Cuts and closures mean people are leaving museums and galleries at an unprecedented rate. Consultancy offers a promising route for those at a senior level; for others the path is less clear.
But people often underestimate themselves, and, as our case studies show, with some serious self-scrutiny, the skills, experience and knowledge that are built up in museums and galleries can be transferred to other – even commercial – sectors.
“You can’t choose what happens to you, but you can choose how you respond to it,” says Kathy Gee, a former chief executive of the East Midlands’ branch of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and now the director of Volition Associates, which offers research and evaluation services to the cultural sector and also coaching to individuals.
“If redundancy is forced on you and you are desperate for work you still need to take stock because competition for jobs is fierce and the candidate who can demonstrate passion as well as skill will succeed.
“The people I work with are often at a fairly senior level and thinking about leaving for various reasons but are unsure if this is what they want; they just know they are fed up or they don’t believe in what they are doing any more. Or they may be in shock after redundancy.”
She adds: “But before they start making any choices about jobs to apply for or directions to take, I ask them to explore what sort of person they are, what their values are and what matters to them.
"If they can build this level of self-awareness, they will understand whether they are running towards something rather than away from it, make better choices and be a lot happier.”
Alice Grant, director, ClothSpot
Alice Grant spent 27 years working in the museum sector, in jobs that included documentation manager at the Victoria and Albert Museum, head of collections information at the Science Museum and 10 years as a freelance consultant, before deciding to set up an online dress fabric shop in 2011.
“I set up ClothSpot partly for family reasons and partly because I became disenchanted with the sector. The economic climate started to make it difficult for a consultant to be positive about museums. I did a skills audit on myself and worked up a rigorous business model.
I found my information and project management skills suited running my own business. It can be hard to set up and you have to be prepared to take it step by step.
Sometimes museums don’t get excited enough about the backroom stuff – analysing what they are doing well and how to refine processes and bring costs down. It’s about understanding your markets and cutting your cloth according to your resources, to use a fitting analogy.
One of the biggest obstacles has been learning how to find suppliers but my research skills and experience of dealing with people has stood me in good stead and I’ve now got a growing network of brokers and suppliers.
I’m going back to my roots – my mum and grandma taught dressmaking and I grew up sewing and had clothes stalls in markets.
I’m rediscovering how good business comes about from being considerate and polite. I had fantastic experiences in museums but I’ve never been happier professionally than I am now.”
Mahtab Hussain, artist/photographer
Mahtab Hussain worked for two years as a design assistant at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG), which followed a couple of years spent doing museum internships, and set up as an artist and freelance photographer when his contract ended in 2010.
“I felt a great sense of loss when I left the portrait gallery but it gave me a chance to build on my long-term photographic practice.
I’d been developing a photographic project in my spare time in Birmingham addressing the complexities of British Muslim communities around the themes of displacement, identity and masculinity. This has really started to take off and 2013 looks like a very exciting year for me.
One of the most valuable lessons I learned from working in museums was seeing what was required to produce a successful exhibition and just how many departments came together to achieve this.
I now feel I’ve got a good understanding of how to fabricate a show, and I still use many of the skills I learned in the design department in my freelance career. I also understand how important an archive is to an artist and the role a museum plays in preserving collections and teasing out the ideas to show visitors.
Freelance work can be insecure, of course, but it’s generally good and well paid when you get it. On the positive side the freedom is very important to me but the downside is not being able to work closely within a team, especially in a museum environment.
I’ve worked in many different industries and I can honestly say museums are the best places to work, especially the NPG, which is a very special place. It has been a fantastic journey since leaving and my work is starting to be archived and collected.
Birmingham Library have expressed an interest in archiving my work and it’s great to be able to create a legacy in this way, but I will always miss working in museums.”
Colin Philpott, cultural consultant and author
Senior-level restructuring at the National Media Museum, Bradford, where he was director, prompted Colin Philpott to take voluntary redundancy in April 2012 to set up his own media consultancy and pursue creative projects.
“I loved my eight years at Bradford but there is life beyond the museum.
Vital experience I gained there about how to raise money, and how to relate to the private sector has helped me forge a new portfolio, which includes running Bradford Breakthrough, a lobbying group for the city, programming festivals, writing a book and becoming a non-executive director in the NHS and for a film company.
I also have 25 years’ experience at the BBC to draw on and you quickly realise how many people you do know. You can’t be bashful – you have to be prepared to sell yourself.
You have to invest time in unpaid development, talking to people about longshot possibilities, for example. The fruits may only come six months later, if at all, and you have to be resilient.
We all need to feel we’re part of something and there are withdrawal symptoms, but I don’t spend that much time on my own.”
Simon Jones, Military historian and author
Simon Jones left National Museums Liverpool in 2004, where he was curator of the King’s Regiment Museum, and now runs battlefield tours in Europe, North Africa, Canada and Turkey.
“The decision to go freelance was based partly on my wife’s career. She is a conservator and was offered her dream job so I nobly sacrificed my career for her! I’d already been doing battlefield tours and knew there would be more work.
