Our Journey To The (Museum Futures) Summit

Hi! We’re Feyi and Lei, two of the Young Freelancers in the Young People’s Skills team at London Transport Museum. On 8 March 2022, we participated in the Museum Futures Summit hosted by the British Museum alongside Hannah, our Khadija Saye Photography Fellow and Zoë, our Learning Officer. It was a one-day online event of presentations, workshops, discussion, and debate exploring paid entry-level training programmes designed to increase the diversity and accessibility to the cultural heritage sector. 

Our presentation was called ‘Beyond traineeships: alternative routes in’. To develop this, we started by brainstorming what points we wanted to get across to the audience about our programmes by exploring what questions we could answer – one being, “How does the programme facilitate your growth?” During the discussion, we were able to reflect on our time and achievements as Young Freelancers. We realised how much we have grown independently and as a cohort, from struggling with the admin side of freelancing at the start to overcoming these struggles with the support of one another and London Transport Museum, of course! 

However, we still faced the problem of communicating everything we wanted to in the time limit given without resorting to monotonous, robot sounding responses. This problem was acknowledged by Stacey-Leigh, the Young People Skills and Community Learning Manager when she watched one of our run-throughs. She suggested that we use dice during the presentation to choose the questions we would answer instead of trying and failing to answer all the questions. The spontaneity of using dice to choose questions also helped to bring a fun and conversational atmosphere to our presentation. 

The presentation was pre-recorded on Zoom with a Videographer. Due to its unscripted nature, we were tested on our confidence to speak on behalf of the programme in a single take within the 15-minute window – you could say the nerves kicked in at minute zero. As the timer ascended to its last minute, we all felt a sense of satisfaction for sharing our personal experiences but also longed for the opportunity to keep the discussion going.  

Fortunately, we were able to do this in the Q&A, where Zoë and Lei had the opportunity to answer questions from the audience. Coincidently, Lei had attended one of the drop-in info Q&A sessions for Young People’s Skills programme before being a Young Freelancer, and now with this event, she has had a taste of being on the receiving end of the questions. 

We were so happy to hear about other programmes like ours which are examples of ways young people from under-represented backgrounds have accessed this sector. But most importantly, we were so proud to watch ourselves on screen and would often nod along in agreement with everything we had said. One of our favourite lines said by Hannah was:

We get to be passionate about anything and everything.

This is truly an achievement that will stay with us for a lifetime, well at least the YouTube video of the Museum Futures Summit will! 

Although we were happy to witness these positive changes, the event was also a constant reminder of how much needs to be done to help young people sustain their careers in this field after the completion of their programme. 

If each cultural institution is able to make small changes, then collectively we can make a big impact to reach the summit of increased diversity and accessibility in the cultural heritage sector. Join us on this journey by watching our presentation at the Museum Futures Summit, where you can meet some of us and learn about other programmes.