Resilience - financial, social, cultural - how do institutions of material record survive and thrive over the long term? Our recent work on museum finance provides a number of answers.

Since May of this year we have been undertaking series of museum finance reviews for Derby, Durham, Norfolk, Ipswich and Colchester. 23 museums and sites in all. This has been with Winkworth Sherwood and the drive of the work has been to see what the advantages and disadvantages of moving museum services to different forms of governance are. In the case of Norfolk particularly we have undertaken an extremely detailed and thorough review of the whole of their financial systems including frequent dialogue with the finance department at Norfolk County Council.

I've been working with Andrew Leitch and with his experience of commercial visitor attractions, local authority museums and national museums we offer a very comprehensive service in financial management and analysis right across the cultural sector.

This service is particularly beneficial for zero-based budgeting exercises and provides a thorough examination of local government finance for museums. It particularly highlights the cost of central services, HR, finance and marketing. This then allows an accurate calibration of the pros and cons of different governance arrangements.