Children First, Please.

In London, not too far from where I live, is the country’s only children’s museum. Hold on, let’s clarify that. The Livesey is NOT a museum about childhood through the ages; it is a museum FOR children. It has an entirely new, interactive exhibition every year covering everything from maths to alternative energy sources. The children can touch and interact with the exhibits in a way impossible anywhere else. This museum has no glass cabinets and there are no ’please do not touch’ signs.

The Livesey Museum for Children is open to the general public and during the week typically receives two school parties a day. The majority of visiting schools walk in or come by public transport. It has been recently short listed in the Guardian as one of the best child resources in the country.

More importantly it is a cornerstone of an inner-city community. George Livesey donated the building to the people of Southwark on the basis that it be used to culturally enrich the area. And it does. Sitting on the A2, The Old Kent Road, next to Kwik-Fit, opposite the KFC drive-thru and Carpet-Rite, it stands out from the steady torrent of trucks heading to Dover. London may be overflowing with cultural landmarks, but the people of Southwark tend to see these are the property of the middle-classes, of tourists, not places for them.

But they do go to the Livesey. It’s a place they can walk to, pushing a buggy with a toddler in tow. It’s a place an eight year old off one of the estates can safely walk to and spend a productive afternoon. It runs SureStart sessions and other programmes for young families. In brings in creative practitioners - everyone from puppeteers to acrobats - and in the summer hosts outdoor sessions in its courtyard, a vital piece of secure, pleasant, green space.

It has been the weekly refuge for at least one young woman trying to get away from an abusive partner and to see her son enjoy himself.

And it’s being closed down.

The Livesey is not a private venture, it is not a charitable trust. It is owned and run by Southwark Council. Southwark is the twenty-fifth poorest borough in the UK despite the northern edge being dominated by the South Bank centre, Tate Modern and luxury, riverside apartments and having areas such as Dulwich Village where a two bedroom house sells for £799,950.

In Southwark fifty-two percent of children live below the poverty line. That’s not working class or low-income families, that’s Below The Poverty Line.

Over half.

On Tuesday night Beck and I went along to picket a meeting of the council’s executive. As most of the protestors, understandably, had children we decided to help make up the numbers and sit through the actual meeting in the public gallery. I learned a lot about local government process, not least that dubiously legal threats of “severe reprimand” can be made towards any council worker joining a protest against council proposals.

There’s a lot of detail to follow, but please bear with me.

A local authority runs an April to April budget. 73% of their budget comes from a donation from central government. The remainder is generated through council tax, parking fines, etc, etc. This money has to cover local health services (meals on wheels for example), refuse collection, road maintenance, etc. Council housing has a different pot of money. National health and education comes direct from central government.

Here’s the crazy bit. The councils only receive a ball-park figure for the following year’s budget in late December. This is not confirmed until late January. In order to be implemented a budget needs to be presented to the whole council for vote in late February. This doesn’t, as you can imagine, leave much time for long-term financial planning or consultation.

Whilst 2008 sees local boroughs receive a ’three-year deal’ for the first time , I understand that inner-city boroughs in general and London boroughs in particular have done rather badly in terms of the actual amount. The central government’s donation to Southwark will increase by less than the rate of inflation. In real terms this means the council is going to be £35,000,000 short over the next three years.

Ouch.

Some of this is recouped by an increase in council tax of 4% (above the rate of inflation). Councils are only legally allowed to increase tax at a maximum of 4.9% but as a disproportionate number of Southwark’s residents are exempt, or paying lower rates, it’s not that useful.

(There’s that word poverty again.)

Southwark Council itself is a mess. It’s run across dozens of different sites across the borough, most of them falling apart. Hosting a meeting, apparently, almost inevitably involves three or four people taking a taxi. The council, however, anticipates a saving of nearly £30 million when it finally moves into its nice new offices of Tooley Street, in the fancy bit of the borough up near London Bridge, later this year.

They’re still £5,000,000 short and cuts in services clearly need to be made. The Livesey, it seems, will be one of them. I’m not stupid. I understand the maths, I appreciate that this is almost an impossible situation. I realise that no-one on the executive takes an pleasure in closing services down nor in making people redundant. They are not acting out of malice, but I do think they’re acting in ignorance.

Oh, and I’ve issues with the process too.

The Livesey costs £150,000 a year. A metaphorical drop in the £5,000,000 ocean. Clearly, though, if it is closed the building will be sold off (morally wrong given that it was donated to the people, but not illegal) and despite it being a grade II listed building it will still fetch a significant sum, although the council denies factoring this into their figures.

The report recommending the museum’s closure (obtained through the freedom of information act) justifies its suggestion on the basis of cost against visitor figures. I’ve worked in the exhibitions industry. You can massage visitor figures to say whatever you like, but even I’m surprised at the variances in different quotes. The museum is only open to the public nine months of the year, taking three months to rip out the insides of the building and build a new exhibition. It claims 18,000 visitors for that period. The report says that visitor figures vary, depending on source, between 11,000 and 15,000 a year so it bases its conclusions on 11,000 visitors over twelve months.

