Don’t take easy option on museums

The Friends group agreed to some extent with your editorial (All year museums are great – ideally) in the recent Kentish Gazette: you are right it is not an ideal world, and these are indeed tough times for the city council in dealing with major cuts to funding. And we agreed that this will have an inevitable impact on council culture and heritage services.

But we did not agree that closing the Canterbury Heritage Museum to public visiting for the whole of the lengthy period from October to March, as determined by the council, is the best or only solution.

So we wrote to city councillors to offer a cost-neutral alternative. We too are keen on pragmatism and, because of the dire funding situation, we accepted the museum could no longer be open seven days a week, even in summer. And we said yes, of the winter and spring, to avoid this total closure. To fund these Saturdays – shown to be the busiest day – we suggested reducing the opening hours a bit further during the rest of the year with closure at 4pm rather than 5pm.

The Canterbury Heritage Museum is in one of the city’s finest medieval buildings, which is a major exhibit in its own right and justly recognised as of national importance. Much public and donated funding has been invested in its restoration and conversion – including some £500,000 of Lottery money in recent years – to provide fitting display of the city’s archaeological and heritage collections that help tell the story of Canterbury from earliest to recent times.

These displays also include the Canterbury’s links to Joseph Conrad, Rupert Bear, and Bagpuss; and a much-appreciated gallery is devoted to Oliver Postgate’s marvellous pictorial explanation of the Thomas Becket story.

Schools and local residents make up half the users, which seems encouraging to us, and the other half are paying visitors from across the world.

Your editorial may have given readers the inaccurate impression that this museum has few visitors, but the council report about the closure showed clearly that this is not the case.

But a real push on publicity and marketing is needed to increase awareness of this building’s many attractions. The city is an all year destination, but in these tough times for all businesses surely it’s important to maintain and market a mix of reasons to choose Canterbury over other places to visit and so help contribute to the local economy. Equally important, existing and future external funders and donors need to feel confident that Canterbury deserves their trust and investment.

We hope that the council will now undertake consultation about opening times, and enlist supporters for this museum rather than simply taking the easy option of closure. Andrew Webster, Trustee, Friends of Canterbury Museum, St Martin’s Hill, Canterbury

We were saddened to read Cllr Gilbey’s views on the recent scrutiny committee meeting that discussed closing three local museums for two thirds of the year.

According to Cllr Gilbey, debating the executive’s decision on museums was “a complete waste of time” and was about “playing party politics”. Odd, as councillors from his own party voted against seasonal museum closures at a meeting in July.

There are a number of reasons why we believe closing museums for most of the year is wrong – not least the fact that no public consultation on weekday and