Museum careers – the freelancer perspective

 Emma Shepley – Freelance curator and museum consultant 

Confession – I have been a museum freelancer for just one year. Until last autumn I had been in permanent museum curatorial and managerial roles for over twenty years. I was running a London museum, managing a team and prodding multiple projects and priorities along every day. I was also regularly recruiting freelancers for projects I wanted to do myself but didn’t have time.  My role was hugely rewarding, but when I was ready to go, I absolutely did not want to move straight to another intensive plate-spinning job, so I went freelance and started off by taking on a project from the museum I was leaving. It has proved one of the best career moves I have made.

Museum freelancing is largely seen as an option for much later in your career – not when you are starting out. This is true to an extent – you’ve got to be at least somewhat expert and experienced to convince someone to pay you to do something! But it is good to think ahead and realise early on that you can progress your career by working flexibly around the structures of permanent jobs.

Freelancers are most common in the fields of museum learning, marketing and evaluation – where employing external people to promote, deliver and evaluate programmes is established practice across the sector. But freelancers and contractors are also employed by many museums to develop, research and deliver galleries and exhibitions, train staff, review collections, write policies, apply for funding and provide interim support at every level. Freelancing might well be an option for you once you have:

• Developed expertise and experience in specific areas of museum work
• Good networks of colleagues and contacts who know and trust you
• Identified a stream of likely work
• Explored the personal and financial implications of the change

My year of freelancing has transformed my professional practice and has been so positive that I’d suggest that every museum professional give it a go at some point in their career. The range of new experiences, colleagues and collections that comes with delivering work for clients as a contractor, not a permanent employee, is thoroughly refreshing.

Another benefit if you have worked in one organisation for many years – you may feel institutionalised, only able work your museum magic because you know everything and everyone backwards. Freelancing is great for testing this assumption and gaining greater insight into the differences and similarities that museum staff experience everywhere.

There are cons of course. The major one is financial insecurity – permanent museum jobs offer regular salaries, pensions and a range of perks from training budgets and season ticket loans to Christmas parties and a biscuit tin. You have to fund your own training as well as the risk of periods of unemployment and clearly define the fees you will and won’t work for.

A few years in to your museum career, you may look around and realise that you need to be as flexible and dedicated to making your next move as you were in getting that first elusive first job. So keep evaluating your strengths and priorities to find out which roles work to bring your most authentic self to work, keep your passion for museums alive and enjoy the challenge.