Holding court
After ten years at the Galleries of Justice in Nottingham, Tim Desmond is expanding the work of the museum further afield. By Simon Stephens.
Tim Desmond has been at Nottingham's Galleries of Justice Museum for ten years, but his first experience of the city was not a particularly good one. He moved to the area in 1999 to start work in an inner city comprehensive after spending the previous seven years teaching in Reading.
"Before I arrived I found out that the school I was going to work at was one of the ten worst in Britain," says Desmond. "And when I went there on a visit some kid told me he was going to kill me."
But from these unpromising beginnings, the short period he spent at the Nottingham comprehensive was important for Desmond's career.
"It was a real turning point," he says. "I went from teaching in relatively affluent schools in the south east to working in an inner city school in Nottingham where educational attainment was as low as it possibly could be.
"Those kids had no aspirations, no social skills and teaching them subjects such as maths and physics meant nothing to them. It really made me question the ability of teachers to teach in that environment and what the kids were getting out of it."
As a result, Desmond decided to return to the theatre, where he had started his career. He wanted to be somewhere that had a totally different approach to education and working with young people and had retained a fondness for the theatre, particularly his time at Dublin's City Arts Centre in the early 1990s.
"At that time Ireland was a place where there was no money at all, but in some ways I thought that as long as you had enough money for a pint of Guinness it was fine. It was a great place to work as you had access to everything. It was a small country, with culture right at the fore, so you'd have a theatre production with a load of local people and the president would just pop in to watch.
"Everything was much, much closer and there was no affectation, whereas in Britain I always felt there were loads of barriers in the theatre and the art world that stopped you expanding."
But the move from teaching back to theatre never happened as a post came up at the Galleries of Justice Museum as the education manager.
"I really saw this museum as somewhere I wanted to be because it was dealing with broad social issues with its education programmes, it did a lot of community work within Nottingham and the East Midlands and it had this fantastic subject matter."
Desmond has had a number of roles at the Galleries of Justice since 2000. After starting off as education manager, he then led the development of the National Centre for Citizenship and the Law (NCCL). This was set up in 2002 to deliver the museum's education activities and it now operates as a separate entity to the museum, although both are overseen by the same trust.
Desmond is very keen on the education work being run separately and thinks other museums could adopt a similar approach.
"In many ways museum education has come a long way in the past 10 to 15 years, but from a personal experience we still found that we had to go through a lot of hurdles and barriers for people to understand what we were doing. But if you've got a very clearly defined education body you translate what you do far more efficiently and make yourself far more fundable. That work can then be delivered in a museum context."
An early reward for the museum's work came in 2003, when it won the Gulbenkian Prize. Desmond says the award heralded real recognition of how important education was to the museum, and led to an even close working relationship with the curatorial side.
The NCCL's activities have made a noticeable difference to Nottingham, according to Desmond, who is a firm believer in the ability of museums to be agents for social change through education.
"Nottingham has had a reputation for crime and we have been part of reducing that - the city's crime rate is dramatically lower than it was ten years ago," he says. "We get people involved at a very early age and take them through the legal process."
The city's problems were all too clear to Desmond in May when a man was murdered very close to the Galleries of Justice in the Lace Market area.
Desmond has not just been involved in the educational side of the museum. In 2003, he became business development manager of the Galleries of Justice and the City of Caves, the visitor attraction that the trust operates in Nottingham. He did this until 2005, when the chief executive, Peter Armstrong, left to join the Royal Armouries.
After deciding that he could take the organisation further, Desmond applied for and got the top job. Since then, a lot of his time has been taken up with making the Galleries of Justice more financially sustainable.
It opened in 1995 without an endowment fund and as an independent museum there are constant worries over fundraising. Nottingham is not a major tourist destination so attracting visitors is difficult.
"Despite all our successes, and we have won a number of prizes and have done a range of work national and internationally, the story of the trust has also been one of financial struggle," says Desmond. "We were losing £200,000-£300,000 a year and getting more and more into debt."
One of the things Desmond has done is change the name of the trust that oversees the museum and the NCCL from the Museum of Law Trust to the Egalitarian Trust. He says this broader term allows the NCCL to apply for a far wider range of funding, including going to government departments such as the Ministry of Justice.
Other changes have been getting tenants into the Shire Hall building. These have included staff from Nottingham Contemporary, the £19.4m art gallery that opens in November and is just a stone's throw from the Galleries of Justice. There has also been a push to host more events.
