Jack the Ripper Museum – RIP?

The museum that opened in 2015 to a cacophony of protests, petitions and national outrage has run out of money. News of the insolvency spread like wild fire online (although thanks to Dr Louise Raw discovering this fact, not because the museum itself announced it.) And understandably, thinking the museum was out of money and, again, with no word from The Jack the Ripper Museum, people assumed it was about to shut its doors.

Apparently not – a spokesperson for the museum told me:

‘I am confirming we are not closed; we have closed for a few days due to Covid 19 and lack of tourists in London.  You can check our website for updates and there is a notice in our window.’

I did ask for a statement regarding the insolvency and financial future of the museum, none has been given at the time of writing. So according to the museum, they are not closed (admitedly, they didn’t say they wouldnt be permantly closing, despite being asked…but benefit of the doubt). Which is good news for the museum’s staff, because hey, during covid the museum sector has already seen far to many redunacies. BUT that being said, it’s not all good news, because having declared themselves insolvent, The Jack the Ripper Museum is on pretty shaky ground.

So, what went wrong and can the museum ever be turned around? Let’s look at the issues:

Issue one – Lack of Trust

It would not be unfair to say that The Jack the Ripper Museum was founded on lies. The community who live around the museum were told that it was going to be a women’s history museum. It wasn’t until the signage came up that anyone knew otherwise.

And it wasn’t just the local community. The museums architect, Andrew Waugh, publicly came out and said he was ‘duped’ into working on the museum, after being told it was a women’s history museum. Saying:

“The local community was duped, we were duped. They came to us and said they had no money but that this is a real heartfelt project. It is incredibly important to celebrate women in politics in the East End. We really ran with it. We did it at a bargain-basement fee, at cost price because we thought it was a great thing to do.”

To make amends, the museum announced that they would be partnering with a women’s domestic violence charity – which again, turned out to be wholly untrue. The charity had never been contacted by the museum and later asked to be taken off their website.

Then came the museums claim that the name of the museum was never actually, The Jack the Ripper Museum. In a 2015 interview with The Londonist, museum founder, Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe explained:

‘The full name of the museum is ‘The Jack the Ripper and the History of Women in East London’. The frontage is not finished and still in the planning stage.’

Yet the name remains the same, as did the frontage until the local community demanded it was taken down in 2017.

Issue Two – No comment

In light of all of this, The Jack the Ripper Museum choosing to disengage from social media and press seemed understandable, if a little petulant. Faced with this utter shit storm immediately upon opening, museum management could either apologise, shutter and makes amends, or just dig their heels in and weather it out. And of course, they chose the latter option.

But the issue here is that this phase of battening down the hatches has never stopped. The museum regularly either refuse or ignore requests for statements (even getting that tiny quote at the top of this article was like pulling teeth). And of course, they have set an unparalleled precedent for social media account blocking. Whenever there is even a hint of online criticism or discontent, that block button is quickly pressed.

Having worked in museum communications I can tell you that I’ve never seen a museum do this before. And that’s not because The Jack the Ripper Museum are ground-breaking communication mavericks. No – it’s because this strategy of refusing to engage and burying their heads in the sand is, frankly, insane.

For one thing by doing this the museum alienate themselves from journalists, the history community and you know, general visitors. Which has massively reduced the amount of press and social engagement they are able to generate after that initial wave of negative publicity when they opened. When was the last time you saw them in a museum Twitter chat or an article on them that wasn’t wholly negative and from 2015-2017?

But arguably the biggest example of why this communications strategy is so catastrophically bad is that when the internet found out The Jack the Ripper Museum had declared insolvency and could be shuttering its doors – the museum seemed to have had no idea. When I asked them about this claims, they said they had never seen or heard anything about them. If true, that’s almost certainly because they’d blocked everyone who was sharing the news from their social media (with the vast majority of these people being female historians)

This meant that for several days The Jack the Ripper Museum management were seemingly totally unaware that news that their museum was closing was being spread around social media. And to really emphasis what a monumental clusterfuck that is, let us remember this: the news of the museums insolvency and probable closure was readily accepted – without a statement from the museum needed. That’s a pretty damning indictment of how The Jack the Ripper Museum chooses to engage with the public,

Issue Three – the actual experience

Ok, lets hit pause on talking about the topics and contents inside the museum (don’t worry I’ll get to that momentarily). What about the actual visitor experience? Is it any good?

