Elections are on the horizon. Here's how museums can advocate for their future
With just a year to go until the 2026 Scottish Parliament election, our Senior Advocacy and Public Affairs Manager Jason Rose assesses how museums and galleries are perceived by politicians, and explains the benefits of keeping them engaged.
Our work ahead of the 2026 election
Next May voters in Scotland will go to the polls to elect the seventh session of the Scottish Parliament. It might seem a distant prospect, but already the parties are selecting candidates and outlining policies. The marketplace for attention is about to become very crowded, so the time to influence thinking is now.
Holyrood tends to see coalitions, or minority governments who need to reach out across the chamber, which means daily opportunities for advocacy. By building understanding with ministers and MSPs you help inform people who take decisions, conduct inquiries or contribute to public debates that affect us. Culture and heritage can be seen as a lower priority but of course we know the benefits our sector delivers in terms of public health and wellbeing, better educational outcomes, and our critical role in a thriving visitor economy. By making these connections, we don’t fade from view.
MGS has been focused in the first half of this year on briefing MSPs for debates to ensure museums and galleries are mentioned in parliament, and we’ve been getting MSPs out and about, from Ayrshire to Tayside. By visiting museums and speaking to staff and volunteers, politicians understand the positive impacts being delivered and the challenges being faced.
We’ve facilitated visits for MSPs across the main political parties, with a focus on members of the parliament’s culture committee and party spokespeople on culture, health, and the economy. Conversations have covered not just funding but the work being done to tackle the climate and nature emergencies, the role we play in giving communities a sense of place, and the fact that collections of national importance don’t just reside in Edinburgh. These points echo our sector’s agreed strategy.
So how are museums and galleries regarded?
As well as winning friends through local MSP and MP visits, we should take heart from the wins we secured in the Scottish Government’s 2025-26 budget, notably the introduction of a new £4million capacity fund. This has allowed us to shape a programme of investment for museums focused on innovation and resilience. It will help our sector adapt for the long-term, creating greater stability, and preventing the constant drain on time and energy caused by having to react to crises.
The new programme – to be launched imminently – presents an opportunity to demonstrate the vital and viable nature of our sector. We will want to persuade the Scottish Government to retain, indeed build upon, this investment, and ensure other parties view it as a good thing. Achieving cross-party consensus for our sector remains a priority heading into what could be a fractious election.
What do we want from the parties?
Beyond investment in resilience and innovation, we need to see all parties commit to recognising the positive impact museums and galleries have on educational outcomes, health and wellbeing, and the economy.
We know from recent surveys that it is learning and engagement roles within museums and galleries that are being lost as organisations cut their cloth to cope with budget pressures.
And we still face a disadvantage in that neither MGS nor the wider sector has access to multi-year funding, unlike performing arts organisations who have three-year deals via Creative Scotland.
Scotland’s museums also have limited access to capital funding. The recent increase in the MGS capital fund of £1.4m is welcome but compares poorly to the Museum Estate and Development Fund (MEND) administered by Arts Council England.
A final key point to make in relation to funding is that Scotland still spends below the European average of 1.5% of public funding on culture. The Scottish Parliament’s Culture Committee has previously stated its support for a ‘percentage for the arts’ scheme. We firmly believe this should be at least a percentage for culture and heritage, including museums and galleries.
At the last Holyrood election, in 2021, party manifesto mentions of culture and heritage were a mixed bag, revealing a patchy understanding of our sector. The recent programme of engagement should have helped shift us to a better place, and we will be looking for further opportunities to make our case, alongside other sector organisations, in the months ahead.
What can individual museums do to advocate?
Here are my top 5 tips…
- Invite your local politicians for a visit. Every museum has 8 MSPs (1 constituency and 7 regional), so don’t be shy! They will be blown away when they see what you do, trust me. You see your collections day in day out, but they don’t.
- Tell your local politicians when you have something new to say, whether it’s a fresh exhibition, maybe you’ve won an award, or are struggling with an issue – MSPs do like to help!
- Suggest a motion in parliament – it can lead to debate. Here’s an example featuring the Black Watch Museum in Perth.
- Use your local press – politicians still pay attention to Couriers and Gazettes, despite the rise of TikTok.
- And if you need support, get in touch with MGS and we will work our magic.
