My name is Caroline James and I am currently in my fourth week of my Digital Marketing Apprenticeship with Bristol Museums.

I am originally from Luton and moved to the South West in 2013 when I was 18 years old to do my degree in Diagnostic Radiography, at the University of Exeter. I loved the South West so much I didn’t want to leave! So once I finished my degree and became a qualified radiographer, I moved to Bristol in 2016 and worked at Southmead Hospital. Although I absolutely loved going to university and had an interesting experience working for the NHS, after being a healthcare worker for three years, I realised it was no longer for me and wanted to have a career change. I wanted to do something more creative and have been interested in digital marketing for a long time.

I thought an apprenticeship was a good route for me as I wanted to learn new skills and use them in a real life setting. So I went on the government website and found this apprenticeship at the museum, and thought it looked great! 

I feel extremely privileged to have got this apprenticeship and I am already learning so much. I loved visiting Bristol Museum and Art Gallery and M Shed even before I moved to Bristol, so it is incredibly fulfilling to be doing digital marketing for institutions I really care about. 

So far I have helped with the launch of a project entitled “Uncomfortable Truths”. This is where a group of BAME students and alumni came together to create podcasts where they discussed their interpretation of certain objects within the museum that have an uncomfortable and controversial side to them – this includes how they were collected and what they represent.

I helped with creating a webpage presenting the project, the podcasts and its creators using WordPress. I helped upload the podcasts onto Soundcloud, and then took the WordPress code generated for each podcast and uploaded it to the webpage. I also assisted with the design of an information leaflet for the launch using a website called Canva.  

The launch itself went incredibly well and it was very interesting. I hope more podcasts discussing the complex cultural and colonial histories behind objects within the museum are created.

Additionally, I’ve been helping with the social media campaigns for the museum shop products using Hootsuite. I look forward to updating the blogs on the museum website and producing email newsletters in the near future. 

Furthermore, I get to help with the creation and the promotion of the “Stories” on the Bristol Museums website, which go in depth about black history in Bristol. 

I expect there will be many more projects and assignments that I will get to be a part of as a member of the Digital Team that will assist with my understanding of digital marketing. Furthermore, I am incredibly excited about the qualification I will be gaining from this apprenticeship and look forward to learning about the fundamentals of digital marketing such as Google Analytics and SEO. It has only been a few weeks but I am already realising what an amazing place it is to work with many teams of incredibly skilled people working together. There are so many opportunities to learn and I cannot wait to gain more skills over the next two years.

My name is Lacey Trotman and I am currently in the fifth week of my Digital Apprenticeship with Bristol Museums. Having left college this June completing a 2 year A levels course in History, Art History, Sociology and Film Studies, the summer was spent searching for the right role for me. Despite College pushing for students to attend University – and many of my friends doing so, I felt the pressures of study and exams to degree level were not for me at this time. I chose instead to look at apprenticeships as it gave me a chance to put my skills into practical use in a real world setting.

Since starting on October 4^th I have already begun to work on various projects broadening my range of skills and understanding: tackling the Discovery Pens, writing ‘How to’ guides, resizing images, composing surveys, working on the online shop, diving into the fast paced world of social media and editing blogs for the Museum website.

My first impression is that it’s an amazing place to work, with many opportunities to
undertake and progress.  It’s also clear to see that there is a lot of work going into such an institution with many more departments behind the scenes than I could possibly have imagined.

I have always loved visiting museums and galleries. As a proud Bristolian I feel Bristol Museums provide some of the best in the country. Growing up, family holidays were full of excursions to castles and places of historical interest. Most recently, we visited St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall. Our seaside cottage faced the historic site making for picturesque views at all times. With Poldark loving parents we also visited the historic mines and ruins of work houses on the Cornish coast. Cornwall was also the home to legendary artist Barbara Hepworth, one of my key artists to feature in the Art History exam I completed this year; so I was thrilled
to see an original piece by her on our day trip to St. Ives.  Even better is that a few weeks after starting this apprenticeship, Winged Figure was newly installed in the gallery confirming this is definitely the best place to work!