Well for £10 general admission (£8 for kids) you get access to the small museum, which lies over six floors with roughly one room per floor. These rooms are a mix of walk-in scenes with little to no interpretation (for example the ‘Mitre Square murder scene’) and walk in scenes with light interpretation (e.g the ‘morgue’ and ‘one of the Ripper victims rooms’)

It’s clearly designed to be immersive, as you flit from streets to ‘Jack’s living room’, with each room having its own soundscape, which runs the gamut from a women’s screams and cries of ‘murder!’, to light folky singing. Effort has been made; there just seemingly wasn’t the budget for it to be well executed. Many areas are very sparsely dressed and most of the rooms are inhabited with some kind of dodgy waxwork with an equally dodgy wig.

The Mitre Square ‘scene’

Then there’s the total lack of quality historic content. It’s all very vague; ‘here’s a Victorian bonnet, maybe a victim wore one like it.’ With short and non-descript panels on the walls and staircases to provide light information. It all feels very last minute presentation and you can see why some visitors have compared it to a live version of the Jack the Ripper Wikipedia page.

On the whole, you can see the entire museum in an hour, but when I’ve visited I’ve seen people in and out within ten minutes – shuffle around, take a selfie with a murdered woman’s waxwork and you’re done. There’s no revisit value. Even the most hardened Ripperologist would struggle on finding a reason to return. Once you’ve gotten past the end of the pier house of horrors ‘I can’t believe this exists’ cheap thrill – there is nothing there.

And that can in no small way have contributed to The Jack the Ripper Museums money troubles. After all, no small museum can finically survive on a diet that consists solely of one off ‘well I was going to the Tower of London, might as well pop in’ visits.

Issue four – It shouldn’t exist

At least not like this. Of course, there’s the argument that a museum that claimed to be a women’s history museum and then turned out to be a Jack the Ripper museum shouldn’t exist in the first place. But it does. And (at least according to their management) it will continue to exist.

But it shouldn’t as it is now. Way back in 2015 we were living in a world that was pre-Hallie Rubenhold’s, The Five. When people could say to The Jack the Ripper Museum, please don’t just shove up pictures of the victims dead bodies in a make shift morgue and say that’s their whole story. And they could shrug, because it would be hard to find out more information on every victim and they were such a small team that they just didn’t have capacity…

Well, welcome to 2020, when Hallie Rubenhold has published a bestselling book on the lives of each victim. It’s been out for a year, proving that:

1. Yes, the information does exist and you have easy access to it
2. People are clearly interested in knowing more about these women and their lives.

So now is the time to change The Jack the Ripper Museum. Take down the morgue, the murder scene and ‘Jack’s sitting room’ and replace it with new content that has substance, isn’t wholly degrading and might just draw people into your museum.

Because, let’s be real here Jack the Ripper Museum – after your insolvency and the last five years of hate being blasted your way – what do you have to lose? Clearly, you can’t go on like you currently are. Something has to change for you to survive. So maybe that something doesn’t have to be sticking in another mutilated waxwork.

Maybe it could be having several rooms dedicated to telling the lives of the five known victims. Maybe you could have more space explaining what life was like in the East End at that time. How 1 in 5 women were sex workers. How the 1885 Law Amendment closed brothels and put many of these women in danger. How in fact there is no hard evidence to suggest that three of those five victims were sex workers, but what would it matter if they were?

We will never know who Jack the Ripper was, but we should use that mystery to uncover a troubling but fascinating past. And yes, that will still be interesting, there’s now hard data to show people are interested. Yes, you can still have selfie moments in foggy London streets and things for people to play with (e.g try out a penny bed!). You just don’t need to capitalise on the violent deaths of women to make money.

Mary Ann ‘Polly’ Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine ‘Kate’ Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly

The Jack the Ripper Museum is never going to be the museum we were promised and wanted it to be (luckily, The East End Women’s museum is opening soon, so we now have that space) However, if The Jack The Ripper Museum really is going to stay open, that it doesn’t just need to change – it has to.

How to get that museum job (despite the world being on fire)

So right now the world is, how shall I put this nicely – a fucking garbage fire of despair and uncertainty. And if you’ve just graduated and/or are looking for a new career in museums and heritage – mate, I’m so sorry. After all, this was already a tough sector to get a foot hold in and Covid has not helped that.

