"@ScotGov has said culture, sport & leisure services may re-open in #phase3. In line with this, our focus is on planning for the reopening of some venues to the public during this phase & we’ll share details in due course. For our latest updates, visit bit.ly/2U6usMg"
I have since had it clarified that the tweet was in fact made on behalf of Glasgow Life (www.glasgowlife.org.uk), the charitable body that delivers cultural, sporting and learning activities on behalf of Glasgow City Council, and which includes the management of the city's museums, libraries and archive provision, amongst them the Mitchell Library, home to Glasgow City Archives. The link given in the tweet leads to the following statement issued by Glasgow Life today:
Since lockdown began, Glasgow Life has received hundreds of enquiries about which of our venues and facilities will be reopening and when. This has only continued to increase in recent weeks as we move through the Scottish Government’s phased approach to easing lockdown restrictions.
This statement clarifies Glasgow Life’s current position and summarises the significant financial and other challenges we face in re-starting services.
Within its route-map, the government has outlined phase three as the period when culture, sport and leisure services may begin to re-open more fully. In line with this, our focus is on planning for the re-opening of some of our venues to the public during this phase.
As it has been from the outbreak of the pandemic, protecting our staff and customers remains our priority, and we’re continuing to be led by the government’s guidance to ensure safety is firmly at the heart of our plans. We will need significantly more staff than before to be on site at all of our venues to ensure government guidance on physical distancing is followed.
Glasgow Life is one of Scotland’s largest charities, and Covid-19 has had a considerable impact on our operations to the extent that the financial and staffing constraints we’re now facing are unprecedented.
We have nearly 1,000 staff on furlough and many more with shielding, underlying health or childcare issues; further reducing our staff availability. While the government’s Job Retention Scheme will hopefully provide some financial relief, it will not compensate fully for the significant losses we’re anticipating this financial year, which will run to tens of millions of pounds.
Glasgow City Council has agreed to support us financially to ensure our long-term sustainability and we’re doing all we can to mitigate these losses, including engaging fully in a number of national and local recovery forums to map a way forward.
However, the impact of Covid-19 means that we will have to review and prioritise which venues and services we can restart or reopen and when. We will be working in partnership with the council to do this over the weeks and months to come, but there are no easy solutions and it is very unlikely that Glasgow Life will be able to return to anything like its normal service provision in the near future.
We will continue to put the safety of the public and our staff at the forefront of any decisions we take and we will share more details about what we expect will be a phased approach to the reopening of some of our services and venues in due course.
Quite what the impact of this on the city's museums, libraries and archives sector will be remains to be seen, but hopefully we will learn more soon as we head towards Phase 3 of the programme to exit from the current lockdown.
(With thanks to Glasgow City Archives)
Chris
My next 5 week Scotland 1750-1850: Beyond the Old Parish Registers course starts July 6th - see https://www.pharostutors.com/details.php?coursenumber=302. My next book, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scottish2 is now out, also available are Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Irish1 and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scotland1. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.
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