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SPEAKERS
Alina Boyko, James Harrod, Sarah Creed
Sarah Creed – Senior Exhibitions Project Manager, Design Museum, London
transcript s.5 ep.2
Building a weird and wonderful career in museums
00:04
James Harrod
This is For Arts' Sake, the podcast with museum people. We're back again to hear their untold stories, for art's sake, and your sake. I'm James.
00:14
Alina Boyko
And I’m Alina. In this episode, we're joined by Sarah Creed, who is currently working as a senior exhibitions project manager at the Design Museum in London. Before joining the Design Museum, Sarah worked in a number of different roles at some of the country's best loved institutions. These include large organisations like the British Museum, and smaller sites like Dulwich Picture Gallery. Given Sarah's extensive experience, we can't wait to hear about working with diverse audiences across different institutions. On top of that, we'll also dig into some of the weird and wonderful stuff museum professionals get into. Sarah, welcome to the show.
00:54

Sarah Creed

Hi, thank you for having me.

00:58
James Harrod
Sarah, to kick things off, there might even be some listeners who aren't completely clued up on what the Design Museum is all about. Could you give us a little intro to what the museum is and what kind of things we might find there?
01:10

Sarah Creed

Yeah. The Design Museum is based in Kensington in London. We moved into our new premises here in 2016. Previously, our home was in Shad Thames, which is by Tower Bridge on the River Thames. The museum was founded by Sir Terence Conran in 1989. We focus on industrial graphic, fashion and architectural design. We've won the European Museum of the Year award, we are a registered charity. On the scale of museums in London, I suppose we're still quite a young museum in terms of the institutions that have been around for hundreds of years, like the British Museum and the V&A, etc. But yeah, I think we're kind of a contemporary design specialist, and it's a really dynamic organisation. We do everything from exhibitions about Ferrari cars to global warming and the environment and everything in between. We’ve got a new exhibition coming up about design in football, too.

01:59
James Harrod
When does that exhibition run until?
02:02

Sarah Creed

We're about to open “Football: Designing the Beautiful Game”, which runs until the 29th of August 2022, at our Kensington branch.

02:11
Alina Boyko
Thank you so much for sharing this, Sarah. We'd like to talk about your current role. You are an exhibitions project manager. Could you tell us what it means, and also for those people who don't know?
02:24

Sarah Creed

My role at the museum is quite unique. I am senior exhibitions project manager, and I don't actually manage projects myself, I manage the team that manages the projects. Historically, an exhibition project manager would be the person who looks after the end to end delivery of a project, everything from writing concept briefs, rank business cases for exhibitions, helping with initial content research, even perhaps, depending on what institution that you're in, and then will deliver that through to design, build, install and opening to the public. My role at the design museum is, I look after one of the galleries with part of our project management team, and guide them through contracting, budget management, builds, construction, making sure that everything is compliant. Then the other half of my time is split 50:50 with our international engagement program, so we have a whole roster of international touring exhibitions that travel worldwide. We currently have members of the team who've been in Sweden and Antwerp installing and de installing things, whilst we're installing shows in London. We're quite dynamic in our operation and we have many things happening in one go, which is always great to have the content traveling around the world. My role within the international engagement side is essentially helping to promote that program. But also, my role as the senior exhibition project manager is to be a bridge between the touring program and the London program and ensure that touring is always considered in how we put together our London shows.

03:57
James Harrod
Awesome, that sounds really exciting, having those two sides of the role, and I'm sure you never have a boring day.
04:02

Sarah Creed

No, never. Two days are never the same. I think that's the same for all exhibition teams, I suppose. That's one of the draws of the job, is knowing that you might be working on a show about Vikings one day, and then the next day, it might be contemporary art. It's such a spectrum, depending on the institution that you're working in. But like I said, here at the Design Museum, because we're looking at how design is embedded in pretty much everyday life in every way, the content can be anything from fashion, to automobiles, to machinery, to art, photography, so it's a really nice breadth of content and mediums.

04:39
James Harrod
So you've been at the Design Museum since, is it last July?
04:43

Sarah Creed

Yeah, yeah. Almost a year now.

