If you are looking for Christmas gifts that are less about stuff and more about experiences, an arts organisation membership could be just the ticket.
An annual subscription to a gallery, museum, cinema or theatre is a gift that will keep on giving all through 2024. Many of us are keen to expand our cultural horizons, and these schemes also raise vital funds for a charity or will help an organisation repair its Covid-depleted finances.
We’ve rounded up a few of the best arts and cultural memberships, including some that offer particularly good value.
Galleries, museums and arts complexes
When you talk to culture vultures, one scheme that keeps being mentioned is the National Art Pass. This gives the pass-holder free entry to more than 250 museums, galleries and historic houses across the UK, including the Royal Pavilion in Brighton (standard individual adult admission: £18) and Cardiff Castle (£14.50). They also get 50% off major exhibitions at the British Museum, the National Gallery, the Tate, the V&A, the Hepworth Wakefield, Compton Verney in Warwickshire, and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, to name just a few.
Buying the pass means you are supporting Art Fund, the operating name of the National Art Collections Fund charity, which provides grants to museums to help them buy pieces, run projects and recover from the impact of the pandemic.
If you are buying it as a gift, a 12-month individual membership costs £75. For under-30s the cost is £45, and you can also buy add-ons for friends and family.
For those who are often in London, membership of the Tate is a gift that is unlikely to disappoint. It gives unlimited free entry to paid-for shows at all four galleries (two in London, plus satellites in Liverpool and St Ives in Cornwall), access to members’ rooms, money off items in the gallery shops, and other perks. Gift options include individual annual membership for £72, while a member plus guest is £114 (in both cases that price is for the first year). All members can take up to six children under 16 years old.
It’s worth being aware that all Tate Liverpool exhibitions are now free to visit, although this is not always the case, while Cornwall residents can get unlimited year-round entry to Tate St Ives by buying an annual Locals Pass for £5.
If the person you are buying for is young and/or a student, there are some good deals to be had. For example, a student membership gift voucher for London’s Design Museum giving a full year of free entry to exhibitions, access to private views and discounts costs £45, while the standard price is £75.
It is a similar story with National Galleries of Scotland, which comprises three galleries in Edinburgh, which charge for some exhibitions. A Solo Friend gift voucher offering unlimited free entry to all exhibitions for a year, an exclusive talks and events programme and other perks costs £50, but for students it’s £25.
At the V&A, under-26 membership starts at £50, while the standard price is from £77. As with the Tate, the recipient gets free access to all paid-for shows, plus previews and talks and discounts at the shops.
One of the best-value arts memberships is offered by London’s Barbican. Gift membership costs £59 for a year, and as a member your loved one will, among other perks, enjoy free entry to all art exhibitions, which typically have a standard admission price of £16-£18. They will also enjoy a chunky 20% off tickets for themselves and a guest for many Barbican events – from theatre and dance to gigs, classical concerts and movies – and access to a members’ lounge.
Cinemas
Membership schemes are offered by big chains and small independents. They vary in price dramatically – from the £20 a year charged by the Garden Cinema, a newish independent located near London’s Covent Garden, to the £850 a year it costs to access the Curzon chain’s top-tier “Cult+” package.
Of course, the important thing is where the recipient (or you, if you are buying for yourself) lives or goes to see films. If they live in a town with just one cinema, it’s probably pretty straightforward, but if they are based somewhere such as London, being restricted to just one chain could be an issue.
Looking at the value-for-money aspect, a lot will come down to how often someone goes, and when.
Andy Webb, editor-in-chief of personal finance blog Be Clever With Your Cash, crunched some numbers for Guardian Money. He says: “The biggest savings come for people who go at least twice a week, mainly at peak times and only to one chain.”
If the recipient goes less frequently, midweek, or mix and match different cinemas, a membership may not be quite such a good deal, financially speaking – but it could still be a happily received gift.
The Odeon’s standard myLimitless membership, which lets someone see as many movies as they like, costs £149 when you pay for 12 months upfront. However, Odeon Luxe cinemas are not included in this package – you have to pay £179 to give access to those, or member will need to pay for an upgrade.
