Early Career Development Event at Kew Gardens

 Hosted by Kew Gardens for the MEG Early Career Subcommittee

3 October 2022

On 3 October, Kew Gardens kindly hosted a group of early career museum practitioners and researchers for a day of talks and tours centred around what it means to work in museums today. Speakers included members of staff from Kew as well as several other institutions. This was a great opportunity to gain insights into the diverse range of work that takes place in museums and to meet new people at a similar stage in their careers.

The day began with a warm welcome from Kew’s Mark Nesbitt (Senior Research Leader) and Erin Messenger (Collections Manager), who introduced us to the Economic Botany Collection. This was followed by a tour of the collection, led by Erin and Ben Hill (Accreditation Manager). The collection contains over 100,000 objects that are all derived from plants. One of the things that makes the collection so special is the fact that it contains materials that relate to the different stages of production, from the plant specimen onwards. For me, highlights of the tour included a set of poison arrows and some (very) Victorian mourning jewelry made entirely of rubber. The collection really highlights the integral relationship between plants and culture.

Later in the day, we had the pleasure of visiting Kew’s community allotment. Jane Roger (Learning Coordinator) introduced us to the remarkable community engagement and learning work that she leads here. This includes working with local refuges, prisons, and homeless charities and making the space a truly accessible one. The beautiful garden itself really reflected the welcoming environment that Jane has fostered, and I’d encourage those interested in community engagement to learn more about this project.

The day included a series of talks from museum professionals and researchers who shared their own career paths and gave an insight into the nature of their current roles. Kew’s Ben Hill introduced us to collections management, Imogen Clarke (The Science Museum) introduced us to museum interpretation and Adam Koszary (The Audience Agency) shared their insights on social media. PhD researcher Kim Walker (Royal Holloway University/Kew) presented their work on Cinchona and offered helpful advice on the merits of undertaking a PhD in partnership with museums. Thank you to the speakers, who were all supportive and generous with their time and advice.

Thank you again to the team at Kew for a brilliant event. This was the first event to be held under the auspices of MEG’s Early Career Subcommittee. It was such an enjoyable and enriching day and a great opportunity to meet new people and hear about their work. If you are an early career practitioner or researcher and would like to be more involved in developing events like this, do contact me on (a.potts@brighton.ac.uk) to learn more about joining the subcommittee. If you are interested in organising or hosting an event like this one at your own institution, particularly beyond London, do also let me know.