Museum professionals have traditionally had to seek pastures new in different parts of the country - and, sometimes, the world - in the cause of career progression and a decent pay packet. But moving home to take that dream job managing a bigger and better collection, researching a favourite subject, or running an institution can be difficult.
Are people prepared for leaving friends, family and furniture behind? What about potential language, cultural and climatic differences, not to mention the prohibitive property prices and the dash for decent school places, all on museum sector pay.
Sarah Riddle has crisscrossed the country in search of curatorial fulfilment. Now the collections curator at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall - after career ladder-climbing stints in Newcastle, Birmingham, Bristol, Surrey and Lancaster - Riddle remembers preparing to take her first tentative steps into the museum world while still at university.
"I probably didn't consider I'd have to move around so much, but we all knew that finding museum jobs would be fiercely competitive. Some of my contemporaries, nine years on, have never secured a museum post," says Riddle, who recalls some of the hassles faced by the itinerant collections assistant.
"There was never enough money to buy or even rent by myself so there was a succession of odd flats and odder flatmates - a bedsit above a garage with no heating and one shared house that seemed to have no spoons."
She was often on renewable contracts with the possibility that funding could suddenly disappear, along with her job. "But I loved what I was doing and it was worth the trouble," she insists. "Some of my friends had gone into different industries and were earning big money; it was a bit galling. You're enthusiastic when you go into museums and you're there for the job, not the pay."
But Riddle says with so many new people wanting to join the sector, wages are being driven down. "It's hardly surprising that people are prepared to move around and work for next to nothing in order to gain experience."
Riddle arrived in Cornwall from a management post last year having missed the cut-and-thrust of collection work.
"I came here for the job, which is rare. Most people come here for the lifestyle change, but I'm not the surfer type," says Riddle who, 10 years after her first museum posting, is still sharing accommodation while saving up for her first home.
"It's difficult, especially now when you need such a huge deposit. You do sometimes get fed up with being a nomad, wondering where the next move might take you. Two relationships have fallen by the wayside. The danger is that people move, but their partners can't settle or find work. But I simply love doing my job."
In terms of sheer mileage and culture shock, Dmitri Logunov's career path meanders more than most. Now curator of arthropods at the Manchester Museum, Logunov came to the UK in 2000 from Novosibirsk, Russia's third largest city, which is some four hours by plane or a two-day train trip east of Moscow.
He had already travelled extensively with his work throughout the old Soviet Union, eventually becoming a senior research scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences, where he specialised in spiders. But sheer economics encouraged the move to Manchester.
"After perestroika, the economy collapsed and my salary was too low (about $60) to support the family. I had been searching for the chance of a job abroad when Manchester advertised for a keeper of zoology. I applied and, to my surprise, got the job," says Logunov, who had never visited the UK before and had little idea of what to expect.
"I had no experience in talking to native English speakers so I didn't think my English was good enough, especially as the majority of arrangements here are done on the phone, which was a huge surprise."
Securing the requisite paperwork for the move was not straightforward either, with long trips to Moscow for British visas. Logunov also had to arrange and pay for the transport of his 300-tube spider collection and vast library of specialist books; more boxes are still in storage awaiting collection. His wife and daughter joined him six months later after he had found somewhere to live and a school place.
"My wife was able to get work as a research technician at the University of Manchester, but it was tough for my daughter. She was
14, a difficult age when kids hardly accept newcomers. But now she has lots of friends," says Logunov. "The idea of returning to Russia has never abandoned me, but I am not sure if it is possible. Emigration seems to be a one-way thing."
Going home is something that Tamsin Daniel knows all about. The creative services officer in the new unitary Cornwall Council left her native St Ives to go to Warwick University and the museum studies course at Leicester before a six-year stay at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London.
"Everyone at the V&A becomes something of a specialist and I found I was being drawn into the project management side a little too early for my liking," says Daniel.
"There's a bungee rope that pulls a lot of Cornish people back to the county and a curatorial job at the Royal Cornwall Museum allowed me to get my hands dirty again, doing everything from arranging exhibitions and painting the walls to hiring volunteers. I began to see the connection between local museums and their communities.
"The V&A was a great training ground and it gave me a great breadth of knowledge, but it was like a little empire and I didn't have enough contact with the public."
Daniel is now helping to bridge the gap between local government and the museum sector, while watching her home county's creativity blossom.
"I originally had to move away because Cornwall didn't have a university. Now we have our own and I'm part of the project team looking at expanding Tate St Ives and trying to bring the Manifesta [European Biennial for Contemporary Art] here."
