Tuesday 26 March 2013

Q: Why should archaeology be free? A: It shouldn't.

Inspired by Emily Johnson's post on volunteers in archaeology and heritage from March 25th, I wanted to explore some of the facts and figures behind the industry. Bear in mind, I am no accountant or mathematical expert. I'm a liberal arts student to the core, and I work much better with pictures than with numbers. That being said, I'm interested and somewhat incensed by the way funds are allocated to the arts in Britain, and I think we need to make more noise about it. In light of the fact that George Osborne's budget stormed onto the scene just under a week ago, I thought now was a good time to talk hard cash.

Britain is, undoubtedly, a hot spot for tourism. Anyone who has been in a major city or a picturesque village during the summer will have experienced this first hand. I've had the... pleasure, of working at Buckingham Palace, one of the busiest tourist attractions in the country, during the height of tourist season. Thankfully, I got paid and fed for my pains (I also got given a beautiful uniform, but no more on that topic) but there are people working in the tourism sector who aren't quite so fortunate. In a public facing role in a heavily trafficked environment, you put up with a lot of shit. I apologise for the profanity, but I have to be honest here. It is often not a particularly pleasant experience. Working in a beautiful historic environment is somewhat lost on you when you're being yelled at, trodden on, rained on, spat at and treated as if you've been scraped from someone's shoe. Believe me, it's bad enough when you get paid for it, so why the heck should anyone do it for free?

VisitBritain reports provisionally, that overseas tourism in January of 2013 is up 11% from previous years, and spending from overseas tourists is at around £1.24bn. Just let that figure sink in for a second. Tourism is one of the largest industries in the UK, valued by Deloitte at £115.4bn. It contributes £96.7bn to the economy in England alone, that's 8.6% of the GDP. A large proportion of the pull for tourists is our heritage and our history as a country. We are ranked 5th in the world in the tourism "dimension" of "historic buildings and monuments". Let me hit you with some funky figures straight from VisitBritain here:
"In 2009 the number of inbound visitors who visited a museum was 7.7 million, with 4.2 million visiting an art gallery. Visiting heritage attractions is also a very popular activity for inbound visitors with 5.8 million visiting a castle, 5 million visiting historic houses and 6.4 million visiting religious buildings or monuments."
The top five leading visitor attractions are all museums and galleries. Do you know what museums and galleries need? Stuff. They need stuff. The stuff museums and galleries need comes from people. People digging stuff up, people piece stuff back together, people discover stuff was made by important dead people. People study stuff, people put stuff on display, people interpret stuff for other people. Stuff + People = Heritage. Heritage + Visitors = Money. Good equation, I feel. But the funny thing about people is that they aren't self sustaining. People need other stuff, like food and shelter, in order to function. That stuff costs money.

People working in retail, catering and hospitality, the other major big-hitters in tourism income, are not expected to work for free. I have never met a volunteer waitress or a volunteer store assistant. Having worked in the soul destroying field of retail, I can understand why. Working in the equally draining field of front-line heritage and arts tourism, I can't understand why we expect people to work for free there. Being in a beautiful, historic place is not payment. It's a perk, and it's similar to the discount retail employees get in their shops and the free food you often get as a waiter or a waitress. Although, I'd love to see a poll on how many people in retail and catering who really enjoy those perks. When you spend all day looking at the same clothes, serving the same food, how likely are you to wear or eat those things on your time off? The shine of that perk wears off pretty quick. I love Buckingham Palace. It's a beautiful and incredible space to work in. But even the lustre of the gilding and the gorgeous artwork is nowhere near enough payment for working there. Thankfully, the Royal Collection is aware of this. Other employers aren't as fortunate, and aren't invested in enough to be able to pay for their employees.

George Osborne's budget includes culture in the section marked "other", which receives £53bn of the £720bn being paid out, alongside sport and international development (and "others"). Even if it were just those three categories, and the amount was split evenly, that's just £17.6bn going into culture. In 201, tourism supported 2.645 million jobs, this is expected to increase to 2.899 million by 2020 (see VisitBritain). Obviously not all of those jobs are found in the heritage sector, but take a look at what has been said so far - a substantial amount of them are.

These figures are important, they show us how vital tourism is to Britain's economy. Further, they show us how big a part of tourism art and heritage is. To not spend a significant amount of time considering how to properly invest in this is ridiculous. The income brought in through arts and heritage tourism is substantial, and it deserves to be invested in a lot more. It is ludicrous to expect so many people to work for free in such a lucrative industry. Volunteers are brilliant, it is great to have people so inspired by their passion that they will work for the sheer joy of it. But for those of us who have invested personally in our passion, we should receive similar investment from our employers, who should be invested in themselves for the work they do.

I could have gone on a very long rant about my objection to the spending on defence, which is something I take personal issue with, but that isn't the point and it isn't appropriate. A redistribution of money is sorely needed. There are people who are grossly overpaid for what they do, such as politicians, and there are people who are grossly underpaid, such as heritage professionals. This problem can't be fixed overnight, that goes without saying, but it can't be something we allow to let fall by the wayside. We need to keep having this discussion, we need to not be afraid to shout louder about it. I want to talk seriously about this issue because it's the only way to fix the problem some of us have been foreseeing that heritage will begin to favour those wealthy enough to work for free. A similar problem is happening in education, and the two are very clearly and strongly linked.

So don't let this issue drop. Emily was brave enough to start this discussion, and we need to be brave enough to continue it, and continue it loudly. Rip this post to shreds if you want to, feel free to tear me a new one, just don't stay silent.


2 comments:

  1. BRILLIANT points Jennie - we need to be able to back up our points with figures and you've done a great job at justifying the need for greater govt. investment in Heritage etc! Interesting statistics that even a maths-illiterate like myself can understand! Thanks so much for joining the conversation!

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    1. Thank YOU so much for starting it! It's nice to have an outlet for all of my angst over this, and to really get into what the facts and figures are behind it all. I've only scratched the surface here, but I'm hoping it will go deeper.

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