Gifting a London culture membership - any ideas?

MSE_Laura_F

I wonder if you might be able to help me pick a good-value membership for someone in London who enjoys concerts, art galleries, theatre, museums, cinema - everything and anything cultural really.

A few friends are clubbing together and our budget is £100.

I like the idea of a Tate membership (£84/year) or Barbican membership (£59/year), for example.

But I'd love to hear people's experience with memberships. Did you find you used them enough to make them worth it?  And do you tend to see any discounts on yearly memberships crop up?

Big thanks,

MSE Laura F

FatherTireseus

My suggestion would be the National Art Pass from the Art Fund. £73 for an individual membership.  It gets you in free to some of the museums where there would normally be a charge - The Charles Dickens Museum, Leighton House Museum, Kensington Palace, the Cartoon Museum, the Household Cavalry Museum, to name a few in London.

it also offers 50% discount on entry to others such as the Churchill War Rooms, St Paul’s Cathedral, the Postal Museum.

It also gives 50% discount on exhibitions at many of the major galleries where entry might be free but special exhibitions are chargeable.  These include the V&A, the Tate, the National Gallery, the Wallace Collection, the Barbican, and even the Science Museum and Natural History Museum.

Even better, it is a national scheme so can be used at lots of museums and venues all over the country.  It gives free entry to a few, but by no means all, National Trust places; Waddeston Manor is one which is free to enter with a National Art Pass.

I like this card because it doesn’t restrict you to a particular venue and if you visit a lot of museums and galleries it’s incredibly good value.  

FatherTireseus

Oh, and occasionally the Art Pass will have a trial for three months costing £15 or something like that, but I haven’t seen that for a while.  If you pay by direct debit you get 25% off for the first year but if it’s a one-off gift that might not be so useful.

I haven’t really used mine for a couple of years but when (fingers crossed) covid cases subside I do intend to get back to galleries and I’m sure it will be very cost effective.

Realised I didn’t include a link in my original post:

https://www.artfund.org/national-art-pass