Mike Houlihan is another well-travelled museum professional. Having started his career as a research assistant in the Imperial War Museum in London, a series of high-flying managerial promotions, including a period in Northern Ireland, has now found him as the director general of Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales.
"In some environments, it's an advantage that people stay within an institution for long periods. I find now when interviewing ambitious people, particularly for non-curatorial areas, that they will probably be around for three years or so. That's preferable to someone doing the same thing for 30 years.
"Back in the late 1970s, you could get a museum job with a degree and a little experience. Then it became a second degree and a Leicester qualification. That's not good enough now. There are routes through, but it must be deeply off-putting to have to make the kinds of decisions that uproot everyone.
"The level of qualifications alone is staggering," Houlihan says. "At our St Fagans National History Museum, we have more archaeologists on our visitor services staff than in the archaeology department itself."
David McNeff has a straightforward explanation for his peripatetic lifestyle - home with the family in Manchester at weekends and in London for his job as loans registrar at the National Portrait Gallery during the week.
"You go where the jobs are, it's as simple as that," says McNeff, whose wife has a job at the Whitworth Art Galley in Manchester and whose children are settled in local schools.
"Both sides of the marriage have to be pretty organised about things. We did briefly discuss moving to London as a family, but we couldn't have afforded a house of comparable size down here. I have colleagues on the same level as me who can't afford to buy a flat."
Good rail connections and an understanding employer mean McNeff can leave the house with his children at 8.30 on a Monday morning and be at his desk three hours later. Similarly, he leaves London at 6pm on a Friday and is home by 8.45pm.
"I am conscious of the fact that my partner has to do all the parents' evenings and school runs, but it's quid pro quo and I make myself available to stand around on drizzly sports pitches and the like at weekends.
"When we started this arrangement, people assumed we were splitting up or getting divorced. It's just something that's worth a bit of effort."
Museum migration is exacerbated by the sheer numbers of people seeking their first or second jobs in the sector, says Caitlin Griffiths, the head of professional issues at the Museums Association.
"A few months ago, a regional museum advertising for an assistant curator received 230 applications," Griffiths says. "I doubt there would be that many trained museum people in that particular part of the world, so applicants are obviously building in a potential move to a different part of the country into their career plans.
"Those entry-level posts are hugely over-subscribed and museums can have their pick of qualifications and experience. But posts that require a specialism or the managing of exhibitions, budgets or colleagues are harder to recruit for. In some cases, museums are missing a trick when it comes to training and developing people."
John Holt is a freelance journalist
Are people prepared for leaving friends, family and furniture behind? What about potential language, cultural and climatic differences, not to mention the prohibitive property prices and the dash for decent school places, all on museum sector pay.
Sarah Riddle has crisscrossed the country in search of curatorial fulfilment. Now the collections curator at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall - after career ladder-climbing stints in Newcastle, Birmingham, Bristol, Surrey and Lancaster - Riddle remembers preparing to take her first tentative steps into the museum world while still at university.
"I probably didn't consider I'd have to move around so much, but we all knew that finding museum jobs would be fiercely competitive. Some of my contemporaries, nine years on, have never secured a museum post," says Riddle, who recalls some of the hassles faced by the itinerant collections assistant.
"There was never enough money to buy or even rent by myself so there was a succession of odd flats and odder flatmates - a bedsit above a garage with no heating and one shared house that seemed to have no spoons."
She was often on renewable contracts with the possibility that funding could suddenly disappear, along with her job. "But I loved what I was doing and it was worth the trouble," she insists. "Some of my friends had gone into different industries and were earning big money; it was a bit galling. You're enthusiastic when you go into museums and you're there for the job, not the pay."
But Riddle says with so many new people wanting to join the sector, wages are being driven down. "It's hardly surprising that people are prepared to move around and work for next to nothing in order to gain experience."
Riddle arrived in Cornwall from a management post last year having missed the cut-and-thrust of collection work.
"I came here for the job, which is rare. Most people come here for the lifestyle change, but I'm not the surfer type," says Riddle who, 10 years after her first museum posting, is still sharing accommodation while saving up for her first home.
"It's difficult, especially now when you need such a huge deposit. You do sometimes get fed up with being a nomad, wondering where the next move might take you. Two relationships have fallen by the wayside. The danger is that people move, but their partners can't settle or find work. But I simply love doing my job."
In terms of sheer mileage and culture shock, Dmitri Logunov's career path meanders more than most. Now curator of arthropods at the Manchester Museum, Logunov came to the UK in 2000 from Novosibirsk, Russia's third largest city, which is some four hours by plane or a two-day train trip east of Moscow.
