And today we are delighted to speak with Aisling Serrant.

And today we are delighted to speak with Aisling Serrant.

So let's see what's special about the museum and what Aisling does to make it an engaging and welcoming place for everyone. Hello, Aisling. Nice to see you today.

Hello.

Yep, sure. So Museum of London, Docklands, we've actually got two museum sites and this, specifically at the Docklands site, and there's also a Museum of London which is located near Barbican. But the site that I’m based at is on the Isle of Dogs, so in Tower Hamlets, and it was originally a warehouse building. So it opened in the early 1800s and it was a key place where goods were being brought from all over the world. They were stored there, they were sorted, and before they were sent back out to be sold, So it's a really interesting building, it's got a really interesting history. It's a very atmospheric place to work. You can kind of just feel the history when you come visit.

Can you tell us about your role? What do you do at the museum?

Yes. So I'm responsible for organising a programme of three large scale weekend festivals every year. And by large scale I kind of mean around 2000 people over two days. The festivals are particularly community focused festivals. So this means that we work with members of the local community to design the themes, the content for the festivals, sometimes we have projects associated with them where people will, for example, create performance pieces and come and show them off. There's a real variety to the programme, and I'm responsible for recruiting groups to work with, developing projects, and then developing and running the festivals themselves as well.

So I studied archaeology at the University of Liverpool, and it's something that I was always really interested in as a child. And people never believe me actually, when I say that the first job I ever wanted to do was be an archaeologist, but it's true. And then once I'd done that, I wasn't 100% sure exactly what sort of field I wanted to work in, and I kind of became interested in education and in engagement, and to me, I think, I'm incredibly passionate about archaeology and history myself, and to be able to share that with people is really, really important to me. So when I left the University, I worked in a school for a little bit and kind of gained the skills in working with children, young people. And then I actually did Heritage Lottery funded traineeship. So that was at the University of Oxford Museums and Galleries. That was an amazing experience for me, so I did placements across at the Ashmolean Museum, the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers Museum. It gave me a real chance to just kind of develop skills and learn about the world of museums really. And that was for a year, and then from there I got the job at the Museum of London. At that point, I was family festivals coordinator, and kind of built the programme at the museum from there. So yeah, really good experiences.

How does your work, curation of family festivals, correlate with the history of the space?

So working in a museum, one of the things that I always have in my mind are the themes of our specific museum and the collection and kind of bringing it back to the collection is really important for me. And I feel really lucky to work at a museum which has this fascinating history, and this really, really diverse history as well. So I think in terms of the themes of the museum and that kind of world trade and not just trade of goods, but all the things that are associated with that, so you know, trade and exchange of ideas, migration to London, all those themes are rich themes to work with. So for my festivals, and particularly because they do aim to attract really diverse audiences, one of the main aims of the programme is to present things which are unique, interesting, exciting, and that you might not necessarily expect to experience in a museum. So for me, the content has always got to really explore those rich themes. So I'll do a lot of things which are exploring the communities in the area, that I've previously worked in partnership with the local bank Bengali community and developed a Bengali Spring Festival. I have previously organised a festival called Hello London, Hello Barbados, which explored some of the links between the museum and some of the Caribbean countries. It's not always the most straightforward programming to do. Some of the histories that are linked are quite sensitive, it's important that we don't shy away from the fact that many of the goods that were coming to the museum when it was warehouse, were linked into things like transatlantic slavery. So sugar was one of the main things which was coming into the museum. And now recently, the last festival I organised was actually a sugar themed festival. So it's just about finding those ways that we can really tap into that content in education, but also these interesting and exciting and unusual ways as well.

Would you say that your personal self-identity and your life story somehow reflected in the work you do?

