Farewell and Goodbye

It gives me great pleasure to thank all of the Brighton-Hove staff who have helped make this apprenticeship a success for both me and Cassie, from City College, Kings House through to Royal Pavilion, The Booth, Preston Manor, Hove and Brighton Museums.

I’ve learnt tons since being here, though it’s not always been apparent to me from the start, only so when a problem is presented to me that I find I can solve it thanks to all I’ve learnt from all of you.

It has been a real joy hopping from department to department, I hope we were not too much of a burden because me and Cassie definitely felt welcome everywhere we went. It’s been an amazing experience to see behind the scenes at the Museum service and all the great work that goes on.

I don’t know for sure if you’ll be seeing more apprentices in the near future, but if you do I think they will only have good things to say at the end of the apprenticeship as well.

I am not sure what is next but I would definitely be interested in doing another Cultural Apprenticeship level 3/4. I am going to apply to various places. If you hear of anything you think I may be suitable for or could use someone like me (even as a volunteer) please let me know.

Finally I was a bit overwhelmed with the fuss, kind words and gifts we received on leaving.

I am extremely grateful and wish you all well for the future too.

Thank you all.

Sincerely

Zak Flannery.

The End!

So, we’ve reached the end! It’s come as a bit of a surprise really, it doesn’t feel like we’ve been here for almost a year and a half! Looking back over our time here, it’s amazing to remember all the things we’ve done, working with so many teams and on so many exciting projects in some amazing buildings.
My personal highlight of my time here was working in The Old Courtroom during The Brighton Festival last year. I had such a fantastic time and learnt so much about managing a building. I made some valuable personal and professional contacts (one of which led to a trip to Glastonbury!) which I have maintained. I am currently working with some of them and am plan on continuing to do so well into the future.
I’ve also thoroughly enjoyed working on the special events that have occurred over the duration – both Royal Pavilion Christmases, White Night 2010 and the numerous private views just to begin with!
Recently, working on the Young People’s Video Project with Rachel and various youth groups has also been thoroughly enjoyable and gave me the chance to have some creative and managerial input into a project.
And of course working in one of the most iconic buildings in the country has been a complete privilege. To be able to visit areas of the buildings that are not open to the public and to learn so much about the history of the venues and the people involved with them has been a joy and I feel so lucky to be able to do so, so early in my career.

The Apprenticeship course has been a brilliant programme of work for me to follow with a high emphasis on vocational learning, with the opportunity to produce written work with space to research our sector and develop our own opinions and ideas. Working with City College to gain a recognised qualification and create a large portfolio of evidence has been completely invaluable. Marcus, our assessor, has been such an amazing person to work with and a fantastic mentor. I’m really proud of the work I produced and hope that it reflects me and will help me to achieve my future goals!

As for the future, I have been applying to drama schools to study Stage Management and Technical Theatre from September. I’m still waiting to hear if I have any offers, but in the meantime I will be busy working at The Old Courtroom and stage managing two shows in another venue during the Festival in May. I will continue to work with The Treason Show at the Pavilion Theatre as well as extending my contacts and experience in other ways. Working at the Royal Pavilion and Museums has helped me develop my knowledge and skills of working within public venues as well as putting on events. It reinforced my thought that working in the arts sector is the right choice for me.

I would like to thank everyone who allowed Zak and I to work with them during our time here and for being so welcoming and patient. Special thanks to John Cooper and Mike Eaton for organising everything and giving us this opportunity.

Last week Zak and I met with the leader of the council, Mary Mears, and councillor David Smith, the Cabinet Member for Culture along with John, our manager at the Pavilion, Mike, the Council’s apprenticeships officer and Marcus and Jean from City College. We were officially awarded our completion certificate, had our photograph taken many times and received some very kind words.

Cassie

The Royal Pavilion & Museums Foundation

Me again,

If you can stand to read another of my postings, I’d like to talk a bit about the Foundation, I worked with them as part of the fundraising team. There were lots of good times, for me at least!

It was interesting in the fact that this department is very entrepreneurial, where most of the other departments I worked in had money come from budgets or grants for different projects.

So the whole approach to money and business was very different and creative.

This meant work was very varied for me, I got to take part in the construction of their new website.

I did leaflet drops, stewarding at some of the department’s events and got to see a Magic Lantern show, I would never have gone if I had not been working here, but it was great.

Abi, Li-an and Rob were great fun to work with, mainly because they are all interesting characters and as a team they compliment each other very well, so I definitely loved the vibe (which is something I thought I’d never say) in this team.

