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A Note From Paul Richards, Senior Curator of Natural History, Museums Sheffield, Weston Park, Weston Bank, Sheffield

Hi

 Apologies for sending this unsolicited email to such a wide audience.

 You may or may not have heard about the recent loss of funding for Museums Sheffield.  The attached gives a little of the detail.  The message has often seemed to suggest that the arts council money was only to pay for art related activity.  However the grant was the primary operational fund for the whole service, so all aspects are affected.  Specifically for us, there will be around 45 redundancies.  We do not know how this will work, but it is likely to mean that only one post will remain in Natural History and likewise in other sections.  This means that next Wednesday I am likely to be served with notice of redundancy, and later given an opportunity to apply for the posts which remain in our restructure, hopefully one of which will include Natural History.

Since there have recently been lost museum posts in natural sciences at Derby, Rotherham, Doncaster and Sheffield, it would be nice to hang on to at least one of the last two remaining curators in the region, if not both.   It is also of great concern that none of the Arts council funding was directed to the east midlands, so there is a swathe from Cambridge to Leeds and Birmingham to Norwich, where no museums service has received major support.  This must put a lot of significant natural history collections under threat.

I do not know what influence public outcry will have, but we would be grateful for any support that you feel you can offer.  The attached give some ideas of where to direct comments.

Thank you

Best wishes

Paul

Museums Sheffield faces a 30% budget cut next year.
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