Hi, thank you for having me.

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.

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

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.

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.

Yeah, yeah. Almost a year now.

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.

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.

Yeah, I do.

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.

Yes, I am.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Oh, God, that is so hard.

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.

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.