Just to add, the work that I did with their website went towards my final piece of course work and got me a pass, so thanks again to the foundation.

Just to stress the importance of external funds a bit to anyone who doesn’t work at the Pavilion, I’ve worked in the facilities department for a large duration of my time here and after seeing first hand the list of maintenance issues, the money raised from the Foundation could greatly help us keep together Brighton’s most precious place.

Zak

Hi All

I'm sorry it’s been so long since we’ve updated our blogs but I’m going to lightly touch on some of the things that I have got up to over the past months.

The Cleaning Team

This was short and sweet (just a week) and I’ve got to say that trying to do this job was a real eye-opener.

I don’t think there’s anyone on the Pavilion site who works constantly as hard as this lot do, in particular Michelle, who managed me during the week.

Yes, I could only manage a week! Michelle gives a whole new meaning to elbow grease with the things that she does.

Here are some of the duties I performed in the team.

Cleaning toilets, vacuuming the carpets, I not sure of the proper name so I’m going to call it ‘dust mopping’ (the clue is in the name I’ve given it), mop and shine/ waxing the floors.

The main pressure about working in the cleaning team is the time constraints, there is so much to get done that I ended up doing surface cleaning and not achieving a really deep clean (Michelle and the other are much better at cleaning then me). If anything goes wrong in the morning such as a spill or flood one or more of you cleaning duties has got to suffer.

I could go on and on but the bottom line is they all work very hard and they are all great at it to.

So if you’re reading this and you work at the Pavilion or Museum sites, and you see one of the cleaners have just MOPPED a floor, then please can you take the long way round it!

Thank you.

One last note, at the end of the week Michelle gave me a going away present, which doesn’t usually happen to me so I was delighted.

It was this, (picture below), a duster, a memento of my taste of hard work and proof to anyone who doesn't believe that I’ve touched a cleaning product in my life.

Guys if you read this, thanks for having me, it was great!

Zak

Well, firstly, I’d like to apologise for a lack of updates. Lots of things have happened and we’ve both been incredibly busy!

Whilst working with the Learning team, I have been involved in a couple of major events. Firstly there was the White Night festival in October, a celebration of the cultural happenings in the city by opening arts venues into the night and putting on special events for one night only. I was working in the Music Room in the Pavilion, looking after the musicians that were performing in the room and making sure the public were well behaved and flowed through the building. The night went really well – we had almost 2000 visitors over the course of the evening and everyone was really positive about the events that were happening in our venues.

Secondly was Christmas at the Royal Pavilion. This was a five-day event held in the pavilion in the run up to Christmas in which children can visit Father Christmas and go on a special tour of the Pavilion. I was heavily involved in the organisation of the event, mainly by planning and buying the presents for the children to receive – nearly 1000 of them! I also had to buy lots of wrapping paper and spent a day wrapping presents with Foundation volunteers. During the event, I was running round, making sure the actors who play Father Christmas, his elves and various characters from the Pavilion (including the cook and Prince George) were all ok and running to time and generally helping the other people working on the event, as well as aiding the visitors. The event went really well and we have received a lot of positive comments.

Zak and I paid a visit to the Lighthouse digital media centre in The Lanes at the beginning of November. One of their employees, Alice, has been doing the same award as us through City College and we’ve met her a few times. It’s really nice to have someone to chat to who is doing similar work with College and finding out how she involves her coursework into her job. We were met by Alice and her college Jamie and were given a tour of the venue and an overview of what they do and how they work. It was interesting to find out how unique the venue is and about the projects that they do.

Just before Christmas, Zak and I completed our course!! We each made a 20 minute presentation for our Technical Certificate about the organisation in which we work and how it fits into the Creative and Cultural sector. We did our presentations in front of Marcus, our assessor and Jean who is City College’s skills advisor who were both really happy with our work! A copy of our presentation along with our award folders have gone off to the College to be assessed before we get our certificates! It was really exciting to complete our qualification and to now be able to concentrate on working until our time here ends at the end of the month.
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Recently, I’ve been working on a project with the Community Engagement Officer to produce a video to promote young people using our services. I am working with a film maker and various groups of young people who use Brighton Museum, such as Brighton Youth Theatre and the Museum’s Event Collective. If the film makes its way onto YouTube, I will make sure I post it here.

I have also been working on a project with Fundraising which is still secret at the moment but is very exciting and meant I had a lovely morning in London visiting the Sir John Soane museum to meet with their Director and Head of Fundraising.