I’m not going to sugar coat it, the reality is this; pretty much every museum and heritage organisation is making changes to their staffing. Redundancies, hire freezes, pay cuts. The whole shebang. This includes small museums, medium ones and many of the major players. And yes, for the most part the directors of those big players will be retaining their same three figure salaries, thank you very much. However, in the immortal words of Whitney Houston, ‘it’s not right (in fact it’s utter bullshit). But it’s okay. I’m gonna make it anyway.’

Okay I may have paraphrased a tiny bit there. But the point stands, you’re dreams of working in history and heritage are not over. And to help you get to that dream, I’ve made this little guide to help you.

So, first things first, on a scale of 1-10 how fucked are you?

Surprisingly, not as fucked as you might think (hooray!) Though there are redundancies, there are still jobs. Which is fantastic news! BUT (and it’s a big but) it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. I spoke to Fair Museum Jobs for their thoughts and they came back with two major things you need to keep in mind when looking at museum and heritage jobs in this Covid landscape:

1.Prepare for competition. 

As Fair Museum Jobs told me ‘We’ve seen some buoyancy in the job market already, but it does mean application processes are going to be competitive.’

Shit is about to get fierce. You’re not just going to be going against other graduates or career transfers for those entry level jobs, but people who already work in the sector and have been made redundant. So, polish that CV and for the love of god, don’t knock yourself out in the first round by doing a copy paste CV and cover letter for every application. You’re going up against dozens if not hundreds of people – tailor it!

2.The sector will try and take advantage of you. 

Fair Museum jobs underlines that museums are likely to take use this staturated job market to save some coin, ‘We worry that organisations will use their financial situation as a reason to make roles voluntary, when really they are roles that merit paid staff.’

This will affect all types of roles, but chances are the roles that are inevitably going to be hit hardest by this lack of pay are in curatorial. This is because historically they always have been. Now employers can’t make a person redundant and then immediately rehire someone to do the same job (just at a lesser salary). Which is why we’re expecting to see museums get around this by making lower level and entry level positions redundant and then magically creating a ‘voluntary’ role which covers the same tasks, but has a slightly different name.

Go into this with your eyes wide open. Look out for jobs that are taking advantage of you and also make sure you remember how fierce your competition is and tailor you application for everything you go for (it’s a ball ache and takes time, but it’s worth it)

So with that all said…lets actually get on to how you can get a foot in the door when your dream job isn’t available (becuase be real, it probably isn’t right now)

Option 1 – volunteering

What a surprise! As we’ve just covered, these are going to be the most popular types of ‘job’ advertised. Now as an entry point, this is very elite. You really can only do this one if you can afford to. If you can’t afford to, then don’t worry. Skip this whole section, because there’s stuff for you later.

But if you are going to apply for a voluntary role, then it’s important to know what you’re getting into.

• This will still be a full time or part time job. You just won’t get paid for it. So don’t expect people to be flexible with your hours.
• You’ll almost certainly still have to interview for the role and have things like a relevant degree, MA and occasionally (kind of hilariously given the role) previous voluntary experience.

And know that there is no guaranteed job at the end of this. Of course some people have gotten a paid gig off the back of volunteering, but it’s far from guaranteed. The odds are not ever in your favour on this one. And athough how good you are does factor in to turning volunteering into paid work, it’s almost all down to luck. It’s basically the Hunger Games and chances are you’re not Katniss Everdeen.

However, if you do still want to apply and see this as your only option, then do. Just know your rights going into it. Make sure you have your hours set in stone and don’t work for free longer than you have to.

Option 2 – other avenues in

So, you can’t afford to work for free. Don’t worry, most people can’t. But you can still apply for jobs. There are jobs going in every area of museums and heritage, just much much fewer than normal.

One thing to consider is if there are jobs in other departments in the museum/heritage organisations you’re looking at. Retail, front of house and marketing are far more likely to be looking than curatorial, education, conservation etc. So this is a good time to work out if you want to be a conservator or a curator, or if you just want to work in museums and heritage. There’s no shame if it’s the latter. That’s why most people get into the sector, to be surrounded by amazing history every day.

So, if you think you might fall into the ‘I just love museums and want that to be my job’ category, then apply to other departments. Having worked across the board in museums and heritage, I can tell you that you still get that amazing experience. Also some of those departments are actually better paid (and you get more transferable skills, should you ever want to leave the sector one day!)

