“East Anglia is the land of the Celts, the land of the Romans, the land of Anglo-Saxons, and the land of famous artists such as Con- stable and Gainsborough,” says Bill Seaman, the museums, arts and culture manager at Colchester and Ipswich Museums.
Collectively, the five venues that Seaman oversees comprise history from Roman times to the present day. Colchester, Britain’s oldest recorded town, houses the famous castle, a venue whose history begins with the Romans. Hollytrees, another museum in the Essex town, takes in social history from the 17th century until now, dis- played in a Georgian townhouse.
And Colchester’s Natural History Museum, which is in a deconsecrated church, explores the wildlife and natural phenomena in north-east Essex over the centuries. Those three venues make up one branch of the museum service that Seaman manages.
The Ipswich branch comprises Christchurch Mansion, a grand Tudor building that holds the biggest collection of Constable and Gainsborough paintings outside London, and Ipswich Museum and Art Gallery, a Victorian museum with world collections, an Anglo-Saxon hoard, geology, an art collection and displays telling the history of the town during the 20th century.
Colchester Borough Council and Ipswich Borough Council merged their museums services in 2007, and Seaman is in charge of the combined organisation. At the time the decision was met with a degree of local scepticism, but its lasting effects have been largely positive.
“The joint service has the collective resources of two services at its disposal,” says Seaman, who also says that this allows staff more opportunities across the two local authorities.
“Efficiencies in staffing, care of collections, subject specialisms, display and design have been brought together, which really comes into play when you have a major project and can call upon a much larger team to troubleshoot issues. We have a supportive pair of local authorities.”
Good experience
Seaman joined the museums service in 2013, just in time to see through the £4.2m redevelopment of Colchester Castle. It was a site and collection he was familiar with, having been the visitor services manager for Colchester Museums in the early 1990s.
“It just so happened the displays I’d installed previously were the ones being taken out when I came back,” he says.
The castle is now populated with tablets, projections and apps, not mannequins, to enliven its history. There’s even a Roman chariot ride experience that uses gaming technology and some level of skill to win.
Colchester recently benefited from the addition of a branch of the upmarket department store Fenwick, too. Surprisingly, the museums service profited from this.
“On a pre-building dig, the Colchester Archaeological Trust found an amazing survival from the Boudiccan revolt,” says Seaman. “They unearthed a bag of well-preserved gold jewellery and valuables buried in haste by a veteran Roman soldier and his wife escaping – we imagine in vain – from the Iceni hordes.”
The Fenwick Group donated the find, and a display case, to the museum service. “We’ve made reproductions of the jewellery, which are being sold in the castle shop,” Seaman says. “It’s been a great example of local commerce promoting the significance of the town and supporting its heritage.”
Seaman’s next project is to redevelop Ipswich Museum and Art Gallery. It was founded in 1846 in the centre of town on Museum Street, but moved to its location on High Street in 1881. Ironically, given the street names, Seaman says that in its current location there isn’t a great deal of natural passing trade so the museum has to be an attractive destination for people to visit.
“The redevelopment has to engage the people who already value their museum so they love it even more, but we also have to extend our appeal to other Ipswich residents and the wider region,” says Seaman.
“Ipswich has a very diverse population from all around the world, and there are connections we should be making,” Seaman continues. “The same amazing collections that the museum originally acquired to tell a Victorian story of the British empire we can now use in a different way to tell the
story of modern Ipswich and the town’s significance through history.”
In recent years, Seaman has been raising awareness of the museum and its collections. In 2013, the painting Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadow (1831) by John Constable was saved for the nation via a new partnership between the National Galleries of Scotland, Colchester and Ipswich Museums, Salisbury Museum, Tate Britain and Amgueddfa Cymru (National Museum of Wales). The group jointly fundraised to make the acquisition, with the help of the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), and others.
The painting went on display as part of an exhibition of Constable’s work at Christchurch Mansion in Ipswich from September 2015 to January 2016.
“It was a fantastic example of partnership working, and what really worked for us is that it threw the spotlight onto our Constable collection,” Seaman explains. “It reinforced the importance of the Ipswich collections and contextualised the painting brilliantly.”
Seaman says that capitalising on the museum service’s assets is one of the keys to its future success. “The Constable show created a huge spike in our visitor numbers,” he says. “It was big news and brought a new audience to Christchurch Mansion.”
Innovative recruitment
Seaman worked in theatre before his museum career and finds his previous experience useful, not least, for recruitment.
“Open auditions meant that you could see 100 people a day, rather than just six or seven, which tends to be the way recruitment processes happen in museums,” he says.
Seaman has introduced a system where trainee applicants are asked for two- minute videos of themselves talking about something they feel passionately about.
“Qualifications are only part of the picture. It’s character and attitude that I really look for and a standard application doesn’t help with that. The people who we employ here are dynamic and have a passion for what they do. I can’t find them from paper alone, but a short video reveals a great deal about the applicant. It’s been a big breakthrough.”