Throughout my childhood I visited all the venues that come under the Bristol Museums canopy. My first trip to The Red Lodge Museum, was with Primary School. I remember being asked by the staff if I wanted to dress as Queen Elizabeth I for the class picture, but afraid of the spotlight I volunteered my best friend instead! Blaise Castle was always a childhood favourite of mine and I can also remember visiting the old Industrial Museum with its variety of transport, planes and trucks. However I was delighted when the new M Shed opened offering fun and interactive features for free. I have not yet gotten over missing the iconic Banksy vs Bristol Museum exhibition or Dismaland, just 40 minutes away in Weston. With such strong links to Bristol, Banksy is a favourite artist of mine. Recently he paid my old Primary School a visit leaving a large mural on their classroom wall.

The next two years fill me with excitement and expectation. The addition of a marketing qualification will add further qualifications to my growing C.V.  I hope to excel in my role growing in both confidence and ability; I am keen to ensure I make the most of this experience and hope that all I have to offer will been seen as a positive addition to the hardworking Digital Team.

By David Wright (Digital Curating Intern, Bristol Culture)

Both Macauley Bridgman and I are now into week six of our internship as Digital Curating Assistants here at Bristol Culture (Bristol Museums) . At this stage we have partaken in a wide array of projects which have provided us with invaluable experiences as History and Heritage students (a discipline that combines the study if history with its digital interpretation) at the University of the West of England. We have now been on several different tours of the museum both front of house and behind the scenes. Most notably our store tour with Head of Collections Ray Barnett, which provided us with knowledge of issues facing curators nationwide such as conservation techniques, museum pests and the different methods of both utilisation and presentation of objects within the entirety of the museum’s collection.

In addition we were also invited to a presentation by the International Training Programme in which Bristol Museums is a partner alongside the British Museum. Presentations given by Ntombovuyo Tywakadi, Collections Assistant at Ditsong Museum (South Africa), followed by Wanghuan Shi, Project Co-ordinator at Art Exhibitions China and Ana Sverko, Research Associate at the Institute of Art History (Croatia). All three visitors discussed their roles within their respective institutions and provided us with a unique insight into curating around the world. We both found these presentations both insightful and thought provoking as we entered Q&A centred on restrictions and limitations of historical presentation in different nations.

Alongside these experiences we have also assumed multiple projects for various departments around the museum as part of our cross disciplinary approach to digital curating.

Our first project involved working with Natural Sciences Collections Officer Bonnie Griffin to photograph, catalogue and conserve Natural History specimens in the store. This was a privileged assignment which we have perhaps found the most enjoyable. The first hand curating experience and intimate access with both highly experienced staff and noteworthy artefacts we both found inspiring in relation to our respective future careers.

Following on from this we undertook a project assigned by Lisa Graves, Curator for World Cultures, to digitise the outdated card index system for India. The digital outcome of this will hopefully see use in an exhibition next year to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of Indian independence in a UK-India Year of Culture. At times we found this work to be somewhat tedious and frustrating however upon completion we have come to recognise the immense significance of digitising museum records for both the preservation of information for future generations and the increased potential such records provide for future utilisation and accessibility.

We have now fully immersed ourselves into our main Bristol Parks project which aims to explore processes by which the museum’s collections can be recorded and presented through geo-location technology. For the purposes of this project we have limited our exploration to well-known local parks, namely Clifton and Durdham Downs with the aim of creating a comprehensive catalogue of records that have been geo-referenced to precise sites within the area. With the proliferation of online mapping tools this is an important time for the museum to analyse how it records object provenance, and having mappable collections makes them suitable for inclusion in a variety of new and exciting platforms – watch this space!. Inclusive of this we have established standardised procedures for object georeferencing which can then be replicated for the use of future ventures and areas. Our previous projects for other departments have provided the foundation for us to explore and critically analyse contemporary processes and experiment with new ways to create links between objects within the museum’s collections.

As the saying goes “time flies when you are having fun”, and this is certainly true for our experience up to date. We are now in our final two weeks here at the museum and our focus is now fervently on completing our Bristol Parks project.