Item 7 on the agenda is the debate on the Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee report, the impact of COVID on heritage, museums and archives. I call on the Chair of the committee to move the motion, Helen Mary Jones.

Motion NDM7477 Helen Mary Jones

To propose that the Senedd:

Notes the report of the Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee, 'The impact of COVID-19 on heritage, museums and archives', laid in the Table Office on 7 August 2020.

Motion moved.

I'm grateful to you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I trust the Chamber won't be overtired by being slightly subjected to a bit too much Helen Mary Jones this afternoon, but the timetable is, of course, beyond my control.

I'm very grateful to have the opportunity to present to the Senedd the culture committee's report on the impact of COVID-19 on heritage and museums. We produced this report, of course, in the summer, and I'm very grateful indeed to all the witnesses, to our committee staff, to my fellow Members—I am biased, of course, but I think we're one of the best committees in the Senedd—and I'm very grateful, too, to the Deputy Minister, for his engagement on these issues and for accepting our recommendations. This is, of course, a short debate, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I can only touch on a few highlights.

As across our national life, the impact of the COVID pandemic on the heritage sector has been profound and potentially catastrophic. The doors were closed of our museums, of our national library, and the income dried up. But some matters have moved on since we presented our report, and the institutions have been able to make use of the support schemes that have been available. We welcome very much the Welsh Government's cultural recovery fund, and indeed the additional resources for that fund that were announced last week. And we do welcome the extension of the furlough scheme, though it would have been nice if it had been possible for that to happen when it was needed in the north of England and Wales, rather than waiting until it was needed in Surrey, but this is not the time to be churlish, and the major cultural institutions do assure us that they will be able to make use of that extension, which will, of course, help them retain their staff. Institutions have been able to open, except in the lockdown, though obviously numbers are restricted and therefore income is affected.

Witnesses highlighted to us the importance of being able to digitise their collections. That is the way, of course, in which the public across Wales, and indeed beyond, can access some of the very important items that we hold in our national institutions. But the capacity to do this, according to our evidence, through the pandemic has been varied. We're very glad that the Welsh Government has accepted our recommendation 4 about the need for a strategy to increase digital access to collections, and we look forward to seeing that national strategy being produced. However, despite Welsh Government accepting our recommendation 3 about resourcing digitalisation, we do have some outstanding concerns. The recently published tailored review of the national library made it clear that more work is needed in this field, and the library are clear that they need resources to make that possible. The committee will continue to be vigilant in this regard, and we look forward to further discussions both with the sector and with the Deputy Minister.

Witnesses told us that the crisis had made them reflect further on the need to expand and deepen access to our heritage and culture. That, of course, involves the digitalisation agenda, but it's also about national institutions working more closely with local institutions, local libraries, local museums and making our collections better available.

We recommended that Welsh Government revise the performance indicators for our national institutions, to promote more collaboration and to encourage the delivery of outcomes in health, education, tackling poverty and social inclusion. We were very convinced, Dirprwy Llywydd, by what the institutions told us of their ability to contribute to all these important agendas.

Now, again, we are very glad that the Welsh Government has accepted these recommendations, and the new cultural contract, which is required of institutions in receipt of the cultural recovery fund, is an important step in the right direction, but again, we believe there is more to do. In particular, it is vital that institutions are resourced to do this kind of outreach work.

There are many other important points in the report that I can't touch on now, Dirprwy Llywydd, because I want to make sure that both Members have time to contribute and that I have time to respond to the points that Members make. Just to once again extend my gratitude to all our witnesses, to our staff and to my fellow committee members, and I look forward to the debate.  

It's always a pleasure and a frustration, sometimes, to follow Helen Mary, because she's so inspiring and occasionally infuriating in her remarks, and it's a lovely combination, I would say, to have from one of your opponents.

In terms of the furlough, which I think is very significant, we've actually called for something that the UK Government has listened to—our voice, amongst many others, no doubt. But it's very, very important for the sector. I read in today's 'Financial Times' that, at 30 per cent take-up, the heritage sector is the highest to use furlough, and we were told by the national museum how important it was to them. So, I'm glad it's going to be here until the end of March and the UK Government has done the right thing.

I did think that Helen Mary was on the very precipice of complimenting the UK Government, but she pulled herself back at the last moment, which I think has preserved her credibility within her own party, anyway, even if—. I was just waiting to see the wonder of that leap to commending the UK Government. But seriously, the furlough has been a very important scheme, and now that we're on the verge of seeing our way out of this crisis with vaccination around the corner, I do think furlough will be seen, in retrospect, to have been a key part of managing the economic consequences of this appalling public health emergency.

