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Number 11, year 2021
Revista Catalana de Museologia

Assault on museums or examples of successful access for young people into the job market

Damià Amorós i Albareda, member of the board of directors of the Associació de Museòlegs de Catalunya (AMC) and territorial delegate in the Tarragona region

Publication date: 16/12/2021


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Publication date: 16/12/2021

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Abstract

The permeability of the job market in relation to the newer generations has never been a matter of easy digestion, especially in the public sector, where unfortunately, and increasingly, young people's access to a public servant position is difficult and complex. And in museums too, which is a primary and alarming issue.

From the Associació de Museòlegs de Catalunya we want to expose this reality, and obviously some others, to the public eye. The “Assault on Museums” campaign aims to bring out the path of young people who are currently working in museums and to divulge how they achieved to do so.

1. Introduction

One of the current problems in the job market, whether linked or not to museums, is the penetration of new and young professionals. This is a complication that has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, along with the resulting economic crisis.

The data to contrast these facts, or the studies that have been carried out, are outdated or altered, like everything, by the events that occurred in 2020. New reports produced in 2021 will be more accurate and adjusted to reality, and will let us know the idiosyncrasy of the museological job market and the access that young professionals in Catalonia have to it.

Nevertheless, Catalan and Spanish universities have continued their training programs in the field of museums, and have generated a bag of new professionals who often access the sector precariously, through private institutions or part-time jobs. These are facts that the journalist Clàudia Rius narrated in a series of articles in the digital media Núvol.(1)

In her article, Rius writes from the example of different professionals who just completed their training, professionals that work in precarious conditions, and professionals who already have quite long careers. From the AMC itself, we can confirm this with the data of our young partners—in this case people between the ages of 25 and 40—who represent only 13% of the total number of our members, mostly women.

In response to the current situation, the AMC’s current campaign “Assault on Museums” is driven, and others such as the “Col·lectiu Avril”, which defines itself in its social media profile as “Young museologists who want to collaborate in the field of heritage and museums. We criticize, propose and act.”

2. Projection and application of the “Assault on Museums” campaign

Faced with this complex situation, with the few actions that have been taken to mitigate it and with the need to disseminate and explain this problem, the communication commission of the AMC promotes the campaign “Assault on Museums.”

It stems from the premise of knowing the experience and the project of a young professional under the age of 35, associated or not with the AMC, who is trained and develops their work in a museum, a heritage center or a monument, either public or private. The next step was to find our protagonists, which is still ongoing, and to carry out the production of the campaign. This, in addition to focusing on actions and people from all over the country and with the possibility of extending the territorial scope of action to other Catalan-speaking territories.

To find the right format, as it was clear that the campaign had to be carried out digitally, the committee assessed the different channels available to our entity and the impact they would generate, because they are perhaps one of the few elements we can quantify. The chosen option was to reactivate the AMC YouTube channel.

Then, once this medium was chosen, the format was yet to be decided on, which in this case was the production of a video, but we needed to define its duration yet. Applying the principle that reigns in the social network of short duration and rapid impact, it was proposed to make short audiovisual capsules no longer than three minutes, where the protagonist answered a questionnaire related to training, projects and experiences in the work environment within the heritage sector.

While writing this article, 4 clips have been already published. Their authors are:

We have unpublished material and new interviews for the last months of 2021.

From the AMC we call on the administrations to urgently apply measures that make it possible for younger people to access museums with decent working conditions, and we denounce that unemployment figures are especially serious among the younger professionals in this sector.

3. Reception and application of the “Assault on Museums” campaign

From the communication committee of the AMC we chose the option of conducting the campaign digitally in order to measure its impact through its number of visualizations and other metrics, provided by the different social media we used.

Our videos uploaded to YouTube add up to a total of 250 views with an average of 63 views per video. We must recognize that the AMC channel has few subscribers and that its visibility needs to be improved.

The result of the metrics of our Twitter channel is quite different—there, our organization has more than 2,200 followers. So, the total views of the four tweets with the embedded clip have 2,720 impacts, with an average of 680 views.

The global count is of 3,000 views approximately on both AMC’s main digital channels. The very channels where the views are accumulated served us to make other appointments with more professionals to increase our number of clips.

There have been two media outlets, until September 2021, that have echoed the campaign. Espluga FM Ràdio published an interview in June 2021, (2) and the journalist Maria Palau also published an opinion piece in the newspaper El Punt Avui(3)

We cannot overlook the fact that part of the success of the campaign is due to the name that was given to it, the idea of linking an assault on museums—which would be dangerous for museums—with another kind of assault—young professionals joining museum teams.

4. Conclusions

The need to disseminate and claim the actions and projects of young and new museological professionals in Catalonia was and still is the reason for the “Assault on Museums” campaign.

Producing audiovisual material, reactivating some of the entity’s digital channels and creating synergies with other people, professionals, museum groups and institutions have been positive derivatives of the campaign.

This can be a first step in setting up, from the entity’s committee, an annual campaign aimed at some of the sector’s most urgent problems, professionals or the cultural and heritage world in general.

Notes


(1)

Rius i Llorens, Clàudia (2019). “Treballar en un museu: utopia o realitat”, September 3, 2021. https://www.nuvol.com/art/treballar-en-un-museu-utopia-o-realitat-57976.

(1)

Rius i Llorens, Clàudia (2019). “Treballar en un museu: utopia o realitat”, September 3, 2021. https://www.nuvol.com/art/treballar-en-un-museu-utopia-o-realitat-57976.

(2)

Molné, Laia (2021). “‘L’Assalt als Museus’, una iniciativa per conèixer els professionals més joves del sector”, 4 de juny de 2021. https://www.efmr.cat/blog/2021/06/04/assalt-museus-iniciativa-coneixer-professionals-joves-sector/.

(2)

Molné, Laia (2021). “‘L’Assalt als Museus’, una iniciativa per conèixer els professionals més joves del sector”, 4 de juny de 2021. https://www.efmr.cat/blog/2021/06/04/assalt-museus-iniciativa-coneixer-professionals-joves-sector/.

(3)

Palau, Maria (2021). “Un assalt necessari”, May 29, 2021. http://www.elpuntavui.cat/opinio/article/8-articles/1976759-un-assalt-necessari.html.

 

(3)

Palau, Maria (2021). “Un assalt necessari”, May 29, 2021. http://www.elpuntavui.cat/opinio/article/8-articles/1976759-un-assalt-necessari.html.

 

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