The working life of Museum of London

Myrofora Neoptolemou, Newcastle University Museum Studies MA student writes:

As part of my MA Museum Studies course, I had my two months work experience at the Museum in Docklands and Museum of London. An informal appointment in advance with Frazer Swift, the Head of Learning, to discuss both sides’ expectations, turned out to be very useful. I expected to gain for my placement a wide experience of museum’s operations/activities. Therefore Frazer wisely decided to split my placement into the Access & Learning Department for the first month and Early London History and Collections Department for the second. In this way he successfully satisfied my expectations as I could experience learning and curatorial job of the museum as well!

For the first moment it was clear that the museum respected its volunteers and is interested not only gaining from them, but also offering them experience that will increase their knowledge, develop their skills and be useful for their career progression. All the museum staffs were so friendly and helpful. Even I know I will soon forget the names, I am sure I will always have their smiley faces engraved in my memory! Good communication and relationships amongst the members of any organisation is of vital importance. It makes your work even more interesting, exciting and inspiring!

Kirsty Sullivan was my supervisor while working in the Access & Learning Department. Working with her it was just a pleasure! I was first involved in the evaluation procedures which sounds like a bit of boring paperwork. I found so useful to know what visitors think about the services and helpful for constantly improving them, trying to satisfy different people’s needs and expectations. In this way each visitor is faced as an individual, given the opportunity to express his/her opinion and feel crucial and valued as his/her voice is heard.

In addition, I attended several sessions for primary and secondary schools, groups with special educational needs, families, toddlers (under 5’s) and carers and adult tours. I feel so lucky because the museum has full programmes of various events and sessions such as storytelling, drama and object handling. Schools sessions were designed to be relevant to the National Curriculum. The freelancers, who led the sessions, catered for different classes’ needs and used their prior knowledge to be flexible and adapt the sessions’ structure.

My work experience coincided with the opening of the Jack the Ripper and the East End exhibition. I was interested in creating the exit evaluation questionnaires of this temporary exhibition and I was given the chance! I had never developed a questionnaire, but with Frazer’s and Kirsty’s co-operation and step by step advice, I managed to put together a questionnaire which matched what the members of the project team wanted to find out. Then Frazer edited it and cut down a lot of questions. He has plenty of experience in evaluations and he respects the time taken by the museum’s visitors to fill in a questionnaire! The last step was interviewing people and getting a sample of 100. This was a challenge! I tried to be smiley and kind with the visitors while asking whether they would like to help the museum evaluating the exhibition. I tried being smiley even after people refused, which was not the easiest thing, I have to admit! It is amazing how different people feel about the same artefacts and how they react alternatively to the messages communicated in the exhibition! The whole activity was very informative and useful and I found it was an enjoyable experience thoroughly!