I think Helen was absolutely right to say about the importance of digitalising the collections, which has advanced very considerably. We had evidence last week about how innovative the national library was 20 years ago when it embarked on this sort of activity, and we know the museum also. And I think many of us would have accessed these resources: many schools have, many students, and many citizens who, perhaps, wouldn't visit the actual facilities of these great heritage institutions have been able to see online some of these wonderful resources. And I do think it's important that that continues because it has the potential of bringing the whole collections to life, not just those that may be interpreted at any one time, or physically exhibited at any one time.

The third point I just want to make is the importance of tackling social exclusion and promoting equality and better health outcomes. Because we've seen facilities now open up just a couple of weeks ago. The national museum made plans for St Fagans, for instance, to reopen partially; of course, pre-booking and restrictions apply there. But it's very important that our facilities are open to people when they may have more time and will want to go and see these attractions and also to take exercise in the many grounds that are in the heritage sector—National Trust properties and the like. So, to have this done in a way that gives maximum access to those who may lack these facilities and the ability, locally, to enjoy gardens or whatever, I think, is quite crucial, as is opening up these facilities to schools as a matter of priority, and particularly those that are in areas of relative poverty.

I also think, for the future, the gathering of material from these communities on how they coped with COVID is going to be really important. Because I'm sure that, if any of us made a study of the 1920 epidemic, it would focus on Lloyd George's illness, the work of the big charities, maybe St John's Ambulance—I'm wearing their tie, the Order of St John, today—very active and powerful organisations in terms of their record-keeping, and it's very important that we preserve all that. But I think a lot of the social stuff would have been lost 100 years ago, but now we can capture that. We'll have diaries, we'll have work plans and class reports from all sorts of schools and community organisations that help people process this incredible episode in our national life. And I think it will be very important to learn from that in the future, so to preserve those resources, but also to capture that experience, and I think it would be of great historical value. Because we've had to study what happened 100 years ago and remind ourselves that mask wearing 100 years ago was seen on the streets of Cardiff and not just in Tokyo or whatever, where we think that it has very much been just an Asian thing to wear masks, and I think that's very, very revealing. So, I hope that becomes embedded in national collections.

And can I just commend the organisations that are working so hard? I just read this week of the £55,000 that the museum has had to boost its learning offer during COVID, and that resource came from the Dame Vivien Duffield fund, and it shows you that our heritage organisations are not solely reliant on Government grants but are out there trying to get the maximum value for us and have a wide range of funds available to them when they raise funds very effectively. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer.

Thank you to the committee for another report and for the opportunity to discuss it today. This series of reports has been very useful in shining a light on the impact of COVID on different parts of the cultural and creative sector, and, more importantly, puts forward recommendations about what we can do in this regard.

This report looks specifically at the impact of COVID on heritage, museums and archives. Now, we in Plaid Cymru are true believers that Government needs to support our key national cultural organisations to ensure their resilience and their development for the future. We have a good number of national organisations and institutions that contribute to our cultural life, our social life and our economic life. They are a core part of the life of the nation, encompassing theatre, opera, dance, literature, books, publishing, archives and museums, not forgetting the National Eisteddfod, of course. But these institutions are facing major challenges as a result of this health crisis, but we have to emphasise that the situation facing the sector at the moment has been made worse because of underexpenditure, underinvestment and austerity over the past decade. The next Government has to get to grips with this in a robust and unambiguous way and to provide the appropriate support that our important institutions deserve.

An annual report was published by the National Library of Wales last week that summarised a busy year for the institution, with almost 2 million visits to its websites, and more than 300,000 items have been digitised. Recently, the national library held the tailored review, and it has to be said that the financial situation currently facing the library is a serious one. The library has faced a decline of 40 per cent in its maintenance grant—that isn't true for other national institutions. The situation of the national museum is very fragile too, and there has been underinvestment in terms of infrastructure and maintenance of the site. There is a backlog of £60 million for the eight sites. They have been successful in terms of increasing income and sponsorship over recent years, but COVID has clearly added to the uncertainty, and having an update from the Deputy Minister about the discussions with regard to funding with the national museum and the national library would be very beneficial, I believe.

As Helen Mary has mentioned, COVID has drawn attention to the importance of the digital sphere, and the report from the committee does give due attention to this. Institutions need to collaborate not duplicate work, particularly in terms of preparing digital learning materials for the national curriculum and health boards. And the increase in online activity needs to be appropriately resourced to succeed. So, I would like to ask the Deputy Minister how he believes funding settlements for the sector in future should provide for digitising local and national collections and provide for educational activities and engagement activities on the internet.

