In the final episode of Voices of the Royal Pavilion & Museums, Sophie interviews Nicola Adams, Digital Marketing Officer and Tasha Brown, Museum Futures Trainee - two individuals who perhaps typify the future of our museums - about their hopes and dreams for the future of the organisation. This episode meditates on how, more than ever, the stories told by museum staff and volunteers are vital for making sense of the time in which we find ourselves.

Voices of the Royal Pavilion & Museums

16. Finale!

This penultimate episode explores the ever-increasing role of digital technology in our cultural organisations by talking to Kevin Bacon, Digital Manager at Royal Pavilion & Museums. Kevin takes us on a whistle-stop tour of his own experiences of working with technology at the museum over the past 20 years and provides an insight into how it has tried, failed and tried again to make collections more accessible and inclusive.

15. People First, Technology Second

In 2019, over 120 items of furniture and decorative objects from the Royal Collection Trust were loaned to their original home at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton after 170 years away. Dr Alexandra Loske, Curator at the Royal Pavilion, talks to Sophie about their homecoming, and explains the prescience of the Prince Regent’s infamous collection for Brighton and beyond.

14. A Prince's Treasure

In the first episode of the final series, Sophie speaks to Amy Junker-Heslip and Carola Del Mese, two members of the conservation team at Royal Pavilion & Museums. Amy and Carola share stories about some of delicate, painstaking and surprisingly creative work they have undertaken to help ‘make things last forever’ at this museum service.

13. The Art of Conservation

In the final episode of the series, Sophie goes behind the scenes with Dan Robertson, Curator of Local History and Archeology at Royal Pavilion & Museums. Dan’s seemingly infinite descriptions of Victorian Egyptologists, holy water sprinklers, German mausers, grid irons, Sussex loops and the deepest hand-dug well in the world capture the unique and complex history of RPM whilst paying tribute to the Brightonian families that first made these collections possible.

12. Rummaging Through Boxes

In this episode, Sophie is joined by Robert White and Kelly Boddington, two early participants of the workforce development programme at Royal Pavilion & Museums, who spearheaded LGBTQ+ interpretation in its current form across the organisation. Kelly, who works by day as Assistant Buyer in the Retail team and Rob, a Marketing Support Officer and Booking Office Assistant, worked together to create Brighton Museum’s first LGBTQ trail back in 2014. Both speak about their role as change agents working from below, pushing forward a radical spirit across the museum services’ exhibitions and events through their focus on Queer history and engagement with local LGBTQ+ communities.

11. Queer Histories

The Booth Museum of Natural History is a museum of Victorian taxidermy (notably of British birds), but also insects, fossils, bones and skeletons. On TripAdvisor it has been described as “a place of wonder, with a bit of terror thrown in.” In this episode Sophie is joined by Lee Ismail, Curator of Natural Sciences at the Booth, who introduces the museum and explains its origins. Sophie also spends some more time with Lavender Jones, long-standing volunteer at RPM and Zak Flannery, Visitor Services Officer, who provide anecdotes from their experience of working at the Booth.

10. Frogs & Formaldehyde

10. Frogs and Formaldehyde

In this episode, Sophie is joined by Rachel Heminway-Hurst, Curator of World Art, and Edith Ojo, freelance Arts Consultant and advisor on the Fashioning Africa project. Rachel and Edith explain the history and culture behind Yoruba Aso-oke textiles from West Africa, helping us to understand the symbolic importance of a British coastal museum collecting such textiles, and how new models of collecting enable previously unheard stories to be told.

9. Disrupting South Coast Colonialism

Sophie meets some of the ‘walking encyclopaedias’ who work on the frontline at Royal Pavilion & Museums. Marcus Bagshaw, Sue Winkett, Clare Hartfield and Zak Flannery all work in the Visitor Services team across the organisation’s five sites. They provide a rollicking, unpredictable and alternative tour of Brighton’s museum service in this episode and their enthusiasm demonstrates how a one-team mentality, however difficult to initially embed, is vital for both a happy workforce and more engaged audiences.

8. Life on the Frontline

In the first episode of Season 2, Sophie speaks to Nick Kay, Workforce Development Officer at Royal Pavilion & Museums. Launched in 2012, Royal Pavilion & Museums’ innovative workforce development programme is a unique example of an on-the-job museum training scheme. Nick talks about the ethos behind the scheme, what has made the initiative so successful and how in-house training isn’t just a box-ticking exercise for assisting staff in climbing the museum career ladder, but about enabling a good quality of work life regardless of your position in the workforce.

7. Workforce Development

Voices of the Royal Pavilion & Museums is a podcast  series that tells the rich and varied stories of the museum people who  keep Brighton’s historic buildings and collections relevant, vibrant and  accessible for the world we are living in. The series is presented by Dr Sophie Frost, who was embedded as an  action researcher at Royal Pavilion & Museums Brighton and Hove  (RPM) throughout 2019. Voices uses the microphone as a medium  to hear the learnt and lived experiences of staff and volunteers working  for this regional museum service. Sophie is Digital Fellow on the One by One project led by the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester, a  collaborative project exploring digital literacy in museums.

0. Voices of the Royal Pavilion & Museums Trailer

In this episode, Sophie is joined by Dr Helen Mears, Keeper of World Art and Sarah Lee, Consultant and Advisor to RPM as well as Co-Founder of Brighton and Hove Black History. Helen and Sarah discuss how RPM’s recent Black and Minority Ethnic cultural heritage projects have adopted ground-breaking practices of co-production and collaboration by working with representative community groups to construct a greater sense of shared ownership around museum collections. Of notable example is Fashioning Africa, a project which ran from 2015 to 2018 and aimed to develop a new collection of African dress from 1960 – 2007.

6. Reframing South Coast Colonialism

Robert Hill-Snook is Head Gardener of the Royal Pavilion gardens in the heart of Brighton, having been in post for almost 25 years. Sophie takes a stroll with Robert as he reflects on his working life in this Regency garden, ruminating on how the garden – and nature more generally – continues to be a tonic for many of life’s ills.

5. The Gardener

Preston Manor is reputed to be one of the most haunted houses in Britain. In this episode Sophie talks to Chris Drake (Development and Operations Manager at Preston Manor), Paula Wrightson (Venue Officer), Lavender Jones (long-standing volunteer) and David Beevers (former Keeper of Preston Manor), who help us to understand the cast of characters (ghoulish or otherwise) that have made Preston Manor a bewitching place to visit.

4. The Ghosts of Preston Manor

A podcast made by staff and volunteers of this museum service in Brighton & Hove on the south coast of England. Dr Sophie Frost meets some of the people who keep these civic museums relevant for the 21st century, and discovers more about the work that goes on behind the scenes -- from the sublime to the ridiculously mundane. Presented by Dr Sophie Frost and edited by Lo-Fi Arts, this podcast is supported by the One by One Research Project, The Keep, and Arts Council England.

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Voices of the Royal Pavilion & Museums

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