I took a break over summer to spend time with my kids and returned in September but somehow we are already in mid-October! I am continuing to focus on youth & early careers employability in the arts through my work evaluating programmes at Tate, The Photographers’ Gallery & the Foundling Museum. In addition I am continuing to work with Art on the Underground on supporting on their secondment programme from within Transport for London. I am also very excited to have started to work with the first Freelands Foundation trainee in a mentoring capacity after recruiting in July, alongside supporting staff to make the traineeship the best experience possible. I also continue to mentor individuals either formally or informally. I feel privileged to work with such a great variety of young people and clients.
Proud of my Mentee
I have been mentoring an amazing BA Fine Art student at UAL since February this year. She is from a working class background, and we have been having interesting conversations about use of language in the arts and the transition from Uni to employment. She has been working for student services throughout studying. I was excited to recently look around her degree show with her. She has now graduated with first class honours, and she has secured a job in a primary school as a Learning Assistant from September. It has been a privilege to go on this journey with her over the past six months. I see mentoring as a two-way process and learn loads as a mentor. I would definitely recommend it to others considering becoming a mentor.
Engage 46: Generation Z & the future of Creative Work
I am excited to share that my article has been published in the new engage journal which focuses on Generation Z & the Future of Creative Work. My article is What Next? Supporting on Progression Routes for Young People within the Museum & Gallery Workforce. It follows on from my report in 2020 for the Routes In Network hosted by Tate’s Young People’s Programme as well as the British Museum’s Online Museum Futures Summit panel discussion that I recently hosted. I attended the online engage 46 launch event and presented at the morning after discussion. I am looking forward to reading the rest of the articles and listening to the podcast series which takes place in autumn. For more information about engage 46 take a look here
Wellcome Collection Research
I am excited to start a short contract with the Wellcome Collection for which I will be researching young people and early careers employability, in line with my other work. I am working in partnership with freelancer Rachel Craddock on this research, which will help inform the strategic work around careers development at the Wellcome Collection.
Freelands Foundation Traineeship
I am excited to be involved in the launch of the first entry-level paid Freelands Foundation Traineeship as a call out:
“Are you interested in a career in an arts organisation, looking for an alternative to university and want to learn new skills? We are looking for a trainee to join our team. This is new a paid entry-level role. This opportunity has been created as an alternative route into working in an arts organisation, therefore we particularly encourage applications from individuals who do not hold higher education qualifications and do not have previous experience of working in a gallery. Instead, we are looking for a can-do nature, transferable skills and an enthusiasm for creativity and culture. If this sounds like you, we would love to hear from you.”
The traineeship will provide hands-on training and experience of working in an arts organisation. The trainee will work across a number of different departments, before they choose one team in which to carry out the second half of their traineeship. They will have regular meetings with a mentor and attend relevant courses.
This is a fixed-term position for 12 months from September 2022 to August 2023, as a three-day per week role from Tuesday to Thursday. The appointment is subject to a satisfactory DBS check. The salary is London Living Wage.
Freelands Foundation is committed to anti-racism and to addressing inequality in the arts sector. We welcome applications from all individuals, including those who are currently under-represented* in the creative and cultural sectors.
*Under-represented in this context includes, but is not limited to, people who identify as being from working class or lower socio-economic backgrounds; unemployed and/or have received welfare benefits; D/deaf; disabled; neurodiverse; LGBTQ+ and/or non-binary; and people who identify as Black, Asian or from an ethnic minority.
We are running a ‘Get to know us’ Zoom session on Wednesday 8 June for potential applicants to ask us questions. Alongside this I have been going into secondary schools, with my colleague Beth Lloyd Curator of Education at Freelands Foundation, to run some Creative Careers Talks flagging up the Traineeship and our new Creative Careers Resource.
