Its been heartening to see more of the nations galleries begin to reopen after a slow start following lockdown. The National Museum of Scotland welcomed visitors again in Edinburgh last week, and on Thursday the public will be welcomed into the British Museum again in central London.

But do not be fooled. These institutions are in the path of a force-10 gale. Austerity has weakened them. The pandemic has knocked them to their knees. And theres a vocal movement for galleries to tell more stories of minorities from refugees to the LGBTQ+ community, as well as sending back to their countries of origin artefacts that were looted over previous centuries.

Many have felt like theyre facing a financial crisis for 10 years. The vast majority of museums are funded by local authorities, which have had their funds cut by the Government and so they have slashed their spending.

Museums have responded politely by trying to build up their own sources of revenue, such as shops, cafs and exhibitions. Unfortunately, after 10 years of hard work, these have been knocked out of action by thepandemic.

Many museums are broke, at the very time they need to spend money to Covid-proof their institutions. The Government has promised money but it is slow coming through. The Arts Council and the Heritage Lottery Fund are offering money but there are so many that need helping.

Encouraged to become businesses, museums cant survive for long without revenue. Birmingham Museums Trust, York Museums Trust, the National Trust they are all laying off staff. There will be others.

But these places vary hugely in size and vulnerability. The big national institutions such as the British Museum are funded by the Government and it seems highly unlikely that any prime minister would ever let them go. At the other end of the scale are thousands of small museums, some private, some run by local authorities, which even at the best of times are struggling.

They are full of curious things, local things, always poignant, sometimes with great stories attached, teaching us unexpected things. And among them are some of my favourite museums.

Take the charming Allhallows Museum of Lace and Local Antiquities in Honiton, Devon, which tells the story of the local fabric industry. Eighteenth-century Honiton lace was gorgeous a delicate, pastoral creation, depicting flowers from the local hedgerows. Beyond the material, this makes it a great place I love this detail to find out what grew in those days in Devons hedges.

Allhallows is free to enter and is run entirely by volunteers, led by the lovely Margaret Lewis, but will be closed until 2021 to protect elderly team members from Covid-19.

One of the reasons small museums exist is so that communities can say: Listen to us, this was how our people lived, dont forget us. Wanting to tell your story is not a frivolous or a narcissistic request. For millennia it was only the rich who could ensure that they were remembered. Local museums are uniquely placed to deliver this small form of immortality.

But right now most museums are simply fighting to survive. Not all of them will. Even before the coronavirus struck, they were working hard to embed themselves more strongly in their communities, and to partner with theatres and libraries to give themselves a better chance of survival. That struggle is now much harder.

Meanwhile, calls for repatriation, particularly aimed at our national museums, are only going to keep on growing.

Personally, I think that anything looted within recent history should go back from whence it came although I know thats a vague formulation and that someone is going to have to give it some hard and painful boundaries. But it is also the case that hundreds of thousands of objects, particularly in small collections, were not stolen and they will stay.

We all go to museums for different reasons. I go to them to daydream, to have the sensation of time travel, to feel that I am meeting people from other times, to be amazed at what people could create. (Could I make Honiton lace? No chance.) Towns, communities, countries all need a sense of their pasts as much as do individuals.

Rachel Morriss book The Museum Makers (16.99, September Publishing) will be released on Thursday

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Museums are the guardians of our memories - but they are fighting to survive - iNews