Yes, I absolutely feel that that is the case. One of the key things for me that's been kind of a thing throughout my career is the fact that I'm from an incredibly working class background, and, you know, we all know the general makeup of museum visitors and of museum staff, and how that's not necessarily, you know, it is unfortunately still in a slightly more middle class, quite white in that situation. And for me, I felt lucky, but even the fact that I feel lucky is probably, you know, not the right way to feel. I've worked hard and I probably deserve to be where I am. But I've always had this kind of sense of feeling incredibly lucky to have been given these opportunities, especially when I got a place on the Heritage Lottery Funded traineeship that I did, which was, you know, a really small number of people had that opportunity. And I think it's something which really had a strong thread through my work, the fact that in terms of accessibility, museums are too often still these really kind of elitist places, even some of the language that we use. And beyond museums, you know, you can be watching a history documentary sometimes and there's words used and I'm like, I don't even know what that means, and I work in a museum. So I think it's created a real kind of passion of mine, the background that I'm from, in terms of just making sure that we're open and accessible and appealing for all sorts of different people from all sorts of different backgrounds. So yeah, I think that's kind of maybe why I've ended up on the path that I have.

So the festivals are actually one part of the programming that we do at Museum of London, Docklands. We do lots of other things as well. But the programme itself I think, was started for various reasons. One We are a slightly smaller, more kind of look or feeling museum compared to our other site which attracts a lot more tourists and things like that. And we were really keen to kind of basically show off what we've got our Dockland site and really raise the profile of the museum. So by doing these kinds of large scale fun, exciting appealing events, we could draw in lots of people and kind of really spread the word that we were there and that we do exciting things. So that's one of the reasons. I think also for me, what's quite important about doing the festival programme is that they are very accessible events. I purposely design a programme which doesn't feel too museum-y. So it's got a more similar feel to something that you might have to, I don’t know, go to a fun day in a park or, you know, an event anywhere in the community that might not necessarily be at a museum and I'll tend to use some a few activities which are more reflective of that. So they might be familiar to somebody who has, for example, never visited a museum before. It could be something as simple as face painting. But it could be that thing which you see and think, actually, that's something I've done before. That's something I'm comfortable with. And I'm gonna come along to that event. And then that's kind of how you build up people feeling comfortable within the space. So I think Yeah, in terms of the festival, just that large appeal, which is going to draw in people and really show off what we've got. But also having these events which are just a bit different, provide an experience that you were not expecting to have in a museum and just really showcase the fact that museums are for everyone. Even if some people don't necessarily think of it as the first place they would visit on a weekend. We are there we are welcoming, we're inclusive, and they can have a lot of fun with us.

Who's your audience?

Our audience for the festivals tends to be a bit more diverse than the regular kind of museum visiting audience. That's because we choose themes which are accessible and which are appealing to, you know, the whole range of people who live in London.

I've looked through the programmes of your ex festivals, the festivals you've already done, and it's truly exciting. So there are activities starting from dancing and singing to things like cockney rhyming challenges. So can you share with the listeners and with us how do you organise a festival and maybe share some secrets and top tips for those who might be interested to do the same kind of thing somewhere else?

So one of my top tips would be to just be as open as possible to ideas and suggestions, because after all I am one person with one brain and so although I can be creative, and I do have to be a lot of the time in my job, I feel you'll create a much more rich programme if you can, you know, collaborate as much as possible. So one of the key things we do on the festival programme here is that we always work in partnership with local community groups and organisations, and it's really about, you know, sharing the power, and sharing the chance to be heard and have a voice and say what we should actually be putting on events. So yeah, just kind of working in consultation with groups as much as possible. And sometimes, you know, having groups organise the full programme, the content and activities of a festival as well. In terms of designing an event, it is just always thinking about kind of making sure that there is a range of different activities which appeal to any sort of person who might walk in, and appreciating that people have different interests, but also different things they feel comfortable doing, and different things that they're going to enjoy. So having those activities which are a bit lighter touch and if you're not a super confident museum visitor, you're still going to feel confident doing, but then also pushing the boundaries, trying new things as well, and having a think about what you can do that is not being offered elsewhere. So for an example, one of the festivals that I did a few years ago, called Hello London, Hello Barbados, we actually set up a video link between the museum and Barbados museum. This was so that families could just talk to each other, just have a chat, we put some prompts out, but it was just about having that little conversation, you know, like, what did the families in Barbados have for breakfast? Was it the same or was it different? And just those little things that can spark connections, and really just get people communicating and thinking about their own experiences and thinking about the experiences of others.

Can you please share some of the visitors' responses? How do people feel after attending a festival?

