Historic buildings at St Fagans National Museum of History are closed and in poor condition, with some showing mould due to infrequent opening, while staff face aggressive behaviour and a phenomenon known as "social media auditing," the head of Amgueddfa Cymru has told politicians.
Chief executive Jane Richardson said people enter museum sites wearing cameras and deliberately try to provoke staff, often junior women from ethnic minorities, into conflict to create videos that are monetised online. She said colleagues across every Amgueddfa Cymru site have been subjected to this behaviour.
Aggressive behaviour reported at every site
Speaking to the Senedd's culture committee, Richardson said: "I would say we are experiencing it at every site, and when I meet with museum directors across the UK it's the biggest change since Covid - aggressive behaviour, angry people, very quick to respond."
She described the tactic: "One of the other really awful things that's happening is a phenomenon called social media auditing, where people come in, and wear a camera and deliberately engage one of our colleagues in conflict, it will usually be a female, junior and often an ethnic minority. They get them into conflict and monestise that on the web. Colleagues of ours have been subject to that."
Training is being provided at all sites to equip staff to handle such situations, she said.
Funding cuts force building closures
Plaid Cymru MS Nick Carter raised concerns that many historic buildings at St Fagans are closed due to staff shortages, lone working issues, and that mould is appearing in some buildings because they are not opened frequently enough. He also said he had received reports of staff being subjected to aggressive behaviour.
Richardson acknowledged the constraints: "St Fagans now has to run on a smaller budget than it did, we can't have as many visitor experienced staff onsite and what we make sure we do is risk assessments about lone working, so if there is somebody working on their own that has been fully planned and worked through with them."
She added: "It's really frustrating. We have glorious buildings. One of my absolute favourites Y Garreg Fawr farmhouse is usually closed but until we have more funding we can't open more of those buildings."
Rebuilding the organisation
Richardson and Kate Eden also discussed staff morale, and were asked to provide the "optimum" number of staff needed to run the award-winning facility.
Responding to questions about staff satisfaction levels, Richardson said: "I don't think we've ever been explicit fully at this committee about just what a challenging situation it was for this organisation at the time we came in. The organisation had been through a very very difficult period, as bad as it can get for an organisation."
She noted: "I don't think either of us had any idea of the scale of the work that was going to be needed across eery single bit of the organisation. Everything has needed rebuilding, shoring up, process put in place, governance put in place, and there's been a lot of work done in the last three years, adn there's a lot we're really please with and can see progress but there's still a lot to do."
Richardson said longer-serving colleagues can see the progress, while those who have joined more recently will see "the bits that haven't been done."
