Victoria Barlow
@vickybarlo
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Arts, Tourism,Culture and Heritage Manager for St Albans. Feminist. She/Her. European. Personal account.
Kent
Joined July 2009
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I posted this elsewhere. Generally I don’t try to insert myself into spaces that aren’t mine but I’m sick of hearing from bigots claiming to speak for me.
#TransRightsAreHumanRights
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@JohnTuckerPhD
@alexbertanades
@ellie_sara
And I’m guessing men like her tutor get to decide what an appropriate level of assertiveness is 🙄
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@JohnTuckerPhD
@alexbertanades
@ellie_sara
I’m sure it feels like that from your male point of view but your point of view matters not a jot to her art. You just don’t get to tell someone how they should feel when you’ve never experienced anything like it
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Disappointing news again for museums. I sometimes wonder what activities people think we offer that makes us a higher risk than shopping.
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In true museums social media style, I’m delighted to announce that I’ll be starting a new job tomorrow! For the next year, I will be Arts, Culture, Tourism and Museums Manager for St Albans Council while the fab
@f_begum
is on maternity leave.
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@sjksanders
@samwhite_
@penny_patterson
@philipmould
@Markgatiss
Tons of materials testing before they go near the real painting!
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Having a nosey on LinkedIn when I spotted this in a job pack. Well done
@DockyardChatham
.
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Just wait until Simon Heffer finds out that a local museum like ours repatriated material years ago, never mind the social inclusion work that was going on in the 1990s. As for his pearl clutching at the notion of polyphonic... 🙄 Tedious rubbish
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@StigAbell
@thehistoryb0y
Have you not read firefighters' request to be called firefighters not firemen ? There have been women doing the job for a long time now.
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Meanwhile in the not-at-all-bonkers world of museum management...
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So why am I over-sharing this photo of me looking like a giant baby? Because 6 years ago, my surgeon (and all her colleagues who saw me over 8 or so months)saved my life. Please, please check your breasts regularly and if you find a lump get it checked immediately. You too, men!
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So today is my last day
@MaidstoneMuseum
It’s been a tough month waiting to hear about redundancy but I’m feeling very positive about putting it behind me and moving on to something new, whatever that may be.
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1/2 I’m thrilled with these items new in our shop. They were developed by local children as part of a contest to take inspiration from the museum and its collections to create a bespoke item that could sell for under a tenner.
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I’m so happy about this! My team have worked amazingly hard and tried so many new things to make it happen.
We may not have any visitors at the moment but in the last financial year, over 98,000 people visited the museum. It’s our best year ever and means we’ve increased our visits by 30,000 in 3 years! Thank you so much to all our friends and visitors x
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@macfarlane_isla
@EJBrand
as
@sovietvisuals
could tell you, it’s clearly Cyrillic cursive for chinchilla
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Is there a better, if bonkers, flower than the peony? These have been here for a week now. Gorgeous ❤️
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I post a lot about the cat but this is Persephone. She was silly and not terribly bright, 6 years old and weighed about a kilo. She died last night and I will miss her out of all proportion for her size.
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Some naive responses to this today. If you don’t want these kind of cuts then USE your local museum, BUY from its shop and donate cash if you can, MENTION it to elected members so they know it’s appreciated, PAY your taxes, ASK why national skills have to be paid for locally.
Courtesy of
@HannahHiles
-looks like the situation in Stoke on Trent is:
- Gladstone Pottery Museum closed 5mths every winter for filming
- Reduced hours at Potteries Museum
- Loss of 19FTE jobs+ 5.5 created
> council saves £560k
@artsindustrymag
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Dear Prince Harry, I've done my national service. I've worked in public service, paid taxes and never dressed as a nazi.
#Republic
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@manylittlewords
A recent audiobook kept sending a character to sit on the stoop of a house. Not only do we not have stoops (stoops?) I’m not entirely clear what one is 🤷🏼♀️
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Quoting Director of National Museum in Kyiv. Imagine having to write this about your staff. 🇺🇦
But I am very proud of my colleagues. Many of them came to the museum and helped to dismantle the permanent exhibition, pack objects, and store them in the basement. After this, two archaeologists and two young historians, my young colleagues, headed straight to the front. 7/9
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Job disappointment. Taking an hour or two to sulk and eat cake then back to the search.
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The best women are those aunties who aren’t really aunties. Thelma, my late mum’s best friend has been there for me since I was a child. Now I live 10 mins away and she nags me, feeds me and looks after me. I’m 49. Today we had lunch as we often do.
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Sometimes as a manager, your most important role is just getting the team motivated/caffeinated.
#WelcomeBack
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Total result. I bought a dress on line and it fits-everywhere! That never happens.
#ItHasPockets
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One silver lining of having to work at home now is that I’ve finally finished the job I started before Christmas. My back bedroom/dumping ground is now an office. Just needs things on the walls. My colleagues are letting the side down by being messy but 🤷🏼♀️
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There is no such thing as a permanent loan. 🤦🏼♀️
Gerhard Richter is permanently loaning his Holocaust paintings to Berlin's National Gallery in order to keep them off the market:
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Our comms team asked us to let them know which museum social media accounts we think are good. Wait til they get a load of
@TheMERL
And
@DullMuseumSnaps
🤣
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Right. This kind of thing annoys the hell out of me. Most museums are not Nationals, do not hold looted collections and have staff working with a huge number of people from a range of backgrounds and experiences to do joyous and celebratory things and not even slightly grubby.