It wasn’t an easy decision to leave Liverpool as we loved it there, but I’d done what I wanted to do in terms of exhibitions. I’m in a related field and using the same knowledge, but I’m more in control of it.
It’s seasonal, so it is difficult to generate income all year round but there is a lot of interest in military history so I’m lucky to be in a field where there’s so much potential, especially with the first world war anniversary next year.
One thing that working in museums gives you is the ability to reduce complex ideas to simple terms, and this is something I’ve been able to apply to my tours.”
Alison Coles, director of development, University of Kent
Alison Coles’s role at the University of Kent, where she has worked for two years, covers fundraising, alumni relations andcorporate events. She moved into the higher education sector seven years ago from St Albans Museum, where she was public services manager.
“The people in higher education are similar to museum people. They tend to be socially conscious and team players.
Exhibitions don’t come together on their own, and if you can cope with the time constraints, the shoestring budgets, and satisfy the tough customer audience, you can adapt to any public-facing role.
Museum people are always focused on exactly who they are trying to serve, and these are great qualities to transfer to other jobs and sectors.
I knew I had skills I could match to other sectors. I had run the museum development trust and the Friends’ group, which isn’t far from fundraising and alumni relations.
So moving from one sector to another is not necessarily a huge culture shock – the much bigger jump is between the public and private sectors.
What’s important is to understand what you bring to any role and to work out what you want to develop within yourself.”
Kiran Singh Sirah, cultural educator and folklorist
Kiran Singh Sirah spent 10 years in Glasgow, including six years as learning and access curator at Glasgow Museums and two years at National Museums Scotland. In 2011 he moved to the United States when he was awarded a Rotary World Peace Fellowship to study peace and conflict resolution.
“I loved my time in Glasgow working with communities across religious divides, but this was a chance to do something different and with an international dimension. It’s unusual for someone with an arts background to be given the fellowship, but I’m still connecting with museums through partnerships I’ve set up with various east coast museums.
My work in Glasgow centred on social justice programmes and this theme has carried through – all my work has a social purpose and I intend to carry this on.
I learned so much from being in museums, from curating and refining the idea of what makes a community exhibition work, to management and presentation skills.
Last month I gave a talk at the United Nations about cultural objects and it’s this working across the range and bringing my cultural knowledge into different sectors, whether they are political, charity or development organisations, that makes it such an adventure to be here. But my heart is in the grassroots and the educator’s role is to bring people together and facilitate discussion.
Museums are the ideal places to connect people, ideas and objects and I aim to continue working with them.
The passion, energy and quirkiness of people in museums gave me such a boost and I miss that. I miss getting lost in the stores and letting my imagination run wild. But what I miss most is the cafe, where wonderful conversations about culture and the world take place.”
But people often underestimate themselves, and, as our case studies show, with some serious self-scrutiny, the skills, experience and knowledge that are built up in museums and galleries can be transferred to other – even commercial – sectors.
“You can’t choose what happens to you, but you can choose how you respond to it,” says Kathy Gee, a former chief executive of the East Midlands’ branch of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and now the director of Volition Associates, which offers research and evaluation services to the cultural sector and also coaching to individuals.
“If redundancy is forced on you and you are desperate for work you still need to take stock because competition for jobs is fierce and the candidate who can demonstrate passion as well as skill will succeed.
“The people I work with are often at a fairly senior level and thinking about leaving for various reasons but are unsure if this is what they want; they just know they are fed up or they don’t believe in what they are doing any more. Or they may be in shock after redundancy.”
She adds: “But before they start making any choices about jobs to apply for or directions to take, I ask them to explore what sort of person they are, what their values are and what matters to them.
"If they can build this level of self-awareness, they will understand whether they are running towards something rather than away from it, make better choices and be a lot happier.”
Alice Grant, director, ClothSpot
Alice Grant spent 27 years working in the museum sector, in jobs that included documentation manager at the Victoria and Albert Museum, head of collections information at the Science Museum and 10 years as a freelance consultant, before deciding to set up an online dress fabric shop in 2011.
“I set up ClothSpot partly for family reasons and partly because I became disenchanted with the sector. The economic climate started to make it difficult for a consultant to be positive about museums. I did a skills audit on myself and worked up a rigorous business model.
I found my information and project management skills suited running my own business. It can be hard to set up and you have to be prepared to take it step by step.
Sometimes museums don’t get excited enough about the backroom stuff – analysing what they are doing well and how to refine processes and bring costs down. It’s about understanding your markets and cutting your cloth according to your resources, to use a fitting analogy.
One of the biggest obstacles has been learning how to find suppliers but my research skills and experience of dealing with people has stood me in good stead and I’ve now got a growing network of brokers and suppliers.
I’m going back to my roots – my mum and grandma taught dressmaking and I grew up sewing and had clothes stalls in markets.
I’m rediscovering how good business comes about from being considerate and polite. I had fantastic experiences in museums but I’ve never been happier professionally than I am now.”
Mahtab Hussain, artist/photographer
Mahtab Hussain worked for two years as a design assistant at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG), which followed a couple of years spent doing museum internships, and set up as an artist and freelance photographer when his contract ended in 2010.
