and 25 per cent of their income. In Glasgow, it's 15 per cent. The national museum in Edinburgh would generate 25 per cent. So, 75 to 85 per cent of a museum's budget are fixed costs—staff, buildings, collection preservation—so there's quite a small sum of money left and you have to think very carefully about what you spend that on. We've had some big successes with charging for touring temporary exhibitions. We had a big Banksy exhibition recently, which was very successful, and we've done exhibitions about the greatest Scottish local artist, Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

But equally, we've had very expensive disasters, and I suppose one of the privileges of being (a) retired and (b) an outsider is I can talk about my disasters more easily. We thought we would be very populist and we did a big exhibition on Scottish football, with amazing collections from famous players and clubs and from the national team, but, unfortunately, the national team were going through an exceptionally bad patch, so the atmosphere around Scottish football was very miserable and nobody wanted to go and celebrate it in an exhibition. We lost a lot of money on that. Similarly, we did a big exhibition on the birth of impressionism, with major works and expensive loans from France and America, and we got 25,000 visits, which was only a fraction of the target.

People talk about benchmarking, but it's very difficult, because going to exhibitions, you're competing with going to the cinema or having a day out outside the city, or whatever. So, it's very difficult to gauge what will work and what doesn't work. For example, the venue behind me is the Riverside Museum, Scotland’s museum of transport and travel, which opened as a new museum in 2011, and we designed it with no temporary exhibition space. We have a major venue, quite like the national museum in Cardiff, that has art history and natural history all in one building, a big encyclopaedic museum called Kelvingrove. That has a big temporary exhibition space, and we thought we just couldn't afford to run two big temporary exhibition spaces.

On the strategy for Riverside, as you can see, it's in a big plaza. So, that's specifically designed to host events, and we have everything there from car rallies, concerts, a big annual what we call a blue-light festival, where all the emergency services—the fire brigade and the police and everybody—come along. It was stopped a few years ago because there were so many people coming it wasn't safe. We got 40,000 people in one day. But the strategy for the exhibitions in this museum is we make small changes—four to six individual stories are changed each year. So, between events and small story changes, we keep its profile up. So, 12 years on it still gets over 1 million visits a year, and 60 per cent of those visits are from west of Scotland people, 40 per cent are tourists. So, it's a very nuanced strategy. Because of the amount of unrestricted cash in the museum's budget, it's high risk, because if you spend £200,000 on an exhibition and you only get £100,000 back, that's a significant loss to the museum.

In terms of one of the big questions on the agenda, about whether temporary exhibitions can attract a diverse audience, can I say a few words about that, or do you want—

Mark, thank you so much. I think that might be one of the specific areas that we'll come back to shortly, if that's all right. Thank you, that was incredibly useful, and thank you for talking us through some of the experiences of things that can be unpredictable in terms of some of the outside factors that can affect exhibitions and their popularity. That's a really useful layer for us to be aware of us as well. Thank you very much for that. Lisa or Nia, before we move on, was there anything else that either of you wanted to add? Lisa. 

I thought I could just give a bit of context on charging in the museum sector in general. Just to introduce AIM, we are a member organisation for independent museums. By 'independent' we mean those that aren't reliant on other organisations—anybody else—for their funding or decision making. In practice, most of them are independent charities, with a charitable board. Within the sector, that is in contrast to, say, a national museum, local authority museums or university museums. Because they're in receipt of little or no public funding, our members do earn their own income. Many of them do charge in some way, and are happy to do so, and are proud to reflect their value in the eyes of their audiences. We are very interested in how they earn their income and how they can run successful operating models. We did publish a piece of research late last year, which covered admissions in some detail. I believe the committee has seen that report in the briefing pack, but I will just mention a couple of key stats that might help provide some context for the discussion. 

The report was partially funded by the Welsh Government. It did cover Wales in some detail, and there is a Welsh language version on our website. It's called 'Research into Admissions Pricing Policy in Museums and its Impact'. We found just over half of museums charge for general admissions. Just over a third do not charge at all. Just less than one in 10 charge for both general admissions and admissions to specific exhibitions, and it was fairly rare to charge only for exhibitions, so only 4 per cent charged for admissions to specific exhibitions. But overall, about two thirds of museums were charging for admissions in some form, and 36 per cent didn't charge at all for admissions. Museums in Wales were slightly more likely than the average to charge for general admissions, and that was from a sample of about 10 per cent within an overall survey sample of 344.

