Five Minute Interview with Development Officer Mary Strickson

 We welcome Mary Strickson as our new Development Officer, also previously working with us as a Heritage Assistant, to discuss her experience during this time and share advice with those interested in working in a similar role. 

What has your career journey been since being a Heritage Assistant at CS? 

I started working as a Heritage Assistant at Culture Syndicates in April 2018. Since then, I’ve also started my own small business, ran artist workshops, project-managed exhibitions and written for national and international magazines! My little business is called The Picture Whole where I work as a documentary events photographer, artist, illustrator and workshop facilitator. I have recently started working as Development Officer for Culture Syndicates and am really enjoying this opportunity! 

Do you feel like you are making a difference in your job? 

I really enjoy working in heritage. My passion for history and art (alongside the desire to work within museums and heritage) were the driving forces behind my degree choices. Culture Syndicates provides space and time for each member of the team to inform discussions, to contribute, make a difference and input collaboratively. Over the summer, they offered the opportunity to share ideas and ambitions for the heritage industry as a whole and opened up discussions about how more support could be provided to sector entrants, through our ongoing working groups and regular reflective meetings. 

Are there any expectations you had/have about this career path that you have found differed from reality, in both a good or bad way?

Over ten years ago when I started my undergraduate degree, I thought the most important route into heritage careers was academic, obtaining and learning through higher education. However, higher education and university academia alone is not enough to break into the sector. Instead, experience is crucial for gaining a foot onto the ladder but it is increasingly difficult to gain relevant paid experience for entering the heritage industry. I absolutely loved studying, researching history and am really passionate about the subjects I explored. I think people should study higher education purely because they love learning the subject, because they want to learn more and engage with academia, which is why I returned to study my postgraduate degree but to be aware that working experience really is the key to landing those sector entrant roles. 

What are the biggest challenges? 

It is a really difficult sector to break into for many reasons. It can be a catch-22 trying to enter a heritage career for sector entrants. In many ways, those who do not pursue higher education will have the necessary amount of working experience needed to apply for entry-level roles as their years have not been spent in education but in gaining that much needed valuable working experience. At the same double standard, most heritage jobs will mandate that either an undergraduate or postgraduate degree in heritage, arts or museum studies is required! In many ways to enter the sector, school leavers, graduates and those wanting a career change are somehow expected to have it all! This makes the heritage sector especially challenging for those who face additional societal barriers such as disabled people, LGBTQIA+ applicants, BIPOC applicants, care leavers, parents, carers, people wishing to change careers or from lower income, underrepresented or disadvantaged backgrounds. 

What has been the most interesting heritage project to work on? 

During my time at Culture Syndicates, I have worked on lots of interesting heritage projects. I spent the most time working on the Lifelines Project, where I saw the project from initial meetings to realisation. This project worked closely with the Lifelines group in collaboration with Heritage Lottery Funding, the University of Nottingham and Lakeside Arts, to research and produce a book about the Nottingham Officer Training Corps during World War One. The project took place across the centenary anniversary of the war. I worked on marketing, advertising the public events and gaining audiences for the project. I also supported running the workshops with the group, where we explored interesting ideas, handled and utilised Nottingham Archives collections, which included first-hand accounts, diaries and journals. I designed and created the flyer and leaflets for the workshops and launch event. I also worked on the Lifelines group website and social media campaign across the project. Additionally, I was commissioned through my little business as a documentary events photographer, to photograph some of the workshops, historical artifacts and memorials relevant to the research, which were included in the published book. I also captured documentary photographs for the launch event of the publication and celebration of the project. 

                                  

                                             

                                             Figures 1 and 2: Lifelines Workshop

Outside of Culture Syndicates, I really enjoyed the Heritage Hunters project I did through a collaboration with City Arts, Erasmus+ and Intercollege. This gave 30 youth workers from 15 different countries the chance to come together and have the opportunity to take part in a cultural exchange where we all stayed in Moldova for 10 days. This allowed the sharing of international ideas around heritage and the exploration of how to provide best practices within our own work delivery. The following year, a different cohort of youth workers all came to stay in Nottingham where we shared our heritage and continued to learn internationally, culturally and historically by sharing ideas, information and practices. 

What is the best bit of advice you have for someone looking to move into this area? 

When I first wanted to enter the arts and heritage sector, I was given a piece of advice that it is not what you know, but who you know. Unfortunately, this turned out to be true and as a young disabled working-class 20-something who was the first to go to university from my family and knew nobody within the arts or heritage sector, it made the prospect of sector entry feel increasingly daunting. The best thing I did was to make proactive movements towards my goal, by contacting local arts and heritage organisations, reaching out to ask for help, advice and mentorship which started by sending a single, tentative email enquiry or by attending networking events, asking questions and having a conversation with experienced individuals. However scary it may seem it can be important just to get yourself out there and to find ways to meet like-minded individuals and organisations. 

What changes do you hope to see in the heritage industry over the next 5-10 years? 

I hope the industry will become more accessible and inclusive generally. I also hope that it becomes easier to break into the industry and to gain working experience within this field. It would be beneficial to see more paid opportunities for sector entrants and entry-level roles, and less reliance on needing unpaid internships or relevant volunteer experience to gain the heritage experience needed for entry-level jobs, which is unattainable to a lot of people. I hope that this would mean we will start to see more heritage industry workers from a variety of backgrounds and open up the sector to those facing additional societal barriers. There has already been a substantial amount of positive change in a short amount of time but there is still work to be done. It is important that heritage and arts organisations focus less on ticking boxes or temporary trends and more on making real actionable permanent change within the industry.

Mary Strickson

Development Officer