Reflections on 2024 & thinking ahead to 2025

2024 was a busy year working with both regular and new clients. This included:

  • New Contemporaries - evaluating Young New Contemporaries for under-represented young people studying an art A level, to support them into creative careers, as well as carrying out research with some of the New Contemporaries alumni artists;

  • Tate - running training sessions and evaluating their mentoring programme matching Tate staff with Tate Collective Producers;

  • Foundling Museum - evaluating their Tracing Our Tales art and creative writing traineeships, as well as their new alumni trainees group;

  • London Transport Museum - reviewing relevant toolkits across the museum sector, and beyond, to help inform their future toolkit about their Young People’s Programme and careers offer;

  • Group for Education in Museums (GEM) - continuing with the research focusing on Work experience, work placements and inclusive pathways by disseminating to GEM members via the area and nation groups, and creating a toolkit to support the members. In addition, I ran a workshop at the GEM Conference in September 2024 and gave a presentation at the Museums + Heritage Show in May 2024;

  • Royal Museums Greenwich - recruiting and training up a Peer Research team to consult with other young people to inform their future youth programme.

I am excited for 2025, continuing to work with New Contemporaries, Tate, the Foundling Museum and the Group for Education in Museums, with two new clients:

  • National Paralympic Heritage Trust (NPHT) - working in collaboration with freelancer Siân Rosa Hunter Dodsworth to evaluate their inclusive approach to working with neurodiverse and disabled people, with my area of focus being their work placements with young people and traineeships with adults;

  • Idle Women - supporting them in setting up a traineeship programme for the women they are working with from local refuge Humraaz for Black and Minority Ethnic women who are experiencing domestic abuse and all forms of Harmful Traditional Practices.

Watch this space for more news in 2025. Happy New Year everyone!

GEM online Toolkit on Work experience, work placements & inclusive pathways

I am excited that, as part of Discover! Creative Careers Week, I have now launched with GEM the GEM toolkit on Work experience, work placements and inclusive pathways with big thanks to all of the contributors especially the case study organisations. We do hope it will be helpful in supporting museum & heritage staff to offer work-based opportunities for young people. Watch this space for further work on this, including Case Studies #34 focusing on Careers Pathways in Museums to be launched in March 2025.

GEM Conference 2024

I attended the GEM conference in Bristol from 11-13 September and enjoyed delivering a workshop, which was a mapping exercise as part of my work with GEM on work experience, work placements and inclusive pathways. I began with a short presentation on the research so far, and then everyone introduced themselves by placing a postit with their name and organisation on a large map. They responded to the following questions  either through discussion or adding to the mapping exercise:

  • What do you already offer or are aware of in your local area?

  • What are the challenges & barriers?

  • Where are the gaps?

  • What partnerships are enablers? 

  • Where could connections be made that don’t already exist?

  • What support would you like to see from GEM?

We then ended with everyone writing down on a postcard one thing they could take away as a follow up to initiate change within their organisation or local area - which could be something big or small.

Other conference highlights for me were the keynote speakers Turi King and John Falk, the workshop I participated in focusing on career confidence led by Liz Fraser-Betts from Dot Dot Dash Coaching, and the Museum Bums tour of Bristol Museum & Art Gallery. It was my first conference in real life for six years so good to reconnect with peers I hadn’t seen for a while and to make some new contacts. Thanks to the GEM team for a brilliant experience!

Group mapping exercise: work experience, work placements and inclusive pathways.



A Summer of European History & Culture

We are lucky to be able to spend our summers abroad with our kids in our camper van and this year we went further afield, starting in Belgium, and heading to Munich via Luxembourg, and then back via Lake Constance and France. This year historical and cultural visits included Art Gallery Am Tunnel, the National Museum of History & Art, and the Bock Casements in the stunning Luxembourg City, along with the Haus de Kunst (Munich), the Kloster Andechs (Herrsching), and the Mercedes Benz Museum (Stuttgart) in Germany, and the Centre Pompidou- Metz, Chateau Musee Vodou (Strasbourg) and various stained glass windows in the cathedral & churches of Metz (including those designed by artists Jean Cocteau and Marc Chagall) in France. We also had a day trip into Stein am Rhein in Switzerland where we visited the St George’s Abbey Museum and the Museum Lindwurm.