I turn to two other issues to conclude. Eluned Morgan has noted that the Welsh Government wants to release a feasibility study on establishing a national archive for Wales. I believe that this is part of the understanding between this Government and Plaid Cymru at the beginning of this Senedd. COVID-19 has impacted the work of the inquiry, I understand, but I do look forward to seeing the conclusions and what the next steps will be as a result of this study. So, it would be useful if the Deputy Minister could give some kind of timetable to us for putting forward this work.

COVID-19 has drawn attention to the crisis in terms of second homes facing our communities and, with that, there is a danger that our heritage will also be endangered as the original names of some of these homes are lost forever. The way that this Government has dragged its feet when it comes to safeguarding Welsh place names is very disappointing. We continue to face a situation where there is no way of safeguarding historic place names in Wales—names that are such an important part of the heritage and history of our nation. We need statutory regulations. This Government isn’t going to introduce those, but we do need to legislate in the sixth Senedd come what may. Thank you very much.

Being the, I think, fourth or fifth speaker, most of what I wanted to say has now been said, so there are just a few particular comments I want to make. The first one is to welcome the report, and to welcome in particular this model of short, sharp reports that are very timely and current, because that way guarantees they actually can have a direct impact on what is happening at the time.

One of the things that hit me most during the evidence sessions we had was the importance of how many heritage centres, museums of various types, are now almost entirely run by local communities, by volunteers, responsible for raising their own resources, but who play a vital role in preserving the community history, the community knowledge that exists. It was clear to me that there's a lot of work that ought to be done and needs to be done in actually blending these and melding these together in some form of coherent form.

I was very impressed with some of the evidence we had in respect of the—not so much the difficulties, but the opportunities that arise from the work of the National Library of Wales, particularly around digitisation. It seemed to me, with all of these, in terms of the role they may now play with the national curriculum of Wales in our schools—. For example, just two in my constituency. The Nantgarw pottery is something that has actually gone through a renaissance recently in terms of people's identification and value of it, because it is so rare, and because of the quality of it. Of course, during the COVID pandemic, they looked at very imaginative ways of raising funds. They've actually taken ancient shards of pottery, turned them into jewellery, and have been selling that, but as well as providing a lot of local information about the work and the way the pottery operated. The same with the Llantrisant Guildhall—I know the culture Minister has been there on a number of occasions. And of course these are all institutions that now struggle, are very dependent on grants for their survival, and their survival is absolutely vital.

The point I would make, and perhaps I could ask the Minister to comment on, is this: what seems to me to be really important is the role that these now play within our education system, and the need for the national curriculum to actually include, engage, and somehow encompass all these heritage centres, museums and institutions. So, if we really want to teach about Welsh history, about the history of the communities we live in, well, we have the institutions there. What they don't have is the integration, the resources, the digitisation to make those materials available and accessible in a way that actually delivers the curriculum. So, I think the one message that came out of it really strongly for me is what a tremendous opportunity we have now we are looking at the resources that we have, and how in the future we can so much better make them available to all the people of our communities, but also as an integral part of our education system. Thank you, Dirprwy Lywydd.

Thank you. Can I now call on the Deputy Minister for Culture, Sport and Tourism, Dafydd Elis-Thomas?

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. It's a pleasure once again for me as culture Minister to respond to this debate in the Chamber on our notable national institutions, and, in doing so, may I thank the committee for its report and also emphasise that I have responded in writing in September and noted that we as a Government were very pleased to accept each and every one of the report's recommendations, and that we will implement those? I will emphasise and focus on that in my brief response to this debate. May I once again emphasise that I will write directly to Members on any points that I'm not able to respond to directly this afternoon?

The important message that I have, of course, is that we have listened to the request regularly made for an increase in the funding for the sectors that we are discussing today, despite the gravely difficult financial context in which we work, and, of course, last week, following the demand for funding across the arts and culture sectors, I announced that an additional £10.7 million would be available to support organisations and individuals. In light of the fact that applications were made to us as a Government that we were unable to respond positively to because the number of applications received far exceeded the size of the budget available, we will have to seek ways and means across Government of deciding whether we are able to provide some more funding before the end of this financial year, if that's at all possible, or to plan for that in the next financial years. But the cultural recovery fund has now reached £63.7 million and, as I said, the interest in the grants of all sorts, including the 15-minute heritage grants, has been quite staggering, and I was very pleased to see that.

May I thank the Members who contributed this afternoon for accepting the importance of digital in what we're seeking to do in response to COVID and in developing a way of communicating and making ourselves accessible to the public throughout Wales? I do very much appreciate the way in which public libraries have continued to provide resources throughout this crisis, such as e-books and e-magazines through the digital library. Digital platforms will certainly have a greater role to play in the near future, and we will seek to ensure that we are able to fund, within the financial constraints upon us, the digital developments, and that this is a priority for us as a Government. And improving the digital skills of the population more generally is a very important part of this project, so that people can take advantage of the materials available.