04:45
James Harrod
Almost a year. How was it starting this new role in this kind of weird COVID protocol world?
04:52

Sarah Creed

It was really interesting. I think. Obviously, everyone was emerging some way out of, whether it'd be furlough or lockdown or change of work pattern or habits. So in a weird way, although it was a very, I would say, quite mystifying experience of onboarding into a role remotely, because you're used to being in a space of people and being introduced to people face to face and getting to know everyone and being quite hands on. We had no choice but to be quite remote and quite separate. I think everybody was in that sphere, so it didn't feel as alien as perhaps, for whatever reason I had to be, solo onboarding remotely, or whatever it might be. I think everyone was emerging out of lockdown, and slowly starting to return to what we could call “normal learning and working pattern”. It was strange, but I think because it was strange for everybody, it was strangely quite a bonding experience for the team, everyone to be coming out of it together. Equally, I think the museum was really great, and just generally my setup and onboarding and everything was prepped and ready for me. So when I started, the normal stumbling blocks of not having a computer or not knowing how to log into something, that was all demystified before I'd even started, so I could hit the ground running. Equally, I think, because my role isn't working on the day to day of projects, I had that little bit of time to just feel through the organisation, get to meet everybody. So yeah, it was unusual, but I think for myself, prior to this role, I have worked a lot of contracts, a lot of short-term contracts, so I'm used to jumping into something and just getting my head around it very quickly, so that shift was something that wasn't so alien to me, I suppose.

06:40
Alina Boyko
Thank you. We'd like to learn a little bit about your history, and basically, what happened before you started working at the Design Museum. Before you worked at the Design Museum, you were the curator for the Vagina Museum, a site that got a lot of press when it first opened, and just generally had a lot of buzz. Obviously, this was a really different place from somewhere like the British Museum or the Design Museum. How different have you found your experiences working in such different institutions, different museums, I'd say?
07:17

Sarah Creed

You want to hear the history of me, it makes me sound a little bit like an object. To be honest, I feel like one sometimes. I've worked at the sets for that long, and my interpretation panel probably would be about 1000 words longer unfortunately. To answer your first question first, around the Vagina Museum, for me, that was a really unique pivot out of what you'd call the traditional museum setting and sector. I was very much drawn to that project from a personal cause perspective, and really believing in the ethos and the message of the museum. That role was very much for me to come on board as the museum person and help them put together the interpretation, the program, collection policies, that kind of thing, because the director of the museum, Florence is a science communicator, by background is a scientist, and she's very good at everything around the subject matter and the advocacy for the museum. But I think they were very aware that that kind of how museums operate side of things was the one thing that they didn't have in their staff base. It was just a really fascinating, constantly evolving world to work within, because it made me break down some of my barriers of like traditional processes, because they just weren't suitable for the really dynamic way we had to work in the space we were working in. But equally, that was such a positive because we could do so many things that a traditional museum just couldn't do, and could be quite reactive.
We opened to quite the fanfare. I mean, it was a bit of a roller coaster, to be honest. I think, in November 2019, when the site opened, in our press day, we had no idea that we were going to open to like tumbleweed, or to hundreds of people. And it was the latter really, we had queues out onto Chalk Farm Road for about two weeks, and I think in our first three months we had over 120,000 visitors. So it was huge, it was a massive deal, and we were on everything, from Saturday Night Live and Late Night with Seth Meyers, to New Zealand six o'clock news. It was just a really bizarre spectrum. Even in traditional museum shows that I've done in the past and I've done press for, you know, you have your normal Guardian evening standard local press coverage, but just the sheer breadth of it was just astounding really, and a real proof of concept. I think also the space, being a nontraditional space, drew in a completely different audience, which was also really interesting. I know we'll probably touch on a bit more later, but for me in terms of my professional experience, I started very traditionally. I did a master's in art history and curating. Whilst I was doing that I'd been working voluntarily in galleries in the northwest, whether it'd be like volunteering on exhibition installs or doing some research for a curator. I just had my hand in many pies, as it were, just kind of trying to feel out what it was that I was interested in. That came purely from a love of the sector. I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but I knew I loved art and I loved going to galleries and museums. I was quite fortunate actually, that by the time I'd finished my master's program, I had about three years volunteer experience under my belt. Before I'd actually completed my master's, I got my job as an exhibition assistant at the British Museum. From there, I've just gone on into my career, and I know that I was very fortunate in that happening for me, I know that it's not something that happens for a lot of people in the sector. And indeed, there are a lot of people who I did my MA with, it took them a little bit of time to get a role. A lot of that was hinged on this voluntary work that I'd done, and it was just completely fortunate that I just so happened to have done it whilst I was doing my undergrad, a day or two a week whilst I was doing my master's in continuity. But it's one of those things that until you actually go to apply for a role, or you go to understand what is required of the sector, it's not very well advertised, essentially, that there's this real requirement for having all of these professional qualifications, but also all of this working experience. At the age of 21, 22, 23, leaving university, you don't particularly and nor should you really, need to go into unpaid work for a year, two years in order to then get a job that at the lower end of the museum spectrum isn't a job that is as well paid as other sectors, banks, lawyers, medicine, whatever it may be. I worked as an exhibition assistant at the British Museum for almost two years, I worked on several exhibition shows there. Then I worked at Dulwich Picture Gallery. I worked there for, again, almost two years, and then I got an exhibition project management job at the Museum of London. So I was kind of slowly working my way up the chain, as it were, of project management and just bolstering more and more experience. I wanted to explore other sides of the sector and explore different roles, because, again, until you actually work in a museum, and from my experience, at that point, I'd worked in three very different organisations, a locally, government funded organisation, a national and a smaller private charity organisation, that the roles were just so varied and different. Equally, within those organisations, there are so many nuanced positions, that until you're actually there, and you're living in projects, and you're living in the day to day life of the museum, you don't actually see what they do at all. Even from kind of on paper job specs, it can be very different.
I worked for two and a half years on fixed term contracts. I worked as interpretation manager, I worked as liaison manager, I worked as a curator in two different places, the Royal Holloway University, I managed their contemporary art gallery. Then I got my role at the Vagina Museum as their curator. So I really explored within my skill set, I pushed the boundaries of what my experience was and what I wanted to develop, and where did I want to sit in both, the sector, but both within a role, because you can be a curator at a very small museum, but that means you're also the project manager, and you're also the program manager, and you're also the budget manager. But you could be a curator at the British Museum, and all you're doing is research and specialist writing and training. So even that phrase, curator, isn't the same place to place. I think that became really integral to how I planned and mapped what my next stage was going to be.

