Hastings’ award-winning museum provides local people with work experience

Since Hastings Museum & Art Gallery joined the Arts Council England's National Portfolio (NPO) in 2023, the museum has used the yearly funding to focus on putting inclusivity and community involvement at the heart of its work.

Thanks to this funding, the museum has been able to provide paid work placements to local people. These opportunities have helped individuals to develop their employability skills, share their own lived-experiences and assist with the curation of the museum’s exhibitions.

These placements are being offered to those who are either LGBTQ+, seeking sanctuary, home educated, disabled, or living in the Ore area, where there is often less opportunity to access art, culture, and history. The museum is working with individuals from these community groups to increase the variety of people involved with the museum and the range of objects on display.

In early 2025, the museum will welcome the next two paid placements. These individuals will have lived experience of migration and/or refugee status and will continue the work of the award-winning ‘Illuminating Invisible Histories: Flavours Without Borders’ project in partnership with The Refugee Buddy Project.

With the support of The Refugee Buddy Project, the placements will also undertake a special project to introduce up to five new objects to the museum that tell stories of migration and the diverse cultures in Hastings today. This work aims to make the museum more accessible to refugee and migrant communities.

Cllr Adele Bates, lead councillor for arts, culture, tourism, equalities, and community engagement at Hastings Borough Council, said:

“These placements offer a fantastic opportunity to those who may not usually visit the museum, to get fully involved in the creation of exhibitions and gain valuable work experience through various daily tasks. 

“A recent museum placement learned responsibilities such as collection care, cataloguing, researching, and object handling. This included the creation of custom boxes for fragile objects, to ensure each item's safe preservation and the maintenance of the displayed collection, where they were cleaning objects and learning the specialised techniques necessary to handle artefacts without causing them any harm.

“Whilst at the museum they supported the curatorial team with an external store move, helping to catalogue and arrange objects for easier access and reference. In addition to this hands-on work, they delved into research on local history and even began developing a pamphlet of local sights.  

“This work with placements builds on the museum’s already successful track record of innovative working with local people and runs alongside the museum’s four other NPO focuses, activating under engaged communities, addressing the ecological and climate emergency, taking the museum beyond the walls, and providing the community with an exciting, fun, and engaging programme.

“If you are a resident living in the Ore area looking to get involved, please keep an eye on the museum’s social media pages and website, as this is where they will be advertising the next placements when they are available next year.”