New employees entering into the museums' service are expected to work with a wide collection of artefacts covering a range of activities such as cataloging accessioning researching exhibition and educational work. This module was run as an initial pilot for third year students and was designed to give them the chance to experience the full range of these activities whilst developing their own collection of artefacts for display. However it also encouraged them to develop key employability skills in project management group working and reflection.
The students had originally chosen an archiving project offered via a general purpose project module but this option turned out to be unworkable. After talking to the two students I discovered that they had an interest in heritage and both had looked at volunteering in our local museum. They were keen to try a module which offered practical skills related to curatorial work and it was possible to do this within the same general module framework. An existing proposal offered a framework within which to operate but only in the most general terms.
This provided an ideal opportunity to trial the Realistic Working Environment (RWE) module which was radically different from anything else taught at UCLAN and which would benefit enormously from such a preparation. RWE modules are intensely practical and offer students to the chance to develop specialist skills (in this case curatorial) and apply them to a specific project to professional standards. They also have a strong element of enquiry based learning with students negotiating with the tutor and with their team the skills they need to learn in order to complete the project brief.
The intention for the module was to go beyond the idealistic view of what museums work can entail which students and most outsiders tend to have. For those with a feeling for material culture and a desire for working directly with the general public museums can be extremely rewarding places to work. However keeping a museum running can be dull and repetitive and it is extremely hard to start up a career even at the lowest rung of curatorial assistant. Students interested in the museums' profession need to know this so they can decide if it really is for them and they also need the advantage of a good grounding in the basic skills a chance to network with professional staff and a look at the behind the scenes work that occurs in museums. I felt that this module could be developed to deliver this.
