Dumbing Down of National Trust

shylockinadress

There is a new trend afoot, to reduce the amount of artefacts on display at National Trust properties. Dame Helen Ghosh, the Trust's Director-General thinks the public are over burdened by having too much to see! Yes, that's right, pay more to see less. Personally I find this patronising, if I visit a property with my family it is likely that we will have different interests and between us we will enjoy a variety of items on display.

I won't go into the iniquitous gift aid admission, I see that has been well covered in previous threads. Suffice to say, be aware of what you pay and what you see. If you aren't happy then please voice your feelings. After all we are told the Trust is for everyone and maybe we all need to keep a watchful eye on current fads.

hollydays

What would be an ulterior motive for doing this?

pollypenny

When you've seen one over-decorated, opulent drawing room with its £7000 vases you've seen the lot.

shylockinadress

Hollydays, the thinking seems to be that ordinary mortals cannot cope with too many things to look at. See Art history News website March this year.

Hedgehog99

It should be up to visitors whether they study every object or move through getting a general feel for the place. I don't like the editing being done for me - I want to see the rooms set out in the stated periods they represent, as people would have lived in them (minus the fleas, lice and other nasties of the times).

Worst of all is the "familyfication" of the NT. All this touchy feely dress up as a maiden nonsense. Yes, NT places have picnic areas & some have playgrounds, that's fine, but there's nothing wrong with children learning there's a time and a place to be quieter and treat objects with respect, otherwise it spoils it for everyone else. The NT risks alienating existing visitors for the sake of attracting new ones. Bet the room guides dread the screaming kids too.

phoebe1989seb

pollypenny wrote: »

When you've seen one over-decorated, opulent drawing room with its £7000 vases you've seen the lot.

What a sad attitude to have

Money_maker

Hedgehog99 wrote: »

Worst of all is the "familyfication" of the NT. All this touchy feely dress up as a maiden nonsense. Yes, NT places have picnic areas & some have playgrounds, that's fine, but there's nothing wrong with children learning there's a time and a place to be quieter and treat objects with respect, otherwise it spoils it for everyone else. The NT risks alienating existing visitors for the sake of attracting new ones. Bet the room guides dread the screaming kids too.

The NT have started to really embrace families and the best behaved kids are those that have a discovery trail or objects to spot at properties. Kids have a great time, parents are happy and want to return. The room guides love the enthusiasm of kids trying to spot something on their worksheet and normally manage to convey other information about the property to the child with hints on where to find things. When all the pensioners are gone, todays families will be tomorrows pensioners and this is really what the NT needs to encourage to survive.

hollydays

shylockinadress wrote: »

Hollydays, the thinking seems to be that ordinary mortals cannot cope with too many things to look at. See Art history News website March this year.

The National Trust is to focus on buying more land rather than taking on large houses, to counter a perception that it only serves the middle classes.
Dame Helen Ghosh, the director general, also said the Trust would simplify the displays of artwork in its properties.
The charity, which has 4.2 million members, unveiled a new strategy to spend £1 billion over the next 10 years on the conservation of its houses, gardens and countryside, with £300 million going to clearing the backlog of repairs to buildings. Last year there were 200 million visits to the Trust’s countryside and coastal areas – compared with 20 million visits to its houses, parks and gardens.
Dame Helen said “if we were offered another 18th century mansion, or a wonderful bit of Wicken Fen [nature reserve],” then it would be likely to opt for the land.
Dame Helen conceded there was a “perception” that the Trust was too middle class.
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She said: “It is not surprising, given where we have come from, that the kind of places that we own are places where the middle classes feel more comfortable, because it is more part of their cultural life.”
She added that it was not the entrance fee at a lot of attractions that was likely to put visitors off, but a feeling that “this place isn’t for them”.
The challenge was to persuade people that they did not need to feel awkward “if they didn’t know who George II was”.
She said the Trust would look at new ways to make its properties more “emotionally rewarding, intellectually stimulating, and inspire them to support our cause”.
She denied that this meant that its attractions would become more like a Walt Disney theme park: “Disney-fy is not a word in our lexicon.”
People were also put off because there is “so much stuff” in some of the stately homes. The Trust was now looking at featuring only a handful of interesting artworks in some homes to see if it increased their appeal. Dame Helen said: “We just make people work fantastically hard, and we can make them work much less hard.”
Tim Parker, the Trust’s new chairman, said he would increasingly be “broadening its remit” to taking on and preserving more industrial buildings from the 20th century.
Mr Parker added: “We have a serious aspiration to broaden our appeal as much as possible. We cannot change what we do; what we can do is to make what we do appealing to a broad range of people.”
Mr Parker, in his first public comments since replacing Sir Simon Jenkins as chairman, said that he wanted to use the Trust to wean people off digital devices.
He said he wanted to take people away from the “always on” culture, saying: “I want to get people away from their screens and get them to see beauty in the flesh.” The countryside, he said, was the “essence of being an inhabitant of this island”.
Dame Helen added that the Trust was in talks with councils in Sheffield and Manchester about helping them establish funds to pay for the upkeep of their parks, as council resources were focused more on statutory services."


Of course it's elitist and of course so called ordinary people can't afford the entrance fee.

pollypenny

phoebe1989seb wrote: »

What a sad attitude to have

Why is it sad?


There are umpteen of these huge houses, with thousands of artefacts.

I'm not sure the NT should be supporting so many of them. They need to be very choosy and support those which are rare.

So many properties were 'off-loaded' to avoid what were then called 'death taxes', anyway.

JP08

hollydays wrote: »

Of course it's elitist and of course so called ordinary people can't afford the entrance fee.

You have to be kidding. Family membership £104, £65 if you're a single parent. Then free entry to gods knows how many places up and down the country. Christ on a bike, you can easily spend that on a single day out if you're two adults and a couple of kids !

Little sister loves it. Single parent (now) with 3 pre teen kids, it's the bargain of the year for her.

ThumbRemote

JP08 wrote: »

You have to be kidding. Family membership £104, £65 if you're a single parent. Then free entry to gods knows how many places up and down the country. Christ on a bike, you can easily spend that on a single day out if you're two adults and a couple of kids !

Little sister loves it. Single parent (now) with 3 pre teen kids, it's the bargain of the year for her.

I presume she has a car and can afford to travel though? Most NT properties are in rural locations and would require a car to get to. So the cost is not just the membership fee.