Engage article: Generation Z and the Future of Creative Work
Following on from the Museum Futures Summit my proposal has been accepted for writing an article for Engage 46: Generation Z and the Future of Creative Work around a similar theme: What next? Supporting under-represented young people into the the museum and gallery workforce. The engage journal will launch in June 2022 with a number of online events, followed by a series of podcasts later in the year. For more information about the forthcoming journal visit here
Recordings of the Museum Futures Summit are Live
If you didn’t manage to attend the online Museum Futures Summit hosted by the British Museum on 8 March there is now an opportunity to watch the recordings of all six sessions of the summit - they are themed as follows:
Session 1 - Building on traineeships: sustainable, embedded change
Session 2 - Beyond traineeships: Kickstart and Apprenticeships
Session 3 - Beyond traineeships: alternative routes in
Session 4 - Rethinking recruitment
Session 5 - Critical reflection: the importance of evaluation
Session 6 - What’s next? Supporting careers after traineeships
The last session was the panel discussion that I chaired with some amazing speakers! I learnt a lot from hearing from speakers during the other sessions too so I would recommend watching all of the sessions.
Screen grab of Session 6 of the Museum Futures Summit
Creative Careers Resource
I’ve written a Creative Careers Resource for Freelands Foundation which launched earlier this week as part of National Careers Week (#NCW2022). Freelands Foundation will soon begin recruiting for a year-long, part-time, paid traineeship, which will run from September 2022. We have compiled the following resource in preparation for the launch of the traineeship. It outlines how young people in London can access free or discounted tickets, where they can attend training events to find out about the many opportunities available, how they can participate in dedicated programmes for young people and how they can access mentoring from industry leaders or even become youth trustees. We will also be going into secondary schools in early summer term to talk about creative careers.
Creative Careers Resource, Freelands Foundation
Mentoring & the Museum Futures Summit
I have really enjoyed mentoring with Arts Emergency over the past year, which culminated last night with an online celebratory event. My mentee has been amazing to work with, and has succeeded in getting a new job on a graduate traineeship scheme with Waltham Forest Council during the past year. A massive highlight was when she spoke at the Museum Futures summit earlier this week, as part of the panel discussion I chaired on What's next? Supporting careers after traineeships (more information here). When I met her at the start of the year she said that she was nervous about public speaking and I said that by the end of the year I would invite her to speak with me at an event and it did happen. In her new job she has to present in real life and online, so has become more confident. I was thrilled she accepted when I asked her!
On the day, she came across as confident and clear, speaking about her experiences of the different traineeships and apprenticeships she has done, and how she believes that there should be better retention of trainees and opportunities for progression within the same employer. For this reason her new job is with a council rather than within the creative and cultural industries. One of the summit attendees posted in the chat box after hearing her talk:
Brilliant, thank you. We have a decent retention rate and a really good employment rate post traineeship but you make such valid points. You have pushed me to approach colleagues about their commitment to employing trainees at the end of their term. Some teams have a great record of doing this but others less so. There is so little recruitment anyway but still, there can be no guarantees but if someone has been with us for a year, our priority should be to turn them into someone who will be taken on should the opportunity arise. Sorry, long comment, thinking aloud, but mostly I wanted to say thank you for airing something important we don't hear very often. I'm really glad you are in a meaningful role.
And my mentee texted afterwards in response:
That has absolutely made my day, thanks for encouraging me to do this Rach. I was so nervous beforehand but it feels amazing to have pushed myself and even better to think it might have a made a small impact!
I am looking forward to staying in touch with my mentee and meeting in person for a coffee and exhibition trip, as our mentoring has been solely online. For anyone interested in mentoring I cannot recommend it enough; I get as much out of it as my mentees.
Museum Futures Summit
I am excited to be chairing a panel discussion as part of the online Museum Futures Summit on 8 March. The British Museum is hosting a one-day online summit to celebrate and learn from ten years of Heritage Fund Skills for the Future programming, which includes Museum Futures as well as dozens of traineeships across the UK.
The Museum Futures Summit aims to explore the impact and key learning outcomes of paid entry-level training programmes - including traineeships, apprenticeships, fellowships, and Kickstart placements - designed to increase representation and accessibility within the cultural heritage sector workforce.
The panel discussion will be the final session of the day and will focus on What’s next supporting careers after traineeships. For more information visit here
End of 2021 & heading into 2022
Unfortunately the end of 2021 was difficult for me after testing positive with Covid at the start of November. It has taken me a while to get my energy levels back up. One highlight of the end of 2021 was evaluating a pilot Creative Writing Traineeship for the Foundling Museum working with some amazing care-experienced young adults, many of whom have special educational needs and/or experiences of mental health. It was interesting to see how they connected with the Foundling stories and collection, both in terms of similarities and differences to their own experiences. They wrote poetry with poet Belinda Zhawi around themes of identity and stigma, and built relationships with each other over a period of ten weeks. Many of them did not have other friends who are care leavers so this was a safe space to be supported by their peers and to share their stories. I am excited to be working with the Foundling Museum again.