The last festival I organised, the Sugar Family Festival, was quite an interesting one, obviously, because of the theme and content, linked into some more sensitive histories. So the link to the trans-Atlantic slave trade was something that we covered. We received really interesting feedback from that with people just being very thankful that we were approaching a topic which is not the easiest topic to approach in a family festival, but that we're not shying away from that. And that they actually feel that it's a topic that relates to their background, but they don't receive the education or their children don't receive the education about it at school that they would like or as much as they would like. So that real kind of appreciation of us being there as a resource to be able to kind of build on that learning, and one of the main things for us was just about starting the conversation. So encouraging families to start that conversation and giving adults the confidence to be able to start that conversation. So sometimes when we do these festivals and you get that real, meaningful kind of outcome, it's a very rewarding thing to do.

So for me, it's about being as visible as you can be in the community. That can be in really, you know, small ways. So for me, I will always go to any networking events in the area, I will always try to support the work that any of the community groups do, if they're doing a project, I will make sure I'm at their launch event, and just to become a familiar face within the community is really, really important. An example of that is one festival I worked in partnership with a Filipino organization, and they told me that the way to promote their community was through the churches, and that's something we would never have known, we would never have had access to. But through working with that group, we could then reach out to that community in new ways. One of the things that we quite often do is in the run up to a festival, we will do outreach assemblies into local primary schools, which is a really interesting way of working. Actually, it's working in partnership within my own team. So I work with people who work on schools. And it's just a way of getting out into lots of schools, we've done it kind of - I think the most I've ever done for a single festival was out into 10 different local schools. During assembly, sometimes for the whole school, you are reaching a lot of people by doing that. And then the assemblies will be linked very closely to the theme of the festival. Each child will get a flyer for the festival to take home and the little free gift and so when they come, or they hopefully come along to the festival, we hand in their free gift so we can actually track how successful that has been.

Thank you. Speaking of communities, the Museum of London Dockland is located in East London. Can you describe what the community is like around there?

Yes, we are in a really interesting place actually. We are in Tower Hamlets on the Isle of Dogs. We sit right next to Canary Wharf. So we've got vastly contrasting communities kind of living, working and using the area. And the area, especially Tower Hamlets is a very interesting borough because it does have such a contrast of people living and working there. So it does have the highest child deprivation levels within the UK. So that's obviously saying something quite interesting about the area. But then you've also got Canary Wharf on the doorstep, which has its own kind of different, you know, social setup. So you've got these communities living side by side. There is a very, very large Bengali community in the area, which is one of the reasons that we have done a Bengali festival in the past. And Limehouse, which is the area right next to where we are, was the original Chinatown. So there's a large Chinese community there as well. It's just an incredibly diverse place. I mean, the London Docks, people were arriving from all over the world, and that's kind of the foundation, you know, of that area and its diversity. So it's a really exciting place to work.

I think one of the early ones I did was called Your East End. This was a celebration of East London, and especially kind of just, you know, its amazing diversity, the different groups that have lived in the area. I love that because it had a real, real strong community feel. We had loads of different community partners, we had community performances, which were showcasing, like amateur dancers from across the area from baby ballerinas, like right up to, you know, a group of older people who dance as well. So it just had a real nice feel about it. Also, in terms of its content, the ability to really explore all the different cultural groups that live in the area was really strong. So we had, you know, Jewish activity, we had a Bengali activity, we had an African activity, we had… which were focused on chutney and things like that. So it was a real fun festival to organise as well. Some of the other ones that I really, really enjoy are ones which are working very closely with specific cultural groups. And then finally, the festival that I just delivered, which was the sugar family festival, I was really happy with that in terms of pushing those boundaries a bit. So with sugar being one of the main goods that came to the museum when it was a warehouse, it linked very, very closely with the content of the museum. And it was an unusual theme, so thinking about the opportunities to use sugar as a really kind of fun exploratory material. There's a lot of scope there, so we could do some really interesting and unique crafts. But then also was kind of merging that with the opportunity to, you know, really get into some of the very important history linked to our site, which is more sensitive and more complex, in terms of us doing programming around the transatlantic slave trade. I think it was a really good point for us to trial ways of working, and something that we would really like to develop in the future. The fact that it was well received, I think is really important to us, ensures that we're kind of on the right track and that we did something that we feel is important for us to develop as we go forward.