The trainee scheme – titled the Training Museum – that Colchester and Ipswich Museums runs has benefited greatly from this process. “One of the things we’ve been doing with our trainees is actively recruiting in different ways, not just looking for people who probably would have found their way into the museum sector anyway, but those with genuinely new perspectives and new skills to bring to us,” says Seaman.
In fact, Seaman prefers to employ people who have experience outside of museums. Before he got a job at the Natural History Museum in 1988, he had worked on a farm, as a teacher, in the theatre and for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. What he found vital throughout all of these roles is the ability to communicate effectively.
“We’ve created a new hybrid role of collections and learning curator, which started in 2015,” he says. “Traditional curatorial skills and collections knowledge are clearly important, but what’s essential is the willingness, ability, and passion to communicate that knowledge to a range of different audiences. That’s what we need in local museums like this.”
Seaman brings this broad outlook to his wider role too. He likes making connections, whether between people, museums, or collections. He remembers working with a horse-drawn Smythe seed drill one day on the farm when he was a teenager, then going inside to watch Star Trek. He never thought the two could be connected.
“In my museum career I’ve worked with Smythe seed drills when I was at Norfolk Museums, and I also managed an exhibition on Star Trek at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Welcome to museums! Nothing is irrelevant.”
Bill Seaman started his career teaching English as a foreign language, and went on to work, including acting, in community theatres in Hull and Birmingham. Seaman then became a schools liaison officer for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers before starting a role as an events officer at the Natural History Museum in London in 1988.
He became the visitor services manager for Colchester Museums in 1990, before being appointed as the head of exhibitions and museums services at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in 1996. He took up the role of assistant head of Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service in 1999, until 2013 when he was appointed the museums, arts and culture manager at Colchester and Ipswich Museums. Seaman has an MA in museums studies, and an Associateship of the Museums Association. He sits on the board for Gainsborough’s House in Suffolk and is also part of the New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership Cultural Board.
There are 77 staff employed across Colchester and Ipswich Museums service, and about 50 volunteers. In 2007, Colchester Borough Council and Ipswich Borough Council merged their museum services to form Colchester and Ipswich Museums. The organisation reports to both councils.
Colchester and Ipswich Museums service runs five venues. In Colchester, it operates Colchester Castle, Hollytrees, and the Natural History Museum. In Ipswich, it runs Ipswich Museum and Art Gallery, and Christchurch Mansion.
Annual turnover across the service is about £1.8m.The museum service has just been awarded £568,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund for the Transforming People to Transform Museums project to work with 24 trainees over three years. The present Arts Council England-funded scheme, the Training Museum, won the 2016 Arts and Culture Suffolk Adult Learner Award.
Collectively, the five venues that Seaman oversees comprise history from Roman times to the present day. Colchester, Britain’s oldest recorded town, houses the famous castle, a venue whose history begins with the Romans. Hollytrees, another museum in the Essex town, takes in social history from the 17th century until now, dis- played in a Georgian townhouse.
And Colchester’s Natural History Museum, which is in a deconsecrated church, explores the wildlife and natural phenomena in north-east Essex over the centuries. Those three venues make up one branch of the museum service that Seaman manages.
The Ipswich branch comprises Christchurch Mansion, a grand Tudor building that holds the biggest collection of Constable and Gainsborough paintings outside London, and Ipswich Museum and Art Gallery, a Victorian museum with world collections, an Anglo-Saxon hoard, geology, an art collection and displays telling the history of the town during the 20th century.
Colchester Borough Council and Ipswich Borough Council merged their museums services in 2007, and Seaman is in charge of the combined organisation. At the time the decision was met with a degree of local scepticism, but its lasting effects have been largely positive.
“The joint service has the collective resources of two services at its disposal,” says Seaman, who also says that this allows staff more opportunities across the two local authorities.
“Efficiencies in staffing, care of collections, subject specialisms, display and design have been brought together, which really comes into play when you have a major project and can call upon a much larger team to troubleshoot issues. We have a supportive pair of local authorities.”
Good experience
Seaman joined the museums service in 2013, just in time to see through the £4.2m redevelopment of Colchester Castle. It was a site and collection he was familiar with, having been the visitor services manager for Colchester Museums in the early 1990s.
“It just so happened the displays I’d installed previously were the ones being taken out when I came back,” he says.
The castle is now populated with tablets, projections and apps, not mannequins, to enliven its history. There’s even a Roman chariot ride experience that uses gaming technology and some level of skill to win.
Colchester recently benefited from the addition of a branch of the upmarket department store Fenwick, too. Surprisingly, the museums service profited from this.
“On a pre-building dig, the Colchester Archaeological Trust found an amazing survival from the Boudiccan revolt,” says Seaman. “They unearthed a bag of well-preserved gold jewellery and valuables buried in haste by a veteran Roman soldier and his wife escaping – we imagine in vain – from the Iceni hordes.”
The Fenwick Group donated the find, and a display case, to the museum service. “We’ve made reproductions of the jewellery, which are being sold in the castle shop,” Seaman says. “It’s been a great example of local commerce promoting the significance of the town and supporting its heritage.”
