WEDNESDAY 11 JULY 2007

MS LINDA CONLON, MR COLIN BROWN, MR PHIL WINFIELD AND MR ALEC COLES

  Q20  Linda Gilroy: Colin, in connection with what you were saying about the visitor numbers, what is the breakdown as between what you would classify as tourist visitors and educational visitors? Presumably, the educational visits are subsidised in some way or paid for in some way perhaps and could you describe what that consists of.

  Mr Brown: With our educational programme, we subsidise the entry ticket for children so that it is cheaper than a normal visit and then all of the educational input is free of charge; we do not make any additional charge for the educational input.

  Q21  Linda Gilroy: What is the range of your charges?

  Mr Brown: The education fee is £5 per child and that includes obviously the visit but a session with a qualified teacher as well for 40 minutes. In terms of the first part of it, the vast majority of our customers come from within a one-and-a-half-hour drive time. So, they basically come from the Yorkshire conurbation: Bradford, Leeds, Sheffield and as far as York and Lincoln. So, inasmuch as they are tourists, they are only day tourists, they come for the afternoon, and I would find it difficult to draw a distinction between who comes as a tourist and who does not. I did have a complaint from one tourist once that they wanted their money back because it was too educational and I apologised if they had accidentally learned anything!

  Q22  Chairman: The children I taught at school said the same!

  Mr Brown: The point of course is that we try and teach everybody who comes in through osmosis even if there is not a conventional teacher/pupil relationship there.

  Q23  Dr Harris: Linda, is your review going to look into whether there is best practice in terms of the correct investment in marketing and the best way of slim lining, if you like, and getting efficient management or is that outside the terms of the review you have been asked to do and is there another way in which you are going to try and identify and spread best practice?

  Ms Conlon: Ecsite-uk already does try to exchange best practice; it does collaborate; it does hold master classes in several topic areas which are of interest to all science centres such as marketing and such as human resources, for example. I think that you have to allow science centres the discretion to understand their local contexts and to run their businesses as they think fit, but I think that it is useful to look at best practice and to share it, so, yes.

  Q24  Chairman: I would like to follow on from that very briefly to say that, in terms of Scotland, they have a different model whereby it is a much more collaborative model. Have you looked at that within the regions, say, or within other parts of the UK?

  Ms Conlon: The situation varies throughout the UK. In Scotland, the Scottish Executive supports more science centres in Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow, Glasgow being by far the largest. Each of those centres receives money from the Scottish Executive which it uses against a set of criteria. It also works collaboratively on initiatives such as human resources and such as marketing, so it works together on areas where it is sensible and economical to work together and share best practice and then it responds to its local context and runs its business as it needs to.

  Q25  Chairman: Is it a model that we should look at?

  Ms Conlon: I think it most certainly is.

  Q26  Dr Harris: If outside funding came let us say from Government, but a condition was that there was going to be a chief executive for all centres and that they would all come under a management structure and maybe even nationalised to make sure that they were not overlapping and best practice was identified and applied, would that be acceptable or would some seek to go it alone in your view?

  Ms Conlon: I think that is a huge question to answer simplistically with a "yes" or a "no". I think that obviously we would welcome any opportunities to secure funding but, at the same time, I think that I would be speaking for my colleagues by saying that I am the Chief Executive of the Centre for Life and I am very happy to work and receive any funding I might get and to demonstrate and I am giving outputs, but I think to have one chief executive directing all science centres might just be a step too far although I certainly would not rule it out and we would talk.

  Mr Coles: That is not mirrored in any way in the museums or art centres and we would like to think that one of the strengths of that sector is, if you like, the regionalism and the fact that you have regional centres and that we do not in fact have a director of national museums who is a director of all museums. I think that it would not necessarily be a sensible step. You would lose some of that regional identity.

  Q27  Dr Iddon: It occurs to me that quite a number of science centres in the broader sense are now in financial difficulty, particularly some of those set up by the Millennium Commission. Whose fault is that and why are they in difficulty?

  Ms Conlon: It is a big question to answer. I think that millennium centres are struggling to a greater or lesser degree. They do very well to bring in around 80% of their operating costs. That is largely made up from ticket sales, shop, café and from ancillary income related to possibly hiring out of space, venues, income from property and whatever else they can raise through grants. Yes, I think that they are struggling. Whose fault is it? I think that the business plans of a number of millennium science centres were unrealistic. They were based upon high visitor numbers sustained over a period of time which was not realistic. Those business plans were approved by Government, they were looked at by independent consultants and the money was made available. So, whose fault is it? I am not so sure that it is helpful to talk about whose fault it is at this stage. Half-a-billion pounds worth of investment has gone into these centres, they are doing a good job but they could do much better with a little extra funding. I find it difficult to apportion blame but I think that Government must ask the question, why did Government approve such unrealistic plans when it was given independent advice?

  Q28  Dr Iddon: What about non-Millennium Commission buildings and centres? I have had to struggle with the Catalyst, for example. There are so many of those; I think there are 83 of these altogether across the country that I counted the other day and is it 12 millennium centres?

  Ms Conlon: Yes.

  Q29  Dr Iddon: So, there are an awful lot outside the millennium ring that are in difficulty as well. Why are they in difficulty?

  Ms Conlon: I think that they struggled quietly for many years and I think that they have been particularly entrepreneurial and imaginative in securing funding. I think it is also worth pointing out that, when you think of the millennium centres, they are big. At that time, we were all encouraged to think big. So, they are expensive buildings to run. Colin was making the point when we were talking earlier that actually you have very small to medium size businesses with turnovers typically of maybe £2/£3 million operating in buildings which would suggest that they are medium to large size. They have energy issues; they have replenishment issues; they have building maintenance issues. I think that the problem has been highlighted with the arrival of the millennium centres. I think that a number of the smaller centres have done jolly well, but I think it is fair to say that they too have struggled but perhaps on a smaller scale and on not such a noticeable scale.

