Attendant's View Blog and Cartoons

Does your museum networking event leave a chasm behind it?

24/2/2021

The majority of museum, heritage and arts industry networking events I see leave a very definite chasm for a certain type of museum worker to try and cross over. An event may be welcoming, have good word of mouth, even be free to attend, but if it's held during the hours of the standard working week, there's your problem. It's not too complex to add greater access to networking events though.

Let's start with the issue, where events held during the standard working day assume that people either:

Are sufficiently their own boss, with suitable staff cover or time management, to decide "I'm going to this".
Or, have management who realise the value of such events and are willing and able to arrange time out of work for them.
Or, are willing and able to book their own holiday time to attend.

(Bear in mind that for many museum and gallery staff, their normal working week also includes weekends, and for some it includes regular evenings up to 10.00pm, but I'm talking broad strokes here)

Janet was a common Anglo-Saxon name

11/12/2020

It was very much taken, and appreciated, as the joke it was intended to be.

Hours of Operation

13/11/2020

museum opening hours

I actually had to be part of a situation like this.

The venue had failed to think through the full ramifications of opening times and staff hours, but it was eventually worked out, although had an understandable knock on effect on new staff who had been planning their travel arrangements around the orignally advertised job times. It's a bit rubbish too, having to tell someone who has just finished their visit that they can't buy anything, because you have already closed the till up.

I'm happy here

22/10/2020

museum cartoon, art gallery cartoon, art gallery chairs

Assume the position

5/6/2020

First Post in quite a few months.
They have been very strange months.

This was actually drawn a while ago having just visited a major exhibition where I assume that the label heights were intended to be accessible for all? Or something? But ended up so low down almost everyone took a hunched position of some kind, and then crabbed their way along the packed lines.

Even if you could peep at an object between people, good luck trying to see any written interpretation about it...

Tutankamun at the Saachi Gallery: A Live Tweeted Review.

11/12/2019

I never really had an "Egyptology" stage as a kid, despite always being interested in history and archaeology, but I certainly understand why it has an enduring mass appeal.

A few weeks ago I went to the Tutankamun: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh exhibition at Saachi Gallery, because my travelling companion wanted a gander, and I figured that it would be interesting to see some very unique items, and also to see how the exhibition itself measured to the hype.

Oh there is hype. This is absolutely a "blockbuster" exhibition, proudly trumpeting in it's sales copy the record-breaking volume of visitors in other countries, and stressing the likelihood of tickets selling out.

I decided that rather than try to compile my thoughts into a review afterward (which would mean, realistically, I'd never get round to it), I'd drop a few live tweets to capture my thoughts and feelings as I went round.

Here are the compiled tweets in one spot for you!

The Exhibition continues in London to Sunday 3rd May 2020.

Topical AND Cheap

19/9/2019

Huge respect to the various arts and crafts events organisers making the most of making things without much to start off with.

Mistaken Identity

29/8/2019

When I read about this, I instantly had a flashback to a similar an instance with a teacher and a full class of 30 kids, which I may now be tempted to render in cartoon....

We'll always need you

1/8/2019

This is absolutely, utterly, not a dig at the many thousands of volunteers without whom so many venues and services wouldn't be able to remain open and functioning.

This is a conglomerate of the tales I have been told where volunteer staffing has increased, and the existing paid staff have suffered with mismanaged hand overs, miscommunication and outright false promises.

Paid staff with years of expertise, experience, stores of knowledge, thousands of pounds of education, seeing their positions packaged into chunks and those chunks handed over to volunteers (some of whom also posses all those qualities, yet can't get paid work) until they are left staffing tills, cleaning, and providing security detail. Paid staff reassuringly told that "we won't be replacing you, you will still have a job!" and slowly finding that their role now only features the tasks that managers can't attract volunteers to.

Yes, many venues need the voluntary help, but it has to be properly, honestly, decently managed.

He's New Here

11/4/2019