Moving statement about impact of National Museum cuts on workers and Welsh culture

Martin Shipton

A manager who left the National Museum as part of a cuts programme that saw more than 100 workers lose their jobs wrote a powerful and moving statement explaining the impact of the cuts on staff and Welsh culture.

The unnamed manager at Amgueddfa Cymru – which runs Wales’ seven national museums – sent their account to close colleagues. It has now been passed to Nation.Cymru.

Wellbeing

The statement says: “I would suggest that it would be wise for the wellbeing of all the members of the Collections Services team that survive this restructuring to re-instate the Collections Services department and its Head. They will need each other more than ever and whether you realise it or not, you need every single one of them. The removal of that support system was the thing that finally broke me. I am well aware that others are on the verge of breaking too.

“I’ve had the privilege of working with some of the most dedicated, creative, flexible and knowledgeable people who, sadly, are totally under-rated by the organisation. They have – every one of them – whether conservator, technician, photographer, documentation officer, loans and copyright staff or manager, helped this museum deliver impossible deadlines within the backdrop that I would argue silo’d them.

“We have never been paid the courtesy of being allowed to hear and answer the alleged feedback from all sites and departments. Rather than listen to this team when they asked for additional resources to help them deliver positive outcomes for this museum, successive senior leadership teams chose to put their resources into other areas.

“These amazing people have had to work out how to deliver Collections Care for 3.5 million objects with fewer and fewer staff, whilst the ambition to use those Collections through exhibition, loans and events grew.

“I stood at the Senedd rally on Tuesday and listened to people expressing the risks to which the Welsh Government is subjecting heritage through lack of funding. However I would argue that the greatest risk within this organisation to our Collections is having managers make decisions in a process like this who have no knowledge or interest in either the Collections or the people that they manage.

“I have a member of staff within my team who – by anyone who has met and spoken with him – would recognise as a national treasure who should be listened to and learned from. Put him in front of any object and he has the ability to read it like a book and tell you its whole history. Yet the first time he saw his divisional director was in what I can only describe as an excruciating meeting where he frantically waited to find out if he still had a job.

“Due to the extraordinary errors in the diagram of the team, it took forever to find out where the two deletions were coming. He did not even realise he still had a job because his role title did not acknowledge three quarters of his areas of responsibility.

“The two roles to be deleted were not afforded the courtesy of any warning to prepare themselves before the meeting. To add insult to injury, it was only after deletion of the two posts that I was asked to meet with my director so they could understand how my team works and the implications for their deletion.

“This is not a game. These are real and vulnerable people. Sadly, for my team mates, they are still in a position where they feel they need the museum in their lives. I no longer do.”

Crying

The account continues: “I am crying as I write this because I feel I have let these amazing people down (as well as my friends and colleagues in departments across this organisation). I can no longer go into battle each day for the Collections. I have no energy left. I was brought to this point of despair once before, during the Change Programme and somehow out of that car crash we managed to ‘build back better’ – but still without the resources we really needed.

“Please, do not make the mistakes of last time. Stop listening to people who do not understand the sites and have no deep knowledge of the Collections and begin really learning from the people with deep knowledge instead. Only if you do that, will you build a resilient team that can weather this current financial storm.

“You have some poor managers in this organisation, our Head is not one of them. They did not deserve to be stripped of their department.

In the wider context of role deletions, you need to be aware that there are other roles at risk that will seriously impact on Collections and delivery for the sites:

“On all the open display sites, cleaners along with MAs are your greatest assets in Collections Care. Without a well-trained team, the displayed Collections are at daily risk of decay and damage.

“Deleting the role of Curator of Rural industries signals the museum is turning its back on the Agriculture, Craft and Vehicles Collections which is ludicrous for a museum that has a rural life museum and multiple woollen mills in its portfolio.

“Downgrading the role of Curator of Buildings ‘because we won’t be putting up any new ones’ signals that the museum is about to turn its back on maintenance of the existing historic buildings both at St Fagans and in the future Llanberis. Moving the Historic Buildings Unit to Buildings is a further signal that the museum has lost sight of the fact that these historic buildings are now an integral part of the National Collection.

“This team should have been moving back to the line management of the Curator of Buildings (as it was pre-Change) and strong ties made with the Conservation team (to ensure that the same documentation and condition checking procedures apply as for the rest of the Collection). These links are integral to the preservation of both the buildings and any Collections housed within them.

“The museum’s archives are vast with a treasure trove of information. To enable access you need qualified staff and enough of them. The museum will never achieve Accredited status if it goes backwards in its standards of care and access.

“The CMS and documentation are the rock upon which everything else sits. At the introduction of our CMS system, departments were left to develop their own rules of engagement. This could be a powerful tool if a) adding all the available information for every object was prioritised and b) staff working across departments did not have to log in to each department system separately so that for objects moving between sites for storage there is a massive duplication of effort.

“In conclusion, I sincerely wish you well in your endeavour to safeguard the future of these amazing Collections and sites. The people and the places have stolen a piece of my heart. If you really get to know them, they will do the same to you and that will help you to fight long and hard to protect them.”

‘Serious concerns’

A spokesperson for the PCS Union said: “We have serious concerns regarding the impact of last year’s cuts to Amgueddfa Cymru on our members and on the organisation itself. The loss of over 100 jobs, both front and back of house, has meant a significant loss of skills, knowledge, expertise and manpower within the organisation.

“The cuts have also impacted services and have led to a worsening of our members’ terms and conditions with significant changes to weekend working patterns, the introduction of annualised/banked hours, and a reduction in the number of breaks hard working front-of-house staff are able to take. Staff morale was negatively impacted by the cuts, with the whole process being an incredibly stressful one for our members, their families and loved ones.

“Alongside the cuts to the National Library and other arts and cultural organisations in Wales, it’s clear that after over a decade of austerity there’s a serious funding crisis in the sector, as outlined by the recent Senedd Culture Committee report. PCS calls for a sustainable five-year funding plan for the Amgueddfa and Library; for grant-in-aid to be restored to its previous real-terms levels and increased annually; for fully funded pay increases; and for a fair pension for all workers at arms-length bodies on a par with those offered to Welsh Government employees.”

Amgueddfa Cymru was invited to comment, but did not do so.