And if you do feel like it’s ‘curator or death!’ then other avenues in are still worth considering. I know many curators, conservators and historians who got their start in a museum shop, as a guide or greeter. It’s a foot in the door. A way to pay your rent, get to know what visitors want and become one of the team. Plus, it never hurts to be an internal applicant.

Option 3 -the waiting game

This is probably the option you don’t want to hear about. But honestly, it’s not that bad and I say that having done it myself. Sometimes no matter how many applications you send in, that entry level job doesn’t happen. It’s not anything on you, it’s just a limited number of jobs and a crazy number of applicants.

I’ve been there. I landed my first job as a paid intern and then after my contract ran out there was nadda. I went for jobs and didn’t get them and it was a couple of months until I landed my next role in the sector. During that time I didn’t have the option of sitting on my hands; after all my landlord still wanted rent and I was very much team I’d like to have enough money to eat please.

So I worked in a shop and then as an admin assistant in an office. I’ve also been a call centre worker (selling double glazing natch), a children’s party host and (arguably) the worlds perkiest leafleteer. None of those things were what I wanted to do, but it got me by until I could do what I wanted.

Between you and me, I actually count those times as some of the most valuable in my career. I got my word per minute speed up, became a boss at spreadsheets and learnt to manage difficult customers (seriously, working in a call centre makes you a boss at dealing with tricky people) It doesn’t sound exciting, but it’s the stuff that meant when I was in an interview and they asked me ‘how would you organise X’ or ‘how would you manage this tricky interpersonal situation’ I had some solid answers tucked up my sleeve. And now, having been on the other side of the desk during assistant interviews, I can tell you that not many candidates have those.

So don’t just apply for those history and heritage jobs, spread your net. And if you strike out and don’t land the dream job, it’s ok. The experiences you get in other jobs whilst you wait will still count.

So what happens now?

Well you apply. And apply and then apply again. And the probably apply some more. Chances are, this is going to take at least a couple of months. And whilst you wait, you can boost your CV, take online courses (there are a ton of free ones I’ll link at the bottom). Join the history and heritage community on social; it’s a great place to find opportunities, but also just to meet some amazing people.

And remember to know your rights. Check out the Museum’s Association pay salary guidelines. Flag up BS job specs to places like Fair Museum Jobs. Check out unions (seriously every museum worker should join a union!) and go to places like GlassDoor to find if the place you want to work at has any major red flags.

Most importantly, don’t give up. This might be a long road, but you will get there.

Handy free online course links:

Future Learn has a ton of amazing online courses you can do for free (their history ones are great) but they also have them in things like interpersonal office skills, safeguarding (handy if you plan to work in education in the future) and presenting your work.

Reed offers several free acredited courses in improving your IT skills and HR basics.

Open Universityhas a ton of free courses (including one on the value of coffee, which I actually now want to do…) stand outs for padding out your experience and CV include project planning, leadership skills and finance basics.

Check out Fair Museum Jobs full statement and advice

‘Given Covid, it’s inevitable that organisation are going to suffer financially. We have already seen that Tate and National Trust Scotland among others are consulting on staff redundancies. This is doesn’t mean there won’t be jobs being advertised, indeed we’ve seen some buoyancy in the job market already, but it does mean application processes are going to be competitive. Don’t let organisations get away with using Covid as an excuse to treat you badly: make sure to check the salary and working hours – can you reasonably live on this? Check the job requirements – are they proportionate to the person specification, and the salary? It’s also worth doing some research about the organisation – How have they treated their staff during covid? What are they doing in reaction to Black Lives Matter? Allow yourself to feel empowered to make ethical choices in your job applications.
We also worry that organisations will use their financial situation as a reason to make roles voluntary, when really they are roles that merit paid staff. At Fair Museum Jobs we would say, don’t apply for these jobs, and challenge them when you see them. It will never be acceptable for any organisation to use their financial situation to treat other people poorly, no matter their charitable status.’

5 ways to get your culture on at home

Right now the vast majority of us are in self isolation and social distancing ourselves from others. But just because you can’t leave your house and visit a museum, gallery or class, doesn’t mean that you can’t get your culture on!

In fact, the cultural world is at your fingertips and you can access it all from your sofa. Learn a new skill, uncover archives and explore the worlds best museums. How? Well to get you started we’ve popped together 5 of the best ways to get your cultural fix right now

1.Build your own museum

Yes. You read that right. Your own museum.