Unfortunately, the museum closed during lockdown. We'd only been open for three months, and it was really quite detrimental just for our growth and trajectory. I'm really thankful to say that they've managed to stay open and are now opening a new space in Bethnal Green, but it was a really rocky period for us. I think it was for a lot of smaller organisations, particularly new ones. So I made the decision to move across to the Design Museum. This is like a permanent role, it's a new role, and it was also consolidating all of my experience, plus offering me something that was, again, the new, string to my bow, as it were, with the touring and international engagement side of things.

14:28
James Harrod
You've done a lot. You've kind of been everywhere and done everything. You mentioned, you had had a lot of fixed term contract, short-term contract roles, and correct me if I am wrong, you also do sort of freelance curatorial work as well?
14:40

Sarah Creed

Yeah, I do.

14:44
James Harrod
That's a lot to juggle, Sarah. How do you find that challenge? How do you find the time to do all of that?
14:50

Sarah Creed

Sometimes I don't, and I think that has been a real learn for me. I do do freelance work sporadically still. I'm currently doing a project in Iraq with the Royal Holloway, around craft and history and inheritance of conflict. That is something that was actually meant to happen pre-pandemic, and unfortunately, due to pandemic times, has been shifted, so I'm really looking forward to working on that over the next 18 months. But for me, it was quite integral to be able to still have the option and the possibility of doing incremental or sporadic freelance work, because I think what I realised was that having, as I said, clicked into this project management track, you can be an exhibition project manager in certain institutions, and you're heavily involved in the content, and you're really involved in the narrative builds, and you can be really hands on and it's really collaborative. And in other organisations, rightly, for their structure, you're just management, you're just doing budgets, contracts, the content side of things isn't in your remit at all. In certain places, like, for example, when I worked at the Imperial War Museum on a short-term contract, I was an exhibition and interpretation manager. So by title and day to day, I was very involved in the content because I was managing the interpretation and the plan, and the text and everything else, as well as the exhibition build and install. That mix is something that makes it appealing, engaging, and gives me that professional balance and reward as it were.

