Free for All success

April 1999 marks an important success for the Free for All campaign as the UK's publicly funded museums begin to abolish entrance charges.

The Free for All campaign, initiated by BECTU's National Visual Artists' Branch, welcomed the move to shed entrance charges, which will take two years. It starts with children in April 1999 being granted free access, to be followed by UK Old Age Pensioners a year later, and finally all other members of the public in 2001.

However Jan Woolf, co-ordinator of the campaign, has warned: "We still need to hear a firm commitment from museum directors that universal free entry will follow in line with the DCMS (UK Department of Culture, Media and Sport) commitment and direction.

"This is time for celebration however. For with charges lifted at the big museums the earlier threat of charging at the Tate, National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery and the British Museum have gone".

The Free for All campaign has worked with trade unions, arts pressure groups, the TUC and members of the House of Lords, and was started in January 1997 with the presentation of a petition at a House of Commons public meeting.