Redundant thoughts

At the start of this month I tweeted that my job was at risk. And then it became official. Here’s an update. I’ve been on furlough since March and now my professional role is officially at risk as a result of COVID-19. I don’t want pity – that’s just a stark reality of 2020 and many other people have had worse to deal with than I have. Closing UK museums over the summer was absolutely the right thing to do, but the fiscal implications are dire. The Trust  I work for is a charity and has reasonable pots of money in from grants to support its existence; mostly it is (was) self-sustaining through money gained from entry tickets, commercial ventures, and events. Nothing open or being opened in a much reduced capacity has made that bottom line a lot closer than anyone wanted it to be. Many jobs in the Trust will go and several new ones are being made to redeploy some of those affected. The new organisational layout is basically a war-cabinet, an arrangement of people who will batten down the hatches to weather the ongoing storm for 12-18 months. None of this is ideal. There will be a huge loss of skills and experience in the curatorial, learning, public engagement, finance, comms, and VE teams. In some cases, these people are basically irreplaceable. Yet here we are. Museums people are a wonderful group of passionate geeks and nerds who scrape a living doing something that they’d would (and probably have, at some point) be doing for free had things worked out differently. I know I’m not irreplaceable but being 2 months shy of 10 years continued service I certainly know a thing or two about the broken old stuff and it’s a shame that might not count for much. The problem is that this knowledge isn’t income-generating unless it’s feeding into an exhibition or other venture.

There are new jobs being made available; on which I can’t say too much other than they are museum generalist types undertaking, it seems, all of the work and all of the paperwork without having a specialist collection to deal with. I imagine that all of the people applying for these jobs will have been working with one of the specialist collections already, so Christ only knows how we are to be dragged away from that which we know best. I hate everything about having to fight against friends and colleagues for a slice of this pitiful cake. I hate being Machiavellian and pushing my own skills and experience, to get a higher score on an Expression of Interest. I hate lying to myself and having to write applications and similar things like I am the best thing that ever happened to Museums Archaeology because I don’t believe that, even superficially, for a second. Whilst gainfully employed I’ve still been unsuccessful in the jobs market for the past 3 years (the current tally is, I think, 6 interviews in a row without a job offer). Given how niche this sector is, vacancies in my region don’t come up all that often and are wildly competitive when they do. I recently came 2^nd for a role in a nearby museum which was more junior than my current one, and that doesn’t do self-confidence any good. A combination of that and the fact that my current job was being financially down-graded before COVID took hold doesn’t lead me to believe that my skills and experience are as highly sought after as I’d like them to be. This means the jobs market isn’t a welcoming place for me, I think. I suspect many colleagues will also be wanting to weather the storm, like I wish to, in a role that is at least in a familiar place with familiar people and familiar systems. Who can blame us? No-one goes into working in museums because it’s lucrative – we do it for the love of our heritage, love of truths and of stories, and we do it because we feel connected to this stuff. Thus, today I submitted my EOI for a job that isn’t my job. What was the alternative? The jobs market in this sector is dire at the best of times and the undoubtedly new influx of fellow curators and historians into it following cuts and redundancies elsewhere in the country will make it more competitive than ever. There are people’s jobs that will go and that has real world implications. I suspect this will disproportionately affect the younger half of the museum’s workforce who may be already have been precariously employed and living in rented accommodation. I am lucky to live in a cheap part of the country in a house that has my name on the mortgage and have a wonderful partner who was a) already the breadwinner and b) isn’t at risk of redundancy. This is a blessing and I know how fortunate I am for all of these things.

I’ve had many conversations with friends and colleagues over the past few weeks and they all seem, like me, physically and emotionally exhausted by the stress of it all. One of the things we are agreed on is that it would be nice to have someone to blame – we are losing jobs because of a virus that didn’t exist a year ago. That’s pretty fucked up. I cant imagine going back to work and having empty desks or names removed from the signing in board; one of them might yet be mine, but this is a a proper sucker punch from the hand of fate.

The Trust must do what it has to in order to survive and I broadly support that idea as I, as a curatorial person, have always been aware that my interactions with the old things will be fleeting and ephemeral. They will be here long after I’m gone (professionally and corporeally, both are true) and that is, I think, reassuring. Perhaps counting one’s blessings are the only sane thing to do at a time like this? As this is my PhD blog I should mention that somewhere. Personally, this does have implications for my PhD as I have no head-space to think about magic and materiality in Roman Britain and getting those all-important words written down for the first draft has become temporarily impossible. Thankfully the OU respects that its students are real people with real lives and real problems, and I should be able to reclaim this time at the end of the programme if I need it. How could I write meaningful, suspenseful things about archaeological theory when my capacity to deal with anything has been cut so thinly? Case in point, on Wednesday I went to the barbers for the first time in 2020 looking for a proper haircut. The bugger chopped it way too short before I could do anything about it and I was a miserable mope for the rest of the day and most of the following day. I’m so stressed I can’t deal with something so simple, so thinking about opening my thesis up gives me chills at the minute. And that’s fucked up too.

What are the solutions to any of these problems? Damned if I know. I’m not a public health expert, or an economist, or a politician. I’m just a history nerd who likes to talk about Medieval pots and pictures of Roman willies and is horrified that my chances to continue doing this might be taken away by something I have next-to-no control over. If I end up unemployed I’m sure I could go work on a forklift at the Wren kitchens HQ in town or become a postie walking all over the place and be thankful for the opportunity, but museums have a way of getting into your soul. Not working in a museum, with archaeology, would be an existential crisis. I’m sure many of my colleagues feel the same: this is what I do, this is what I am. That’s a very capitalist way of thinking about the world, defining yourself by your job, but Museums are not part of the normal world. They are wonderful places ran by passionate people. It’l be a shame to lose some of that. If you have read my small rant then thanks for doing so. I repeat: I don’t want pity. If you want to help in any way, then go to your recently re-opened museums, buy a mug from their online shop, or just retweet their frantic digital engagement. Museums have been brought to their knees once again and this time the pressure isn’t going to go away. Museums are for everyone and the idea that some of them might not exist this time next year is not worth bearing, so help them out. Please.