Thank you very much. 

Okay. So, my question is: to what extent can charging for access to temporary exhibitions compensate for reduced public funding? But, after visiting the national museum today, I'm going to actually extend 'exhibitions' to events and productions, because I heard this morning about so many other activities that are being offered, such as a night in the museum and silent discos. So, there are lots of things that I didn't realise happened there as well—very innovative ideas. So, that's my question, really: how can they help to compensate for the reduced public sector funding?

The way that we would see the question, or certainly the answer, is that generating income, whether that's funding through statutory income or self-generated income, will always be a mixed model. Sadly, there is no silver bullet, and so it's important to have all of those levers for financial sustainability. I think the impact is that, sadly, we don't have the funds available to invest in everything, and therefore to your question, Llyr, it's about being really targeted and understanding where the greatest investment is and the greatest return. And when we speak of return, there are benefits way beyond revenue. So, some of the examples that you've given and that I've given to Llyr in terms of how the museum raises money also have benefits above and beyond the income that it raises. And it's really important, both in terms of ensuring that people continue to visit and that they are repeat visitors, which is really valuable. People see different things when they come back and see the collection. And it might be because they've come to a silent disco, or it might be because they've come to the cafe. So, there is a benefit from that and pride and an understanding and a level of engagement with colleagues' expertise across the organisation in different ways at different times. So, there are benefits beyond just the income. 

I suppose they build a relationship up, don't they, then? If you get them into the facility, the place, they build that relationship up, then.

Carolyn, just before we go to the other witnesses, I think Laura wanted to come in on this point. And I should say—I was going to say later that we're very pleased to have Laura as a new member of the committee, and so this is going to be the first time that Laura will be asking a question as a member of the committee. So, you're very welcome to have joined us, Laura. 

Thank you very much, Chair. I just wanted to follow up from that, because it is important obviously that we get these people back into the museum and that they have a great experience, which everyone I have spoken to has done, obviously. But have you done any work—? I want to know what work has been done in terms of making—. If you were to charge, what would be a reasonable amount to charge? And obviously, we're going to go on to talk about the impacts of charging, but I want to know: has any work been done in terms of what cost is seen as reasonable in terms of getting people back in and not overcharging, et cetera?

The work that has been done is about understanding the considerations, the nuances and the checks and balances. When you have a mixed model of income generation, I think the research from AIM attests too that, for certain organisations—and to Rhodri's point, different organisations have different considerations—an impact on one income stream could adversely or positively impact on another.

So, the work is about understanding what the interconnectivity is, so that for anything that we charge for, that we choose to charge for—which our royal charter allows us to do and it doesn't compromise our charitable status—that we are able to benchmark to understand our own data and ensure that the overall mixed model is positive and isn't compromised in any way, not just from an income perspective, but in terms of social equity, in terms of the work that we do to represent the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, and to make sure that the principles are also adhered to. So, there are many bottom lines when it comes to income generation and charging. So, understanding those nuances has been done and is an important piece of work before launching into anything.

Have you ever had exhibitions that have turned a profit?

Should we go to our witnesses online for this first, maybe? So, Mark and Lisa, I'm not sure if you heard—. Did you hear the question?

No. Could you repeat it?

Yes, sure. Have you previously run exhibitions that have turned a profit?

Well, that's an interesting one. No temporary exhibition we've ever run returned a profit if you included staff time. But usually what you're talking about is cash in and cash out, so we've run—. There was the Charles Rennie Mackintosh exhibition, the Banksy exhibition that I mentioned, and some other exhibitions that have made a cash surplus, but a big exhibition involves members from every staff department, and it might be something like 10 staff years in total if you add it up, which would be £0.5 million of staff time, which is not factored in. So, I'm very wary of the word 'profit'. We talk about making a surplus, if it works, and that's valuable funding, because the surplus is free and you can devote it to your priorities, unlike a lot of the other money that you get, which is just to keep the building open and to keep the staff functioning. Anyway, I could go on, so, yes, we have made money, but only in the sense of a surplus.

Lisa, were there any reflections? Yes.

