The working life of Museum of London

I work in the Community and Audience development team at the Museum of London group. As a team we aim to make the Museum relevant, representative and engaging for absolutely everyone, from under 5s, families and adults. Although we focus on informal (that’s not schools, night classes etc, to you and I) learning programmes and events in and out of the museum, we also work to as audience advocates to ensure all visitors and potential visitors represented it such aspects of the museum as exhibitions, recruitment and policy. I work specifically with people at ‘risk of social exclusion.’ I put this in quotation marks because it’s a bit of a politicised term and I hate to use labels.

I work with young adults excluded from school or out of any kind of education/training; long-term unemployed adults and offenders. For the last three years I have been working on a programme of 13 projects, each around 3 months long. These projects use different creative mediums to engage the participants of the projects with their heritage. I am extremely lucky to be able to work with such a fantastic collection and subject matter. London and the everyday life of Londoners engages everyone, so I am always confident that once a group I am working with comes to the Museum they will find relevance to their lives. Some of the projects used the collections directly, such as creating art trail leaflets based on the art collection or gallery tours for families. Others projects look at identity and what it means to be a Londoner – ideas have fed into films, video art and websites. The focus is on the participants, from the direction the various outputs take to the skills they gain, including confidence, creativity, and ICT. We never dictate what the end product should be like, it is vital the groups feel empowered to make these decisions.

I am responsible for managing the projects, which means recruiting freelancer artists, building up re developing the creating briefs, delivering workshops and evaluating what the participants have gained. A large part of my work is also building up the relationships with the various organisations that refer people to my projects. It takes ages to build up respect and trust with organisations, which is why sustainability of the work is vital, such as the opportunity for participants to continue to work on future projects. My very favourite thing is meeting so many different kinds of people and being amazed by their abilities, and the very creative way the collections are interpreted. I love working with different artists and I get to learn something new all the time. So far I’ve been an amateur tour guide, muralist, poet, artist, designer, oral historian, photographer, film-maker, VJ, drummer, gumboot dancer, singer and actor!

I never planned to do this as a career… I don’t think it’s a job I knew really existed! At school I wanted to be a graphic designer or archaeologist. A snooty teacher told me I’d never get a job if I studied art, so I went off to study ancient history and archaeology. I had a brilliant three years digging in south of France, Northern Italy and trailing around temples in Greece, but I knew deep down the reality was wet and cold. I knew I wanted to work with people, but I’m not a formal teacher type. I worked for the University of the First Age, mentoring young disadvantaged pupils who were underachieving at school. I then taught English as an additional language in Japan for a year before coming to London to work with long-term unemployed adults in a training and advice context. This involved intensive 1 – 1 and group work with young adults, ex-offenders, and people with housing issues to name a few. I also volunteered with Envision, a charity that works with young adults. Here I worked with a college every week to guide them on social enterprise and environment projects. I knew I increasingly wanted to combine my interest in heritage with my experience of working with young people. Just this time I spotted the job ad for Inclusion Officer at Museum of London and the rest is history :).