The Museum Series: Exploring other ways to work in and with museums

The Museum Series is a collection of interviews with inspirational and successful professionals from across the museums sector.

Working in, with or for a museum is a fantastic experience, especially for the adventurous of mind and those with a thirst for being around history, art and artefacts on a daily basis. However, museums, art galleries and other cultural institutions are notoriously difficult to get into in the first place.

There are currently plenty of articles and blogs out there offering advice to the aspiring museum professional, however the problem is that this advice is often stagnant and overwhelmingly along the lines of “you need years of volunteering experience and an MA in Museum Studies and/or a PhD to work in museums”. Or, alternatively, the articles are overtaken by the debate of for and against the substance of having said MA in museum studies in the first place.

I want to offer a totally different type of advice. Advice from people who came into museums in other ways. I want to debunk the commonly held conceptions mentioned above and to reinforce and provide evidence that there are many different ways into a museum career. I want to open the eyes of people of all ages and build confidence which spurs on people who are struggling to find their way to go out and find a different pathway. I want to show that this pathway may also lead to something entirely different, yet still amazing.

You may ask if this has been done before, however I believe it has not. There has not been a series of interviews which boosts people’s confidence to find their pathway into museums. There are of course articles offering advice but there is nothing with consistency and a strong voice and breadth of experience I aim to share with this series of interviews. I want to cultivate a dialogue of strong, guiding voices which instils positivity, drive and aspiration to those who have come to the crossroad of low numbers of opportunities and years of studying and/or volunteering with no certain outcome. I want to present different ways for people to get into this exciting, amazing sector.