Closure of Museum of Nottingham Life

Hearing via the BBC that one of the proposals contained in the next NCC budget is to close the Museum of Nottingham Life to the general public. It is intended to still allow visits from groups and schools.

This would be a serious mistake. The museum is an excellent resource and located in historic buildings in the Brewhouse Yard - the cottages date back to the 17th Century. It seems to be following a long term pattern of closing or restricting the opening hours of Nottingham's heritage centres, following closures of the Canal and Costume Museums, the Lace Museum and the reduction of opening hours at Newstead Abbey.

It is said that closing the museum will save £40k/yr which is chicken feed, especially when you bear in mind that Nottingham Contemporary received £313k last year and the Playhouse got £235k. Surely these organisations could stand a cut of similar size without much hurt, they could probably make it up with corporate eventing easily enough.

I use these other organisations merely as an example, you could probably find others. The issue is that heritage always seems to lose out. The more you restrict opening hours the fewer visitors you end up getting and this is often a pre-cursor to full closure. How long before we lose the Castle?

Note; pics taken by me which means I own the copyright. See 'creative commons' license terms over on the sidebar before you try and nick them.