Nottingham City Council Museums & Galleries Service Strategic Plan 2014 – 2018 141022plan Page 1 of 96 141022plan Page 2 of 96 PREAMBLE PREAMBLE [i] Preface by Councillor Dave Trimble [ii] Contents [iii] Executive Summary [i] Preface by Councillor Dave Trimble Portfolio Holder for Leisure and Culture It gives me great pleasure to present this Strategic Plan for the Museums and Galleries Service to 2018. This is the first major Strategic Plan developed for our Museums and Galleries Service and the first such comprehensive Plan that I have received as Portfolio Holder for Leisure and Culture. This is a very important time for our Museums and Galleries Service, as we embark on a huge redevelopment of Nottingham Castle until 2020 – a development that is vital not only to secure the future of this world-renowned site, but as a keystone in the future economic prosperity of the City through the creation and support of new employment. However, the Plan encompasses the future of all of our major heritage sites, including Nottingham Castle Museum, Wollaton Hall and Park, Newstead Abbey with its beautiful gardens and grounds and Greens Mill. It includes an ambitious programme for the development of our outstanding collections, with detailed proposals for associated learning, engagement, digital developments, research and scholarship. Partnership working is vital to this enterprise and the role of partners for service delivery, research or as funders is clearly identified. In particular, the developing role of volunteer engagement, which will be vital to the sector as a whole, is a priority for development. The Service already has considerable expertise in this area and this will serve the wider community well as we aim to develop over the next few years. This is just one area where our Service will provide strong leadership to the wider museum sector in the coming years. The Plan also features significant Arts Development proposals for the City with a detailed programme of artistic development, including a major contribution for Asian Arts in the City and beyond and heralds our ambition to be a UNESCO City of Literature. The last few years have been very challenging for local authorities, as we have had to cope with huge cuts to our base budgets, and it is certain that these difficult times are far from over. This has had an impact across all services but our Museums and Galleries Service has proved to be very resilient and it is therefore all the more impressive that we can aspire to such an ambitious programme of activity with the confidence and the authority described here. 141022plan Page 3 of 96 Nottingham City Council Museums & Galleries Service Strategic Plan 2014 – 2018 [ii] Contents Plan Section Section Content PREAMBLE [i] Preface by Councillor Dave Trimble [ii] Contents [iii] Executive Summary of Plan 1.0 OUR PLAN CONTEXT 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Review of Previous Strategic Plans 1.3 Nottingham – the Political and Economic Context 1.4 Citizen First! 1.5 Nottingham Arts Framework 2012 - 2022 1.6 Our Purpose 1.7 Current and Future Governance 1.8 Resilience 2.0 OUR SITES 2.1 Nottingham Castle 2.2 The Museum of Nottingham Life 2.3 Wollaton Hall and Park 2.4 Nottingham Industrial Museum 2.5 Newstead Abbey and Gardens 2.6 Greens Mill and Science Centre 2.7 Other Facilities 3.0 OUR PLAN – The 6 ‘Cs’ 3.1 Creativity 3.2 Collections 3.3 Community 3.4 Collaboration 3.5 Communication 3.6 Commercialisation 4.0 STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS 4.1 Nottingham City Museums and Derby Museums Trust 4.2 Sectoral Leadership and Engagement 141022plan Page 4 of 96 5.0 FORMULATION AND REVIEW OF OUR PLAN 5.1 Plan Development 5.2 Plan Review 5.3 Leadership Development and Diversity APPENDICES A1.1 Strategic Policy Context A1.2 Key Stakeholders and Partner Organisations A1.3 Nottingham City Council Citizen First! Policy 2012 - 2015 [Summary] A1.4 Nottingham’s Arts Framework 2012 - 2022 A2.1 Nottingham City Museums – The Property Portfolio A2.2 Nottingham Castle – Inspiring Visitors for 1,000 Years: Development Proposals 2014 - 2020 A3.1 Our Learning & Engagement Policy A3.2 Our Collections Access Strategy A3.3 Nottingham City Museums and Galleries Interim Digital and Social Media Strategy 2014 A3.4 Our Collections – Overview A3.5 Our Collections – Research Priorities A3.6 Our Collections – Benchmarks in Care and Storage Review A4.1 Key Stakeholder Priorities A5.1 Our Operational Plan 2014 - 2018 A5.2 Our Activity Plan 2014 – 2018 A5.3 Our Marketing Priorities 2014 - 2018 A5.4 Our Service SWOT Analysis A5.5 Our Exhibitions Programme 2014 - 2016 A6.1 Our Resource Plan 2014 – 2018 – Revenue Expenditure A6.2 Our Resource Plan 2014 – 2018 – Capital Expenditure A6.3 Our Resource Plan 2014 – 2018 – Current Staff Structure A7.1 Strategic and Service Plans 2002 - 2015 141022plan Page 5 of 96 [iii] Executive Summary Purpose of the