He had already travelled extensively with his work throughout the old Soviet Union, eventually becoming a senior research scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences, where he specialised in spiders. But sheer economics encouraged the move to Manchester.
"After perestroika, the economy collapsed and my salary was too low (about $60) to support the family. I had been searching for the chance of a job abroad when Manchester advertised for a keeper of zoology. I applied and, to my surprise, got the job," says Logunov, who had never visited the UK before and had little idea of what to expect.
"I had no experience in talking to native English speakers so I didn't think my English was good enough, especially as the majority of arrangements here are done on the phone, which was a huge surprise."
Securing the requisite paperwork for the move was not straightforward either, with long trips to Moscow for British visas. Logunov also had to arrange and pay for the transport of his 300-tube spider collection and vast library of specialist books; more boxes are still in storage awaiting collection. His wife and daughter joined him six months later after he had found somewhere to live and a school place.
"My wife was able to get work as a research technician at the University of Manchester, but it was tough for my daughter. She was
14, a difficult age when kids hardly accept newcomers. But now she has lots of friends," says Logunov. "The idea of returning to Russia has never abandoned me, but I am not sure if it is possible. Emigration seems to be a one-way thing."
Going home is something that Tamsin Daniel knows all about. The creative services officer in the new unitary Cornwall Council left her native St Ives to go to Warwick University and the museum studies course at Leicester before a six-year stay at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London.
"Everyone at the V&A becomes something of a specialist and I found I was being drawn into the project management side a little too early for my liking," says Daniel.
"There's a bungee rope that pulls a lot of Cornish people back to the county and a curatorial job at the Royal Cornwall Museum allowed me to get my hands dirty again, doing everything from arranging exhibitions and painting the walls to hiring volunteers. I began to see the connection between local museums and their communities.
"The V&A was a great training ground and it gave me a great breadth of knowledge, but it was like a little empire and I didn't have enough contact with the public."
Daniel is now helping to bridge the gap between local government and the museum sector, while watching her home county's creativity blossom.
"I originally had to move away because Cornwall didn't have a university. Now we have our own and I'm part of the project team looking at expanding Tate St Ives and trying to bring the Manifesta [European Biennial for Contemporary Art] here."
Mike Houlihan is another well-travelled museum professional. Having started his career as a research assistant in the Imperial War Museum in London, a series of high-flying managerial promotions, including a period in Northern Ireland, has now found him as the director general of Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales.
"In some environments, it's an advantage that people stay within an institution for long periods. I find now when interviewing ambitious people, particularly for non-curatorial areas, that they will probably be around for three years or so. That's preferable to someone doing the same thing for 30 years.
"Back in the late 1970s, you could get a museum job with a degree and a little experience. Then it became a second degree and a Leicester qualification. That's not good enough now. There are routes through, but it must be deeply off-putting to have to make the kinds of decisions that uproot everyone.
"The level of qualifications alone is staggering," Houlihan says. "At our St Fagans National History Museum, we have more archaeologists on our visitor services staff than in the archaeology department itself."
David McNeff has a straightforward explanation for his peripatetic lifestyle - home with the family in Manchester at weekends and in London for his job as loans registrar at the National Portrait Gallery during the week.
"You go where the jobs are, it's as simple as that," says McNeff, whose wife has a job at the Whitworth Art Galley in Manchester and whose children are settled in local schools.
"Both sides of the marriage have to be pretty organised about things. We did briefly discuss moving to London as a family, but we couldn't have afforded a house of comparable size down here. I have colleagues on the same level as me who can't afford to buy a flat."
Good rail connections and an understanding employer mean McNeff can leave the house with his children at 8.30 on a Monday morning and be at his desk three hours later. Similarly, he leaves London at 6pm on a Friday and is home by 8.45pm.
"I am conscious of the fact that my partner has to do all the parents' evenings and school runs, but it's quid pro quo and I make myself available to stand around on drizzly sports pitches and the like at weekends.
"When we started this arrangement, people assumed we were splitting up or getting divorced. It's just something that's worth a bit of effort."
Museum migration is exacerbated by the sheer numbers of people seeking their first or second jobs in the sector, says Caitlin Griffiths, the head of professional issues at the Museums Association.
"A few months ago, a regional museum advertising for an assistant curator received 230 applications," Griffiths says. "I doubt there would be that many trained museum people in that particular part of the world, so applicants are obviously building in a potential move to a different part of the country into their career plans.
"Those entry-level posts are hugely over-subscribed and museums can have their pick of qualifications and experience. But posts that require a specialism or the managing of exhibitions, budgets or colleagues are harder to recruit for. In some cases, museums are missing a trick when it comes to training and developing people."
John Holt is a freelance journalist