I also spent a few days with Kevin Bacon, the Curator of Photographs, uploading images onto the asset bank and scanning slides. It was really nice to work with a curator, even though it was only for a short time, as we haven’t had much contact with collections during our time here.

We've got lots to do in our last few weeks here but I'll make sure I do a last post before we leave!


Cassie

Exhibitions

Ok, I would say I’m quite reliant on deciding if my time with a department is going to be good or not, by the first impression I get by meeting the team.
So I can’t tell you what a delight it was meeting the exhibitions team over in the Brighton Museum. I was greeted with lots of lovely cakes and biscuits and was promised more to come, oh yeah and the work plan set for me was pretty good too.
Firstly I got to help bring down the exhibition over in Hove called Touching Art, Touching You, Which is the last tour exhibiting in Hove Museum I believe.
That was good fun. Later I help pack up the From Sickert to Gertler: Modern British Art from Boxted House exhibition which was interesting because it was so different to the one I did in Hove.
An example of this is the no touching rule. The art work in Sickert to Gertler gallery in Brighton you had to use gloves for whenever you would move a piece of art or had to give it a condition check. But in hove because Touching Art, Touching You exhibition was all about touching and feeling the art, there were no need for gloves.
Now this is when things started to get interesting. I’ve seen how bring down an exhibition, now I would get to see one put up.

Once all three of the temporary galleries over in Brighton Museum were emptied of Sickert to Gertler , along came the new exhibition Strange and Familia part of the bpb (Brighton Photo Biennial).

Basically this exhibition is about how 3 photographers (one who is from the USA and another from Japan) see Brighton. The American photographer collaborated with his 8 year old daughter that gives yet another interesting twist and angle. HP lent a special printer to print out all the photographs and in what is apparently a world’s first there are no frames on any of the pictures in the exhibition. We used magnets to hold up the pictures.

Here’s a link if you would like to know more about the exhibition http://www.brighton-hove-rpml.org.uk/WhatsOn/Pages/BMAGphotobiennial2octto14nov10.aspx.

Zak

I worked with the Fundraising team for three months over the summer. For most of that time we were working together on producing and delivering a door drop for the Royal Pavilion and Museums Foundation. This was done to raise awareness of the charity to residents of Brighton and Hove and has proved to have been a very successful way of increasing interest.
Other jobs that I worked on include developing the social networking sites that I mentioned before, which are both growing steadily, helping Li-an with processing new members applications and sending out their membership packs. For the most recent mail out to the members of the Foundation, I compiled a competition crossword for the newsletter!

I have been working with the Learning team for a month now and I’m very busy. I’ve been working closely with the organisers of the Christmas events and am taking on part of the organisation for the project, as well as looking into developing the African Masks school session, helping at early years sessions, preparing for Diwali and White Night events and generally integrating myself into the department.

Zak and I have been working on the technical certificate part of our apprenticeship coursework. This is a really interesting piece of work and a chance for us to do a bit more research into the sector that we work in. We have to write a couple of presentations to show our knowledge of the creative and cultural sector and how creative ideas are developed and put into place. I’ve been doing research into museums of natural history around the country and how they tailor themselves to appeal to children. I’m comparing what I find to what the Booth Museum offers. It’s very interesting to see what services other museums offer as a whole and to what extent they provide to younger audiences.

Cassie

Hi all!

As some of you may or may not know, I’ve been working in Faculties with Robin and Louise over the past few months.

Sadly my time with the Faculties team has come to a end, but when one door closes another door opens. On that note I’m very happy to announce that I’m now working with the exhibitions team and very much look forward to telling you how I get on.

Now, at the request of a college I’m going to talk a bit about how a leak next to

Firstly, the leak had started in the early hours in the morning and was due to rain. By the time I arrived staff were already dealing with it.

On this day the museum was closed but if it hadn’t have been we would have roped off the area surrounding the leak so members of the public were not put at risk.

We immediately started mopping up the excess water on the floor and walls, and a bucket was put under the leak. The next issue was to find the source of the problem and fix it.

We discovered the problem was one of the tiles on the roof had broken letting the water in, which then would seep through a void, which then came through the ceiling.

But you can’t access the roof when it’s raining out side, because it is too dangerous, so there was no way to stop the leak in the short term.

The next step was get in contact with the curator in charge of the paintings next to the leak, so they could make the decision if the painting should be taken down or not.

