More trainee news

Another week, another blog from another trainee. This time it's the turn of Jed one of our Collections trainees, who's put together this piece for the Association for Suffolk Museums newsletter, which he's kindly offered to share here on the MEAL Blog. It's fantastic to share some of the day to day life of a trainee, and to highlight just how interesting and rewarding the schemes being offered here at the Museum are.

'We’ve now been at MEAL for four months and we’re amazed not only by how quickly the time has passed, but by how much we’ve already done in this short time. Over these four months we’ve attended numerous training sessions, teaching us the expected standards relating to documentation, handling, and conservation to name but three. Significantly though, this traineeship has not just been a prescribed set of training days but a flexible learning experience, and most of our time at the Museum has been spent not in meeting rooms but getting on the job experience.

Fellow trainee Laura labelling an object at the Labeling and Marking objects training

The main focus of these four months has been getting involved in the everyday management of the museum’s collections; using the cataloguing system, finding items in the stores, and adding items to the database. We’ve also been heavily involved in the museum’s HLF project, inventorying items, conducting research, and contributing to interpretation. Alongside our work in the collections, however, we’ve had the chance to get involved in the museum’s events, including the Beer Festival, On Landguard Point and the Steam and Crafts Weekend.

Jed pouring a pint at the beer festival

More recently we have begun to get training as Museum Assistants, looking after the museum’s day-to-day operations but more importantly looking after the museum’s visitors. All of this has been great experience to count towards the Cultural Heritage Venue Operations NVQ we are undertaking over the course of the year.

Visiting the V&A, who are running the NVQ programme

Overall, it’s been a busy but rewarding four months!'