“Imagine you are in London’s South Kensington district. You pass the glorious Romanesque architecture of the Natural History Museum on Cromwell Road, before turning onto Exhibition Road where you encounter not one but two more museums, the V&A and the Science Museum. Now imagine that, instead of being open to the public and bursting with tourists, they were closed and dilapidated, Dippy the dinosaur outside with a “for sale” sign around his neck. 

Of course, this is unlikely to ever happen. London’s big national museums are safe, funding-wise. Across the rest of England though, it is a very different story.”

To continue reading this piece on saving regional museums I wrote for CityMetric, click here…