Diane Lees, the director general of the Imperial War Museum, was the head of the Galleries of Justice until 2001 and she appointed Desmond.
"He has done a great job to keep the galleries alive and developing while having some very difficult fundraising issues," she says.
In the past couple of years, Desmond has been focusing on the Galleries of Justice itself. "What I have spent time doing is making sense of the museum to stop it leaking money and to harden up the product as a visitor attraction to make sure we bring the visitors in."
But the recession has made income generation difficult, particularly from corporate hire. "The recession has knocked us back," says Desmond. "We are battling in very difficult economic times to increase income into the museum side."
It is not all doom and gloom though. Desmond has led the creation of marketing body that promotes the cultural side of the city and he is hoping that the opening of Nottingham Contemporary will help to attract more visitors the area.
He is also planning to expand the presence of the NCCL out of Nottingham by opening a national centre for citizenship in London. Last month the Ministry of Justice asked him to submit a proposal to develop the concept.
You sense that the NCCL's work in areas such as equality and social justice is what really excites him and there is a hint of regret that he has left his hands-on work in education and the theatre behind.
"I have come from being an idealist with the NCCL to becoming a businessperson," he says. "In some ways I wonder if I have become an accountant."
But Desmond, who wants to stay in the museum sector, is determined to get the NCCL and the Galleries of Justice right before he takes on a new challenge.
"What I would love to see is us get that cushion of funding that would ensure our sustainability and then I'd like to look at a new challenge," he says. "I don't feel I need to be here forever, there are other projects to be looked at, but I don't think we are quite there yet. I have got to see the project though and that is what has kept me here."
"Before I arrived I found out that the school I was going to work at was one of the ten worst in Britain," says Desmond. "And when I went there on a visit some kid told me he was going to kill me."
But from these unpromising beginnings, the short period he spent at the Nottingham comprehensive was important for Desmond's career.
"It was a real turning point," he says. "I went from teaching in relatively affluent schools in the south east to working in an inner city school in Nottingham where educational attainment was as low as it possibly could be.
"Those kids had no aspirations, no social skills and teaching them subjects such as maths and physics meant nothing to them. It really made me question the ability of teachers to teach in that environment and what the kids were getting out of it."
As a result, Desmond decided to return to the theatre, where he had started his career. He wanted to be somewhere that had a totally different approach to education and working with young people and had retained a fondness for the theatre, particularly his time at Dublin's City Arts Centre in the early 1990s.
"At that time Ireland was a place where there was no money at all, but in some ways I thought that as long as you had enough money for a pint of Guinness it was fine. It was a great place to work as you had access to everything. It was a small country, with culture right at the fore, so you'd have a theatre production with a load of local people and the president would just pop in to watch.
"Everything was much, much closer and there was no affectation, whereas in Britain I always felt there were loads of barriers in the theatre and the art world that stopped you expanding."
But the move from teaching back to theatre never happened as a post came up at the Galleries of Justice Museum as the education manager.
"I really saw this museum as somewhere I wanted to be because it was dealing with broad social issues with its education programmes, it did a lot of community work within Nottingham and the East Midlands and it had this fantastic subject matter."
Desmond has had a number of roles at the Galleries of Justice since 2000. After starting off as education manager, he then led the development of the National Centre for Citizenship and the Law (NCCL). This was set up in 2002 to deliver the museum's education activities and it now operates as a separate entity to the museum, although both are overseen by the same trust.
Desmond is very keen on the education work being run separately and thinks other museums could adopt a similar approach.
"In many ways museum education has come a long way in the past 10 to 15 years, but from a personal experience we still found that we had to go through a lot of hurdles and barriers for people to understand what we were doing. But if you've got a very clearly defined education body you translate what you do far more efficiently and make yourself far more fundable. That work can then be delivered in a museum context."
An early reward for the museum's work came in 2003, when it won the Gulbenkian Prize. Desmond says the award heralded real recognition of how important education was to the museum, and led to an even close working relationship with the curatorial side.
The NCCL's activities have made a noticeable difference to Nottingham, according to Desmond, who is a firm believer in the ability of museums to be agents for social change through education.
"Nottingham has had a reputation for crime and we have been part of reducing that - the city's crime rate is dramatically lower than it was ten years ago," he says. "We get people involved at a very early age and take them through the legal process."