Two of the highlights of our trip were, firstly, the Museum Haus Dix where artist Otto Dix lived with his wife, Martha, and their three children from 1936 until his death, in 1969. This house is located in Germany on a hillside with a view over Lake Constance, between Gaienhofen and Hemmenhofen. There weren’t many of his famous artworks there - most are in the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, sadly closed when we were there - but they dealt with this well by putting monochrome images of these paintings on the interior walls of the house where they think they were hung. You could scan a QR code to find out more about each of the artworks, as well as hear about the history of the house and also family life from one of Dix’s relatives. Secondly, the Weissonhof Museum located on the edge of Stuttgart, which is based in two semi-detached houses designed by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, as part of the Weissenhof housing estate. This estate was built for the 1927 Deutscher Werkbund exhibition in Stuttgart, Germany. It was an international showcase of modern architecture's aspiration to provide cheap, simple, efficient, and good-quality housing, and architect Mies van der Rohe was in charge of the project. The building was simple yet stunning in terms of it’s design and highly conscious of utilising space, including having a roof terrace. The rest of the estate - with a few buildings sadly destroyed - is privately owned but each has a plaque outside with information about the architect and an interior floor plan.

The Weissonhof Museum on the edge of Stuttgart

M+H show recording

I’m pleased to now be able to watch the sessions I missed at the M+H show and to share the recording of my talk as part of the Group for Education in Museums (GEM) talk on The Future of Museum & Heritage Learning. Take a look here

Speaking at the M+H Show in May

Royal Museums Greenwich

I am excited to be working with the young people’s team at Royal Museums Greenwich to recruit and train up a team of Peer Researchers to consult with local young people over the summer. This will help inform their next phase of programming .

Young New Contemporaries Zine launch

I am enjoying working with New Contemporaries on evaluating their pilot Young New Contemporaries (YNC) programme, run in partnership with the Institute of Education and supported by Art Fund Reimagine. As the culmination of Year 1, the group of Year 13 students (who are studying an arts related A level) have produced a zine which was launched at Camden Arts Centre during April. The YNC programme will continue to support the students next year as they go on to further study, creative practice or employment.

For more information about the YNC programme, the zine and the zine launch take a look here

Museums + Heritage Show

I was delighted to be speaking on day 2 of the Museums + Heritage Show as part of the talk The Future of Museum & Heritage Learning along with Rachel Tranter and Kara Wescombe-Blackman from the Group for Education in Museums (GEM). I was speaking about the work I am doing on Work experience, Work placements and Inclusive pathways, and now have a number of conversations to follow up on after my talk and from the networking sessions I attended in the afternoon. It was my fist time at the show. I will be back next year!

London Transport museum

I’ve always wanted to work with the young people’s team at the London Transport Museum (LTM) as they run an amazing youth employment programme offering a wide range of opportunities for young people. I am carrying out research and a review of existing toolkits and resources published for the museums & galleries sector on youth employment and talent development, including making recommendations for LTM’s future resource development, as an update to their Journey Planner toolkit focusing on apprenticeships from 2016.

Foundling Museum's Tracing Our Tales Alumni group

In addition to continuing to evaluate the Tracing Our Tales Traineeships for the Foundling Museum - this term there has been another Creative Writing Traineeship led by poet Anthony Anaxagorou - I have started to evaluate the Foundling Museum’s Tracing Our Tales Alumni group. The plan is for them to meet every month as a way to stay connected to the Foundling Museum and for the Museum to be able to track them in terms of what they go onto do next.

We took some of the alumni trainees to the Westminster Abbey Royal Carol Concert: Together at Christmas, hosted by the Museum’s patron the Princess of Wales, which was a very special event and a lovely way to start celebrating Christmas.

Rachel standing outside the entrance to Westminster Abbey with a christmas tree to the left and people gathering

Young New Contemporaries

I am thrilled to be working with New Contemporaries on evaluating their pilot Young New Contemporaries programme, across two years with a group of 30 Year 13 students in their final year of studying an arts related A level and then into their next year beyond. This programme particularly excites me as it provides the opportunity for the organisation to support and stay in touch with the young people for an additional year to see what they go onto do next, maybe studying, or employment, or creative pursuits, or something else. Young New Contemporaries is run in partnership with the Institute of Education and is supported by Art Fund Reimagine.

You can find out more about Young New Contemporaries here

Summer holiday visits

Over the summer I visited a number of museums and galleries with my children. During our camping trip in France we went to the Musée de la Bande Dessinée in Angoulême, featuring the artwork from a wide range of comic books which my boys enjoyed visually even though many of them were in French! We also visited The Cathédrale de Jean Linard, an outsider art sculptural masterpiece created by one artist in a wooded area not far from Bourges (see image below). I could have stayed there all day!

Back in London, we enjoyed a day with friends at the newly opened Young V&A with the kids enjoying, in particular, the small worlds art commission, the arcades area and the theatre performance space. The front of house staff were very friendly and it was amazing to see how the building has been transformed.

I also took my children to do the detective hunt along the South Kensington pedestrian tunnel that I created with Monster Chetwynd as part of her Art on the Underground Commission at Gloucester Road tube station. This culminated with a brief visit to the Natural History Museum to find the ‘treasure’ and we explored the Earth Galleries but not for long because it was very hot. The bonus of Exhibition Road is you can pop in and out of the different museums if you know where you want to go inside them, so we also went to the V&A to look at their musical theatre display and the boys loved seeing Scar’s costume from The Lion King.

