In the 1980s, “the UK’s national museums faced political pressure from the Conservative government to charge for admission, to make them less dependent on government funding".
The initiative
In 1997, the new Labour government made a commitment to reinstate free entry for national museums in order to have a more diverse range of visitors. “Following a campaign led by the museums themselves,
The impact
The national museums which dropped charges all saw substantial increases to their visitor numbers, an average of 70 percent. In the first year after free admission was introduced visitor figures.