Seaman’s next project is to redevelop Ipswich Museum and Art Gallery. It was founded in 1846 in the centre of town on Museum Street, but moved to its location on High Street in 1881. Ironically, given the street names, Seaman says that in its current location there isn’t a great deal of natural passing trade so the museum has to be an attractive destination for people to visit.
“The redevelopment has to engage the people who already value their museum so they love it even more, but we also have to extend our appeal to other Ipswich residents and the wider region,” says Seaman.
“Ipswich has a very diverse population from all around the world, and there are connections we should be making,” Seaman continues. “The same amazing collections that the museum originally acquired to tell a Victorian story of the British empire we can now use in a different way to tell the
story of modern Ipswich and the town’s significance through history.”
In recent years, Seaman has been raising awareness of the museum and its collections. In 2013, the painting Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadow (1831) by John Constable was saved for the nation via a new partnership between the National Galleries of Scotland, Colchester and Ipswich Museums, Salisbury Museum, Tate Britain and Amgueddfa Cymru (National Museum of Wales). The group jointly fundraised to make the acquisition, with the help of the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), and others.
The painting went on display as part of an exhibition of Constable’s work at Christchurch Mansion in Ipswich from September 2015 to January 2016.
“It was a fantastic example of partnership working, and what really worked for us is that it threw the spotlight onto our Constable collection,” Seaman explains. “It reinforced the importance of the Ipswich collections and contextualised the painting brilliantly.”
Seaman says that capitalising on the museum service’s assets is one of the keys to its future success. “The Constable show created a huge spike in our visitor numbers,” he says. “It was big news and brought a new audience to Christchurch Mansion.”
Innovative recruitment
Seaman worked in theatre before his museum career and finds his previous experience useful, not least, for recruitment.
“Open auditions meant that you could see 100 people a day, rather than just six or seven, which tends to be the way recruitment processes happen in museums,” he says.
Seaman has introduced a system where trainee applicants are asked for two- minute videos of themselves talking about something they feel passionately about.
“Qualifications are only part of the picture. It’s character and attitude that I really look for and a standard application doesn’t help with that. The people who we employ here are dynamic and have a passion for what they do. I can’t find them from paper alone, but a short video reveals a great deal about the applicant. It’s been a big breakthrough.”
The trainee scheme – titled the Training Museum – that Colchester and Ipswich Museums runs has benefited greatly from this process. “One of the things we’ve been doing with our trainees is actively recruiting in different ways, not just looking for people who probably would have found their way into the museum sector anyway, but those with genuinely new perspectives and new skills to bring to us,” says Seaman.
In fact, Seaman prefers to employ people who have experience outside of museums. Before he got a job at the Natural History Museum in 1988, he had worked on a farm, as a teacher, in the theatre and for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. What he found vital throughout all of these roles is the ability to communicate effectively.
“We’ve created a new hybrid role of collections and learning curator, which started in 2015,” he says. “Traditional curatorial skills and collections knowledge are clearly important, but what’s essential is the willingness, ability, and passion to communicate that knowledge to a range of different audiences. That’s what we need in local museums like this.”
Seaman brings this broad outlook to his wider role too. He likes making connections, whether between people, museums, or collections. He remembers working with a horse-drawn Smythe seed drill one day on the farm when he was a teenager, then going inside to watch Star Trek. He never thought the two could be connected.
“In my museum career I’ve worked with Smythe seed drills when I was at Norfolk Museums, and I also managed an exhibition on Star Trek at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Welcome to museums! Nothing is irrelevant.”
Bill Seaman at a glance
Bill Seaman started his career teaching English as a foreign language, and went on to work, including acting, in community theatres in Hull and Birmingham. Seaman then became a schools liaison officer for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers before starting a role as an events officer at the Natural History Museum in London in 1988.
He became the visitor services manager for Colchester Museums in 1990, before being appointed as the head of exhibitions and museums services at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in 1996. He took up the role of assistant head of Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service in 1999, until 2013 when he was appointed the museums, arts and culture manager at Colchester and Ipswich Museums. Seaman has an MA in museums studies, and an Associateship of the Museums Association. He sits on the board for Gainsborough’s House in Suffolk and is also part of the New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership Cultural Board.
Colchester and Ipswich Museums at a glance
There are 77 staff employed across Colchester and Ipswich Museums service, and about 50 volunteers. In 2007, Colchester Borough Council and Ipswich Borough Council merged their museum services to form Colchester and Ipswich Museums. The organisation reports to both councils.
Colchester and Ipswich Museums service runs five venues. In Colchester, it operates Colchester Castle, Hollytrees, and the Natural History Museum. In Ipswich, it runs Ipswich Museum and Art Gallery, and Christchurch Mansion.
Annual turnover across the service is about £1.8m.The museum service has just been awarded £568,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund for the Transforming People to Transform Museums project to work with 24 trainees over three years. The present Arts Council England-funded scheme, the Training Museum, won the 2016 Arts and Culture Suffolk Adult Learner Award.