Tag: heritage

Job Vacancy: Countryside Visitor Operations Manager – National Trust

Posted on by Amy Shakespeare

We have an opportunity for a hands-on Countryside Visitor Operations Manager to manage our busy coastal car parks and visitor related commercial enterprises to ensure every visitor gets an excellent welcome, a memorable experience and important income streams such as membership recruitment, catering and retail are further developed at the property. You’ll be working five days a week, including regular weekend days.

Due to the nature of this role a driving licence is required.

What it’s like to work here

The Lizard & Penrose is principally a countryside property featuring dramatic coastline, woodlands and farmland, busy and beautiful beaches, unique wildlife and a range of buildings from cliff top cottages to historic mansions.

A dedicated team of staff and volunteers look after the special places in our care. With 1800 hectares of land including National Nature reserves and Sites of Special Scientific Interest surrounding car parks that welcome hundreds of thousands of visitors, we’re a busy place to work, with lots going on and lots of challenges.

The Lizard and Penrose team holds a strong emphasis on partnership working. With the help of a dedicated team of volunteers, we work together with other organisations, local communities and farm tenants to help look after the special places in our care. We are committed to the Trust’s vision of of restoring a healthy, beautiful natural environment and inspiring people with great experiences so that we grow ever more support for our conservation work.

For more information about our property please visit www.nationaltrust.org.uk/lizard

What you’ll be doing

You’ll be responsible for managing an inclusive visitor welcome at our three existing coastal car parks, recruiting and managing a team of seasonal and permanent staff, motivating them to recruit new members to the Trust, to increase our income through car park fees, retail sales and a new catering business. Through a part time member of staff, you’ll oversee the property’s website and social media presence, information and signage, ensuring good presentation, tone of voice and brand guidelines are adhered to. You’ll lead the property team for customer service.

This is a hands on job, our car parks can be exceptionally busy in the summer months and increasingly so through the year, requiring strong operational management skills, prioritisation and attention to detail. You’ll be out on site with the teams regularly, working closely with the Ranger team, other members of staff and volunteers. You’ll build strong links with partner businesses, other stakeholders and the local community.

In 2019 we’ll be managing our first in house catering business at the property and there will be opportunities for business growth through new opportunities in membership, retail and catering across the portfolio.

As part of the property heads of department team you’ll contribute to the property business plan and strategic aims of the Trust.

Apply here

Closing date: 20 January

Job Vacancy: Learning Curator – Interpretation at Tate St. Ives

Posted on by Amy Shakespeare

Opportunity type:Permanent, Full-time 

Working hours:36 hours per week 

Salary:£28,742 per annum 

Location:St Ives – Tate St Ives 

Closing date:23 January 2019 at midnight

This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced communicator with a passion for promoting public involvement in the arts to work at the heart of a world-renowned and award-winning public art gallery in the beautiful location of St Ives, West Cornwall.

Working as part of the Programme team, you’ll be responsible for generating high quality and innovative interpretation in a range of different forms that help visitors engage with exhibitions and displays. With a keen eye for detail and excellent writing and proof-reading skills, you’ll be responsible for editing and coordinating the production of all forms of gallery-based interpretative media.

You’ll show that you’re a team player with a good understanding of the issues and practices of interpreting art for visitors to museums and galleries, enabling access for all.

You’ll have a degree in art, education or a related subject or be able to demonstrate the equivalent level of knowledge and thinking ability gained through experience. You’ll have up to date knowledge of how to design and deliver interpretation materials in a range of media to maximise learning experiences. Above all, you’ll have a collaborative approach to working across teams combined with excellent negotiating skills and the ability to work effectively and confidently at all levels.

This is a chance to join an amazing creative organisation, in a stimulating and challenging job, with a very friendly team.

Apply here

Job Vacancy: Property Manager – Pendennis Castle

Posted on by Amy Shakespeare

Title: Property Manager – Pendennis Castle

Location: Pendennis Castle, Falmouth, Cornwall, TR11 4LP

Salary: Up to £32,000 depending on experience

Job type: Permanent

Closing date: 20/01/2019 23:59:59

Would you like to use your passion for team leadership and delivering exceptionally high quality visitor experiences to become a key part of the English Heritage story? If so, then Property Manager at Pendennis Castle could be the role in which you really make a difference.

This is an exciting time to be joining English Heritage in Cornwall. In the last two years we have invested substantially in Pendennis Castle, launching innovative new interpretation delivered through volunteer ‘story-telling’, developing a beautiful hospitality suite and creating a welcoming new tearoom. In addition, Pendennis Castle is a major events site, staging popular events such as jousts throughout the main season.

Reporting to the Head of Historic Properties for Cornwall and Devon, you will have direct management and stewardship for both Pendennis and St. Mawes. We will look to you to inspire our fantastic team of staff and volunteers to deliver the very highest standard of customer service and experience for our visitors.