But there is nothing like visiting historic sites in person—not to do so virtually, but doing so in person. And this has been extremely difficult recently. But I have to say that I have had the experience because of where I live, in Llandaff, as have many other people, because we are walking more and travelling less, that we are seeing new things in our own local communities, and have done during this period, and are rediscovering local historical sites. And that has contributed to our understanding of our communities.

Thanks to everyone who has participated in this debate. I'm sure this won't be the first or the last time that we will gather together as Members to give our support to the cultural sector. And the creative criticism and encouragement that I receive from Members in these debates is something that helps to keep me on the right track, as it were. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Again, there are no interventions, therefore I'll call on Helen Mary Jones to reply to the debate. Helen.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd, and can I say a huge thank you to everybody who has contributed to the debate? Once again with debates arising out of our committee's work we see the breadth of support, the breadth of ideas and the cross-party recognition of how important, in this case, our heritage and cultural sector is to us all.

I did think, in response to David Melding, I was being quite nice about the UK Government. I was doing my best. I said that I was glad they'd done it, but I think we'd probably all acknowledge it would have been better if they'd done it a little bit sooner. But the point that David makes very importantly about the need for social justice access: do we need to prioritise getting in our schools from our poorest communities, and since not everybody can go into our museums, should we be making those prioritisations? And I was very struck by what he said about the national museum's gathering of COVID stories. This is going to be a fantastic archive—all those voices that we weren't able to hear 100 years ago we will be able to hear through this project. And I'm really looking forward to seeing their work as it's produced. I should declare a sort of interest as an escaped historian myself. This will be a fantastic resource for the historians of the future, and it will ensure that everybody's stories are told, not just the big voices, as David Melding said. 

I'm very grateful to Siân Gwenllian for her very positive comments about our committee's work. She's right, of course, to stress that our institutions will need ongoing Government support and to highlight, of course, that going into the crisis they were vulnerable because of the years of austerity. And I, too, will be interested to see the progress around the development of the national archive. The Government will need to continue to support our big institutions and, indeed, our smaller local ones. It will be a long time until those that were making real steps in terms of being able to work more commercially, it'll be a long time until they can get back to that position. 

Mick Antoniw, of course, was the person who suggested the short, sharp report, so he's right to approve of them. And I think it has enabled our committee to respond to changing situations in quite a flexible, responsive way. And what Mick says around the opportunities around digitisation is, of course, absolutely correct. He's right to make the points about the possibility of digitised, as well as real, records in our institutions contributing to the national curriculum right across Wales, and I'll come back to that in a moment. But I think he's right also to draw attention to the innovation that's going on in local cultural institutions, and I have to tell him that the Nantgarw pottery jewellery is on my Christmas card list, in case anybody is listening. It's absolutely beautiful, and what a clever idea, to use what is essentially a waste product not only to generate income for the pottery, but also to raise awareness of it. I haven't actually been, I must admit, and I'm certainly going to go when that becomes possible.

I'm very glad, as I've already said, that the Deputy Minister has accepted our recommendations. And we are grateful as a committee, and the sector is grateful, for the extra resources that have been made available and the additional funding this week. I know that he will acknowledge that there will be a need for further support medium term, and I was glad to hear what he said about looking for cross-Government support.

Here I'd refer back to what Mick Antoniw said about the potential educational contribution as we move into the new curriculum, where there will be much more variety in what our young people are taught when they're being taught their heritage and their culture. I wonder if the Deputy Minister, following today's debate, might speak to the education Minister and see if there might be some resources that could be moved into supporting perhaps the national library, and also the national museum, around their digitisation agenda, because we need to have those amazing resources available to children and young people all over Wales and, indeed, to all of us.

The Deputy Minister is, of course, right to talk about the importance of real-life access, and we all look to the days when we can visit our institutions in the way that we used to be able to. In the meantime, I think we can be very proud of the innovative ways in which they have responded to very challenging times, and I hope that the Deputy Minister understands that he has cross-party consensus in terms of protecting our institutions—local and national—and ensuring that they will be there for us when we come out of this, and for our children and grandchildren in generations to come.

Thank you. The proposal is to note the committee's report. Does any Member object? I don't see any objections. Therefore, the motion is agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

Motion agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

We now suspend proceedings to allow changeovers in the Chamber, and the bell will be rung two minutes before proceedings restart. Thank you.

Plenary was suspended at 16:51.

The Senedd reconvened at 17:00, with the Llywydd in the Chair.

Welcome back.