Art Steps is a really easy to use app (it’s free for those wondering) that not only allows you to create your own museum but also to explore other self made galleries from around the world.

Example of an ArtSteps digital exhibition. Pot plants optional!

I stumbled across the app about a year ago when I used it to create an online museum of my work for a job interview (why yes I am that extra, thank you for asking) and I’ve been hooked ever since.

It’s kind of like if museum nerdom and sandbox gaming had a baby. What I’m saying is the possibilities are endless.

You can create anything you want. An exhibition you’ve always dreamt of, a retrospective you missed (or let’s be real, one you saw but kind of knew could be better). Hell, you could even create an online museum for a loved one. Stuffed full of their favourite artwork or goodies from a much thumbed through era, all for them to enjoy from the comfort of their sofa. The perfect pandemic gift.

Just to give you an idea of the ArtSteps interface – seriously it is stupidly easy to use

2.Google Arts and Culture 

Look I know it might seem obvious, but I swear, Google Arts and Culture is so severely underrated it is ridiculous.

From street view tours of the worlds most incredible museum galleries, to exploring endless retrospectives of different work and diving into high res art work. You could spend the whole isolation period on this site and still never get bored. Seriously there are over 500 art institutions to digitally walk around – and that’s just the art galleries!

Sure it might look like I’m sat on my broken sofa in London, but I’m actually on a private tour of the Musee Dorsay

But the real jewel in the Google Arts and Culture crown has to be it’s archives collections.

Many were created to tie in with a major anniversary of history week and contain the highlights of museum digitised archives and collections from across the world, along with specially made videos.

It’s an ideal way to really delve into a subject matter and not only read about it, but really get hands on (admittedly through a screen, but still, it’s bloody fantastic!)

Here are some of my favourite collections:

• Black Cultural Archives
• Road to Equality (100 years of suffrage)
• Commemorating Stonewall
• The fall of the Iron Curtain 
• Women in India, their unheard stories

3.Delve into the archives

Speaking of archives, one of the many (many) great things the internet has given us is access to archives from across the globe. Now admittedly you used to have to order most archive resources but that’s not the case now.

This is 2020 and you better bet your bottom dollar that top quality shit is digitised.

If you’ve never tried out accessing archive records, now is a great time to learn how. After you’ve used Google Arts and Culture to get a feel of how to use archived resources, check out The National Archives and start searching for whatever takes your fancy.

Study like a boss

They have over 32 million records from 1000 years of history, with some of that digitised (or described). 

You could test out archive digging by searching for your family history, an area of local history you’ve always been interested in or something more broad, like passenger lists from The Titanic or military records.

If you’re stuck, check out National Archive Discovery, which has some great archive collections, or their always fantastic blog, for inspiration.

4.Visit your local library at home 

Most libraries are now shut, but you can still borrow e-books, audio books and sometimes even magazines from the comfort of your sofa.

If you visit you’re local libraries website, then they’ll probably have a link to an online library like RBdigital, BorrowBox or Libby.

All you need to do is pop in your library card details and as if by magic you can download all the literary gems you might like to your phone or tablet.

Plus it’s all for free! 

Now, as with any library, there aren’t infinite amount of books, so there may be a waiting list for what you initially want, but it’s also a great chance to explore types of books that you might not normally read.

Because as the old adage goes:

5.Learn!

Everyday is school day, even when the schools are closed and even when you haven’t been to school in like…er, actually lets not get into how long it’s been since I graduated.

One of the best ways to spend isolation has got to be by learning a new skill or immersing yourself into an era of history you’ve always wanted to know more about.

My personal favourite place for online courses is Future Learn, which has some amazing free courses (as well as many that you need to pay for access to) 

They’re put together by leading academics and universities, so there can be no quibbles over their quality. I’ve done their  Tudor History course, which I can definitely recommend (it takes place over six weeks with five hours a weeks work). Oh and they even have a course on Covid-19, so you can become an expert and dispel all that BS you find on WhatsApp and Facebook.

Oh did I mention Suzanna Lipscombe teaches the Tudor History course?

The Open University also has over 1000 free courses that you can choose from. With a ton of amazing introductory history courses, as well as some for languages. Courses vary in length from one hour all the way up to thirty. So you can find something to fit whatever free time you have right now.