Yes, I think I would echo Mark there, that it's very difficult to carve out the costs of doing the exhibition from the costs of running the overall museum. And for instance, if somebody's paying to come to an exhibition, and then they want to have a coffee after and a cake, what do you portion to the cost of the exhibition from the cost of running the cafe, and those kinds of questions make it quite difficult to say, 'Well, this one made money and this one didn't.' Certainly, there are examples in the national museums of England down in London of exhibitions that have done very well and created, as Mark says, a surplus. I think one of the key concerns when you're talking about temporary exhibition income making up for a reduction in public income is the uncertainty around—. Mark, again, said about his football exhibition in Scotland, and you can look at something from within the museum, and it's very hard to say, 'This one's going to do really, really well and make lots of money, bring in lots of money, and this one is actually not going to do what we hoped it would do financially.' And I think that is coming back to the figure I mentioned of the organisations, with only 4 per cent that charge only for temporary exhibitions. It's an unreliable income stream if you're really relying on it to be reinvested into the rest of the organisation. Thanks.

You could do with having a value for social value. If you could have a coin for social value, that would be amazing, wouldn't it? Some of the events that have been organised now, though, do they help turn a profit rather than the exhibitions?

It might be helpful perhaps to understand the overall wheel of income for the museum. Overall, events and exhibitions in themselves are relatively modest income streams. However, the value is far greater than just those incomes, and they are important as they bring different audiences in. It allows people to view the museum in different ways and it allows us to showcase the collection and the work that's done differently, and some of them are part of deep-rooted work with various communities that's important in terms of the social impact work that the museum does.

However, some of those events and exhibitions, although in themselves a very small proportion of the income that comes in, have a positive impact on our secondary spend for our cafes, for our shops, for our car parking, et cetera, and so the greater value of them is really important. What we work really closely to is to balance the effort that's put in, recognise why we're doing something, the benefit that we'll see reaped from it, and that there is a balance in terms of the effort and the return.

And how does charging impact on the tax status of income, so your charitable status, et cetera, if you do you charge?

So, I'm not a value added tax or tax expert—declaration made—and whilst we have incredible accountants at Amgueddfa Cymru, none of us are tax experts. Again, going back to the question that Laura had about what work has been done, one of the considerations that we understand is that our status, really, as both—. We're named, for example, in section 33A of the Value Added Tax Act 1994, and as a result of that, we're able to recover VAT that incurs costs in relation to free admission. And so that's important for us to understand, because again in that same Act, potentially, we are able to be treated as exempt from VAT under the cultural services exemption for some things. So, for example, it's important for us to know that the pay-what-you-can for Art of the Selfie at the moment is a ticketed opportunity. As I said, visitors get to decide what ticket price they pay and that is applicable to VAT, because if we had asked to be exempt from that, then it wouldn't have been possible to recoup some of the VAT on our revenue costs and our capital costs. So, again, it's about understanding which one is more valuable. So, the advice given and the understanding of those nuances and considerations are really important, and that will be different for every organisation and every circumstance, but it's really important to consider those before inadvertently doing something where one thing may seem like an income-generating opportunity, but, inadvertently, negatively impacts on another stream. I'm not sure if that helps.

Yes, thanks, it does. Yes.

Lisa, you want to come in.

Yes, I just wanted to come in. I'm also not a tax or VAT expert, but we've already heard about VAT 33A, the VAT refund scheme that is intended to support free entry in general. The other tax support that is available for exhibitions is the museums and galleries tax relief on temporary and permanent exhibitions, which was introduced in 2017 and it has just been made permanent in the previous budget. We are hoping from AIM that we will see more museums being able to benefit from that tax relief now that they know it's going to be able to be claimed for quite some time. That does require quite careful accounting around the costs of putting on the exhibition. Around the time it was being discussed and agreed, before it was introduced in 2017—it was originally going to be just for temporary exhibitions, and the feedback from the sector was, 'Well, actually, a lot of us don't do that many temporary exhibitions', or 'The financial impact, or the benefit of it won't really be high enough.' That was why it was extended to permanent exhibitions as well.

Just to also mention the other tax benefits, not, I don't think, on temporary exhibitions—I would have to check this and perhaps write to the committee about it—but around entry, general admissions. Gift aid can be a useful scheme enabling museums to claim some money back there. So, I would very much agree with the point, it's a careful weighing up of where the different income sources are and what you might lose from one benefit by introducing a charge elsewhere.

Lisa, if you could write to us with some of that extra information, that would be really useful, please. Thank you.

Have you got anything to add about the key features of exhibitions that are intended to be profit generating? No, you've covered it quite well, haven't you, before?

