After museums across Wales closed through covid, and funding cuts have meant 140 members of staff have taken voluntary redundancy, national museums have now passed 1 and a half million visitors for the first time since the pandemic, so we’ll be taking a look at the numbers.
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00:00Wales has some world-class museums spread out all across the country.
00:06The National Museums of Wales, all owned and operated by the Welsh Government, span from
00:10the Slate Museum in Llanberis in Gwynedd to the north, all the way down to the Roman Museum
00:15in Cillian in the south.
00:17Visitor numbers haven't quite come back to what they were before the pandemic.
00:21Obviously throughout 2020, when museums were closed, the numbers hit zero, and although
00:25the numbers aren't what they were, they've now reached one and a half million for the
00:29first time this year in 2023-2024.
00:33There have, though, been differing stories for different museums, with the Wool Museum
00:36in Carmarthenshire only reaching 19,000 visitors, while St Fagans reached a whopping 611,000,
00:43roughly only 10% shy of pre-pandemic numbers.
00:47Funding cuts to museums has meant 140 staff members have taken voluntary redundancy, and
00:52there are concerns that some museums must either start charging visitors, or could close
00:56entirely in the next few years.