As well as ensuring that a keen commercial focus is maintained you will also work in partnership with colleagues across different departments to deliver high standards of presentation and maintenance whilst ensuring that all activities are in line with the English Heritage brand.

We are looking for someone who is a proven leader, able to manage and inspire a diverse team and who can embody the English Heritage behaviours of Collaboration, Innovation and Empowerment in everything we do. You’ll be great at prioritising and planning and be keen to develop our stakeholder relationships in the local area.

If you can bring those skills as well as proven experience in achieving income targets through a number of revenue streams whilst controlling costs to achieve a budget this could well be the role for you.

English Heritage cares for over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places across the UK. We champion historic places, helping people to understand, care for and enjoy them, now and for future generations.

We’d love you to join us and play your very own part in our vision to become a thriving and well-loved charity.

English Heritage offers a competitive salary, a generous pension scheme, 25 days holiday (plus bank holidays) and other financial and non-financial lifestyle benefits.

Click here to apply

Assessments are expected to take place on 1st February with second interviews on 7th February.

Heritage Heroes Award

Posted on by Amy Shakespeare

In March 2018 Cornwall Museums Partnership and SW Museum Development hosted the very first Cornwall Heritage Awards to celebrate and champion the amazing work that’s taking place in our museums.

This week we recognise the invaluable contribution made by the volunteer teams within heritage organisations across Cornwall. Without volunteers, our heritage would not be protected for everyone to enjoy, learn from or be inspired by in the future.

The judges found this a particularly difficult award to judge and wanted to express thanks and appreciation to all the entrants.

 

Joint Winner – Heritage Heroes Award (smaller organisations) Newquay Old Cornwall Society; Archaeology Group

Under the guidance of Sheila Harper this group tirelessly cares for ancient archaeological sites around the Newquay area. Never afraid of hard work, they do everything from clearance to remedial and preservation work and have brought the ancient late Saxon village at Mawgan Porth back off the English Heritage risk register. The group meet throughout the year and undertake site monitoring, provide talks and guided walks and actively encourage others in learning about and enjoying our heritage.

 

Joint Winner – Heritage Heroes Award (smaller organisations) Old Guildhall Museum and Gaol, Looe; Winter Team

The museum was left without leadership when both former curators fell ill and were facing a very difficult future. However, the volunteer team stepped forward and worked tirelessly to care for, identify, research and redisplay the artefacts. The process has enabled the volunteers to completely refresh the museum and learn a lot more about Looe’s heritage which they can share with their visitors. It hasn’t stopped there, they are now working on events and activities to encourage and build new audiences.

 

Highly Commended – Heritage Heroes Award (smaller organisations) The Castle Heritage Centre, Bude; The Castle Archive Team

The archive team at The Castle Heritage Centre are a group of skilled and dedicated volunteers who care for the collections twice a week, keeping meticulous records, recording environmental data and caring for the objects across 3 sites; The Heritage Centre, The Barge Workshop and The Old Forge. The team also support and encourage others, through the return to work schemes as well as work experience initiatives, family history research and public enquiries. It is clear that the volunteers are prepared to go above and beyond for the good of the Heritage Centre.

 

Winner – Heritage Heroes Award (larger organisations) Wheal Martyn; Historic Crane Conservation Project

Volunteers were absolutely at the heart of this conservation project from the very start through to undertaking the work. Following professional conservation advice, Peter and Ray undertook painstaking conservation, working outdoors in all weathers. It was a long and hard job, particularly given the number of pieces the crane was dismantled into. Peter and Ray were later joined by three new volunteers, Ken, Andrew and during the summer holiday Gavin, a student from St Austell College. The project has been featured as a case study in the  Association of British Transport and Engineering Museums Guidelines for the Care of Larger and Working Historic Objects.

 

Highly Commended – Heritage Heroes Award (larger organisations); Geevor Tin Mine; Muckers & Loco Restoration Group

Locos and muckers were used at Geevor to transport rocks underground and the shed where they were repaired is still in operation. Jack, John and Kevin have been enthusiastically restoring the vehicles and have spoken with people who still work in the mining industry and sought the knowledge of former miners and engineers to assist them in their work. The team have worked tirelessly to ensure the project is successful by chatting with visitors and sharing progress on Facebook. They provide an enormous contribution to Geevor and the wider story of Cornish Mining.

 

Highly Commended – Heritage Heroes Award (larger organisations); Helston Museum; Education Pod

Helston Museum Education volunteers take care of all the many school visits to the museum, everything from taking bookings to devising and delivering activities, such as their Victorian schoolroom and evacuee sessions. The team create an immersive learning experience where all participants feel as though they have travelled back in time. They are extremely hardworking and imaginative and were pivotal in enabling Helston Museum to gain a Sandford Award for Heritage Education.

