NO to the National Trust's ten year vision!
The Issue
The Times recently published a leaked, internal National Trust document, written by the Director of Visitor Experience for the NT, Tony Berry, in which it outlines its plans to all but abandon its role as a national cultural institution and custodian of the English Country House.
The Trust believes that the Country House offers an outdated 'mansion experience....serving a loyal but dwindling audience' and as such its historic houses will be “repurposed as public space in service of local audiences” and it will move away from a “narrow focus on family and art history”. Its collections will be put into storage and it plans to hold fewer exhibitions at its properties to prioritise its role as the “gateway to the outdoors” instead.
The ten-year strategy also hints at making properties available to “people who are prepared to pay more” for “specialised experiences” which does not rule out hen or stag parties.
The trust currently looks after hundreds of historic houses and castles and 248,000 hectares of land. It said that the coronavirus pandemic had accelerated its need to make “tricky choices about which activities to stop, start and continue” and it claims that it simply cannot afford to keep doing everything' the same way as before.' Yet at the same time the Trust currently sits on reserves of £1.3 billion, money which it says is for restricted use but which it has made no serious attempt to access.
The aim of this petition is to get the Trust to drop its current proposals. Instead we ask that the Trust remains true to one of its central principles - to work to preserve and protect historic places and spaces- for ever, for everyone.
Instead of closing Country Houses, further access should be encouraged. Instead of the increasing disneyfication of the visitor experience (largely because of an implied assumption that people from different economic or diverse backgrounds are unable to appreciate the beauty of great architecture and art because it lies outside their own immediate experience) the Trust visitor experience should return to its roots.
As members and supporters we therefore ask that the Director-General, Hilary McGrady, drops the proposals and that she steers the National Trust, which we all love, in the right direction so that all of us, its members, continue to see a future for it which is still bright and hopeful.!
5,984
The Issue
The Times recently published a leaked, internal National Trust document, written by the Director of Visitor Experience for the NT, Tony Berry, in which it outlines its plans to all but abandon its role as a national cultural institution and custodian of the English Country House.
The Trust believes that the Country House offers an outdated 'mansion experience....serving a loyal but dwindling audience' and as such its historic houses will be “repurposed as public space in service of local audiences” and it will move away from a “narrow focus on family and art history”. Its collections will be put into storage and it plans to hold fewer exhibitions at its properties to prioritise its role as the “gateway to the outdoors” instead.
The ten-year strategy also hints at making properties available to “people who are prepared to pay more” for “specialised experiences” which does not rule out hen or stag parties.
The trust currently looks after hundreds of historic houses and castles and 248,000 hectares of land. It said that the coronavirus pandemic had accelerated its need to make “tricky choices about which activities to stop, start and continue” and it claims that it simply cannot afford to keep doing everything' the same way as before.' Yet at the same time the Trust currently sits on reserves of £1.3 billion, money which it says is for restricted use but which it has made no serious attempt to access.
The aim of this petition is to get the Trust to drop its current proposals. Instead we ask that the Trust remains true to one of its central principles - to work to preserve and protect historic places and spaces- for ever, for everyone.
Instead of closing Country Houses, further access should be encouraged. Instead of the increasing disneyfication of the visitor experience (largely because of an implied assumption that people from different economic or diverse backgrounds are unable to appreciate the beauty of great architecture and art because it lies outside their own immediate experience) the Trust visitor experience should return to its roots.
As members and supporters we therefore ask that the Director-General, Hilary McGrady, drops the proposals and that she steers the National Trust, which we all love, in the right direction so that all of us, its members, continue to see a future for it which is still bright and hopeful.!
The Decision Makers
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Petition created on 24 August 2020