What would you say are the main challenges when working on these festivals?

As you picked up, partnership working, that’s incredibly valuable. It can also be a bit tricky at times. Finding partners in the first place is not always the easiest thing, especially when you are being quite specific about wanting to engage certain types of group. It's not always easy to find those groups. And, you know, as I keep saying, it's - we assume that people want to engage with us as museums, and sometimes they don't. We need to put in that hard work to make it worthwhile for them, and not just for us. So yes, forming those partnerships, keeping those relationships going, although I do three festivals a year, how do you then keep those relationships? It's, you know, it's not right at all to build up relationships and then just drop them and kind of not have anywhere for them to develop and to grow after a festival. So that's a real challenge, and I think, not just for my programme, but for many programmes within museums and many situations is how do you actually keep those relationships going? Also, because some of the festivals that I do organise working with specific cultural groups or developing content, which is linked to more sensitive topics, they're still family festivals, they're still large scale events, and they need to be appealing because they need to attract a lot of people. So matching up those sensitivities, but also packaging it in a very exciting, attractive festival can be quite a challenge. And there are certain themes, which I personally feel, you know, a family festival is actually not the best way to deal with it. So it's also trying to figure out, you know, those kinds of what are the lines, what are the boundaries, where is a big celebratory festival appropriate, and where other types of engagement are more appropriate. And then also just in terms of the logistics of organising a really big event, there's always going to be challenges, things are always going to get thrown up, especially when I first started in the role, which was, it's coming up to four years ago now. Because the programme was completely new, so we were pushing the museum to do things which were very different, and whether that's, you know, being able to use certain materials out in the galleries without people freaking out that they're going to ruin the collections, or making a lot of noise, like, you know, I'm a big fan of noise in museums, steel pan drums outside and singing in the galleries. Sometimes you can face a little bit, you know, sometimes people can be a bit unsure or a bit nervous about disrupting other visitors' experiences, which is a completely valid thing that needed to be thought about as well. So developing those kinds of systems that fit in with the rest of your organisation, but that still really push your organisation to do things that are a bit different and to step a bit out of their comfort zone, I think has been a bit of a challenge for me up to this point as well.

Firstly, I would say, leave enough time, and especially if it is something which is going to consult with the community, work with the community, your biggest mistake is not to allow enough time to actually build those kinds of authentic relationships. So that'll be rule number one. I think otherwise, it's just about, I think, really, you've kind of got to get to know your organisation, get to know what's going to work in that space. And to allow yourself to experiment a bit because I'm kind of a believer that nothing's going to be perfect the first time around, as long as everyone's safe and happy and, you know, that's the most important thing. But trial things out, maybe do a little trial the first time, do something a little bit different, and then next time go one step bigger, push things a bit more, but always kind of work with your organisation and your team as much as possible. Because the more people who are involved, thinking more about like internal colleagues now, the greater investment you will have from everybody. If people are invested, they're going to be behind you, they're going to go out of their way to help you, you know, deliver the event. So just try to involve as many people as possible, start small, maybe trial things, trial things, and then build in, you know, the opportunity to push the boundaries as you go along.

If you had unlimited funding, and you could build any museum or cultural institution in the world, what museum would it be? What would you say to people on the opening day?

So I think if I was designing my own museum, one of the things that I'm just really, really passionate about is museums being really embedded within that community. So for me, it would be about having museums and I kind of want this to exist in every town and city in the UK, which is slightly impossible, but just having that real community resource in every place, which is the story of that town or that city. There are some great examples of this already, you know, especially some of the local and regional museums do this really well, but especially having a museum which is a full resource for the community. So I've always been a firm believer that a museum should kind of border on being a community centre, so should have a community library, for example, should have a space that people can go just to relax and to share and talk and debate and have those conversations, it should be a place that young people can hang out when they don't want to stand on a street corner, where they're not going to get told that they need to move on because they're looking too suspicious or whatever. Or where families can go and there's baby and toddler groups and things that people actually need in life to, you know, feel comfortable and feel a part of their community. So yeah, not the most radical idea, but I think a really important thing that would just help museums have a real, you know, genuine positive impact on people's lives.

This was For Arts’ Sake and we'll see you in the next episode next week.