Letters

I would like to respond to comments by Maurice Davies in the article about the downsides of transferring to trust status from local authority governance.

At a Renaissance West Midlands funded training course I attended recently a group of museum professionals concluded that working for a local authority was like being a teenager: you don’t have to pay the bills and you can spend your pocket money on additional extras but you do have to be in bed at a certain time and you have to put up with your embarrassing dad when he puts in an appearance at your birthday party and makes a random speech about how proud he is of you.

Being part of a trust is like going off to work or university for the first time – terrifying but totally worth it. You may make mistakes, you may blow the budget on getting Sky Plus or food from Waitrose instead of Lidl but you soon learn that your mistakes affect no one but yourself and you pretty soon put them right.

In my experience, being part of a local authority museum service means bland corporate marketing, no freedom to respond to new media, and a procurement system that has a minor meltdown when you try to order a replica Viking helmet.

It means councillors who know practically nothing about what their museums and galleries are really for and whose social skills mean any opportunities for advocacy are cancelled out as they make a beeline for the free buffet.

As for favourable employment conditions – after recent ructions over local authority pensions who can say how long these benefits will continue to outshine those in the private or third sectors?

No, give me trust status any day and I’ll follow the advice of Adrian Babbidge (as I did when taking over the management of the Uttoxeter Heritage Centre from the local town council) and ensure a water-tight agreement between the local authority and the trust so that museums don’t close or run into the ground from lack of investment.

Laura Wigg-Bailey, freelance heritage consultant

MJ February 2012, News analysis


Museums routinely spend money and effort on evaluations. But evaluations often don’t have the impact they could. Are there gems of valuable information lurking in evaluations that other museums could learn from? And how can evaluations be more useful to the museums that commissioned them in the first place?

Evaluating Evaluation is a research project, funded by Heritage Lottery Fund and the Wellcome Trust, looking at what evaluation of museum displays can tell us and how evaluation might be improved. We’re seeking exemplary evaluations of museum displays of all types and sizes.

If you’ve undertaken, commissioned, or simply read an evaluation you think is excellent, then please send us a copy.

Maurice Davies, head of policy and communication, Museums Association, and Christian Heath, King’s College, London


It was interesting to see the article on internships and some of the individual stories concerned.

Reading the part of the article about Shahana Khaliq reminded me of a talk I heard by a representative of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council about their studentship scheme targeted at ethnic minorities.

One of the points made by the speaker was the very high percentage of studentship recipients who had gone on to get jobs in the sector. The percentage was so high (80%-plus as I recall) and very much higher than that of students from non-targeted MA courses etc, that I was prompted to ask what proportion of those successful candidates were working in jobs directly linked to ethnicity issues such as ethnic minority outreach. I was told it was a significant proportion of them.

While it is obvious that many people in that position will be drawn into such areas, I feel it is dangerous if it is so often the case that ethnic minority professionals end up in such roles rather than in mainstream museum work, that it reinforces the stereotype that established collections and exhibition work is of less interest to people whose ancestors haven’t lived in this country for thousands of years.

The cultural heritage of our country affects us all. The fact that my family comes from Yorkshire and my granddad had an operation for the tendon problem linked to Viking genetic background should not really have much logical influence on my level of interest in Viking history compared with, say, someone whose family comes from the valleys of Wales.

Obviously it does from an emotional viewpoint but when this becomes too ingrained it all too easily becomes a tool for those that wish to promote ethnic division.

The museum profession will be a lot closer to true equal opportunities when members of ethnic minorities are as likely to go into registrar work or exhibition curatorial work as those roles linked to ethnicity issues.

Erik Blakeley

MJ January 2012, All work and no pay


In reference to the article on the Lost in Lace catalogue, with so much talk of collaboration currently in the air, I would like to make special note of the fact that the Crafts Council and Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery produced the Lost in Lace exhibition in association with the University for the Creative Arts.

This added a highly valued higher education partner to the project and enabled a full illustrated book by exhibition curator, Lesley Millar, to be produced, providing significant additional profile to the exhibition and the partnership.

Annabelle Campbell, exhibitions and collections manager, Crafts Council

MJ February 2012, Catalogue: Lost in Lace


A photograph of the Old Royal Naval College, London, in a story about the Olympics was mistakenly captioned as the National Maritime Museum, London.

MJ January 2012, Docklands Museum wins German Olympic funding

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