 

Bryony Robins, Museum Development Officer – bryony@cornwallmuseumspartnership.org.uk

Cornwall Heritage Awards is launched

Posted on by Amy Shakespeare

Cornwall Museums Partnership (CMP) has launched the very first ‘Cornwall Heritage Awards’, which will celebrate the achievements of museums and heritage organisations across Cornwall.

The awards, which were officially launched on Tuesday 10 October, will give the opportunity to showcase the hard work of museums as well as the staff, volunteers and trustees that support them.

Applicants can enter up to seven awards, which include innovative project of the year, heritage heroes, the family friendly award, the audience initiative award, the Cornish heritage award, project on a budget, and the object of the year award, which will be subject to a public vote in the new year.

Emmie Kell, Director of Cornwall Museums Partnership encourages local museums to get involved in the new awards: “We are excited to be launching such a fantastic new initiative. The Heritage Awards have been designed to recognise and reward achievement, and raise the profile of museums and heritage organisations in Cornwall.

The Awards ceremony will also offer a great opportunity to network with colleagues and build connections with other key industry professionals. The event will be true a celebration of Cornwall’s distinctive cultural heritage.”

The application process is open until Friday 15 December 2017. Winners will be announced at the Awards Ceremony that takes place on 20 March 2018 at Scorrier House in Redruth.

For more information and to apply, please visit the Cornwall Museums Partnership website.

Weekly Tech Review – Week 6 Sketchfab – viewing 3D scans

Posted on by Amy Shakespeare

Sketchfab

Overview:

Following on from last week’s review of publishing 3D models on Sketchfab, we are reviewing the user-experience of Sketchfab. Sketchfab is a platform where you can publish, share and discover 3D content. There are over 1.5 million scenes with a community of over 1 million creators you can follow, making Sketchfab the largest platform for immersive and interactive 3D content. As with most of our reviews, this is a free platform, where there is no cost to upload or access content.

What you need:

  • An internet connection
  • A computer or smartphone
  • The Sketchfab website or app (available for iOS and Android)

 Instructions:

The Sketchfab website is incredibly easy to use and navigate. For the purposes of this review, we visited the profile of the British Museum, who have made a concerted effort to publish 3D models online, and have uploaded 220 to date. Following on from this we explored the models that were tagged as ‘Cornwall’ and then filtered for ‘Cultural Heritage and Museums’. We particularly enjoyed the 3D models created by Tom Goskar.

Pros:

  • Detailed information has been provided next to the models. We selected the Queen piece from the Lewis Chess set – this showed information relating to the date of production, height, material, as well as meta-data about the person who took the 3D scan and what equipment was used.

  • There is the facility for multiple annotations when a model contains more than one object.

  • You can download the model for free, though if you wished to charge, there is the facility. This is dependent upon copyright restrictions – so if you don’t want people to download something, you don’t have to offer it.
  • You can add this model to your own collection, embed it on a website, like it, and share it on social media.
  • You can see how many people have viewed and liked the model, allowing museums to gauge the popularity of objects.
  • There is the facility to set different licenses for the download, for instance, the Queen is Creative Common Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. The Creative Commons system of licensing is very straightforward, and you can easily work it out here.
  • People can comment on each model, allowing for extra information, feedback, and discussion amongst users.
  • You can tag each model with generic terms, making it easy for people to find your model while browsing.
  • Link to the museum’s website

Cons:

  • We were keen to try out the VR facility on the Sketchfab app with our trusty Google Cardboards, however, we noticed that all of the museum/heritage models that we looked at were not optimised for VR. This is not a criticism of Sketchfab per se, but more of a missed opportunity on behalf of museums. We did find some ‘VR ready’ models and found the experience to be absolutely brilliant, with the ability to move around the object (something that we noticed was noticeably lacking in Google Arts and Culture and Google Expeditions.
  • Viewing objects in VR version works perfectly for iOS devices. However, using an Android device takes a long time for the object to load in VR and, additionally, the user must install the Google VR Services app beforehand, in order to be able to view objects on Google cardboard (or any VR device).

General feedback:

We love Sketchfab! It presents a brilliant opportunity to freely share and disseminate 3D digital content and become a member of this burgeoning online community. We particularly like the idea of being able to comment on models and feel that this would be a useful tool in the co-curation of museum objects, enhancing digital engagement and participation.

We noticed that most of the models that have been tagged as ‘Cornwall’ are archaeological or architectural, so there is a need for museum object to comprehensively display Cornish heritage.

Score:

  • Price – 5/5
  • Ease of use- 5/5
  • Education – 5/5
  • Fun – 4.5/5

Overall score: 19.5

Jenny Lee and Yiota Liopetriti