Thankfully there was no damage done to the paintings and it had stopped raining so there was no need to take it down, but if there had been, a small lifting contraption would have been used to help lift the painting down safely.

Now that it was safe, Robin and I headed up to the roof to see what could be done to fix the tile. Unfortunately the tile was out of our reach and was also in a disgusting area where some pigeons lived. They had made quite a mess!

A cleaner had to be called in before attempting to fix the tile, due to the diseases you can pick from bird excrement, but after all that the area was cleaned and the tile repaired, and now I can safely say that’s one less tile worry about on Brighton museums roof!

Thanks for reading.
Zak

Having said that I would be writing lots more about my Functions work once I started working in the department, I didn’t appreciate quite how busy I would actually be!

Before the festival started, I spent a week with Sarah and Trish preparing for the three weeks of Fringe events in The Old Courtroom. This included imputing all the event and staff information into the booking system and creating fact sheets for the staff as well as cleaning and arranging the venue. The Old Courtroom is a lovely space, however because it is used so rarely we had to spend a lot of time anticipating the needs of the venue and the problems our customers may have. It is also the first time the venue had been used as a theatre, which created a lot of problems in itself! Tony, the venue manager who hired the venue from the Functions team, brought in stage lighting and a set of flats which completely transformed the venue from a lecture theatre into a fully formed performance space.

Throughout the festival, I took the role of house manager. I spent every day at the Courtroom, either opening up in the morning and spending the day there, or taking over in the afternoon, spending the evening there and locking up at the end of the performances. During my shifts, I was responsible for making the venue presentable before we opened to the public and at the end of the day, which involved cleaning the public spaces, setting up the equipment for the caterer, organising the signage and generally arranging the space. Once there were visitors in the building, I helped sell tickets and refreshments, organised queues and ushered the audience into the auditorium. I also had to help solve problems between customers and between the performers, which was interesting at times!

Overall, the month flew by! I could never have imagined how tiring it could be, but between working at the Courtroom and on a Fringe show at another venue, I didn’t have a moment to myself the whole month! I really enjoyed it all though and met some great people and been given some amazing opportunities.

I am now working in the Fundraising department which is hectic but really interesting. I have spent a lot of time filling envelopes in the past three weeks, but its all part of it! At the moment, I’m researching the different areas of Brighton and Hove and deciding which parts would be best to target with leaflets and promotion to gain more members for the Royal Pavilion and Museums Foundation charity. I have also set up Facebook and Twitter accounts for the RP&M Foundation and been present at meetings with companies outside of the council which I’ve never experienced before.
After I get back from Glastonbury (one of the aforementioned opportunities which Sarah and I could not turn down!), I’ll continue working with the Fundraising team until the middle of July. I will also be helping at the charity’s AGM at the end of the month which will be interesting.

I am sure I’ll be able to fill you in with more detail when I return from my holiday time and can get stuck into the projects properly.

Cassie

May is a very busy time of year in Brighton. It’s as if the city suddenly springs to life. I believe it is to do with a number of things not least of which is the change in the weather. No even though there are 2 bank holidays the main reason Brighton is buzzing in May is because the city holds one of the best festivals anywhere in the country (or anywhere but I am biased).

The festival makes use of the buildings and theatres around the city and many of Brighton’s finest artists open their houses to exhibit their work to the general public every weekend.

So invariably May was going to be a busy Month (in fact it still is as I write this). Having had a week at functions earlier this year I volunteered myself to help out on the Fringe. I got sent to help out a production at The Old Courthouse (opposite the Pavilion) and got thrown in at the deep end to help with the sound and lights. This involved cueing up music, running a power point and changing the lights to the cues on time. I found this task very stressful at first but soon (after a few mistakes) managed to get my head around it. The play was a series of monologues about characters from Brighton’s past. Bearing in mind my apprenticeship I found this fascinating as it really brought to life some of the characters that helped make Brighton what it is today.

I have also been helping contractors up in the voids behind the ceiling domes in the Pavilion. I love it up there it really gives you a different perspective on the Pavilion and how it is constructed. Just as I think I have seen everything there is to see here someone shows me something I have never seen before. For instance when I was showing a water testing company around they showed me a whole new room I didn’t know existed! It turned out to be an old blue bathroom that was put in for the Queens visit to the Pavilion (or that’s what I heard anyway).

Zak

Over the past few weeks I’ve been up to various things including
helping with contractors (showing them around and answering questions), changing filters to the roof and of course being in the Argus talking about the apprenticeship!