Plan This Executive Summary summarises the full Strategic Plan for Nottingham City Council Museums and Galleries Service for the period 2014 – 2018. The Plan has been written to explain: • The origins and recent history of our Service, the historic structures we care for and the many collections we hold – many of national and international importance. • The social, political, economic and cultural context in which we operate. • Our demonstrable record of good performance in the most trying of circumstances • How we will use our excellent record for income generation, major project funding, community engagement and digital media to take a greater leadership role for the sector. • The strategic partnerships and collaborations that will enable us to achieve this – in particular, our Consortium with Derby Museums Trust. • Our priorities for research and other forms of collaboration that will achieve this. • Our objectives and priorities for funding and action to 2018. Description of the Plan The full Strategic Plan is a very substantial document. It follows national guidance in its form – the scale of the document has, however, been determined by the range and complexity of the Service, the range and importance of our historic buildings and by the outstanding range of collections that we care for. Nottingham City Museums is a very large and complex Service, with close inter-relation of functions. Nevertheless, the very significant adjustments to our Service provision and the fundamental changes of approach have been introduced very quickly indeed and it is for that reason that our Service has not suffered the shock of the economic downturn in the way that many might have feared. The full plan and appendices include all relevant background information and our detailed work programme to 2018. The Plan itself has five sections, covering all aspects of our Service provision. 141022plan Page 6 of 96 The first section of the Plan is entitled OUR PLAN CONTEXT . This, as the title suggests, sets the broad context of our operation and includes a review of previous strategic and mid-term plans for the Service since 2002. It introduces the political and economic context in which we operate, the Citizen First! Customer Care strategy we have available to meet the challenges of a operating large visitor attractions in a city of great diversity and the artistic and cultural context of our operation. Responsibility for the Arts team [including the Asian Arts Team], devolved to the Museums & Galleries Service in 2012 and the first section therefore includes within the strategic context, a thorough review of the Arts activity that will be undertaken and the framework of arts provision in the City. Our Purpose is the next section which introduces our Mission statement for the Service. We will inspire and challenge the way people experience, explore and develop their ideas about Nottingham and the world through the creative use of our museum sites, collections and cultural resources The section also introduces our six key themes, our overall goal is CHANGE and this will be achieved through the “6 Cs”, for the Strategic Plan. These are introduced in turn and the section introduces a vision statement for each. These are included in the table of Outcomes below. The themes are: CHANGE: Creativity Community Collections Collaboration Communication Commercialisation This first section of the Plan also includes a short review of current and future governance. Our Service has already embraced significant change and will continue to develop even more diverse and sustainable revenue streams to reduce dependence on City Council funding. This will involve defining the nature and scope of the Service in future. An obvious option, therefore, is the development of a new organisational structure which can be commercially free of many of the constraints of local authority procedures. It is realised corporately that, having begun to look seriously at the future development of the Castle as a world class attraction, a changed model of governance may well be necessary for the Service as a whole. The Service is, however, so closely inter-related, with shared professional staff between sites that any disaggregation of key sites as separate organisations would require duplicate finance and staffing and so could well prove less economic than the retention of an integrated organisation. The 141022plan Page 7 of 96 Plan therefore gives no clear answer at this stage, as all of the available options for future governance must be reviewed in the context of the Development phase for the major Heritage Lottery Fund award to the City in 2014. Evaluation of these options will therefore take place over the next twelve to eighteen months during the life of this Strategic Plan. The final part of this first section of the Plan concludes with a review of the background and key tasks with regard to Resilience.