Scotland’s museums and galleries face funding gap

A survey conducted by Museums Galleries Scotland (MGS) has found that 11% of Scottish museums and galleries feel they are at risk of closure in the next twelve months.

The national development body contacted Scottish museums and galleries in July to gather evidence of the challenges facing the sector following the release of the Scottish Parliament’s pre-budget scrutiny for 2025/26.

The survey also found that 14% of respondents have less than one month's reserves, while 28% have less than three months' reserves.

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In its evidence submission to the Scottish government, MGS says many of its members are in a “precarious position”.

It warns there are “serious concerns over the financial stability of several of [its] industrial museums” and adds that the “fragile situation” of civic museums, which accounts for 28% of the sector, has “reached tipping point”.

“Financial challenges dominate with rising costs and public sector funding cuts, and the result is a severe hollowing out of services,” the response explains.

“The increased cost of keeping the doors open and the lights on is seeing the sacrifice of the value-adding, outreach and engagement programmes that deliver benefits across portfolios including health and wellbeing and education.”

MGS also highlights that, unlike museums and galleries in other parts of the UK and other arts organisations in Scotland, Scotland’s museums and galleries have no route to applying for core funding to support running costs.

Project funding is also restricted to those holding accreditation status, leaving 40% of the sector “with virtually no access to public funding,” the response says. It adds that there is also “virtually no access to capital funding,” with “the poor condition of buildings putting collections at risk and [limiting] ability to be used as safe public spaces”.

Fair funding allocation

MGS says it welcomes the Scottish government’s commitment to investing at least £100m annually in arts and culture by 2028/29 and has asked the government to ensure museums “are not overlooked as decisions are made”.

In 2024/25, the body received £1m in government grant funding to distribute to non-national museums. “This amount is inadequate to meet the urgent needs and ambitions of 98% of the sector and compares poorly with other parts of the culture portfolio,” MGS’s response says.

Figures submitted from the Local Government Benchmarking Framework show the cost per visit to civic museums has reduced by 15.9% since the pre-Covid period. MGS says this shows the sector “has innovated in income generation and maximised its potential for efficiency savings”.

“After decades of real-terms reductions in funding a reduction in service is the inevitable result if no additional resource is made available to meet rising costs,” it warns, adding that is “extremely difficult to innovate within one year funding settlements so this would be a key benefit of multi-year funding.”

The Museums Association (MA) has echoed the call for multi-year funding. In its evidence submission to the Scottish government, the MA said multi-year funding should be distributed to the museum sector through MGS “to give museums the ability to plan ahead”.

Both MGS and MA also voiced support for a ‘percentage for the arts scheme’, calling for the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee to set a target of at least 1% of overall Scottish government investment in culture.

Holyrood's pledge to support arts and culture with £100m of annual investment by 2028/29 was called into question last week after art funding body Creative Scotland put one of its major grant schemes on hold, claiming there was too much uncertainty surrounding the provision of grant-in-aid budgets from the Scottish government.