It was very exciting that the Argus asked for one of us to star in their apprentice of the month. I had good fun doing a phone interview and explaining to them what the apprenticeship is all about.

When the article came out, I thought it quite funny that they’d had spelt my name wrong, ha ha.

I spent much of last Wednesday morning with the contractors working on the William IV gatehouse at the north end of the Pavilion. This meant supervising them in and around the Green Centre, where the World Art curators usually work. As I spent quite a while waiting outside the Green Centre for one of the workmen to arrive, I got to properly look at the stonework of the gatehouse for the first time. A lot of it is really intricate and pretty, I had never looked up to the top properly before, even though I must have walked through it hundreds of times!

On Monday morning, Louise gathered a team to volunteers to do a Spring Clean of Preston Manor. I spent the morning carefully cleaning the old radiators and polishing the banisters of the main staircase. It was lovely seeing people from all different departments coming together to give Preston Manor some well needed TLC and being able to see the difference at the end of the morning. It was also nice talking to members of staff and volunteers that I don’t usually see.

This week is my last week in Facilities Management. I’ve really enjoyed my time here. It’s been great seeing so much of all the venues and I’ve learnt a lot.

Next week I start back with the Functions team, working on the fringe festival events taking place in The Old Courtroom. We had a meeting about it on Friday and I’m very excited about it all starting next weekend! I’ll be writing lots more about it when I start working!

Cassie

What is so interesting about this apprenticeship is the way we get put into different departments and discover the many diverse roles that make up the team in the Museum service. Recently I have been assigned to the Restoration Department which deals with anything that needs looking after maintenance or restoration wise in the different buildings.

This department always has an array of things to do every day from inspecting the voids in the Pavilion to supervising contractors cleaning the fireplaces or hot water tanks.

The voids are areas between the domes of the Pavilion and need to be inspected for wear and tear etc. I made an important archaeological discovery the other day. In one of the voids we were inspecting I found a Coca Cola can circa 1986! It was really old, even older than me. I had a look at the label which listed only 4 ingredients and I thought that Coke must have been healthier then. However it was suggested to me that labelling now had to list every ingredient. I am not sure it will make the exhibits in the Museum.

I have really enjoyed working with all the various contractors I have met during the time I have been here. They all come with new skills and generally are very entertaining, informative and friendly. Unanimously they all appreciate and respect the uniqueness of the Pavilion and remind me of what a National Treasure we look after.

I have also discovered the concept of minutes in meetings which all sounds pretty obvious when you know about the importance of them, but it just hadn’t occurred to me before. I have also been using a laser to check the heat omitting from the radiators in Museum. This involved finding all the heat sources using a plan of the ground floor and measuring each one before recording the information. I felt almost like a scientist.

I have been involved in a small way with the opening of a new exhibition about how the Pavilion was turned into a hospital for Indian Troops. I attended one of the final meetings and I found it fascinating how all the different jobs came together to create the final product.

Perhaps the finest moment in my time here came when I was given the job of toilet seat installation, something that I have never done but have heard my dad moan about. I don’t know why he was complaining because I found the whole experience extremely rewarding. I think I did a good job and if there is a need will be asked to do it again.

Anyway back to the coalface as they say!

Zak

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We have been so busy the past few weeks that it would be impossible to write about it all! We’ve done everything from being involved (from a distance) with a blocked urinal, to repairing the mosaic floor of the Museum. I’m really enjoying working in Facilities Management. It great having such varied days and not knowing what’s about to happen! Having a more hands-on role on the estate is great as we’re getting to see every inch of the buildings and being able to see physical things we’ve achieved, such as the mosaic, is very rewarding.

I have been working a lot on the sustainability project that we have been set. I spent a lot of last week with an electricity meter measuring the costs of running various appliances found around the buildings. There were some very interesting results and Zak, Louise and I are on the case to make the buildings run much more eco-efficiently. I can’t write about any of our findings at the moment, but everything will be revealed eventually!

Cassie

Time for a catch up!

Firstly, I’d like to apologise for the lack of updates! Zak and I have been so busy over the past few months, it’s been hard finding a chance to update properly! We’re going to do our very best to restart our regular updating again. Starting from now!

On Monday 7th of December, Zak and I started working in the Retail and Catering department. We began our first morning with till training. Luckily, we’ve both worked in retail before, so got to grips with the system quite quickly. In our first week we learnt how to correctly store, price, replenish and display stock, as well as merchandising and keeping the shops clean. As part of this, we spent time at the Booth Museum, Hove Museum and the Booklovers Store in the Jubilee Library.