Thinking ahead to 2022, all of my work is aligned with supporting young people into careers in the creative industries and museums & galleries either through setting up programmes, evaluating or mentoring:
Foundling Museum - evaluating the Foundling Museum’s Art Traineeship with care experienced young adults, which has been running for a number of years;
Tate - evaluating year 2 of Tate’s internal mentoring programme for Tate Collective Producers paired off with Tate staff, following on from the pilot programme last year;
The Photographers’ Gallery - continuing on year 5 of evaluating DEVELOP: Creative Careers through Photography for 14 to 24 year olds;
Freelands Foundation - continuing the planning of Freelands Foundation’s first paid traineeship role to start in September 2022, including making connections with secondary schools, colleges and youth groups across London and forming a group of arts organisations who also run traineeships;
University of the Arts London (UAL) - mentoring a young person who is studying or who has recently graduated from UAL;
Art on the Underground - evaluating and mentoring on a secondment programme within Transport for London (TfL). Interestingly the person on this secondment is not a young person but someone who has worked at TfL for a number of years. So how does this change the support they need to transfer into a more creative role?
Watch this space for future work announcements in 2022!
The Foundling Museum
I am excited to have been invited to evaluate a ten week pilot Creative Writing Traineeship for care-experienced young adults at the Foundling Museum, led on by poet Belinda Zhawi . This traineeship is built on the learning from the established Art Traineeships that the Museum has been running since 2017.
For more information about the Foundling Museum’s Traineeship programme take a look here
Working from home
I have been working from home as a freelancer on and off for a long time. Having moved house over the summer, we now have a shared working space in our garden and I am excited to get back to work this week!
Our summerhouse / shared working space
Tate TCP Pilot Mentoring Programme
From March to July 2021, I continued to work with Tate following on from the Routes In research I carried out for the Young People’s Programmes team. One of the recommendations was for long-term networking, mentoring, training and development, and I was approached to set up and evaluate an internal mentoring programme. This was run in partnership between Tate and Creative Society with the Tate Collective Producers (TCPs) paired off with a Tate member of staff (mainly band 4 level - i.e. Assistant Curator type roles).
The pilot consisted of nine mentoring pairs with the following steps:
Step 1: Recruitment and planning (February/March 2021);
Step 2: Training for Mentors and Mentees (end of March 2021);
Step 3: Six fortnightly sessions of an hour long online or via phone call, alongside networking events to connect with each other and share knowledge and expertise (April to June 2021);
Step 4: Monitoring progress, supporting mentoring pairs and evaluation (throughout);
Step 5: Following up post mentoring with TCPs and future plans for mentoring at Tate (July 2021 and then ongoing).
The learning from the evaluation of the pilot will be taken forward into year 2 with the idea that the mentees from year 1 may get involved as peer buddies. Comments from the mentors included:
“I would tell other Tate staff that it's a really useful and important extension of what we do at Tate.”
“It's a great opportunity to reflect on your own practice as well as learning a new skill and supporting a young person into the arts.”
“I was really impressed by the perspective and ideas being presented by the mentee which I found exciting and inspiring.”
And feedback from the mentees included:
“I feel mentoring has allowed me to discuss my confusions around applications and interviews, and has given me the chance to speak with a young professional who is confident in their own line of work… I think it’s rare to be able to have employability conversations focused on a specific part of the creative sector.”
“I’ve enjoyed being a mentee and it has led me to find opportunities and it has made me believe in myself and what I can achieve.”
“The world started to open up 3 sessions in… I’ve got back on a better path for work and employment.”
Voices that Matter
I feel privileged to have been working with some amazing women over the past few years as a ‘participant observer’ on the project Voices that Matter for the Whitechapel Gallery. The Gallery has partnered with local organisations NUMBI and City Gateway focusing on women’s voice, agency and social confidence.
