Public addresses relating to matters of business for this agenda, up to five minutes is available for each public address.

The request to speak accompanied by the full text of the address must be received by the Director of Law, Governance and Strategy by 5.00 pm on Thursday, the 16^th of October.

Cabinet received two addresses from members of the public.

Address from Marta Lomza, former City Council employee.

My name is Marta Lomza, I am speaking tonight as a resident of Oxford and a former employee of the Oxford City Council (2018-2024), with some 15 years of experience working in the heritage industry. I was the Twinning Officer in charge of signing of the twinning agreement with Wroclaw, Poland; for 6 years after that I worked as the Community Engagement & Exhibitions Officer at the Museum of Oxford, and I had a secondment to act as deputy coordinator for a Central Oxford response hub during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020. I’m saying this to stress my experience in culture & heritage and in working with the residents of our city, and my knowledge of and care for this council.

I’m here to present my serious concerns about the proposal regarding museum fees and to urge you to consider rejecting the proposal as it stands. I don’t have time to present all my concerns so I will focus on four main points as submitted in my draft; I will illustrate each point with an example.

1) LACK OF COMMUNITY CONSULTATION

Appendix 4, section 3, point 17 admits there has been no community consultation. As I said in my draft, this poses serious reputational and relational risks to the Council, as in the following example. One of the museum’s key achievements is the strong partnerships it has built with incredibly diverse and often marginalised communities - East Timori, Iraqi, African families, LGBTQ+ groups and more. This has led to diversifying museum collections with objects generously donated or loaned by those communities. We now have a proposal which does not even list community partners on the concessions list, risking a situation where people will have to pay to see their own object on display. This will have a negative impact on the relationships between the museum staff and the community partners. The lack of consultation will also affect the staff morale when they’ll have to communicate this to the people impacted by it. It might also affect your own Customer Service Excellence assessment, which the museum has made valuable contributions to over the years. Finally, at a time when there are strong community reactions regarding the County Council’s congestion charge, there’s an increased risk this will add more arguments for those who think our local authorities ignore the opinions of the residents.

2) LACK OF EVIDENCE IN THE PROPOSAL

Except for the 2023 AIM (Association of Independent Museums) report from which it cherry picks quotes to support its recommendations, the proposal cites almost no evidence or research to back up its claims, with spurious points based on conjecture, such as in this sentence “it is possible that the free entry may have had a negative impact on visitors’ perception of the potential quality of the offer” - a sentence so vague it’s practically meaningless, and yet it’s used as the basis for an argument. This is just one example. It appears that you are being asked to vote on a draft of someone’s brainstormed ideas rather than research & evidence. Is this an example of ‘best practice’ that I know this Council prides itself on following?

3) POOR QUALITY OF THE ATTACHED Equalities Impact Assessment (Appendix 4).

The assessment’s own introduction says it needs to be based on “sufficient information and data” on impact, mitigations and justifications; this assessment evidently does not do that. Instead, it contains generic text copied and pasted across all fields, both for the risk and the proposed mitigations. As one example, this leads to proposing that “free access for people in receipt of state benefits” is an adequate measure to mitigate the impact on asylum seekers; as we know, asylum seekers have no recourse to public funds so they could not claim state benefits. This lack of giving the specific impact on asylum seekers due consideration alone makes a dent in the council’s recently confirmed status as a Local Authority of Sanctuary. But again, this is just one example. The Assessment lumping all people with protected characteristics together and treats them a homogenous whole with exactly the same needs, and so is against the Council’s own ethos and recommended practice, thus posing a risk to its desire to be seen as a council which is “passionate about equalities”. Both from personal experience as a resident who has several of the characteristics on this list, and from professional experience of working with many diverse communities in Oxford, I am confident that when this is shared more widely, people will feel offended by this treatment, which, again, poses risks to the reputation of the council, its relationship with our city’s most marginalised communities, and third sector agencies that work with these communities.

