PEOPLE from outside of Salisbury are always surprised when I say that the events of last year have had a crippling impact on visitor numbers. The museum’s numbers were down around 40 per cent compared with 2017. Admittedly we had the fantastic Terry Pratchett exhibition which hugely boosted attendance in that year, but if you take that out of the equation our numbers were down by roughly a third compared with an ‘average’ year.

Healthy visitor numbers are vital to the museum. As an independent charity we have to derive a significant proportion of our income from ticket sales and retail – so just like other businesses in Salisbury the events of 2018 have made balancing the books difficult. We are grateful to the recovery fund for offsetting a small proportion of this loss, but this is a finite amount of money that has to be spread evenly around the city.

In 2019 the impact of the event continues as visitor numbers remain low. Our efforts should focus on what can be done to change things. Salisbury has an incredible cultural offer; the envy of many other market towns and cities. Beyond the iconic cathedral is a vast array of cultural ‘assets’ including a producing theatre, arts centre, international arts festival (relaunched in 2019), galleries and museums.

Culture will be central to how Salisbury moves out of this crisis. Visit Wiltshire have commissioned a rebranding exercise; more importantly Wiltshire Council and the Arts Council have funded a new cultural strategy for Salisbury. This critical piece of work will look at all the existing cultural activity and how all the organisations delivering cultural programmes in Salisbury can work together to attract both local residents and visitors back. There is also the potential for the city to develop a cultural quarter in the Maltings – but we need to establish what Salisbury’s cultural quarter should be beyond simply co-locating the library, City Hall and the Playhouse.

One challenge I hope the cultural strategy can resolve is the lack of connectivity between cultural organisations. This has never been deliberate – but a consequence of us all being busy doing our own thing. At the moment a visitor to the cathedral or museum would be unaware of the Arts Centre, Playhouse or City Hall. The same could be said if you visit our websites. Linked programming, which happens through events such as the arts festival, should be happening as a matter of course. There is no thread that links us all together to create a compelling visitor journey; a simple progression from the cathedral to museum, from museum to restaurant, from restaurant to the Playhouse, from the Playhouse to a hotel.

We need to get this right if there is be a future for not the just the museum – but the city as whole.