Letters

A Museums Association poll that revealed more than 70% of respondents thought that unpaid internships were exploitative sparked a flurry of comments on the MA’s website. We reprint a selection of views here.

David Cameron has made it clear he is “cool” with using connections to help family and friends! I feel deeply uncomfortable with this sentiment and don’t feel it is right for institutions to use their status to get people to work for free.

At a time when we should be trying to diversify the workforce in museums to keep them relevant to the communities they serve, this can only damage this aspiration because of the fact that the only ones who can benefit from these internships are those who can afford it!

David

I work in Austria and the situation here is quite different. We would like to invite two student interns to work over the summer months for six-week periods each, 10-15 hours per week. However, unpaid work of any kind is mostly prohibited (only “job shadowing” is ok!).

I think this rule is unfair because it prevents motivated young professionals from getting ahead and obtaining valuable experience. That said, the number of unpaid hours permitted each week should be government regulated.

For example, up to 40 hours for the first eight weeks and then up to 20 hours thereafter. Employers should not be able to “hire” an intern for more than six months without pay.

Holly

I have got several unpaid internships with my skills and not connections. Nevertheless I felt used. I learned amazing practical skills but I did so much more than the paid employees.

I was glad to gain the experience but I lost a lot of money and struggled to support myself while having a full-time internship. It is completely unfair that museums do this. I want to learn but at what cost can I gain knowledge in the field?

Jessica

The trouble with unpaid internships is not so much that they exploit the labour of the intern, but that they maintain an unfair system.

Those not fortunate enough to have the means to support themselves while working for free, often doing long hours, are discriminated against in a job market where getting the all-important work experience depends on working without pay.

This flies in the face of all the noble speeches about how museums should be inclusive and representative, and how important it is to have a varied workforce. No diversity programme in the world is going to give us that if at the same time the job market is skewed to favour those who can afford to do an unpaid internship.

Or could it be that certain museums only wish to employ people who uphold middle-class values, and offering fulltime unpaid internships is a convenient way of filtering out “the wrong sort”?

Anonymous

Join the debate: http://bit.ly/isSUgs

In the discussions about axing purchase funds for museums and galleries and the question of acquisitions, I do not think enough emphasis has been laid on the sheer monetary advantage acquisitions can bring to a city and its museums.

With a small acquisitions fund and judicious use of grant funding from various sources, including Friends’ organisations, during my almost 20 years as director of Bristol Art Gallery I acquired paintings that now exceed by far in value the total salary I received over all those years.

And this is, of course, true for many museums and galleries and their staff. This is the hard-nosed argument to a committee.

Arnold Wilson, former director of Bristol Art Gallery, Bath

Many members will doubtless have seen the recent BBC2 television programme, The Secrets of Scott, in which explorer Ben Fogle travelled “somewhere in the Antarctic” to visit the semi-permanent base camp established by Robert Scott prior to his attempt to reach the South Pole in 1911.

The hut is still standing and contains 10,000 original artefacts, “frozen in time”, as one magazine chose to put it. It is undergoing a conservation programme that will take four years at a cost of around £6m.

It is a moot point whether the project impinges on the museum world – can Scott’s hut be regarded as a form of site museum? It hardly fits into the definition of one: access is limited and there is no interpretation.

Why remove precious objects for conservation in a carefully controlled environment, only to return them to the same environment that was the cause of them requiring conservation in the first place?

For whose benefit is this being done?

Graeme Cruickshank, AMA, FMA, Edinburgh

Everyone says that one of the first things to go when there are cuts is the training budget.

Some recent work that I carried out for the Museums Association (MA) into the future of sharing collections knowledge painted a bleak picture of stretched staff having little time to develop themselves, or even leave the office to meet colleagues or attend training.

This is a huge shame given the investment there has been over the last few years to develop people working in the sector.

At the moment it’s hard to know what the future holds for workforce development: we don’t yet know what the priorities are going to be for Renaissance or Arts Council England (ACE), or to what extent the Heritage Lottery Fund’s (HLF) support for workforce development might change.

It is timely then that the future development of the workforce is going to be the subject of a one-day conference in July.

It should give people the opportunity to hear from ACE, HLF, the MA and others about where they see the focus for workforce development being in the future. Let’s hope the event shows that people are still committed to this area of work.

Caitlin Griffiths, museum and heritage consultant

The event is on 4 July at Nottingham Contemporary: www.mla.gov.uk/what/events/Building_Connections

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