Plus the courses give you a certificate at the end, which is a handy way for you to show off all that new knowledge you’ve learnt. 

I don’t know about you but I’m really excited to put all this into action, escape my sofa and explore a world of knowledge. 

Me when isolation ends

Why won’t museums pay their staff fairly?

This week staff at Museums across the UK have gone on strike. Everyone from curators, explainers, archivists and front of house staff are calling to not just be fairly paid, but to be a paid a reasonable wage to live on.

Since 2011 Science Museum staff have seen a real terms pay cut of 10% since 2011. It’s estimated that 25% of staff earn less than the real living wage, which is frankly disgusting.

For those who don’t the national living wage is the bare minimum you can legally pay someone over 25. Currently this is £8.21 (or if you are under 25, it’s £7.70). HOWEVER, when you actually factor in silly little things like rising rent costs, inflation on food, transportation and general goods and services, the national living wage doesn’t cut it.

Instead it’s advised that companies pay the real living wage (which for you economics lovers out there, is £9 or £10.55 for those in London, because everything is more expensive in London!). But the key word here is ‘advised’. You don’t actually have to pay the real living wage and you best believe many museums are choosing not to pay it.

So what’s the big deal?

It’s not a matter of pounds but pennies right? And yet, those pennies make a difference. It’s knowing you have enough money for the bus to work at the end of the month, It’s having enough food on the table and putting the heating on when it’s cold. It’s the teetering point, between a good quality of life for you and family, or scraping by perilously close to the poverty line.

That’s an incredibly hard position to financially be in. And it’s made worse when you realise that whilst a quarter of staff are counting the coins to get by, The Science Museum Groups director is on over £100k.

As Prospect negotiator Sharon Brown said:

“It is clear from the accounts that SMG (Science Museum Group) can afford to pay a reasonable way. It’s time for management to sort this out so our members can get on with the jobs they love”.

And the Science Museum staff are far from alone. Also striking are staff at the Museum of London, who have seen a 6% real terms pay cut since 2013, but also watched on as the number of those in higher up positions earning over 100k has doubled. Oh and despite being in a period where the museum is undergoing a location move costing hundreds of millions and they apparently can’t afford to pay all their staff fairly – the museum Director took home a 5% raise.

Because although this is THE WORST – museum staff know how to break it down. Courtesy of Prospect

Having worked at one of these museums in the last few years, I can categorically tell you that there is a startling disparity between how those at the top are paid and those at the ‘bottom’ are paid.

To give full disclosure, until Nov 2018 I worked as a press officer in one of the striking museums and I was paid around 31k. I didn’t negotiate for that, that’s just the set level. To put that into context at the same museum (according to glass door for an average as this fluctuates!) an archaeologist might be on something between £19-22k.

So why was my pay so much higher? Well to be blunt, because my role exists outside of the sector. If you work in something like museum PR, marketing, or events, having knowledge of history, collections and how the sector works is of course a bonus, but it isn’t necessary. You’re expected to know your area and because all these roles exist outside of museums, your generally paid the going rate that most companies would pay a PR, marketing officer or events organiser.

But that fair pay all goes to shit when it comes to the people who are the very glue of a museum. The people who look after the collections, put together exhibitions, care for archives and are the boots on the ground, making people fall in love with a museum.

The reason for this low pay is simple but bleak.

According to Fair Museums Jobs: 

‘why do museums pay so badly? Short answer: because they can. There are numerous museum related courses churning out graduates who need jobs, not to mention other academic courses for whom museums are a “back-up” career option, so there’s a constant supply of applicants for most jobs. Why would trustees or directors think they should pay more when they are getting applicants at every level? 

Science Museum strikers, Courtesy of Prospect

What makes this worse are that The Museum Association guidelines for pay are kind of screwing people over. For those becoming a curatorial or conservation assistant, with a post graduate degree (or decent experience working in collections, which they probably had to do for free FYI) The Museums Association advises they are paid a just 17-22k. Break that down to an hourly rate and its £8.17. Which you guessed it, is below the real living wage!

Whilst museums can get away with paying people a pittance, they will. Which is why strikes like this are so needed. As Fair Museums Jobs put it:

“If we want to see change in this area, then actions like these strikes are crucial. They have brought the issue to the mainstream UK media and increased awareness with visitors about the unfair practices of their organisations. More visibility = more pressure = we hope, change!”