16:23
Alina Boyko
You are a museum person in every sense. In fact, we'd like to learn about what you do when you are not at a museum. We know that the museum sector can be very demanding, very time consuming, and often doesn't leave much time for our or someone else's hobbies and passions. For you, you're really passionate about pottery, right?
16:47

Sarah Creed

Yes, I am.

16:48
Alina Boyko
So how did you get into that, and how does it fit into your life now?
16:54

Sarah Creed

I actually made a really conscious choice around the time that I took on the contract work, around 2017 ish, that as well as wanting to do this short-term contracts and feel around the sector, I needed to get that work life balance better, because that was also what prompted me to want to explore what other roles looked like. As you say, I think project work can be really time demanding, and it can be emotionally demanding, your bandwidth can be taken up by things. I personally hadn't been very good at setting those boundaries for myself, protecting my own time, and showing that I was leaving on time, coming to work and leaving work at reasonable times, etc. You can get sucked into the project bubble, time passes in a very different way, and I didn't really have a “hobby of my own” as it were. I had done practical art whilst I had done my masters and done workshops and done various things, and I haven't done anything like that in a long time, so I just went to a taster course, just a weekend taster course for pottery, I just thought why not. I did it once, I just absolutely got caught by the bug of it. It's essentially become my art therapy really. I think this is the best term for it, it's my time to switch off, you can't really think about a lot other than what you're doing in pottery, so you have to be really focused on what you're doing at the time. But the big thing for me around the pottery has been just developing something, a skill set, something that has an output that isn't work related was really important for me, to be able to have something that was very separate to work, that I had a sense of pride and accomplishment around. Also, in every single stage of pottery something can go wrong, and it's completely out of your hands, there's nothing you can do about it. You could make the most beautiful ball on a wheel and throw it, but you might take off the wheel and it'll fall on the floor and it'll be a pile of mud again. I think being a project manager and a program manager, the job that we do, we are perfectionists, we want to be over everything, we want to make sure that everything is as good as possible, and it's taught me really good lessons, you just have to take a step back.

19:04
James Harrod
I 100% agree with that. For me that kind of escapism has been baking. I think there's a lot of parallels between what you're saying about pottery and what I've experienced in baking, where sometimes you can make the best loaf of bread in the world and you pop it in the oven and oh, today, it's just decided to get burnt to a crisp, despite the fact you've cooked it at the same temperature. Throughout your career, you've worked on lots of projects. As you've said, you've been everywhere, you've done everything. What we'd really like to know about you is some of the weird stuff, because there's always weird stuff, isn't there? Nothing is ever completely normal in the museum sector. Can you maybe tell us about some of the more out there projects or the weird jobs you've worked on?
19:40

Sarah Creed

Oh God, where to begin? I suppose my first instinct is also like what is people's perception of weird, because I think now I've been so diluted by some of the stuff that I've been around, oh yeah, of course I've got a life size rubber duck in the middle, you know, I don't have that boundary anymore. I suppose for me, I also said that about my partner who's a software engineer, and I'll just mention things in passing and they're like what? When I talk to them about it, they are like what did you do? I think some of the more unique and unusual things that I've done are definitely around, I worked on an exhibition at the Museum of London, “Fire Fire”, which was the anniversary of the Great Fire of London. We created this amazing huge theatrical set that had all these replicas that were bespoke made, I was in charge of commissioning, and getting them and getting them all on site. So one day, I would just have like an entirely life size, completely real looking roast chicken on my desk. Then the next I'd have leather gussets and strange clothing parts and life size replica 17th century hoses arriving and all of my colleagues constantly will be walking past every day, and it became this really strange stop point every day that they just have to peek in to see like what was on my desk, because every time they walk past, there's just something absolutely bizarre. I also very specifically remember, I had to get certain things bespoke made, like leatherwear and some other things, and I kept on having to have very awkward conversations with the IT department because the websites kept on getting stopped by the firewall, and it was purely because I was looking for leather, and I was like, this is a very, very, very stringent firewall, but unfortunately, I need to access these websites. It was a very, very interesting conversation to be having.