Any of our witnesses online? So, any of the key features of exhibitions that you'd like to highlight to us about any exhibitions that are geared towards generating profit. Mark, you talked to us earlier about, as you said, how things haven't gone well as well.

I wish I knew the answer to that question, otherwise my retirement would be much better funded than it is. It's like putting on a play in the theatre, or making a movie, and you get the impression that lots of movies make money because you hear of the famous ones, but it's a very high-risk business. So, even what you think of as surefire successes—. Impressionism is the most popular period of art, they're very accessible, and we have lost a lot of money on impressionism.

The features that would attract people would be, to be more positive and maybe generalised, are either of international celebrity status, so an exhibition on the Titanic or the Emperor's warriors or something like that, or an exhibition that has a really strong local significance of material that hasn't been seen before, because if it's new research and stuff that has been seen before, that won't cut through to the public. Family exhibitions that were really communicated to the public that they're highly interactive and engaging. But all of these are general principles that can be undermined by something that happens in the world outside or it doesn't cut through.

A lot of those judgments are made by staff who know their place, with the marketing team and the knowledge base, the curatorial conservation team, and a lot of it is experience that really can't be systematised—if you know your audience, you've done your audience research. Because, usually, there is no comparator, you know? There's no equivalent that you can compare, in a sense. So, you're competing with the cinema, with events and activities. There was a big period when our main competitor was escape rooms. They've come and gone. So, it takes a lot of experience and a lot of detailed market research, audience research over many years to make those judgments and they're still very risky. Sorry, that's a long way of answering and saying, 'I don't know.' [Laughter.]

No, that was genuinely fascinating. Thank you.

My last question was covered earlier, so happy to move on.

Thank you. We'll move on to Alun.

Diolch. Before we move on, Mark, you said earlier that you wanted to share with us some thoughts on the effect of all this on the diversity of people going to see exhibitions. So, it would be great to hear your thoughts on that.

Thank you very much. The conversation has broadened a little and I'd like to make one more general point, which is that, sociologically, the primary predictor of museum visiting isn't income, and charging isn't the most significant barrier. The greatest predictor of museum visiting is the prior level of education. People with poor or no educational qualifications usually have had a bad experience of school and of learning, they see museums as schooly places that are not for them. The kind of programmes that Nia has been talking about, in-depth work with communities over years, is what is takes to break down those barriers.

For example, if you did a big exhibition about something that was really important to a particular neighbourhood community that was traditional working class or poor, or for, say, a south Asian community, their history of moving and living in the area, people will come once, they'll find their way in, they'll overcome the threshold fear, they'll get through, but they won't come again unless they know that they are really welcome in the museum.

For people who are educated, for people who've been brought to museums as children by their parents and by school—although school visiting is not as important as family visiting in predicting adult visiting—it's very hard for us to imagine how daunting a museum can be. We see the impressive building in Cardiff; it looks like a bank or a palace, and it's about getting across that threshold for people who may have literacy difficulties, people who would be afraid of being embarrassed in front of their children if their children asked them a question that they can't answer, or they're afraid that their children will misbehave.

Some of the research we did in Glasgow—. Maybe you've heard of the Burrell Collection, a very big collection of decorative arts in a park that's just at the edge of the city, with loads of beautiful objects. When we asked local people why they didn't go, they said it was too expensive to get in, but it has never charged. It was the sense that it was such a posh place that they wouldn't be welcome. Those psychosocial barriers are much more important, I think, than charging for a particular exhibition—so, within a general strategy, that it tries to address those psychosocial barriers over a long period of time.

You may charge for some exhibitions, or you may not, but the overall engagement and diversity strategy is much more important, and that's a generational thing. If you want the children being brought to the museum now to bring their grandchildren in 40 years' time, that's the kind of timescale you have to plan for, and you have to have the freedom to invest money in that kind of long-term thinking, rather than, 'We might get some extra free cash by charging for that exhibition'.

That's useful. Thank you very much, Mark. Lisa, I think you want to come in as well.

Yes, thank you, just to follow up on the diversity of audiences. We did an earlier research report around 2016 or 2017 that did find, perhaps counterintuitively, that actually charging and free-entry museums did have similar social mixes in their audience patterns. It didn't seem to make that much difference to the diversity, certainly from a socioeconomic background point on view, whether a museum charged or not. We didn't quite replicate that finding in the more recent report. Some of the museums that had moved to charging did report, actually, a reduction in diversity, so perhaps there's a little bit of a change there in the most recent times.

