National-regional museum partnerships

National museums are committed to ensuring people around the UK have access to their collections, exhibitions and expertise, and are actively involved in collaborative working with regional museums.  The NMDC has been active in promoting national-regional partnerships, for instance through project reports including National Dimensions and via the work of the NMDC UK Affairs Committee. 

National Museums - Working in Partnership Across the UK

The NMDC has published a new report on partnership working between national and regional museums across the UK.  NMDC undertook a survey of its members’ 2008-9 partnership activity to gain a better understanding of the way national and regional museums work together.  The research findings informed development of a set of recommendations for national museums and other sector bodies to improve and develop partnership working. 

Download the project summary report.

Download the full report of the partnerships mapping survey and research findings.

Read the press release for the project launch.

Mapping national-regional museum partnerships

In summer 2009 NMDC undertook a mapping exercise of UK national-regional museum partnership activity, the aim of which was to gather together existing evidence with information from a high-level snapshot survey of NMDC members’ recent partnership activity and professional judgement from partnership leads at NMDC member museums.  The mapping was undertaken for NMDC by Kathy Gee of Volition Associates.

Map of 2008-09 national-regional museum partnerships

The mapping exercise included consideration of generic issues relating to partnership working, as well as the many different aspects of partnership activity including:

  • Public services – exhibitions and loans, digital access, learning, audience development.
  • Collections – scholarship and knowledge sharing, distributed national collections.
  • Professionalism – staff issues, Subject Specialist Networks, brand and profile-building.

It also considered patterns, formats and quantities of current partnership activity, value for money of working in partnership, and the context of local and national government priorities and the current economic climate. It was not intended to be a major new study or in-depth statistical survey, and in order to ensure focussed and useful research and recommendations was limited to partnerships between national and regional museums and galleries only.

Key findings include:

  • Across 16 national museums the total number of projects undertaken with partners across the UK in 2008-9 was well over 1,600.
  • Loan activity is strong, with nearly 80% of survey respondents describing their loan service as good and sustainable.
  • There is good provision for learning, with three quarters of loans and exhibitions in 2008-9 supported by access to specialists in learning.

Strengths of current partnership working include:

  • The large number of national-regional museum partnerships.
  • The importance of sustained government funding – in particular Renaissance in the Regions funding to build regional museum capacity, and Strategic Commissioning funding for museum education projects.
  • Cross-border relationships between UK home countries.
  • Increased strength in working with universities.

Threats and barriers to the future development of partnership working include:

  • Diminishing resources – reductions in government funding, earned income and grants.
  • Absence of UK-wide museum sector delivery strategy.
  • A lack of comprehensive data collection.

Project recommendations

A project advisory group chaired by Diane Lees, Director-General of the Imperial War Museum, used the findings of the mapping exercise to develop a set of recommendations for national museums and other sector bodies to improve partnership working.  Members of the advisory group were:

  • Peter Berridge, Colchester & Ipswich Museum Manager, Colchester & Ipswich Museum Service
  • Caroline Collier, Director, Tate National
  • Alec Coles, Director, Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums
  • Bill Ferris, Chief Executive, Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust and Chair, Association of Independent Museums
  • Diane Lees, Director-General, Imperial War Museum (Chair)
  • Ellen McAdam, Acting Head of Museums, Culture and Sport Glasgow
  • John Orna-Ornstein, Head of London and National Programmes, British Museum
  • Fiona Talbott, Head of Museums, Libraries and Archives, Heritage Lottery Fund
  • Mike Tooby, Director of Learning, Programmes and Development, National Museum Wales
  • Hedley Swain, Director of Programme Delivery, Museums, Libraries and Archives Council

The 11 recommendations focus on 8 key areas:

  • Building collaborative partnerships
  • Working strategically
  • Sharing knowledge
  • Developing best practice
  • Making lending easier
  • Staff development
  • Joint advocacy
  • Recording partnership activity.

Next steps

As a next step NMDC will be convening an initial meeting of partnership leads from member organisations, together with representatives from DCMS, MLA, HLF and other sector bodies, to discuss how to take forward the project recommendations and improve partnership working between national and regional museums.

For more information please contact the NMDC Staff Team.

(above) Map showing locations of regional museums with which NMDC member national museums worked in partnership on all types of activity in 2008-09.