The Museums Association’s (MA) Diversify programme has been a runaway success on many counts. More than 100 people have been through the scheme since it was launched in 1998.
Also, individual museums, Arts Council England (under its Inspire programme), and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council have either run programmes based on the scheme or funded their own affiliated traineeships.
But have all these schemes really made a difference to the participants’ lives and careers and have museums been able to retain them?
Diversify came out of a collaboration between the University of Leicester’s school of museum studies and the MA, and was designed to address the under-representation of people from visible minorities in museums and galleries.
Through positive action in the form of a paid one-year museums studies master’s and a paid museum placement, it aimed to make museum careers more accessible. It took on its first trainee in 1999.
Career opportunities
At the time, the only data collected by the sector showed that 95.8 per cent of museum staff across the UK were white, leaving only 4.2 per cent as visible minorities.
But the Cultural Heritage National Training Organisation, which undertook the survey in 1998, said the latter figure was likely to be artificially high, painting an even more dismal picture.
What the figures revealed was that there was particular resistance to diversifying collections-related jobs compared with other museum work.
Tracking the first 30 who went through the programme from 1999 through 2005, 18 graduates (60 per cent) are still in the sector.
Eleven (36 per cent) have left the sector, although three are working in arts or heritage, and in those roles have some partnership working with museums. One could not be traced. The sample confirms that the majority of the alumni found jobs in the sector, even though some eventually left.
Lucy Shaw, the Museums Association’s Diversify coordinator, says, “We only set one target and that was that 50 individuals should participate in the scheme by the end of 2006, and we’ve exceeded that.”
All the participants interviewed for this article testified to the value of Diversify to their careers. Vanessa Mitchell became a Diversify trainee in 2003 and is now the keeper of art at Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery. “I wouldn’t have been in this job if it wasn’t for Diversify. It’s as simple as that.”
And even those who have left the sector say their progression has been greatly helped by the programme. Kiran Singh became a trainee at the National Museums of Scotland in 2001, later moving to the St Mungo’s Museum of Religious Life and Art in Glasgow.
He says: “Without Diversify, I probably would have pursued a different career. Before that, I couldn’t see the opportunities.”
Before being accepted as a trainee, Sarah Blackstock had started a master’s in history and for three years had worked part-time front-of-house at Aston Hall in Birmingham.
She says she wishes she had read history rather than media studies at undergraduate level, and thought the master’s would give her access to a professional-level job in museums.
A museum manager showed her the advertisement for the Diversify scheme and she quickly applied. She was accepted as a trainee at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (BMAG) in 2001.
Pace of change
For Blackstock, the traineeship confirmed that a career in museums was right for her. “I wanted to be in museums for the rest of my career,” she says. Based in the history department, her experience at BMAG fuelled her passion for museums.
“There were not many black people working in museums and I could see how I could make an impact.” After the traineeship, she became a community development officer at BMAG.
Blackstock says the introduction of Renaissance in the Regions created a false impression about how quickly things were moving. “I was new and thought: ‘Wow, all this [Renaissance and Diversify] is happening.’ But the sector as a whole was not moving as quickly as some of the initiatives.”
In 2004 she left Birmingham to become the curator of transatlantic slavery at National Museums Liverpool and spent two years there.
Today she is the head of children and young people’s engagement at Birmingham arts centre, the Drum. She admits to feeling “jaded” about the museum sector and the slow pace of change.
But Gurminder Kenth, who became a trainee at BMAG in the art department at the same time as Blackstock, has a very different story. She has remained with Birmingham Museums throughout her career and has risen to management level, running Aston Hall, a community museum in the city.
After her traineeship she became the deputy curator at two of Birmingham’s smaller museums, Soho House and the Museum of the Jewellery Quarter, and found that she enjoyed project-led work, including the operational aspects of looking after sites.
Hannah Phung was in the right place at the right time when she became a trainee in 2002 with a placement at the Grange Museum of Community History (now Brent Museum) in north-west London.
From the start she filled a vacant post as assistant curator and then took the lead on an exhibition when a colleague fell ill. Her positive experience of a small museum has put her off working for a larger one.
“Trying to move up to a big museum you lose the autonomy of your work,” Phung says. Having struggled to find an exhibitions manager role, she is now the hub regional programme manager at Renaissance London, working with smaller museums on creative ideas for Olympic projects.
Supporting trainees
A common experience among the trainees has been the freedom to work in a range of museum departments. And this is invariably how the trainees discover what area they want to pursue. Emma Poulter learned how quickly you are forced to specialise.
“It is good to get an insight into everything a museum does,” she says. Poulter’s placement was at the Harris Museum & Art Gallery in Preston from 2002 and she is now the Talking Objects programme manager at the British Museum.