For the most recent project with City Gateway, the women participants have been working with artist and filmmaker Hussina Raja to make a film Voices that Matter: Bidēśi Mahilā (Travelling Women). This is an experimental short film exploring what it means to ‘take up space’ in public spaces, whilst building a life in London, and longing for connection to Bangladesh.
Take a look at the film here
Art on the Underground Poster Launch
The Art on the Underground Sankofa Poster Project launch had to be postponed over a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic but the themes of the winning design seem even more relevant in 2021.
In early 2020 we approached Westminster City School, located between Victoria station and Westminster station, to do the Sankofa Poster Project consisting of a one day schools workshop led by artist Shepherd Manyika, in relation to Larry Achiampong’s commission. The workshop was with 22 x Year 10 students, who were all male and from multicultural backgrounds living across London and beyond. The day kicked off with an introduction about Art on the Underground and Larry Achiampong’s commission as well as his ongoing series Pan African Flag for the Relic Travellers’ Alliance, followed by workshop artist Shepherd Manyika talking about his own artistic practice. We then walked with the students to Westminster tube station to see Larry Achiampong's commission, along with some sketching at the station and in the surrounding area to identify other iconic London or British designs, like the Roundel. Back at school, students were set an individual poster design brief around redesigning an iconic London or British design in a way that changes its meaning and makes the individual feel more represented both culturally and personally, along with the idea of ‘sankofa’ - using the past to prepare for the future, relevant in Larry Achiampong’s commission.
As an extension to the project the students created a poster design (started during the workshop and completed during further school lessons) with one student’s work chosen by Shepherd Manyika to be displayed in a poster site at Westminster tube station during July and August 2021. At the launch event the winning student, Niaz Rahman attended with his family. Niaz unveiled his own poster in situ and announced to the public over the station tannoy system to look out for his artwork.
For more about the project take a look here
“They watched the video of Larry Achiampong’s work and said they liked the way he was fighting for social justice, equality for all with his work and it had more meaning than they realised when they first saw it. The idea that the colours of the roundel are very imperialist had never struck them so they looked at the colour in Achiampong’s designs and the underground differently following the workshop.”
(Head of Art, Elaine Chance)
The winning student photographing his poster design on display at Westminster tube station
Evaluating the DEVELOP Programme at the Photographers' Gallery
I am thrilled to have been invited by The Photographers’ Gallery to continue working as the evaluator on their DEVELOP Programme for young people aged 14-24 who are interested in Creative Careers through Photography. This is my fifth year working on the programme which will include evaluating Zoom sessions as well as in person events at the Gallery later in the year. In addition I will be working with a group of 20 participants across the year sharing their journeys with them via Zoom, phone chats and monthly Padlet posts.
Southbank Centre Curator Development Programme
In line with most of my current work which focuses on supporting young people into the museum and gallery sector workforce, I am pleased to be advising on a forthcoming Curator Development Programme cross-site at the Southbank Centre. Watch this space!
Mentoring
Yesterday I met my new mentee through Arts Emergency. I’m excited to be mentoring her across the next year especially as we have a shared passion. I’ve also recently been matched with a new mentee with UAL for the next six months. In addition, for the first time in a long time, I currently have a mentor myself via the Group for Education (GEM), and I have just started setting up a pilot mentoring programme internally at Tate with Creative Society as a partner. So this week the theme is definitely mentoring!
GEM Training Session, Young People – Career Opportunities and Progression Routes into the Sector
I am running this event for the Group for Education in Museums (GEM) on Wednesday 3 March - advertised as follows:
“This past year has been particularly difficult for young people with both COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter affecting mental health and well-being, along with the unpredictability of future study and employment opportunities.
Consultant for Arts Education and Evaluation Rachel Moss will use her experience in setting up paid traineeships, evaluating young people’s programmes, and as a mentor for young people, along with her What Next? Research report for Tate’s Routes In Programme, as a springboard into looking at how we can support young people into the sector workforce.
This 2-hour course will include: What do we mean by young people? What careers support is already on offer for young people? What is enabling change? What steps do the sector need to take to address the gaps? The session will be delivered via interactive presentation and discussion along with time to create actions for you to take away and implement in your own organisations.”
Take a look at the event details & book a place here
Clay Station Traineeship 2017, Art on the Underground in collaboration with A New Direction and Create Jobs. Photos: Benedict Johnson, 2017