“the leaders of museums and art galleries need to be relaxed about the fact that there is inevitably something a bit grubby about what they are doing.
…many [exhibits] are the product of intrusive curiosity and conscious desecration.”
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After 30ish years in museums, I have my first work in an art exhibition! This was so much fun - community partners, volunteers and staff all reacting to the work of Rana Begum. I love the range of reactions.
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Delaying? The sexist assumption that all women really want children so there must be an external reason for not. How about- I don’t want to be a mother
More women are delaying having children than ever before 🤰🚫
Half of women aged 30 don’t have children for the first time since records began.
Experts have explained why this may be.
[THREAD]
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I’m off to a local vaccination centre later to drop off these simple quiz panels which we hope will help people pass the 15 minute wait after their jab!
#healthAndWellbeing
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@RepublicStaff
Good on young people. I hope I’m around long enough to see this lot out on their ear and to become a citizen not a subject.
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Becks and
@ashzenon
ready for the crowds. (Reader, there were no crowds. More of a trickle but we were glad to see them. )
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I spent about two hours in Birmingham on a whim today (so apologies for not arranging to meet anyone). Thoroughly enjoyed Victorian Radicals. There are some star pieces and gorgeous things I hadn’t seen before, which is pretty much what I need from an art ex!
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I’m gutted about this. We had just opened an amazing exhibition and had great events lined up. However, the safety of my team and our visitors means everything. The response of every single person working here has been brilliant; flexible, adaptable and concerned for each other.
In line with Government advice we've taken the difficult decision to close
@MaidstoneMuseum
from 5pm today until further notice. All events and activities are also cancelled. We're sorry to disappoint our residents and visitors, but will be in touch with ticket holders asap.
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@Tim_The_Sandman
@NobelPrize
@SenPolehanki
Why would you assume all women will have children or that men won’t want time off with children? I don’t get paid for my reproductive decisions but how well I do a job. You are living in the 1970s
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So that’s it for another month. We’ve put the museum to bed. Very different feeling saying goodnight to the FoH team tonight to when we left in March. Much more sombre and sad.
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Over the past year, my team have been through redeployment, working from home, a restructure meaning we’re all part time now and losing two of our colleagues. Today we reopen. It doesn’t cancel out everything we’ve been through but it does feel like a new start.
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Neighbour is having a barbecue. They insist on fancy dress so I’m going as Judith Chalmers! One for the kids 🤦🏼♀️
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I swore not to become the woman who tweets pictures of her cat but a) I’m getting wound up reading tweets and b) LOOK AT HIM 🤣
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Today my exhibitions colleagues are off talking to potential sponsors for an upcoming exhibition on underwear armed with these biscuits! How can they fail?
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Who am I? I’m Vicky. I’ve wanted to work in museums since I was 15 and, contrary to the evidence, I’m in it for more than the dressing up!
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I love travelling alone. No compromise on how many museums or churches you get to visit, stop for coffee as often as you like and no one to count desserts!
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Job hunting and I’ve yet to find a single job with anything like my current salary. Fancy titles won’t pay the mortgage and pay deflation is real in our sector.
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When I was a child, I envied old women with pink rinses! Now I’m old, I’ve got my own (my hairdresser was feeling frivolous!) Also-the backdrop is our Town Hall where I’m at a meeting as an observer only but I did take the photo before the meeting!
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@oldenoughtosay
That he’d looked is one of the creepiest things I’ve heard in quite some time.
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I forgot to show off my new charity shop plate! It’s Blue Regatta by Palissy from the late 1940s(?). (The design suggests 50s but the pottery mark apparently wasn’t still being used then) I quite fancy getting an entire service now!
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A new
#tourism
and
#heritage
offer for
#Liverpool
. It’s a walking tour of me pointing out places I got drunk when I was young and asking why they aren’t exactly the same 30 years later. Total winner.
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This year I decided to try growing carrots for the guinea pigs. THIS is what I reaped. I am not going to survive in a post-apocalyptic world.
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Once again I’m proud to be a local government employee. Seconded members of
@MaidstoneMuseum
front of house team will be on duty every day over Christmas supporting vulnerable community members even as the museum faces cuts.
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I’m never going to be an interior designer but I’m pretty happy with my (mostly) finished picture wall 🙂
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Tough day but then I came in to find this little one snoring on my pillow 🤣
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Oops. Having prodded the team to do
#MuseumSelfie
, I forgot my own so here’s one of me being very silly.
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I love abusing my position to get my hands on any dressing up stuff that comes to the museum!
#directorprivelege
#queen
#whyilovemyjob
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Launch of the Ladybird art exhibition tonight. Everybody getting happily nostalgic! I was very excited to see a copy of Ned the Lonely Donkey, which I was starting to think I’d imagined!!