21:34
Alina Boyko
So how did you get into that, and how does it fit into your life now?
21:47

Sarah Creed

Absolutely. I think it's really interesting as well, working with a variety of lenders and people that contribute to projects, because you'll have people who work with museums a lot, or are a museum or are a collection and completely understand the process around things, or you might be working with individuals who have never, you know, these are their personal possessions, and they've never let them out to people before. It can be quite an overwhelming experience for some people, and they don't like the process, and it's our role to really take them through that journey, and make sure that they're really comfortable and that they're happy with everything. I've had instances where people have said they're gonna send something, and then they send something completely different, because there's not that understanding that the continuity is important all the way through it, there's a real spectrum. But I think that that is part of the role and part of the journey, and I think it makes an interesting period, especially when you're installing an exhibition or you're researching it, you'll even have people who might think that they have something that they can loan to you. If it's private individuals, then halfway through the project you'll find out that they actually don't have it anymore, and you have to recalibrate. Yeah, there's lots of different scenarios for sure that I've worked with in, but it's all been a learning experience, for sure.

23:05
Alina Boyko
A learning experience that is exciting at the same time. Sarah, thank you so much. You likely touched upon different audiences you worked with, and we understand that working across so many different museums and galleries, you must have curated and project managed for lots of different audiences. Something like the Vagina Museum, would I be right in thinking that it didn't attract your typical museum audience?
23:33

Sarah Creed

I would say that it did and it didn't. I think that our audience was always going to be everybody. That was the whole intent, that it was going to be really inclusive, that everybody could come into the space, but equally, that it wasn't going to be a space that would put off or turn away a nontraditional museum audiences, the people who don't step over a museum threshold for a particular reason, whatever their individual reason may be. I think the biggest thing for us when we were opening was - it was two things really. It was the location and the subject matter. I think just by proxy, the social history and the political history and the whole history around gynecological anatomy, at the time that we were opening was a really hot topic, and something that amongst all the myriad feminist movements, and also inclusivity and LGBTQ+ rights and all the other things that the museum stands for, it was just a really well timed opening that engaged that younger audience that were really politically engaged with this topic and all the things around it. What that meant was, quite organically, we had quite a young audience that came across the threshold very organically, like we didn't really have to push very hard for them to come. It's that kind of 18 to 30s audience broadly that museums historically struggled quite a lot with getting over the threshold, how do we make things exciting, engaging, fun. Certain museums may think that they have a certain image that they need to debunk, or their building or their threshold or their collection isn't something that attracts a certain audience, there's a myriad of things that can do that. But because we were coming from a completely different angle, I think that all of that potential criteria fell away. I think a lot of people came just for the intrigue factor, and then once they were across the threshold, my job and our job as a whole was to keep them there, and to put that learning outcome in there. And also ensure that we had repeated visits, which we had hundreds, if not thousands of back when I was there. I have to say, we were incredibly fortunate, we had absolutely, in my mind, there was no negative feedback. We had people who would just wander in, quite rightly, I think we had some concerns that people might be worried or thinking that maybe it wasn't for them, even if it was appropriate for us to be in that space. That was something that we were very firmly working with and ensuring that reassurances are in place, but also our ethos was like, why wouldn't we be there, that's the whole point of the museum, is to debunk this kind of negativity around gynecological anatomy. I equally think that younger audiences came to the museum just because the information isn't out there really in any other way other than the internet. There are hundreds of galleries full of paintings and galleries full of objects from all historical periods and pieces, whatnot, but there are very few places generally, that really look at the anatomy of any body, not the gynecological anatomy, and we were the only place in the physical premises that looked at gynecological anatomy. We had everybody, from toddlers through to 90 year olds coming across the threshold, it isn't by any means a young person's space. But yeah, those demographics were definitely a key part of our audience.