The city's problems were all too clear to Desmond in May when a man was murdered very close to the Galleries of Justice in the Lace Market area.
Desmond has not just been involved in the educational side of the museum. In 2003, he became business development manager of the Galleries of Justice and the City of Caves, the visitor attraction that the trust operates in Nottingham. He did this until 2005, when the chief executive, Peter Armstrong, left to join the Royal Armouries.
After deciding that he could take the organisation further, Desmond applied for and got the top job. Since then, a lot of his time has been taken up with making the Galleries of Justice more financially sustainable.
It opened in 1995 without an endowment fund and as an independent museum there are constant worries over fundraising. Nottingham is not a major tourist destination so attracting visitors is difficult.
"Despite all our successes, and we have won a number of prizes and have done a range of work national and internationally, the story of the trust has also been one of financial struggle," says Desmond. "We were losing £200,000-£300,000 a year and getting more and more into debt."
One of the things Desmond has done is change the name of the trust that oversees the museum and the NCCL from the Museum of Law Trust to the Egalitarian Trust. He says this broader term allows the NCCL to apply for a far wider range of funding, including going to government departments such as the Ministry of Justice.
Other changes have been getting tenants into the Shire Hall building. These have included staff from Nottingham Contemporary, the £19.4m art gallery that opens in November and is just a stone's throw from the Galleries of Justice. There has also been a push to host more events.
Diane Lees, the director general of the Imperial War Museum, was the head of the Galleries of Justice until 2001 and she appointed Desmond.
"He has done a great job to keep the galleries alive and developing while having some very difficult fundraising issues," she says.
In the past couple of years, Desmond has been focusing on the Galleries of Justice itself. "What I have spent time doing is making sense of the museum to stop it leaking money and to harden up the product as a visitor attraction to make sure we bring the visitors in."
But the recession has made income generation difficult, particularly from corporate hire. "The recession has knocked us back," says Desmond. "We are battling in very difficult economic times to increase income into the museum side."
It is not all doom and gloom though. Desmond has led the creation of marketing body that promotes the cultural side of the city and he is hoping that the opening of Nottingham Contemporary will help to attract more visitors the area.
He is also planning to expand the presence of the NCCL out of Nottingham by opening a national centre for citizenship in London. Last month the Ministry of Justice asked him to submit a proposal to develop the concept.
You sense that the NCCL's work in areas such as equality and social justice is what really excites him and there is a hint of regret that he has left his hands-on work in education and the theatre behind.
"I have come from being an idealist with the NCCL to becoming a businessperson," he says. "In some ways I wonder if I have become an accountant."
But Desmond, who wants to stay in the museum sector, is determined to get the NCCL and the Galleries of Justice right before he takes on a new challenge.
"What I would love to see is us get that cushion of funding that would ensure our sustainability and then I'd like to look at a new challenge," he says. "I don't feel I need to be here forever, there are other projects to be looked at, but I don't think we are quite there yet. I have got to see the project though and that is what has kept me here."
Tim Desmond at a glance
After taking an English and drama degree at Loughborough University, Tim Desmond moved to Ireland to work as a production manager at the City Arts Centre in Dublin. He later took a PGCE before teaching in Reading and later Nottingham.
He joined Nottingham's Galleries of Justice Museum in 2000 as
the education manager. He went on to become the head of the National Centre for Citizenship and the Law (NCCL) at the Galleries of Justice, then business development manager and finally chief executive. He now oversees the museum and the NCCL.
He is involved in various tourism promotion bodies, including the Nottingham Cultural Marketing Initiative. He is also an ambassador for Make Justice Work, a campaigning organisation that offers alternatives to prison.
After taking an English and drama degree at Loughborough University, Tim Desmond moved to Ireland to work as a production manager at the City Arts Centre in Dublin. He later took a PGCE before teaching in Reading and later Nottingham.
He joined Nottingham's Galleries of Justice Museum in 2000 as
the education manager. He went on to become the head of the National Centre for Citizenship and the Law (NCCL) at the Galleries of Justice, then business development manager and finally chief executive. He now oversees the museum and the NCCL.
He is involved in various tourism promotion bodies, including the Nottingham Cultural Marketing Initiative. He is also an ambassador for Make Justice Work, a campaigning organisation that offers alternatives to prison.
Links
www.galleriesofjustice.org.uk
www.nccl.org.uk
www.galleriesofjustice.org.uk
www.nccl.org.uk