Edinburgh closes one of its museums due to its budget deficit

Closed for two months due to a lack of staff, the People’s Story Museum, dedicated to the history of the working class in Edinburgh, is extending its closure until April 2025 in the face of a worrying financial situation. The museum will, however, remain open on certain days during the month of October, indicates the museum management.

The city’s Labor, Conservative and Liberal Democrat councilors, in charge of the budget, unanimously voted to close the museum for seven months. The decision is one of the consequences of the budget deficit of the City of Edinburgh, which runs the People’s Story Museum among other municipal museums. The municipality’s forecast budget would reach a deficit of 26 million pounds sterling (around 30 million euros) for the coming year, according to The Guardian. The entire budget allocated to the city’s museums and galleries represents 467,000 pounds sterling (around 530,000 euros), reports Edinburgh News.

In addition to closing the museum, the council took the decision to freeze staff recruitment to reduce costs, while the museum is already experiencing a staff shortage. Council members also voted to close the Queensferry Museum, a small historical museum about the town of Queensferry, now accessible by appointment only.

Closing the People’s Story Museum and Queensferry Museum will save the council £205,000 (around €233,000), or around 1% of the annual deficit.

Faced with the urgency of the situation, the Edinburgh Museums Association is looking for a “emergency stabilization funding of at least £30 million (approx. €34 million) »according to The Guardian. An alternative, to charge visitors for entry to the People’s Story Museum, will be studied in December.

The extension of the closure of the People’s Museum was very poorly received by cultural professionals and citizens of Edinburgh, who protested after the decision was announced. A petition titled “Save the People’s Story” has collected signatures from around 100 University of Edinburgh academics, citizens and trade unions. Several personalities highlighted the museum’s mission of transmission, which traces the history of the working class and a “essential part of the social fabric of this city”explained one of the signatories of the petition for Edinburgh News

The People’s Story Museum was opened in the 1980s by Edinburgh’s first Labor administration. Located in a 16th-century building in the Old Town, the museum offers a panorama of the working class history of the Scottish capital from the 18th to the 20th century. The museum’s collection is made up of revolutionary banners, reconstructions of bookbinding workshops, war kitchens and a prison cell.

In the last 10 years to 2020, local authority spending on museums and galleries in the UK fell by 27%, and 23% in Scotland, according to a funding report local authorities. Affected by the Covid crisis, many municipal museums have been facing financial difficulties across the United Kingdom for several years.

A possible reopening of the People’s Story Museum will be re-evaluated at the next council meeting in December 2024.

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