27:20
James Harrod
You mentioned this idea of these barriers, this sort of fear of crossing a threshold into a museum. What do you think are some of the biggest factors behind that decision not to enter a museum?
27:35

Sarah Creed

I think that's a really interesting question. I think it's really complex. You could write a whole PhD thesis on it. I think that there are quite literal ones, I think that there are huge socio economic ones, I think there are huge ones around groups of certain disparate, just not wanting to engage with collections that are quite colonial or have a certain route within them. I think that socio economic factors do have a big impact as well. I think that education levels have a big impact as well, wrongly. I think that people think, oh, because I haven't gone to university or I don't know history, or I don't like this or that, that's not a place for me. Or there's also like a very presumed concern that if I don't understand the subject matter or topic, like I'm not going to get it, what's the point of me even going there? I think schools are a really interesting part of it. I think that at school, you learn your history modules, you might learn about the First World War and the Second World War, and maybe a few other things sprinkled in between, but there's such a breadth and plethora of history that isn't presented to you, unless you do do like a history degree or your own reading and research. I think that is seen as quite far away for certain people who haven't gone into that track, or maybe don't have an interest. There are not a lot of avenues into certain subject matters, other than further education, or going to a museum, that's about it. I also think that cost and transport and travel and things like that are a big impact. I know that a lot of museums do really good work with getting funding to have free school trips, or to ensure that there are accessible routes of people on lower incomes or whatnot, to be able to come into a museum. But I think for certain people, especially for special exhibitions, a £20 ticket is a lot of money. I think that it's ensuring that you have that offer of free of charge is really important. It's really interesting, there's lots of studies and research that's ongoing continually by audience people like Morris Hargreaves McIntyre, all these kind of organisations that really try and analyze that from an external perspective. I think for me as well, there is a time thing for a lot of people. We live in such a fast-paced world now where everything is on your phone, or on your laptop. Why would I go to a museum if I could just Google it, or go and see it in a different way. That's a change that's happened even since I've started museums, this digital world has emerged, and I think we're competing with something that's evolving at such a fast rate. How do we keep up with it? I think that it's an interesting thing that's going to emerge, I think over the next decade or so, how museums live within this new TikTok, online world.

30:42
Alina Boyko
You mentioned different audiences, socially engaged teens and kids and schools. Are there audiences you have particularly enjoyed programming for over your career?
30:55

Sarah Creed

It's a hard one, because I think that audience segments are really crucial, and you need to know who you're targeting for. But my experience is that you might get a majority of a certain segment, whether it be over 50s, or working professionals or culture vulture people who go to a museum every day or every week or every month. But you'll always end up getting a complete spectrum of people across the threshold. What really interests me is that regardless of the sector that you're aiming your project at, what's that holistic experience of everybody, and ensuring that, regardless, all visitors are catered to to a certain degree or extent. I think, for me, what was a key visible thing was when I was working at the Royal Holloway University actually, and I was programming their Contemporary Gallery. That was a unique programming thing, because essentially, the audience was the campus, it was a campus university, there were almost 10,000 students and staff on that campus out in Egham, because it's the destination campus, a majority are living or commuting there. It was almost like a little mini village, in and of itself, it was an audience segment with an audience segment. Equally, the exhibition space was inside the main hub of the campus where the library was, the cafe, the shop, the Student Union, the meeting hub of the campus. For me there, I had to kind of cut through the noise of everything else that was happening to be like, there's a culture offer here as well. That was just really interesting, because I think everybody said to me, across the sector, you must have absolutely loved working there because that dream audience is there, you've got your 18 to 21 year olds who are just there, and clearly they are your audience. But actually, it was a really interesting thing to tackle, because they weren't there to go into a gallery, they weren't there to go and look at an exhibition, they were there to go and work in the library, or go and pick something up from the Student Union or meet their friend. So actually, it was kind of a reversal of a problem that museums have, where like they were all there, and I just had to find a way of engaging them and enticing them in. And we did, successfully, I think in a myriad of ways, we put on a lot of like practical hand workshops, and getting artists on campus, really creating a buzz around it. What was really nice for me, and I think was really a useful thing that I've taken into other roles is that kind of cross communication of, I think, historically, campus galleries or galleries attached to higher education, or museums attached to higher education, across the board, seem to naturally gravitate towards targeting things like their history students, or their archaeology students or their art students, because of course, they are going to be an audience. But for me, I tried to challenge that and say, well, I think they're going to be your audience no matter what, because that's what they're interested in, and they're going to come and have a look, because that's part of their world. But how do we target the sports students, and the math students and the science students and the people who really probably are not going to be interested in engaging in this, like how do we cut through to that side of things. I found that really rewarding because it was just trying to open up people's spectrum of audience really. And we had art students coming to collage workshops or photography workshops, coming and looking around, and it was just nice to see that cohesion across the board. I think that that's happening more and more in more traditional museum settings, in the way that you'll have museums hosting hackathons, or robot building workshops. But they might be [Tate], and it's like why is an organisation that's very art focused, but it's all of these hybrids starting to happen that I think is really interesting, and I think people are really picking up on this cross functionality of how learning programs can bring people in, and then they'll go to the exhibition program, or people might come in for a cup of coffee in the shop, and then all of a sudden they'll see a poster. I think it's getting very diluted, and that's quite exciting. I think it's just about getting people over the threshold and letting them see what you have to offer is the key thing.

