Measuring the Impact of Free Admission

Abstract

The reintroduction of universal free admission to the government-sponsored museums is often cited by politicians and commentators as one of the principal cultural policy achievements of the current Labour administration. Both in terms of increasing the total number of visits to the sponsored museums and in encouraging new visitors from priority groups the policy has been a demonstrable success. The complexities of the data generated in support of free admission have hitherto, however, gone largely unexamined. This article therefore explores the ways in which government has gone about measuring the impact of its free admission policy. It traces the history of free admission to museums and galleries as a concept, before setting out the background to the reintroduction of universal free admission to those museums sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) that had introduced charging in the 1980s and 1990s. It then considers ways in which the impact of the policy can be measured, through use of the data generated by the 23 performance indicators used by DCMS in the funding agreements that it has with each of the museums. The article then considers the various factors that need to be taken into consideration in any assessment of the impact of the free admission policy, including the effect of new capital investment. The article concludes by suggesting that further work is needed to isolate the precise impact of free admission, particularly on attracting new audiences to museums and galleries.