2025 was a busy year in which my favourite month was May because it included being invited by the Foundling Museum to attend His Majesty’s Garden Party for those working in Education & Skills at Buckingham Palace, and presenting on behalf of GEM at both the M+H Show at Olympia and the Connected Audience conference in Berlin. Other highlights included working with my wonderful clients, lots of young people, and the amazing women doing traineeships with Idle Women. In addition, I enjoyed working with GEM to produce the GEM Case Studies publication #34 - Career Pathways in Museums.
Planning ahead for 2026, I am excited to be continuing to work with my regular clients as well as two relatively new clients, Arts Students’ Union and Westminster Abbey:
Arts Students’ Union - continuing to work with the team after delivering a networking session for UAL students in autumn. I am now writing a networking resource for them to be used at their Course Rep Conference in February;
Foundling Museum - carrying on with the evaluation of their Tracing Our Tales art and music traineeships, as well as working with their alumni trainees group;
Group for Education in Museums (GEM) - continuing with the research focusing on Work experience, work placements and inclusive pathways by working with seven museums (or groups of museums) on the GEM Inclusive Pathways Action Research Programme. In addition, I will be chairing a panel discussion at the M+H Show in May and possibly presenting at an international conference in autumn;
Idle Women - maintaining to support the women on a traineeship who have come via local refuge Humraaz for Black and Minority Ethnic women who are experiencing domestic abuse and all forms of Harmful Traditional Practices;
National Paralympic Heritage Trust (NPHT) - continuing on a collaboration with freelancer Siân Rosa Hunter Dodsworth to evaluate NPHT’s inclusive approach to working with neurodiverse and disabled people, with my area of focus being their work placements with young people and traineeships with adults;
Tate - proceeding to co-lead and evaluate their mentoring programme which matches Tate staff with Tate Collective Producers, and we have 19 pairs this year!
Westminster Abbey - continuing to work with them after acting as a critical friend for them in autumn to enable them to offer a two week work placement for young people via the Kings’ Trust. I will now be evaluating the pilot Work Placement Programme for them during spring.
Watch this space for more news in 2026. Happy New Year everyone!