“You are forced quite quickly to specialise and crossing boundaries is difficult in a big museum.” She says some of her colleagues expected a positive-action trainee to want to work in outreach. Of the sample group that remained in the sector, half are in access and learning roles.
But what happens if you have a bad experience on a placement? For one trainee who preferred to remain anonymous, whenever the museum manager, who was also their mentor, was away from the museum, the trainee would mostly be ignored.
Shaw at the MA says: “We work with the host and trainees before they start, and look at the practical stuff like making sure the trainee has a desk and an email address. When things go wrong we can advise either side and offer mediation but we can’t wade in and interfere.”
The MA is also clear that it is unable to get involved directly in a Diversify graduate’s career. But Panya Banjoko, who has worked freelance for museums in the East Midlands and became a trainee with the aim of getting a paid staff job, believes the MA needs to do more to scrutinise interview panels.
She says there has been a lack of opportunities for her since graduating from Diversify in 2007 and she is considering leaving the sector.
The Diversify programme works well when the host museum makes staff aware of the reasons for engaging with the programme. It may not completely remove resentment from colleagues who feel the scheme is unfair, but if Diversify is backed from the top, it offers a more enjoyable experience for trainees.
Perseverance
BMAG has a strong reputation of employing its Diversify trainees. At present there are four on staff. Gurminder Kenth, one of the earliest trainees, says: “The traineeship allows you step through the door but you need the persistence to carry it out.”
More evidence about the effectiveness of Diversify will be available at the end of this month when the MA publishes its own analysis of the impact of the scheme.
This is the first in a series of articles on diversity in museums and galleries. In October’s issue, we look at whether diversifying staff can make as big an impact as diversifying museum programming
The Diversify programme was launched in 1998 to address the under-representation of people from visible minorities working in museums and galleries. It took on its first trainee in 1999 and was later expanded to include deaf and disabled people and those from less affluent backgrounds.
Diversify offers training to people from under-represented groups to enable them to develop skills and experience to compete on an equal basis for jobs in the sector.
Diversify’s main funder is the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council as part of the Renaissance in the Regions initiative. It is also supported by a number of museum, gallery and university partners.
Diversify offers entry-level traineeships (there are two funding models within the scheme; a 12-month work-based placement in a museum or gallery; and a five-month placement in a museum or gallery with funding for a master’s in museum studies) and management-level traineeships.
More than 100 people have been through the scheme.
Also, individual museums, Arts Council England (under its Inspire programme), and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council have either run programmes based on the scheme or funded their own affiliated traineeships.
But have all these schemes really made a difference to the participants’ lives and careers and have museums been able to retain them?
Diversify came out of a collaboration between the University of Leicester’s school of museum studies and the MA, and was designed to address the under-representation of people from visible minorities in museums and galleries.
Through positive action in the form of a paid one-year museums studies master’s and a paid museum placement, it aimed to make museum careers more accessible. It took on its first trainee in 1999.
Career opportunities
At the time, the only data collected by the sector showed that 95.8 per cent of museum staff across the UK were white, leaving only 4.2 per cent as visible minorities.
But the Cultural Heritage National Training Organisation, which undertook the survey in 1998, said the latter figure was likely to be artificially high, painting an even more dismal picture.
What the figures revealed was that there was particular resistance to diversifying collections-related jobs compared with other museum work.
Tracking the first 30 who went through the programme from 1999 through 2005, 18 graduates (60 per cent) are still in the sector.
Eleven (36 per cent) have left the sector, although three are working in arts or heritage, and in those roles have some partnership working with museums. One could not be traced. The sample confirms that the majority of the alumni found jobs in the sector, even though some eventually left.
Lucy Shaw, the Museums Association’s Diversify coordinator, says, “We only set one target and that was that 50 individuals should participate in the scheme by the end of 2006, and we’ve exceeded that.”
All the participants interviewed for this article testified to the value of Diversify to their careers. Vanessa Mitchell became a Diversify trainee in 2003 and is now the keeper of art at Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery. “I wouldn’t have been in this job if it wasn’t for Diversify. It’s as simple as that.”
And even those who have left the sector say their progression has been greatly helped by the programme. Kiran Singh became a trainee at the National Museums of Scotland in 2001, later moving to the St Mungo’s Museum of Religious Life and Art in Glasgow.
He says: “Without Diversify, I probably would have pursued a different career. Before that, I couldn’t see the opportunities.”
Before being accepted as a trainee, Sarah Blackstock had started a master’s in history and for three years had worked part-time front-of-house at Aston Hall in Birmingham.
She says she wishes she had read history rather than media studies at undergraduate level, and thought the master’s would give her access to a professional-level job in museums.