Our key message around charging would be that each organisation needs to think about it very carefully and make the decisions that are based on what they want to do, what they are looking for on the financial basis, what they are trying to do with audiences and for audiences, and for communities, and make those decisions based on all of that. You can't just go, 'Well, one size fits all, here's a charging approach', and expect it to work. There are ways to target and to support the costs for audiences that you really want to bring in to the museum, or to a particular exhibition, which are, again, not one size fits all, but saying, 'Right, who do we want to come? Who do we want to be able to come?', and how can we make that easier for them, based on what they tell us. It's very much about listening to the audience and understanding what is going to be able to bring them in, and then setting the admissions strategy, in particular around concessions, free tickets or being able to enter freely to something that is otherwise chargeable, based on that very clear knowledge of the audience and what you're trying to achieve.

Thank you very much for that, Lisa. We're going to move on now to Laura's questions. I'm very aware that we have just under a quarter of an hour left. If we were to run over by a few minutes after that, would that be all right with all the witnesses, because I want to make sure that Laura has as much as time as possible? Okay. Diolch yn fawr. Thank you. Laura, over to you.

Thank you, Chair. If I may, Chair, I'll just follow on from what has just been said. I accept the fact that you've all said that you work on a premise of a mixed model of self-generating income, but how do you, following on from what's just been said, balance that desire to generate income from temporary exhibitions with that desire to increase the diversity of audiences, please?

Who would like to go on that first?

It's about choice and listening. So, whenever we're considering charging for anything, yes, we'll think about it in the round, but we'll take on board the experience of working with communities on particular projects to apply to our income generation. For example, in our philanthropic work we make sure that there are schemes and capabilities for people to be able to give in any way that they can. Visitor donations are just as important to us as major donors, it's just as important to us as legacies. Where we invest our time and effort, absolutely, is where we have the greatest return, because sadly we can't invest in all of it, but it is all important and there's plenty of choice for people to give in the way that they can or want to give.

And equally, on the commercial side of things, we give people a choice and we listen to the experience of colleagues who've worked deeply with communities, and in particular with Amgueddfa Cymru producers, who are a group of young people who are paid by Amgueddfa Cymru, over 100 of them, experienced through their lived experience to work as activists in the museum to help us to think about our policies, our programmes, et cetera.

The Vulcan Hotel that's just recently opened at St Fagans is a good example, where it's part of the collection, and we are charging for people to be able to buy a pint if they want to—that's alcoholic or non-alcoholic—but equally, you can walk around and enjoy the space and there's no pressure to have to buy at all. As well, you can book in advance, you can hire the space, so there's a choice of engagement and listening and learning from that, so that we make sure that we break down barriers. So, it's not about an 'either/or', it's an 'and', and it's also multilayered, that we take the experiences of the deeper work to ensure that we can give options for diversity at all times.

Thank you. It's clear from what you've all said that education outreach and creating that awareness is vitally important to get people through the doors. You've said that previous exhibitions in the museum have used the variable charging scheme, so basically donations—you can give what you want—but do you actually charge different prices for different people? Is there a difference there? Have you ever done that?

We certainly have concessions. An example might be that we've recently joined the Hynt scheme, which is, of course, as I'm sure the committee know, a Wales-wide access scheme, and we're looking forward to launching that. But it's quite common for us to offer concessions to various groups, and that will depend on the product and the item. For example, a few years ago there was a particular emphasis—. I can't remember which exhibition we had, but there was a charge for it, and we made it quite clear that there was a welcome and a free access to any refugee at the time. So, there are various groups that we sometimes target, either because of the deep partnership work that we have with those communities or the relevance of that for a particular exhibition, perhaps—if there is a charge at all.

Thank you very much. I think it was at the beginning that Rhodri from the national library said that people can now donate via contactless payment. I'm just wondering what difference that has made, because I know, when it comes to Conservative Party things, it has made it much easier for people to give us stuff. So, how does that make a difference? Because you make it easy for people to give.

Thank you, and, Chair, if I can move on to the impact of charging on visitor experiences, do you believe that the negative impact outweighs the positive impact of charging for exhibitions or visitor experiences of any kind in your places, or do you believe that charging can be used as a way to subsidise provision of a broader range of exhibitions, or perhaps, potentially, even attract new audiences in? Thank you. 