35:35
Alina Boyko
Another favourite question, just one thing that we really want to ask since you've worked at so many museums and have a lot of experience in the sector. What are some of your favourite museums? Are there any that you think are really doing great work and need to be celebrated just a little bit more?
35:58
James Harrod
Can I add a little, maybe we keep it to the top three, because I'm sure there are hundreds and hundreds of museums that you love.
36:03

Sarah Creed

I am the worst person to go to a museum with, because unfortunately, I'm that person that is like that was a bit wonky, that paints a bit [shit], like I see it all because it's been my world, so I am not a visitor anymore. It's really horrible. Like, I walk into a space, and I just like to professionally analyze it. I've gotten better at it, but a few years ago, I would just see everything that I wasn't meant to see, and then the content came second. I've kind of had to recalibrate myself a little bit. I was talking to, just the other day, actually, I've been in a gallery wanting to take photos of lights and showcase seals because I thought they were nice, and everyone thought I was a bit mad.
For me, there are a few places that I think are doing really amazing stuff. I mentioned earlier, the Migration Museum, who are based in Lewisham. They've been doing amazing things for several years now. They used to have a shipping container that was on the riverbank in London, where they did some kind of pop up exhibitions around an old firehouse and then they had their permanent location. Well, I don't think it's permanent, actually, I think it's kind of a semi-permanent location in Lewisham Shopping Center, in an unused retail unit, which they've completely fitted out, it is this amazing museum space, event space. I think it's a really amazing example of how a museum can slice itself into an untraditional setting, and really thrive within the local community, I think especially because in the Borough of Lewisham there is a really large migration population. It's one of those things of the content really mattering to the local community, which I think is something that other museums always are trying to engage the people who literally live around the building, like how do we get them in the threshold. I think they're doing really amazing stuff there. They are about to open their new exhibition shortly, which title has completely evaded me, but I would encourage everyone to go and look at their website. They also have an amazing shop there, which is all either items that are made by individuals from migrant communities, or they're from countries and locations that have a lot of migration to the UK and back and forth. It's like a really nice social enterprise space.
I would also completely recommend everyone to go to the new Vagina Museum location, which is in Bethnal Green, just behind the currently closed Museum of Childhood. It's a much bigger space now. They are hopefully there for the foreseeable, for a little bit of time, and they've got a permanent gallery in there now, as well as a temporary exhibition space.
In terms of bigger organisations and things and how they've kind of shifted and what I've liked, I think that there is a real atmosphere of change, I suppose, like how the more larger traditional museums are programming their spaces and how they're engaging with communities. I went to the Tate's Britain Exhibition, “Life Between Islands”, which looked at symbiotic nature and also the juxtapositions and the emergence of Caribbean British art from the 1950s to now. I think that what's been really interesting with Tate's Britain's program over the last three, four years is this real engagement with certain groups and sectors of the society and really kind of shone a light on things. I see it really as them trying to turn around what I think quite a lot of the bigger nationals and certain collections have critique about in the past of like not engaging with different diaspora, with different sexualities, genders, with different sectors of the society, whether that be because their collections might not necessarily publicly reflect that, or perhaps content historically has not been well received. But I think that there are certain nationals that are really making strides forward in order to engage with underrepresented audiences, and undo a bit of that. I think that Tate’s Britain show was a really, really great example of that.