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All Team Meeting and, at my colleague Sam’s suggestion, we all said one thing we had done recently of which we were proud and one thing another team had done that they should be proud of. We’ve just been through a painful restructure but it was totally inspiring.
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I know some people here are worried about eating out alone. All I can say is-look what you might be missing out on!
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Everyone rounding up their decades. Mine was decidedly mixed. I got cancer and had a failed relationship but I also survived, went to Barbados , did 4 different jobs, made new friendsand, this year, got the cat I’ve wanted for years. Can’t wait to see what the next 10 yrs bring.
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I’m reading the worst spy novel. Our hero has just killed somebody in a Historic Embroidery Museum! The best part is that he set the meeting 10 minutes before closing because no one will remember him! Mate! That receptionist will not only remember but has crafted a voodoo doll.
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Updating my CV immediately to explain that my “guiding star is centred on leadership “. Thanks
@nationaltrust
🤨
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Woman and small child in the gallery FaceTiming someone. Mum: tell him what we’ve seen at the museum Child: EVERYTHING! 🥰
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So I finally worked out how the cat managed to disappear for 21 hours on Saturday 🙄
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My friend bought a lovely basket for putting odds and sods in so of course THIS happened!
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It appears to be dissertation time again so here’s my annual plea: Please don’t use Freedom of Information requests for information you could get by contacting the museum and asking. It creates extra work means you won’t get a nuanced answer.
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@sjksanders
I’m not a Conservator, but it did seem a bit ‘enthusiastic ‘ to me! Mind you I’m more used to object rather than painting conservation.
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My grandmother came to England ‘in service ‘, I worked as a cleaner during school holidays. If I want to pay someone to do something useful, honest and legal then The Guardian can sod off. (Of course, I couldn’t hire a cleaner without having a good tidy up first!).
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Booked myself a nice little trip to Paris. Last time I went, I realised I was being cheated on and ended up hospitalised (the two things weren’t linked) so I’m really looking forward to reclaiming the city from those associations.
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Meanwhile a creationist somewhere is having a meltdown 😂
Dippy the dinosaur has taken up residence at
@Nrw_Cathedral
for the final stop on his nationwide tour and was welcomed in style by cathedral choristers.
@Dippy_the_Dino
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The brat is on emergency cat food because I couldn’t get. His normal stuff. To encourage him, I mashed in a bit of tuna. He just licked off all the tuna and left the cat food 🤦🏼♀️
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Malik Al Nasir on identity and having both slave owner and enslaved ancestors. Could he ever “ go back where he came from”, as racists would have it, when his ancestors built cities on the back of his other ancestors. Powerful work and an amazing life.
#Museums2021
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I am become my mother by going to a historic house just to look at the garden. I am fortifying myself with a huge slice of cake and dinky little coffee before hardcore plant hunt. Sadly I forgot earphones so I have to hear the conversation of older ppl with no masks in the cafe.
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I had a great time at tonight’s Private View of Do You See What I See, our new exhibition curated with members of the Maidstone Nepalese community.
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It’s rare to get a room with a sea view when you’re travelling alone but I can see about half the bay. Not so good- woman travelling alone is given ground floor apartment *sigh*. Still, there’s dolphins in that sea and if get to see them, much else can be forgiven.
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@BlondeHistorian
@GuideDogAva
That must be very dull for an intelligent dog like Ava and I can’t imagine how much you miss her when you’re out. Here’s to a swift and successful recovery as soon as possible.
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Sometimes organisations have to make difficult decisions but there is a right way to treat people. This is NOT it.
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Finally back to a grown up hair do. Before, during and after.
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This one is making me a bit twitchy. I’m 50 and still have 15-20 years to go before retirement. I’d like to think I still have things to offer and barriers to smash.
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And this won’t include museums like ours where the whole team is now part time and we still lost posts. Local Authority Museums expecting more savings next year. This is not over.
We have documented 4100 redundancies in the sector since the beginning of the Covid crisis. In a sector with around 50,000 employees in the whole UK, that’s approximately 8% of our workforce. 2/
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And my regular warning.
#FoH
is not there to give wannabe Curators a leg up. It needs its own skill set and is an important role.
#FoHMuseums
Interesting results out of 172 people 55% of first paid museum jobs were in
#FoHMuseums
whilst our poll was at 60% so many people working in museums building skills in
#FoH
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Employers! If you don’t state a salary in the advert or job pack, I’m going to assume you aren’t a good organisation to work for. Don’t waste applicants time. I may not be who you want for the job but I will tell people about you.
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I’ve just realised that this day in 1995 was the beginning of my paid museum career
@MansfieldMuseum
25 years! 😬 So much has changed in the industry (including the fact that you’d do well to get funding for a post called Assistant Curator in most places now) so much hasn’t.
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Brilliant time at the opening of Pants!, our excellent summer exhibition.
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Their names were Caroline and Wendy. They lived in the same town as me and were just a few years older. The
@BBC
thinks they were ‘two women’. I don’t care what their killer is called. He shouldn’t define them.
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I don’t normally work down here but snow, a cat, coffee and a snug throw are making it all very pleasant.
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