What is the point of science centres? This is the question currently on the mind of the Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology, and science centre chiefs couldn’t be happier.
After concerted lobbying on the part of science centres, the committee is holding an inquiry into their role and funding. The science centres have pushed for this because, they claim, they are so under-resourced that they can only just survive as they are, let alone develop. They hope that the committee will recommend central government funding. But of course it’s not going to be quite that straightforward.
The fact that some science centres are facing dire financial difficulties is clear. Earlier this year At Bristol announced the closure of its IMAX and Wildwalk exhibition in order to shore up its finances. But at least it’s still open; others have not been so lucky — the Big Idea in Irvine closed in 2003 when falling visitor numbers made it unsustainable and the Earth Centre near Doncaster wound up its operations in 2004 for similar reasons. But how did such a parlous state of affairs come about?
The story starts in the mid-1990s when a number of cities submitted proposals to the Millennium Commission for funding to support local regeneration schemes that had a science centre as their flagship project. This idea was repeated in many cities with, it would appear, little forward planning or coordination.
As a consequence many science centres found themselves in a wilderness with scant passing trade — bad news for organisations that need fee-paying visitors. Glasgow Science Centre was the major project aimed at regenerating of Pacific Quay, one of the city’s old docks. Kirk Ramsay, the chief executive of the centre, says that when it opened in 2001 it was in a desolate part of the city with no local traffic at all. ‘The science centre has had to exist on this barren site for all that time, which made life difficult at times,’ he admits. He is beginning to see a change though now that there are bridges to tie the centre to the city, and the soon-to-open next door will also attract people. The new Museum of Transport will also open nearby in December 2010. But the some of the planned redevelopment is years behind schedule. This situation is not untypical.
Goéry Delacôte, the chief executive of At Bristol On says that on top of poor infrastructure and development planning, there was a lack of in-built financial sustainability in the original schemes. At-Bristol was the reincarnation of Explore, one of the UK’s first science centres, when it became the focus of a bid to regenerate Bristol’s city centre. Given At-Bristol’s recent difficulties, it is hard to believe that the initial funding for the new centre and surrounding site was nearly £100m, but of course that was capital funding only which promised nothing towards revenue costs or the future development of exhibits.
But science centres were supposed to be self-sustaining businesses; all of them had to submit business models as part of their Millennium Commission bids. So is it fair to ask the government to bail them out now? Sally Montgomery, at the 5W science centre in Belfast is one the few chief executives to be involved in her project from the outset. She is blunt: ‘The Millennium Commission said that you should be able to stand on your own feet and be sustainable. Well, that’s fine but our business plan never, ever showed that.’
Ramsay in Glasgow, who has been in post for two and a half years, takes the view that often the early management of science centres was poor and says that they often had no knowledge or experience at all in managing an operation. ‘None of them had operated in the commercial world. So when you looked at the fundamentals of how the business was run, and what the expectations were for the business, it was totally unrealistic.’ However, he admits that even when run as competently as possible science centres will not be totally self-sufficient.
Being in a room with the chief exec of a science centre can be a little unnerving: to say they are passionate about their cause is something of an understatement. That cause fits broadly under the heading of science education. Nick Winterbotham, the chief executive officer of Think Tank in Birmingham, says he wants to ‘create a new kind of inquiry’ and talks about an ‘enabling environment’ that makes visitors feel they can make a difference to issues such as global warming. Delacôte wants to be ‘a logistic base for helping schools to change and improve their way of teaching’. All say they want to ‘empower’ ‘motivate’ and ‘engage’ visitors, though those concepts are not always clearly defined.
But ask what the future holds and most chief executives will name two things: outreach and contemporary science. Delacôte wants to ‘reach out to where people are — schools, community centres, teachers, science learning centres’. Peter Trevitt, the chief executive of Techniquest in Cardiff, wants to do more outreach particularly in schools: ‘to reach people who don’t think science is for them’.
Ramsay points to the their independence as a factor that sets them apart from other organisations involved in science education. He cites Al Gore’s film about climate change and a recent Channel 4 documentary on the same subject as an example where presenting very different accounts of the same subject can lead to confusion. ‘The truth is they’re all biased. But you can ask one or two fairly straightforward questions and quickly get to the facts.’ Trevitt agrees: ‘This complex balancing exercise is the missing ingredient [in science communication]. That’s what society lacks; it doesn’t have a body or institution that understands that and can handle it and we can therefore be a kind of trusted reference point.’
But communicating science to the public is a competitive field. The British Association, the Wellcome Trust and the Royal Society would all consider themselves to be impartial facilitators in science. And one question that has not yet been asked is how government funding or other sponsorship would affect the perception of science centres’ independence.
A focus on outreach in schools may put science centres in competition with government’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Network (STEMNET) initiative. This national agency part-funds local science outreach initiatives called SETPOINTS, with the rest of the money coming from regional development agencies or local businesses.
An additional problem for science centres is the lack of evaluation of their effectiveness. Trevitt says that evaluation and research is needed, but acknowledges the difficulties in measuring the long-term impacts of science centres. Montgomery from 5W agrees: ‘I think we need some more money going into some very careful studies.’ She would like to see a study comparing object-led and interactive-led approaches to science communication. Working out how to do this is important because any new government funding will most likely be dependent on science centres being able to prove their worth.
As it stands science centres are in a tight spot. They were set up as regeneration projects with only capital funding; they cannot sustain their operating costs, let alone development, and they are potentially in competition with other better-funded organisations. Add to that the difficulty of proving their value and it seems as though they are set for a fall. So what is it exactly that they want in the way of help?
The answer is money, but they don’t speak with one voice on the type of funding they would like. Delacôte wants the government to establish a £10m fund to support competitive bids for development projects. How this would differ from, say, Wellcome Trust grants, is not clear; and if all parts of the science communication or science education community could apply to it, £10m may not be enough. Winterbotham feels that the government is shirking its responsibilities, but is more reticent about what he wants. He admits to looking at the situation in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland with envy. In those countries science centres are already funded by their respective national assemblies. The Scottish funding is a tripartite system: science centres in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee, receive core funding and are also able to make competitive bids to a development fund. There is a third strand of funding for other science communication operators.
Techniquest in Cardiff and 5W in Belfast both have agreements that give them core funding in return for achieving certain targets. In addition Trevitt would like a source of investment capital to allow Techniquest to ‘grow’; for example to create an outdoor area at the site in Cardiff and to expand activities in the centre’s three outposts. Montgomery points to the capital funding needed to refurbish interactives that have to sustain heavy use, but she is pragmatic on the question of funding. She acknowledges the potential competing interests of science centres and other science education organisations: ‘There are lots of agencies doing similar things and there should be a rationalisation… Why isn’t someone taking a holistic approach and saying we could make some efficiency here by looking at how we deliver [the services]?’
Such a review may be the best that science centres can hope for when the Select Committee inquiry reports in the next two months. Government spending for the next three years will be determined by the Comprehensive Spending Review to be announced in the autumn, and unless the centres get really lucky it’s unlikely that there’ll be an odd £10m floating around for them.
This article was first published in Museums Journal, September 2007.
Rachel Souhami 