Change is a coming, but it is happening slowly. 

The Science Museum Group have now agreed to pay their lowest paid staff the living wage (and London living wage for those based in their flagship museum) they won’t actually do this until April 2020. Which means months more of a quarter of their staff having to just about scrape by.

In addition, The Institute of Conservation recently announced that entry level conservators should be paid at least £27,108, which is fantastic! Recognising all the years of work and training these people do. BUT, it’s just a suggestion, museums don’t actually have to do it. And lets be real, until they are made to, they won’t.

Striker, courtesy of Prospect

So what happens now?

Well it looks like industrial action will have to continue. And we can expect to see more museum workers unionising and going on strike in the coming months. At least until museums realise these three key things:

1. ‘What I did for love’ is not a decent hiring strategy – This is not A Chorus Line. Do museum workers love what they do? Yes. Can you keep on depending on being able to retain amazing staff based off of the love of museums rather than actual pay? No. Sadly you can’t feed a family on passion.
2. You can’t diversify museums with low pay like this in place – It’s a fact that museums are facing a diversity crisis, especially in areas like curatorial and conservation. A huge reason for this is that the extraordinary low pay for entry level roles in these departments simply prices out many candidates from low income and minority backgrounds.
3. People outside the sector are realising how shady this is – These strikes are drawing attention, not just at the museum sites but in the national press. The longer this is drawn out, the less people will want to come and drop their cash at a place that doesn’t care about it’s staff.

 

Fair Museum Jobs kindly gave as the below statement on this issue. It’s definitely worth a read: 

“The Science Museum Group and Museum of London strikes highlight the fundamental issue that many jobs in museums and heritage just do not pay enough to live on. In such a highly qualified sector, where expensive post-grad qualifications are constantly deemed essential; that many organisations pay 25% of their staff less than their directors annual bonus is ridiculous.

“So why do museums pay so badly? Short answer: because they can. There are numerous museum related courses churning out graduates who need jobs, not to mention other academic courses for whom museums are a “back-up” career option, so there’s a constant supply of applicants for most jobs. Why would trustees or directors think they should pay more when they are getting applicants at every level?

“If we want to see change in this area, then actions like these strikes are crucial. They have brought the issue to the mainstream UK media and increased awareness with visitors about the unfair practices of their organisations. More visibility = more pressure = we hope, change!

“Some organisations are leading the charge for this: Institute of Conservation recently announced that entry level conservators should be paid at least £27,108 – recognising the training conservators go through before their first job. 

“In short, if you want highly qualified, accredited, candidates, you must be willing to pay for them.

“More work could also be done by the Museums Association; their salary guidelines are a good starting point and we would welcome some robust implementation of these across the sector. Funding bodies should also take a look at their policies and requirements: for example, we would love to see National Heritage Lottery Fund, Art Fund and Arts Council England add salary and recruitment requirements for project posts.

“Nobody goes into this sector to become a millionaire, but all of us deserve to be fairly recompensed for our time, skills, knowledge and qualifications.
Fair Museum Jobs campaigns on fair and transparent recruitment, pay and jobs in museums and heritage. Find out more about our manifesto here: https://fairmuseumjobs.wordpress.com/manifesto/ “

 

 

News flash: Exhibitions don’t have to be boring

When I was little, one of my favourite videos to watch was Passport to Paris, a Mary-Kate & Ashley film that, being a twin and a child of 00s, I was obsessed with.

What’s always stuck with me, however, is a scene in Passport to Paris, where the twins walk through the Louvre, and slowly, their fascination turns to utter boredom. The painting fly past them, barely noted, as they walk, shoulders slumped, through gallery after gallery.  (Oh, and while we’re here, FYI other 00s kids, I can tell you  that in real life twins don’t make their prospective boyfriends tell them apart by dressing the same, it is not a done thing).

Do not trust them on twins or museums

That scene in the Louvre represented, to me, how people often saw museums. Lengthy, complicated interpretations, medieval paintings, some marble and if you’re lucky, some decent taxidermy.

So, when I started to work in museum, my greatest fear was that people would walk through my exhibitions the same way that the Olsen sisters walked through the Louvre – without looking at a single thing, uttered uninterested.

But, having been on the inside, I can say with authority that museum people are no longer the tweed jacket and elbow patch wearing people that the Olsen twins (and many of others!) thought they were. Museum folk aren’t out there just to recite some lengthy historical facts and bore visitors to tears.