  Q30  Dr Iddon: What do they need, capital funding or revenue funding?

  Ms Conlon: They need both. Unless you are a centre in a tourist destination like Edinburgh or York or London for example, typically you will depend upon local people; you will depend upon people who are coming from about 45 minutes to an hour's drive time and they will only come back if there are new things. New things means replenishment. Ideally, a centre should totally replenish within a ten year timeframe. We are talking about exhibits which are expensive and we are talking about a lot of money, but we are also talking about a real desire in the sector to be able to provide educational experiences free of charge so that every child has an entitlement, a science enrichment entitlement, and, if we could receive funding to offer that entitlement to children, then that would be wonderful. So, it is a balance: it is a balance of capital and, curiously, it is probably slightly easier to get one's hands on capital than it is on revenue because revenue is never quite so exciting a case to make as for capital. However, in answer to your question, we need both.

  Q31  Dr Iddon: May I bring our other three witnesses in as perhaps they want to comment on this question.

  Mr Winfield: I would like to fly the flag for a self-sufficient science centre. I agree with everything that Linda has said and we do have the same challenges as all the other science centres and generally we have the situation where admissions income and all the ancillary income from things like the shop, cafeteria and so on are subsidising our education provision. So, in order to do more education, which is our aim and our main focus—all our goals and objectives which are all around education—and do it well and do more of it, we need to ensure that we get good income from the other areas. That means that it is okay to survive but survival is not enough because, as Linda said, there is refreshment of the exhibition or development of the exhibition or other features in the science centre and, if you do not do those sorts of things, then your income drops off, you cannot then subsidise your education provision and, as a result, the outcomes drop off as well. My science centre is self sufficient, we break even, but we do not have enough money to be able to do lots of development that we would like to do to improve our education provision and the demand for our education services is greater than what we can supply at the moment.

  Q32  Dr Iddon: If the Government took over all the funding that comes from so many different sources at the moment and there was core funding available for all 83 science centres in the broader sense, do you think that there would be room for the entrepreneurs to develop something different? In its time, Eureka at Halifax was different, for example. With the greatest of respect, there are a lot of aquariums, not quite like The Deep, I admit, or the one at Plymouth but they are exceptional, but a lot of towns have aquariums. If somebody wanted to go in a different direction and create something quite different in this broad remit of science centres, do you think that if there were core funding available that could happen?

  Ms Conlon: Yes, I do. If you look at the situation in the States, for example, there is a national science foundation. I do not think that any of us in the science centre world are expecting to get an automatic and regular handout. We are prepared to work hard for any money that comes to us and we are prepared to have any of our proposals peer reviewed. I think that actually stimulates new ideas and new thinking. Yes, it is very important to have some core funding pinned against education initiatives but, in the science centres today, we are living in a very fast moving world, controversial, sensitive, cutting-edge, scary science, and we are always looking for innovative ways of engaging with the public and I think that any proposal for money should be peer reviewed and we should only receive that money if our proposals are robust, if they stand up to scrutiny and, in turn, we can learn from some of the good projects and proposals and that in turn can be disseminated throughout the science centre sector.

  Q33  Dr Iddon: Is there room for failure?

  Ms Conlon: Is there room for failure?

  Q34  Dr Iddon: If somebody wanted to try something rather special?

  Ms Conlon: Yes. If the money is there, of course, yes. It depends on priorities. Do you want to play it safe or is there some money available to try and be entrepreneurial and to think outside the box? That would be wonderful. We would welcome that.

  Q35  Linda Gilroy: Has the science enrichment entitlement idea that you mentioned been worked up into a proposal at all and costed?

  Ms Conlon: Not one single proposal. I think it is something that we do all of the time. We recognise that we are centres to try and help and sustain the formal learning environment and so the packages and proposals that we put together on a regular basis, sometimes single science centres, sometimes working in partnership with others—

  Q36  Linda Gilroy: I was thinking more like the books for babies entitlement that the Government fund.

  Ms Conlon: I see what you mean.

  Q37  Linda Gilroy: Has Ecsite and others together lobbied to try and obtain funding perhaps for doing this at each relevant stage of the curriculum?

  Ms Conlon: Some of us have been doing some early work on this, particularly linked to the science city initiative. Newcastle and Birmingham, for example, have been looking at science enrichment as part of an overall package of measures to promote science in our respective cities but not sector wide yet.

  Q38  Linda Gilroy: What about any specialist schools, science and technology status schools outside of science cities because they are few and far between at the moment?

  Ms Conlon: Yes, indeed.

  Q39  Dr Iddon: My final question is, if we were to set up the perfect model of funding for the 83 science centres, what would it be? Would it be the Scottish model or is there another preference?

  Mr Brown: Firstly, I do not think that it would be 83 science centres. I think that we need to be clear that some of the organisations being spoken about as science centres are already national institutions. I think that any organisation which already receives money from national or local government should be excluded from this process, so the number is smaller. Speaking for myself, I think it would be a mistake to consider two options, one of status quo or of some sort of Government takeover because the fact that we do generate over 85% of our own income is a testament to the amount of entrepreneurism that is there. We need to encourage that rather than it becoming a government department. Personally, I am not looking for either revenue funding or capital funding; I would like the Government to stop taking as much money as it does away from me in terms of VAT. We pay 15% VAT.