Delivered by UCL Special Collections
In 2022, the Foundation for Future London has awarded a grant to UCL Special Collections, in partnership with Newham Heritage Month, for its project “The New Curators Project” for people in Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest through our Medium Grant Scheme.
“The New Curators Project” is a career focused programme for young East Londoners that demystifies the cultural heritage sector while creating opportunities for participants to develop the skills, experience and confidence needed to access it.
The Medium Grant Scheme is part of our Westfield East Bank Creative Futures Fund, funded by Westfield Stratford City.
The project meets three of our scheme’s key themes, Employment Opportunities, Learning Opportunities and Young People.
The New Curators Project is a career focused programme for young east Londoners that demystifies the cultural heritage sector while creating opportunities for participants to develop the skills, experience and confidence needed to access it.
The project aims to provide real-world skills and competencies in an inclusive and creative way; training sessions will provide the opportunity to meet a range of professionals from the field and learn some field specific skills, and a real-life brief from Newham Heritage Month will provide a hands-on experience that can be added to a CV and discussed in future interviews.
The project will create and support a cohort of ten young practitioners aged 18-24 from Newham, Waltham Forest, Hackney and Tower Hamlets in 2022. They will receive training and guidance including supported access to and use of the archives at Newham and at UCL. Participants will develop an understanding of how to research a theme, collate historical resources, interpret them and then curate their own exhibition as part of the 2022’s Newham Heritage Month programme.
With support from Newham Library Services, the resultant exhibition will tour the 10 libraries in June 2022, and the community curators will be given further opportunities to run engagement activities related to this exhibition.
Our ‘alumni’ group (last year’s participants) will be invited to contribute to take up bursary supported work experience placements in the following year, which will support the delivery of the next year’s iteration of The New Curators Project.
We are recruiting for participants until 28 February, after which the workshops will begin.
To take part, please email library.spec.coll.ed@ucl.ac.uk or phone 07741671329.
For more information, see blogs.ucl.ac.uk/special-collections/2021/12/15/the-new-curators-project-2022-is-open-for-applications/
Newham Heritage Month
UCL Special Collections
Transforming lives and careers of people in East London
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