4) NOT INCLUDING A PROFESSIONAL ASSESSMENT

In November 2024, an Income Generation Options Review, conducted by a reputable consultancy firm Revels, was published on commission from the City Council. That review used benchmarking, data from the museum, contextual evidence, and extensive research to make a set of recommendations, some of which go beyond this proposal and some of which contradict this proposal. For example, it makes it clear that any gains from introducing a charging model would be offset by the reduction in footfall, and that a preferable option in order to actually increase income would be to invest in staff training so the existing Pay as You Can model is used to its full potential. In other words, if you want to help the museum finances, this proposal is not the way to do it. The question is, why did the Council pay a professional, well informed consultancy firm to make a set of recommendations only to completely disregard it and replace it with a proposal based on hardly any research at all?

IN CONCLUSION

- This is a wholly inadequate proposal which includes little to no evidence, poor understanding of financial modelling, editorial errors and bad maths - the numbers actually don’t add up - and, most concerningly, displays an attitude towards Oxford’s residents that can only be described as contemptuous.

- The decision you’re facing tonight is this:

- Do you want to cause damage to both the finances and the reputation of the museum, the city council, and your own as individuals who are signing this off, as you will be tarnished by association to this exceptionally poor piece of work?

- Or do you want to make financially prudent decisions based on evidence, and support work which leads to more community cohesion, and a sense of belonging and pride in our city for all?

- If it’s the latter, I kindly request, do not vote this through tonight; instead, follow best practice: read the Revels report, seek more advice, consult with the museum staff on the ground and museum audiences, and make your decisions based on evidence and informed, professional advice.

Address from David Juler, Chair of the Museum of Oxford Development Trust: 

My name is David Juler, Chair of the Museum of Oxford Development Trust. I would like to speak to Item 9. Museum of Oxford Entry Fee. The Development Trust was established to support the Museum of Oxford and its educational activity - it was an incredibly important body in accessing funds for which the City Council is ineligible. During the redevelopment of the Museum spaces, philanthropy and grant fundraising was deemed essential for securing this important community asset. Although I am now a trustee and chair I was also a council employee for 10 years, working on the development of the current Museum of Oxford from inception to delivery. I understand the pressures on budgets and the aspiration for the Museum to be self-sustaining. However, I, and fellow trustees, believe the approach proposed is inadequate, does not take into account the unique context of Oxford and, more seriously in our view, is counter intuitive to the values and mission of not only the Museum but also Oxford city council. The Museum was not developed as a charged for attraction. This is not the Story Museum, this is not a space featuring large, show stopping exhibitions. This museum was designed to engage and represent communities. To welcome and open up the city’s history to school children, families and all of the diversity this incredible city of ours has on offer. Early reports by the audience agency for the Museum demonstrated that visitor figures were more diverse than those for comparator sites - in fact, it directly reflected and represented the unique diversity of Oxford. Other museums can only dream of this type of engagement. The Museum was created and curated with those people. Have you used the object table interactive? Charging has the potential impact of creating a barrier to access and redirecting visitors to other, free to enter venues in the city who MOX must compete with for attention and patronage.

The AIM report used as evidence for the positive impact of charging should come with some caveats. The more detailed AIM admissions pricing policy research document highlights that on-site donations dropped, and around 45% (of a total of 17 museums surveyed in this category of going from Free admission to charged) saw an increase in visitor numbers, whilst a further 45% saw a decrease. The issue with these reports is that they include a small number of museums and provide no further context. One of the museums to introduce charging was the National Football Museum in Manchester which received between 400k and 450k visitors annually. Its initial pricing strategy at least gave free entry to local residents. Even with its greater appeal it reported “a reduction in the number of visitors, and a major reduction in donations”. Context is everything and in city with a small centre and several of the nation’s largest, free to enter museums, MOX is in a considerably different setting.  

Income via retail and on site donations has been on the rise, as has income through hiring spaces. MOX has also used consultancy firms to review developing income sources. One such report stated that visitor figures would drop by 50% and although we do not deny income would increase, the report states it does not fix the funding need and deficit and would impact other means of fundraising. The Development Trust is hoping to do more to raise funding support for the charitable activity of the Museum. We would ask all here to consider the greater impact of charging to Oxford’s communities and to the staff of the Museum of Oxford. We believe that charging will not fulfil the stated ambitions and more negatively is setting the Museum up to fail. 

Councillor Hollingsworth provided Cabinet’s response to the two addresses from members of the public.

(response to follow)

Councillor Railton arrived during this item, at 18:08.