OpenCulture

OK, so next year is going to be a nightmare. How much of a nightmare, nobody yet knows, but we are starting to discern the shape of how some arts and culture organisations are going to react. People everywhere are freezing recruitment, asking staff to act up into vacant posts and - most importantly - to accelerate redundancies in order to contract out committed work.

As a tactic, it’s straight from the first page of Management for Beginners, and it works - up to a point. It enables organisations to invest in this current year (in the costs of redundancies) in order to achieve savings next year. It also mitigates some of the risk of what’s coming next year by replacing difficult permanent contracts with ones that are shorter and easier to cancel.

So far so businesslike - but what it means is that in the next 18 months, we’re likely to see a loss of skills from the sector on a scale which few of us have ever experienced. In a world in which we were already bemoaning the loss of curatorial expertise, we’re likely to see a wholesale attrition of museological and Collections Management knowledge, infrastructure and experience as the cuts bite deep.

As I’ve said before, I believe we’re heading towards a ’self-help’ sector. Which sounds ridiculous, of course, when you realise that the sector has always, to an extent, run on a filigree of personal and professional networks and contacts. But whereas this social/professional infrastructure has hitherto coexisted with a well-funded stratum of professional support agencies, it is soon to become the primary channel for professional development in museums, culture and arts organisations. (more…)