Hmph.

Councillor Lorraine Zuleta, the member of the executive responsible for culture, heritage and leisure, claimed at the meeting that she had “no choice” but to close the Livesey. It is not one of the services the council is obliged to provide. She has “no choice” but to recommend it for closure, and then promptly mentioned two viable alternatives.

1. Close two libraries.
2. Cut funding to a fitness initiative designed to combat obesity in Camberwell.

We’ll come back to these.

The process with which the council makes decisions are so rapid that there has been no public consultation. The report recommending the Livesey’s closure has clearly been put together after the initial budget figure arrived before Christmas. The budget, responding to the report and the confirmed figure, has been assembled in less than two weeks. Tuesday’s meeting was for the executive to agree to propose it to the wider council. The council will meet on the 20th and (in all probability) vote to accept the budget. The Livesey’s current exhibition will be its last and it will close in late April.

That’s fast.

Opponents to any proposals made by a council can present a delegation at the meetings of the executive. A representative may speak for five minutes and then may be subjected to a further five minutes of questions and answers. The hastily formed Friends of the Livesey did this. No questions were asked. From where I stood deputy leader Kim Humphreys barely seemed awake. It’s not surprising because there was no way anyone was going to reconsider their position, in public, with such a short time scale. This was a rubber stamp meeting paying lip service to the notion that the community has a voice.

No-one was listening.

A woman standing next to Beck who was there to hear about a proposed development on a piece of green space, and who was also hard of hearing, asked what was going on.

“It’s the Livesey museum,” Beck whispered.
“Our museum?”
“Yes, they’re going to close it.”
“But they can’t. It’s the only one we’ve got. They can’t.”
I couldn’t help but think ’they just did.’

There is still a chance. The ruling coalition of 26 Liberal Democrats and 6 Conservatives only have a majority of two. It could still be blocked, but there’s only a week to get all the opposition councillors on side and find at least two others prepared to go against the party line.

This isn’t just Southwark, or even just London. The cuts in government funding and the swift processing applies to all councils around the country. If you’ve got facilities or a service provided by the council that you think is pretty good, then you probably won’t by June. I’d have a nose around if I were you.

So what should be done? The money has to come from somewhere, what’s the alternative? Well, I suspect there’s £150,000 that could be saved in other council expenditure. I understand, from a councillor no less, that the annual bill for catering at the town hall is £30,0000. Alternatively, give the Livesey time to morph itself into a charitable trust. Donate the building (which allegedly isn’t factored into savings made anyway) and it’ll be £150K off all future budgets. The success of the South London Gallery in Camberwell suggests this is a viable option.

Or, and this is going to sound crazy coming from someone who’s trying to become a writer, shut the two libraries. London is awash with libraries, Southwark has fifteen libraries including major ones in Peckham and Camberwell and (I think) a new one opening in Canada Water soon. The closure of two, smaller libraries would not be a disaster. The books would be shifted to other centres and people will still be able to use the facilities because there are other libraries. There is no alternative to the Livesey.

Or, cut the fitness the initiative’s funding. Okay, so obesity is media popular at present, but Tuesday’s lunchtime news included two items on anti-social behaviour amongst youths (the murder in Warrington of Gary Newlove and the decision of Corby council to ban so-called mosquito alarms that disperse groups of children by targeting their hearing spectrum) both of which emphasised a lack of alternative activities and the BBC website today leads with a story announcing government targets to get children involved in culture more.

I would suggest that the Livesey does all of these things.

Councillor Nick Stanton, the council’s leader and a man with a young family, said that the Livesey was not designed to be a drop-off centre for kids, it was not designed to keep children off the streets. Maybe not, but that’s what it does. He claimed that “in all likelihood” Southwark’s children would go on to use other cultural facilities elsewhere, such as the Tate, the Imperial War Museum or the National Maritime Museum.

But that’s the point. The middle-class parents who use the Livesey will shout and scream and wave placards and join Facebook protest groups and if it closes they will find alternative for their kids. But the locals, the people for whom it is really intended, won’t. In London there are a surprising number of people who don’t leave their communities. They have no need to. They can’t afford to go shopping on Oxford Street or down Convent Garden or for drinks and dinner in Soho and why would they want to when all their friends and family live in Peckham which has a busy shopping centre of its own? And they certainly won’t be buying four travel cards and traipsing across the city for an hour to the Natural History Museum where, when everyone’s tired and thirsty, they have to find fifteen quid to get some drinks and a snack.

The Livesey Museum for Children serves the Southwark community because of what and where it is. Close it down and there are no alternatives. It’s this or nothing for the vast majority of people who use it.

You might want to look at the following websites:
www.liveseymuseum.org.uk
www.facebook.com/group.php?grid=8314768438 www.bridgetmckenzie.blogspot.com/2008/02/save-livesey-museum-for-children.html
www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/390816.html
www.gopetition.com/online/16681
www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/nwh_gfx_en/ART53981.html