A museum manager showed her the advertisement for the Diversify scheme and she quickly applied. She was accepted as a trainee at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (BMAG) in 2001.
Pace of change
For Blackstock, the traineeship confirmed that a career in museums was right for her. “I wanted to be in museums for the rest of my career,” she says. Based in the history department, her experience at BMAG fuelled her passion for museums.
“There were not many black people working in museums and I could see how I could make an impact.” After the traineeship, she became a community development officer at BMAG.
Blackstock says the introduction of Renaissance in the Regions created a false impression about how quickly things were moving. “I was new and thought: ‘Wow, all this [Renaissance and Diversify] is happening.’ But the sector as a whole was not moving as quickly as some of the initiatives.”
In 2004 she left Birmingham to become the curator of transatlantic slavery at National Museums Liverpool and spent two years there.
Today she is the head of children and young people’s engagement at Birmingham arts centre, the Drum. She admits to feeling “jaded” about the museum sector and the slow pace of change.
But Gurminder Kenth, who became a trainee at BMAG in the art department at the same time as Blackstock, has a very different story. She has remained with Birmingham Museums throughout her career and has risen to management level, running Aston Hall, a community museum in the city.
After her traineeship she became the deputy curator at two of Birmingham’s smaller museums, Soho House and the Museum of the Jewellery Quarter, and found that she enjoyed project-led work, including the operational aspects of looking after sites.
Hannah Phung was in the right place at the right time when she became a trainee in 2002 with a placement at the Grange Museum of Community History (now Brent Museum) in north-west London.
From the start she filled a vacant post as assistant curator and then took the lead on an exhibition when a colleague fell ill. Her positive experience of a small museum has put her off working for a larger one.
“Trying to move up to a big museum you lose the autonomy of your work,” Phung says. Having struggled to find an exhibitions manager role, she is now the hub regional programme manager at Renaissance London, working with smaller museums on creative ideas for Olympic projects.
Supporting trainees
A common experience among the trainees has been the freedom to work in a range of museum departments. And this is invariably how the trainees discover what area they want to pursue. Emma Poulter learned how quickly you are forced to specialise.
“It is good to get an insight into everything a museum does,” she says. Poulter’s placement was at the Harris Museum & Art Gallery in Preston from 2002 and she is now the Talking Objects programme manager at the British Museum.
“You are forced quite quickly to specialise and crossing boundaries is difficult in a big museum.” She says some of her colleagues expected a positive-action trainee to want to work in outreach. Of the sample group that remained in the sector, half are in access and learning roles.
But what happens if you have a bad experience on a placement? For one trainee who preferred to remain anonymous, whenever the museum manager, who was also their mentor, was away from the museum, the trainee would mostly be ignored.
Shaw at the MA says: “We work with the host and trainees before they start, and look at the practical stuff like making sure the trainee has a desk and an email address. When things go wrong we can advise either side and offer mediation but we can’t wade in and interfere.”
The MA is also clear that it is unable to get involved directly in a Diversify graduate’s career. But Panya Banjoko, who has worked freelance for museums in the East Midlands and became a trainee with the aim of getting a paid staff job, believes the MA needs to do more to scrutinise interview panels.
She says there has been a lack of opportunities for her since graduating from Diversify in 2007 and she is considering leaving the sector.
The Diversify programme works well when the host museum makes staff aware of the reasons for engaging with the programme. It may not completely remove resentment from colleagues who feel the scheme is unfair, but if Diversify is backed from the top, it offers a more enjoyable experience for trainees.
Perseverance
BMAG has a strong reputation of employing its Diversify trainees. At present there are four on staff. Gurminder Kenth, one of the earliest trainees, says: “The traineeship allows you step through the door but you need the persistence to carry it out.”
More evidence about the effectiveness of Diversify will be available at the end of this month when the MA publishes its own analysis of the impact of the scheme.
This is the first in a series of articles on diversity in museums and galleries. In October’s issue, we look at whether diversifying staff can make as big an impact as diversifying museum programming
Making a difference
The Diversify programme was launched in 1998 to address the under-representation of people from visible minorities working in museums and galleries. It took on its first trainee in 1999 and was later expanded to include deaf and disabled people and those from less affluent backgrounds.
Diversify offers training to people from under-represented groups to enable them to develop skills and experience to compete on an equal basis for jobs in the sector.
Diversify’s main funder is the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council as part of the Renaissance in the Regions initiative. It is also supported by a number of museum, gallery and university partners.
Diversify offers entry-level traineeships (there are two funding models within the scheme; a 12-month work-based placement in a museum or gallery; and a five-month placement in a museum or gallery with funding for a master’s in museum studies) and management-level traineeships.
More than 100 people have been through the scheme.