The “cost per visit” via the £149-a-year membership is £5.73, based on going every two weeks. Webb says that is “not bad at all,” adding that if they go weekly “it comes down to a bargain £2.87 a visit”.
Cineworld’s Unlimited scheme has four different membership “groups” ranging from £10.99 a month to £21.90 a month (£131.88 to £262.80 a year). The price you pay will depend on which group your loved-one’s local or favourite Cineworld falls into. Based on going fortnightly, this would put the cost a visit at between £5.07 and £10.11. Webb says: “Again, that’s pretty competitive.”
Home in Manchester has a Film Pass that includes unlimited tickets to all regular screenings. It is a rolling monthly subscription of £18, so is not as straightforward to give as an annual pass.
The Light cinema chain – boasting 13 cinemas in locations including Bradford, Cambridge and Sheffield – has a similar scheme called myLight Premiere costing £179.99 if you pay for 12 months in advance.
The Everyman chain has an unlimited deal called Everywhere costing a wallet-busting £650 a year, although with that, two people can go to any showing.
The Curzon, Picturehouse and Everyman chains all offer membership schemes that offer free film tickets. For example, the Curzon has one called Classic where you get five free tickets a year that costs either £50 or £65 annually depending on the venue, and one called Cult, where the standard deal offers seven free tickets a week for £285 annually.
Many may feel they would rather support a small independent cinema. ArtHouse Crouch End in north London has a lot of fans, and at the time of writing it was offering a gift version of its Classic membership (where you get two free tickets, 25% off further tickets and 25% off food and drink) for £33.75 instead of the normal £45. However, 15- to 25-year-olds and over-60s currently pay just £11.25 forthe same deal (reduced from £15). It also offers an “unlimited” deal costing £225 for a year (was £300).
Lots of other independents offer memberships of various types, including the Prince Charles Cinema located just off London’s Leicester Square, the Ultimate Picture Palace in Oxford, and the Living Room Cinema, which has venues in Liphook, Hampshire, and Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire.
A good gift for a film buff who lives in or near London is membership of the BFI (British Film Institute). It costs either £45 or £50 for a year, depending on whether they receive information by email or post. They get two free tickets, but arguably the best benefit is priority booking for the London film festival and for events at BFI Southbank involving big names: yesterday, A-listers Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling were billed to talk about their hit movie Barbie.
Theatres
Theatre memberships do not usually include free tickets – instead you are giving the recipient the gift of discounts and early access to the cheap/best seats.
Buy someone 12 months’ membership of the Royal Court in London for £45 and they can book best-seats-in-the-house tickets in advance for all its main productions on Monday nights for £12 a time.
Also in the capital, the Young Vic offers gift memberships for £50 a year. Again, members get first dibs of the cheap (usually about £12) seats at its main house productions, which are often in the front row.
The National Theatre on London’s South Bank sells lots of gift memberships, including one called Advance costing £35 for a year which gives early access to the £20 front stalls seats at its two biggest venues, the Olivier and the Lyttelton, which are now playing host to the hit productions The Witches and The House of Bernarda Alba.
The Lowry in Salford offers a gift membership lasting for 12 months that comes with a very good perk: “2-for-1” tickets for many shows, including the hit play 2:22 A Ghost Story, playing in June. The normal price of the membership is £40, but it can currently be picked up for £30 if you use the promotional code FESTIVE.
If a membership scheme provides unfettered access to great cheap seats, that can deliver big savings, says Steve Rich, the founder of the website Theatremonkey.com, which focuses on London’s West End and features seat reviews and details of deals. But, he adds, some theatres hold back tickets – sometimes quite a lot – for the general public, somembers can end up with less choice. These days, says Rich, membership is often about showing support for a venue rather than what you can get for it.
One alternative to a theatre membership is Theatre Tokens, which are valid at more than 300 venues nationwide, including most, if not all, of London’s West End and lots of regional theatres. They have no expiry date and are available as a physical gift card or electronic voucher. One slight downside is that only some participating theatres – about 45 – currently accept tokens online (with the others, it’s in person and/or by phone). So, depending on where the recipient is based, you may want to check that first.