The museum world has fought against this tired image and today, exhibitions and events in museums, galleries, historic houses and archives are becoming more and more engaging, accessible, fun and inviting. 

In 2017 I started putting together an exhibition on the suffrage centenary, Represent! Voices 100 Years On, for Manchester’s Peoples Museum. At first, the main goal was to ensure that the people visiting the exhibition didn’t trudge through a’la Mary-Kate and Ashley. That they were able to discover stories of incredible women and leave excited and engaged. 

It turns out that saying you want your exhibition to inspire and engage is a lot easier said than done… 

Putting together Represent! was was the best of times and the worst of times – like with any job, huge amounts of stress was involved, but also so many rewarding moments. So lets look at all the lessons I learned!

Represent! Voices 100 Years On at the People’s History Museum, Manchester

What struck me throughout the process was how different it felt. People’s History Museum worked with so many different community groups and individuals to interpret the stories, contribute their own opinions and ideas, and actually make the story we were telling relevant, and impactful.

See, that’s what was missing from Passport to Paris – impact. (FYI, something the Louvre has a lot of – don’t believe those sneaky twins). Visiting a museum or an exhibition shouldn’t be about expectations. If you’re expected to appreciate, understand, or even celebrate what’s on display, then you’re going to feel out of place. You’re going to feel lectured at, and you’re going to switch off.

But that’s where most museums are changing.

If you see yourself reflected in the objects, in the labels, in the interpretations – something you might have thought, or said, something entirely not curated or edited – you might feel a stronger connection to what you’re seeing, or reading. That realisation that one voice – the voice of a curator – is not the most important voice in the room is the biggest change that museums have made to exhibitions, for the better.

 Now, of course, working with communities has its challenges. Traditionally, you source your objects, working with the Collections team and Conservation to ensure everything in the collection that we want to use is in a good condition and is able to go on display. Loaning objects might also be part of the process, from other institutions, or sometimes just individuals. A lot of work goes into preparing these loans, so it’s always a relief when they finally make it into the building.

Working with communities, you don’t always get that level of planning. Even if you do plan, things might go awry.  

One of my favourite moments from Represent! was when I spoke to a well-known group of activists, and met them to discuss potentially lending some objects to the exhibition. They turned up to our meeting with a treasure trove of objects – only I was stranded without an entry form or the paperwork.

Sometimes, working with activists and grassroots groups means that proper museum practice can’t always be as black and white as it traditionally is. Flexibility, and to an extent, spontaneity are definitely needed.

That’s the best part of mixing the past and the present, though! Getting a glimpse into the heart of campaigns today, then seeing it reflected back in objects from 100 years ago is what made the exhibition what it was.

That’s the beauty of it! How can you look away? Real people make you feel included, and part of something.

There’s more, though. The raw truth that community groups and individuals are able to deliver – untamed by the voice of the museum – offers a sort of uncomfortable reality whilst also being authentically inspiring.

Honest reflections like these fill the walls of Represent!, with phrases including “The vote was for white women” and “Feminism is about equality and if the values were actually played out, maybe I would believe in it.”  Alongside these quotes, narratives and stories of the continued fight for equality show that it still very much needed.

Platform guests at the Represent! Preview, recreating the Caxton Hall photograph

Right until the end of the process, we kept this community-led focus on the exhibition.

We launched the exhibition by recreating the below photograph, taken at Caxton Hall in 1910, just before this deputation of suffragettes led by Emmeline Pankhurst marched on Parliament and were brutally attacked for hours on end (on the orders of none other than Winston Churchill).

We filled the platform with activists and campaigners of today, and it was a moment where the past and present combined, to commemorate those who had gone before, and to champion those who were carrying on their struggle.

WSPU members, including Emmeline Pankhurst and Sophia Duleep-Singh, on the platform at Caxton Hall

Different, from start to finish. Different, diverse voices. Unique, unsung narratives. Costumes,newspapers, banners, placards, arrest warrants, pink pussy hats, maiden speeches, paintings and pamphlets.

I don’t think Mary-Kate and Ashley would have been bored in this one.

Helen Antrobus is 1/3 of F Yeah History. She’s also a curator (formerly for Manchester’s Peoples History Museum) with a passion for telling the stories of radical women and working class history.