We also met friends at Hampton Court Palace one day, enjoying actors recreating an event in the Great Hall and visiting the Magic Garden. We are often away during the school holidays so it was enjoyable to visit so many interesting cultural venues not too far from where we live. We are lucky to have London on our doorstep as such an amazing cultural resource!

My youngest son making friends with one of the figures at Jean Linard’s Cathedral

ICA Safeguarding Policy

Back after my summer break, I have been wrapping up my work with the ICA on supporting them by updating their safeguarding policy which they are now actioning in-house, including training up staff ready to re-launch their youth programme. This followed on from my work with them as a critical friend earlier in the year, around them focusing on younger audiences.

Group for Education in Museums

I am pleased to start working with the Group for Education in Museums (GEM) on a scoping project looking into work placements and inclusive career pathways for young people into the museum sector workforce. Watch this space…

Pond Life: Albertopolis & the Lily

Last week I was excited to be at the launch of Pond Life: Albertopolis & the Lily the new commission by Monster Chetwynd at Gloucester Road tube station.

Chetwynd has created a salamander sculpture along with a series of five large-scale sculptural discs located on the disused platform, each featuring creatures that seem to be constructing sections of the Crystal Palace. Chetwynd became fascinated by the giant Amazonian waterlily which was the inspiration behind architect Joseph Paxton’s pioneering design for the Crystal Palace, the building which housed the Great Exhibition in 1851 in Hyde Park and later in Sydenham.

Where I was involved in the commission was in creating the related detective hunt of seven posters placed along the South Kensington pedestrian tunnel, inspired by the book Masquerade by Kit Williams. Visitors are invited to look for the piggy-backing frogs and solve the clues leading to a word that takes them into the Natural History Museum, to discover a hidden history and alternative stories often untold in Museums.

For more information about this Art on the Underground commission visit here

One of the seven posters in the South Kensington pedestrian tunnel

Monster Chetwynd Commission

I am excited to be working with artist Monster Chetwynd on part of her Art on the Underground Commission at Gloucester Road and South Kensington tube stations. I am creating a detective hunt influenced by Kit Williams’ Masquerade at seven poster sites along the South Kensington pedestrian tunnels featuring Monster’s collages, focusing on Paxton’s design for the Crystal Palace. This drew inspiration from the veined structure of Amazonian waterlilies, and was so successful that it raised money to help build the South Kensington Museums.

For further information on Monster’s commission - along with other Art on the Underground 2023 commissions - visit here

Working with the ICA

I’m excited to be working with the ICA staff as a critical friend to think about focusing on younger audiences. This started with an away day workshop with the Curatorial team and will continue with 1:1 conversations with staff at the ICA.

Ending 2022 & Looking ahead to 2023

2022 has been a fantastic year work wise, with continued working from home and an increased return to being in real life. My focus has moved to solely supporting early career individuals, or those looking at making career changes at a later stage, into the museum and gallery sector workforce, especially those individuals who are under-represented in some way.

I have continued to work with Freelands Foundation (setting up their first traineeship), Art on the Underground (supporting on their secondment programme), Tate (evaluating the Tate Collective Producers Mentoring Programme), The Photographers’ Gallery (evaluating the sixth year of their DEVELOP Programme) and the Foundling Museum (evaluating their traineeships for care-experienced young adults), along with a new client - the Wellcome Collection - for whom I worked on a piece of Youth & Early Careers Research along with another freelancer, Rachel Craddock.

In addition, I have been mentoring for University of the Arts London (UAL) and involved in a number of seminars, including chairing a panel discussion for the Museum Futures Summit hosted online by the British Museum and presenting at the launch of the engage journal 46: Generation Z & the Future of Creative Work for which I wrote an article on ‘What next? Supporting on progression routes for young people within the museum and gallery workforce’.

Looking ahead to 2023, I will be continuing with my regular clients, as well as starting to work with the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), and coaching on Arts Emergency’s ten week pilot coaching programme.

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas & here’s to 2023!

Trans Awareness Training

I recently attended a two part online training course focusing on Trans Awareness & Supporting Trans (including Non-Binary) Young People. This was organised by engage & run by The Proud Trust. I am always keen to keep learning and this course resonated with me as a cis woman who has worked with a number of trans and non-binary young people since partnering in 2008 with The Metro Centre, PACE, and Gendered Intelligence on a project with LGBTQ+ young people, inspired by the Gay Icons exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.

For me this training was so much better than any other courses I’ve attended online. I felt able to ask questions in a safe space, and benefitted from hearing from those who were generous to share their lived experience. The small group and the pace of the session allowed breakout conversations, covering a lot without feeling hurried. I would definitely recommend The Proud Trust for training of this kind and will be following up with their online resources for both my work with young people and to enable me to have open conversations with my two children. Thank you to The Proud Trust!