Mark and Lisa, did you want to go first on this? 

Well, if I can start with the previous question, as it were, I feel I may have given the impression that, when I was head of Glasgow Museums, I was reluctant to charge, and, actually, the ethical principle was very simple: we didn't charge for access to the collections the people already owned. So, anything else could be charged for. But there was a lot of naive thinking about what money could be made. Perhaps the best example was in the shops. When I started working there first, the shops were described as profitable, but, actually, they weren't taking staff salaries into account, and it took six or seven years to get the shops to be efficient and effective enough to make a profit including the staff salaries, and the same was actually true in the cafe—so, a very old-fashioned local government view of cash. 

But, in terms of your second question on the visitor experience, there's a lot of different kinds of temporary exhibitions. So, one of the most basic kinds are touring exhibitions where visitors can see things that the museum doesn't have. So, you bring in something from— . I suppose the emperor's warriors, or something like that, is the classic example. You can see something that you would never otherwise see. Investment in temporary exhibitions often means that the experience is more intense, because there's a narrative and you may have more money for technology and for design. But, if you haven't got the wider access programme, what they do is that they give a service to the best educated, best-off people, people who are already very well included, are superserved. 

Again, being very pragmatic, I would sometimes have justified that because the income would cross-subsidise, as you said, other activities or other exhibitions. But you have to be really aware of being naive about how the money works in all of these situations, and what compromises or what trade-offs you're looking to achieve. So, it's all about transparent accounting and being very clear about what the decisions you're making imply for giving an extra benefit to your most regular visitors, versus trying to include the most excluded audiences, who are much more difficult to include. It's much easier to get regular visitors to come back than to get new visitors to come.   

Lisa. Lisa I think wants to speak, Chair. 

I know, I'm just waiting for—. It'll be that the microphone will be muted. It's fine.

Sorry, messing with my muting. Yes, so, I think we are quite bullish about charging, actually, at AIM, and we don't think it's necessarily a negative on the visitor experience at all, and it can very much be positive. I'm speaking more generally about admissions charging, rather than specifically to temporary exhibitions, because that's what our research and most of what we have done is about. But a lot of it is around the museum being confident in their value and in their charging. We would say to a museum that is coming to it with the approach of, 'Oh, we hate that we have to do this, and it's going to be horrible for the visitor experience'—don't do it, find another way, because that is going to come over to the visitor, and that is going to reflect in the visitor experience. But if you go into it with the mindset that, 'This is going to contribute to what we do and how we do it'—. Particularly, communication is incredibly important, both around the staff, so the people front of house, people on the ticket desk, can explain, 'This is what you're paying for, this is why we charge, this is what you're getting for it', but also that communication to the visitors, and being able to show how that income contributes to the museum. But a number of our charging museums have also found it can be motivational for staff for them to know, 'Our visitors really value our museum, they've paid money, they've reached into their pockets to be here, so we've got to give them a great day out.' Museums can use it as a driver to raise standards and to provide a great visitor experience by using that money really well. But it's got to be a mindset that goes through the whole museum.

Thank you. One argument may be that charging for access to temporary exhibitions goes against that spirit of free entry, so I'd like your thoughts on that. But have you had any—? Have any of you experienced any really negative feedback on charging for anything? Thank you.

Only where we were showing our collections that the city owned. So, for example, in the impressionism exhibition, we showed, I think, six or eight of our own paintings in the context of major loans from France and America, but some people objected to paying because our own works were in there. But, otherwise, the main resistance would have been about the amount of the charging; people would say, 'That's too expensive.' But, for the really successful exhibitions, about local artists or a local subject, where they caught the imagination, there was no resistance either to paying or to the price point. So, again, it's that magic judgment of getting the right topic at the right time and getting the right message, and people are willing to pay.

And my final question: how are audiences involved in the production of temporary exhibitions?

That varies hugely from museum to museum. Maybe the national museum—. Rather than me telling you my experience, the Welsh experience might be more relevant.

Diolch yn fawr iawn. Well, at this moment, I'm afraid that time has defeated us. There were so many more questions I think that a number of us wanted to ask. If it's all right, we will write to all of you with some further final questions that we didn't quite have time to reach.

—may I just thank you all very much, again, for your evidence? It's been really enriching and fascinating to hear the good and the more challenging experiences that you've had, and to learn from all of those.