They also did a queer art show, I think it was two years ago, that was really, really good. But generally, I think that there are certain things that I am still waiting for the broader museum sector to engage with. I think that there are a lot more collaborations that need to happen and emerge and a bit more of a - I'm essentially the worst critical friend, because I think there are so many opportunities that museums can step into in terms of collaboration and content, without understanding the nuances of certain bits of content or decisions made on how shows have been brought together. Unfortunately, whenever I go and visit one, I always see it, and I've never left enough thought, oh, I wonder why they didn't talk to that person and why they didn't contribute to the show. For me, there's always a strange ellipsis of that there's something a bit missing. I think that's my own fault for having like a curatorial project manager hat on, because you look at it from a very researchy perspective. I would say that I really, really enjoyed the Louise Bourgeois exhibition at the Hayward as well, which I've actually just been to see. I'm about to go and see the “Masculine Fashion Show”, the “Masculinity Show” at the V&A, which I'm very much looking forward to. There's a lot out there at the moment, and there's lots of like, really dynamic shows that are being programmed for this year, including, even here at the Design Museum, we've got, as I mentioned, the “Football Show”, but we've got a show about ASMR that's opening in May, which I think will be really exciting and really different. I think that there's a real move away from quite object focused exhibitions, into more kind of dynamic experiential exhibitions, which is really exciting. So yeah, lots to look forward to. It's not a very direct answer to your question, I do apologize. I will caveat that by also saying that, I always say that it's a bit like a busman's holiday, I try and go to museums, and I try and go in exhibitions and enjoy it, but when it's your job, and you're in it every single day, I have to really make the effort to go to museums and galleries for my own enjoyment, because I think that, it's like if you were a banker, and then you were going to the bank to deposit money every weekend, you wouldn't want to do it. I love going into exhibitions, but I think sometimes, if you had a really busy time at work, or you've been in a gallery installing something, sometimes the last thing you want to do is go to another gallery. But actually, I've often found it a very nice palette cleanse to just be in a different space, and to just enjoy it passively, rather than knowing that I'm responsible for it.

43:06
James Harrod
Yeah, I think we can all definitely sympathize with that. Sometimes you just need that change of scenery. One last little quick question that we ask everybody before we let you go. If you had unlimited funding, what kind of museum would you build?
43:22

Sarah Creed

Oh, God, that is so hard.

43:26
James Harrod
Don't worry too much about it. We're not gonna actually make you produce it. It's just something fun and whimsical.
43:29

Sarah Creed

It's really hard. Oh, something fun and whimsical. I think I would love to have a museum that you could put on the back of a truck and just like drive around everywhere. Because I just think that there's a real real onus in just barging into certain spaces and setting up shop there and just leaving things there and letting people interact with them without this traditional museum threshold. There's the Museum of Nowhere, which is like that collection that travels around, I think they had some things at the Southbank, and is very much like a nomadic museum. I really love that idea of just not having a fixed home and just going wherever the wind takes you, with whatever collection you might just happen to find. I think that that would offer up quite a lot of nice, collaborative opportunities, and for people to maybe even add to it. One thing that I said years ago was that you could just get an empty truck and drive it around and stop at certain towns and just ask people to donate to you what they thought should be in a museum. Then you could just like pick it up as you drove around and then culminate it in an exhibition of it or who knows what would be in it. But I think it's important because we might think that a beautiful Rembrandt painting is important, but for whoever from Birmingham or Scotland or London, this whistle that their dad gave them might be important for specific reasons, so that should be equally as represented and cherished as that.

45:07
James Harrod
I love that.
45:07
Alina Boyko
Absolutely, I love this too. Thank you so much, Sarah. Thank you so much for speaking with us today. Just one last thing, where can people find more about your work, the Design Museum and your pottery?
45:20

Sarah Creed

The pottery, I have a horrendously dormant Instagram site, which is just @creedceramics is the handle for that. I will get more content on it shortly. For the Design Museum, I just recommend going to our website, https://designmuseum.org/ and also on all social media. In terms of just contacting myself, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on several other platforms and I'm always happy to chat with people if anyone has any kind of professional questions or career advice questions. My email inbox is open.

45:20
Alina Boyko
Thank you.
45:59
James Harrod
Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to For Arts' Sake. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe and check out our previous seasons. You can follow us on Instagram @forartssake.uk, and on Twitter @sake_arts. We hope you've enjoyed this week's episode of For Arts' Sake. If you'd like to learn more about who we are and what we do find us online at https://forartsake.co.uk/, on Twitter @sake_arts, or on Instagram @forartssake.uk.