“I felt a great sense of loss when I left the portrait gallery but it gave me a chance to build on my long-term photographic practice.
I’d been developing a photographic project in my spare time in Birmingham addressing the complexities of British Muslim communities around the themes of displacement, identity and masculinity. This has really started to take off and 2013 looks like a very exciting year for me.
One of the most valuable lessons I learned from working in museums was seeing what was required to produce a successful exhibition and just how many departments came together to achieve this.
I now feel I’ve got a good understanding of how to fabricate a show, and I still use many of the skills I learned in the design department in my freelance career. I also understand how important an archive is to an artist and the role a museum plays in preserving collections and teasing out the ideas to show visitors.
Freelance work can be insecure, of course, but it’s generally good and well paid when you get it. On the positive side the freedom is very important to me but the downside is not being able to work closely within a team, especially in a museum environment.
I’ve worked in many different industries and I can honestly say museums are the best places to work, especially the NPG, which is a very special place. It has been a fantastic journey since leaving and my work is starting to be archived and collected.
Birmingham Library have expressed an interest in archiving my work and it’s great to be able to create a legacy in this way, but I will always miss working in museums.”
Colin Philpott, cultural consultant and author
Senior-level restructuring at the National Media Museum, Bradford, where he was director, prompted Colin Philpott to take voluntary redundancy in April 2012 to set up his own media consultancy and pursue creative projects.
“I loved my eight years at Bradford but there is life beyond the museum.
Vital experience I gained there about how to raise money, and how to relate to the private sector has helped me forge a new portfolio, which includes running Bradford Breakthrough, a lobbying group for the city, programming festivals, writing a book and becoming a non-executive director in the NHS and for a film company.
I also have 25 years’ experience at the BBC to draw on and you quickly realise how many people you do know. You can’t be bashful – you have to be prepared to sell yourself.
You have to invest time in unpaid development, talking to people about longshot possibilities, for example. The fruits may only come six months later, if at all, and you have to be resilient.
We all need to feel we’re part of something and there are withdrawal symptoms, but I don’t spend that much time on my own.”
Simon Jones, Military historian and author
Simon Jones left National Museums Liverpool in 2004, where he was curator of the King’s Regiment Museum, and now runs battlefield tours in Europe, North Africa, Canada and Turkey.
“The decision to go freelance was based partly on my wife’s career. She is a conservator and was offered her dream job so I nobly sacrificed my career for her! I’d already been doing battlefield tours and knew there would be more work.
It wasn’t an easy decision to leave Liverpool as we loved it there, but I’d done what I wanted to do in terms of exhibitions. I’m in a related field and using the same knowledge, but I’m more in control of it.
It’s seasonal, so it is difficult to generate income all year round but there is a lot of interest in military history so I’m lucky to be in a field where there’s so much potential, especially with the first world war anniversary next year.
One thing that working in museums gives you is the ability to reduce complex ideas to simple terms, and this is something I’ve been able to apply to my tours.”
Alison Coles, director of development, University of Kent
Alison Coles’s role at the University of Kent, where she has worked for two years, covers fundraising, alumni relations andcorporate events. She moved into the higher education sector seven years ago from St Albans Museum, where she was public services manager.
“The people in higher education are similar to museum people. They tend to be socially conscious and team players.
Exhibitions don’t come together on their own, and if you can cope with the time constraints, the shoestring budgets, and satisfy the tough customer audience, you can adapt to any public-facing role.
Museum people are always focused on exactly who they are trying to serve, and these are great qualities to transfer to other jobs and sectors.
I knew I had skills I could match to other sectors. I had run the museum development trust and the Friends’ group, which isn’t far from fundraising and alumni relations.
So moving from one sector to another is not necessarily a huge culture shock – the much bigger jump is between the public and private sectors.
What’s important is to understand what you bring to any role and to work out what you want to develop within yourself.”
Kiran Singh Sirah, cultural educator and folklorist
Kiran Singh Sirah spent 10 years in Glasgow, including six years as learning and access curator at Glasgow Museums and two years at National Museums Scotland. In 2011 he moved to the United States when he was awarded a Rotary World Peace Fellowship to study peace and conflict resolution.
“I loved my time in Glasgow working with communities across religious divides, but this was a chance to do something different and with an international dimension. It’s unusual for someone with an arts background to be given the fellowship, but I’m still connecting with museums through partnerships I’ve set up with various east coast museums.
My work in Glasgow centred on social justice programmes and this theme has carried through – all my work has a social purpose and I intend to carry this on.
I learned so much from being in museums, from curating and refining the idea of what makes a community exhibition work, to management and presentation skills.
Last month I gave a talk at the United Nations about cultural objects and it’s this working across the range and bringing my cultural knowledge into different sectors, whether they are political, charity or development organisations, that makes it such an adventure to be here. But my heart is in the grassroots and the educator’s role is to bring people together and facilitate discussion.
Museums are the ideal places to connect people, ideas and objects and I aim to continue working with them.
The passion, energy and quirkiness of people in museums gave me such a boost and I miss that. I miss getting lost in the stores and letting my imagination run wild. But what I miss most is the cafe, where wonderful conversations about culture and the world take place.”
