Rebecca Atkinson's contribution adds a note of common sense to a debate that has increasingly concerned me.

May I offer the viewpoint of an independent museum with big ambitions for excellence but limited funds?  Auchindrain, located in the rural west of Scotland, has for some years been involved in the provision of an organised programme of work experience which recently lead to the much-coveted award of Scotland's Enterprising Museum of the Year for 2016.  From a social and political perspective, the museum's Trustees and senior staff fully endorse the principal that internships can be exploitative, and should never be seen as a money-saving alternative to paid employment.  However, MCG has to be very careful here not to find itself in a situation where as a result of righteous zeal the baby is thrown out with the bath water.  Where a museum has resources which it ought reasonably be using to pay people, there is no doubt that it is immoral for it to attempt to not do so.  There are, however, a good many museums - ours included - which do NOT have money.  Unpaid, or expenses-only, internships enable us to achieve a great deal that would otherwise not be possible, and it would be hugely damaging to smaller independent museums to face a sitiuation in which a doctrine-based advertising ban by bodies such as MCG prevented it from inviting interest in opportunities.  

This summer we will be hosting five interns.  Two are undergraduates at an English university who are choosing to spend their 3-month summer holidays gaining experience which will help them decide their career paths and make them employable.  We will pay them enough wages for casual work in our Tearoom to be able to buy food. One is a postgraduate student at a German university who wants to work in museums and who knows he needs experience to get that key first job.  One is about to go to University in Italy, and wants a summer of independence doing something worthwhile.  Both of these, as a result of a grant, will receive food money and travel expenses. The fifth is from a French University: he is with us to gain work experience and improve his English as a required part of his course, and the French Government is providing a subsistence grant.  Each and all of these students will make a material contribution to the museum's work for which they will not be paid, but in return will receive supported work experience which they each actively want, in a context of their choosing.  We've been doing this sort of thing for several years, and ou interns highly rate the programme - most stay in contact afterwards.  We couldn't possibly afford to pay any of them a proper wage, and if "the rules" required us to do so the internships simply would not happen.  Both the museum and the individuals would lose out.  Would that be the right outcome?  Of course not.  I suspect that some contributors here have not fully thought things through before putting fingers to keyboard.

There is an underlying scandal here, within which museums who could perfectly afford to pay take advantage of the need and willingness of young people to save on a wage for a project, but the answer is not a ban that will have a negative impact on museums with good intentions and on the lives of the people they draw in as volunteer interns.  Rather, I suggest, the way forward should be for unpaid or expenses-only vacancies to be vetted to filter out those that are genuinely exploitative whilst letting through those that are genuine opportunities which add value on all sides.  That still does leave the worrying problem of young people who simply cannot afford to work for nothing, and I share the general concern that this reinforces the non-diverse, WASP-ish profile of the sector.  But surely the answer to that is to press for governments to provide grants to enable people without money or family/institutional support networks to undertake career development internships in places such as museums, rather than to ban the advertising of anything that is not a properly-paid job?  

We operate all our internships strictly in accordance with Museums Association guidance, set out by Rebecca Atkinson below.  If there are people within MCG who seriously believe those guidelines to be wrong, I despair and am probably contributing to a forum where I have no place.  Surely the best thing for MCG to do would be to adopt the MA guidelines and be done with it?



Bob Clark
Director
The Auchindrain Trust
mailto:[log in to unmask]org.uk

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Friday, May 26, 2017, 8:36:05 AM, you wrote:

It might be useful to refer to the Museums Association’s current guidelines on internships – http://www.museumsassociation.org/download?id=705443  (pdf) The important points are: The MA believes that all internships should: ● Pay reasonable work-related expenses and give interns reasonable access to staff benefits (such as free tickets to exhibitions or events). ● Be planned and structured with a clear brief, specific job content and a named line manager or supervisor. ● Give a clear outline of what is being offered to interns, and what is expected of the intern. ● Offer an agreed training and development plan with the intern, setting out what learning opportunities will be offered. ● Ensure that potential interns are told whether there is a realistic chance of the internship leading on to employment. ● Be of a minimum of eight weeks and a maximum 12 months (if paid) and a maximum of three months (if unpaid). Rebecca Atkinson Online publications editor Museums Association Tel: 01274 404851 Twitter: @rebeccaa_ma email: rebecca.atkinson@museumsassociation.org Please note my usual working days are Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I work predominantly from home in West Yorkshire, with regular visits to the MA’s offices in London   From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Andrew Lewis Sent: 26 May 2017 07:55 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Unpaid internships and the mailing list: vote now! I would like to request we change the survey here. It doesn’t seem to quite reflect the different opinions on unpaid activity. I would say the three bottom-line positions people appear to have expressed are: Option 1 – Black and White  - Unpaid work is always bad MCG community declare it is not OK to post unpaid posts of any sort including volunteers on the MCG community list Option 2 – Some flexibility to allow people to support museums by volunteering in other ways than working for them. (like many people do outside of museums) – This usually means volunteering, but also being a trustee and offering crowdsourcing help are also unpaid MCG community could manage this by stating its position as being opposed to replacing jobs that are vital to a museum operating with unpaid work and not allowing those onto the list, with this stated in the posting rules. Calls for volunteer and some other unpaid opportunities to help could be allowed, but all of these would need to be flagged so the community could spot them and decide if they counted as job-displacement by unpaid workers. This requirement would be defined and stated in the posting rules. (I’m ignoring the exact pedantic wording that would define this for now, you get the gist. Please don’t start a thread on that yet – the principle is clear, whether we agree with it or not ) I would suggest that if this was an agreeable option to the community (and some members of the community have expressed they want this in one form or another), we have standard wording for any opportunity asking for unpaid assistance and we post-moderate it. I would say unpaid work of any kind be flagged with something like (and again we should not debate the wording of this now): “Volunteer opportunity – please note this is unpaid” Option 3 - We allow calls for unpaid work of any kind and let individuals decide This seems to me to represent the various opinions and needs expressed in the best way to have a representative vote. I am ambivalent about adding an option 4 for no opinion, but let’s keep that too, just to see how many that respond feel that way. We should post the results. Nick, I am happy to set this up as list moderator and resend Andrew Lewis | Data and Insights Architect | Technology Solutions | Natural History Museum | Cromwell Road | London | SW7 5BD Tel:  020 7942 6134 | Email:[log in to unmask] From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Nick Clarey Sent: 25 May 2017 17:10 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Unpaid internships and the mailing list: vote now! Please find below a link to a Google Form to vote to permit or forbid advertising of unpaid internships on the MCG mailing list: https://goo.gl/forms/REabxMe3g662tsTz1 Please note: all responses are anonymous, no login required. Best regards, Nick -- Nick Clarey CEO, Airsource Ltd. @airsourceltd Phone: +44-1223-708370 **************************************************************** website: http://museumscomputergroup.org.uk/ Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ukmcg Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/museumscomputergroup [un]subscribe: http://museumscomputergroup.org.uk/email-list/ **************************************************************** ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service. 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