As I have worked in a Deli for the past two years, the majority of my time with the department was spent in the Pavilion shop, with Zak spending a lot of time in the Pavilion and Hove Museum Tearooms, as there was space for them to have only one of us at a time. It was great spending Christmas in a lovely and warm shop, selling Christmas presents to customers who had stories to tell (one lady was telling me about the 10-week Mediterranean cruise she and her husband were embarking on the next day. It made me very jealous!).

I only spent a few days in the tearoom at the Pavilion. I had a good time though. Everyone that works up there is so nice that it’s great just being around them. As I was there for such a short amount of time, I didn’t really pick up many new kitchen skills, but I spent time serving customers, making tea and coffee and washing up as well as spending a whole day doing stock-take. The way customers are treated and spoken to is very different to the way it is in the rest of the building. A great deal of care and time is spent talking to them about their visit and about their food to make sure everything’s right and that they’re having a good time.

On the morning of Monday the 18th of January, Zak and I began our Equalities Awareness training that concluded the following week. It was a very interesting course as it’s not really a subject that gets discussed very often and I learnt a lot. The course involved a lot of worksheets and handouts, which made the group think about and discuss language and actions appropriate to working for the Council as well as our own opinions, prejudices and attitudes towards minority groups.

On the afternoon of the 18th, I started working with the Functions team; Trish and Sarah. This week has been my favourite week so far as Event Management is one of my big interests. My main project for the week was coordinating a mailout to a number of businesses who had booked stalls at the Royal Pavilion Wedding Fair, which happened on the 7th of February. For this, I wrote a generic letter, then personalised it and addressed it to each of the businesses. I then made sure each business received an appropriate number of free entry vouchers, flyers and posters to help promote the event. During the week I also went on a number of site visits, in which prospective clients came to view the rooms in the Pavilion that are used for weddings/corporate events as well as attending an actual wedding on the Friday of the week! It was really strange sitting in on a stranger’s wedding, but it was lovely to see the building being used in a completely different way and it was a really nice event. I also attended a sponsorship launch in the Courtroom for a string of events happening as part of the Fringe Festival in May. The events sound really good and I hope I’m going to be able to get involved in the actual thing as everything that I saw looked amazing

After the second half of Equalities Awareness training, we began our three-week stint in the Bookings Office. Zak and I began by having a meeting with Joceline (who is acting Bookings Manager) to create a timetable for our time with her. It was great to have such a precise structure to our work and it was nice to be able to plan our time ourselves. We began the week by learning how to use the scary phones and the even scarier booking programme! Both have lots of buttons and codes and take quite a bit of getting used to. During our time in the office, we both attended Pavilion tours and Museum learning sessions to get a better idea of the events we were booking as well as doing work on the Pavilion phone system and website.

After our time in the bookings office, Zak moved onto Functions, while I went back to the shop for a week. The reason for this was to fill the gap while Zak was elsewhere, but also so that Marcus could come in and carry out the first of my observations, which are a big part of the assessment for our National Award. Unfortunately, the shop was really quiet during the time Marcus was around, which wasn’t ideal, hopefully it will be better next time!

We are now at the end of our second week with the Facilities Management team. I’m having a great time, even though it’s knackering! Over the past fortnight, we’ve found ourselves on the roofs and in the basements of the Pavilion, Brighton Museum, The Dome and Preston Manor, learning how to move the seats in the Courtroom and starting work on a big project to do with electricity usage, cost and sustainability that Louise has set us. We’ve also been on a tour of the Materials Recovery Facility in Hollingdean, attempted to use an electronic (sadly not sonic) screwdriver, spent a couple of days at the Booth Museum (which Zak has written about) and lots and lots of other things. Part of the Facilities Management job is dealing with problems and reacting to situations, so our stint in the department doesn’t have a set plan, which makes a nice contrast to the structure of our time in the Bookings Office. We will be with Louise and Robin until mid-April, so I’m sure we’ll be writing lots more about it!

This is probably a good time to say that Zak, John and myself were featured on Meridian East news (which meant it wasn’t shown in the Brighton & Hove area) a few weeks ago to tie in with the launch of the Council’s Apprenticeship strategy. I’m still waiting on a final answer as to whether the feature can be uploaded onto the internet for us to post here, but in the meantime, if you’re desperate to see it, the three of us all have a copy on DVD which I’m sure we can lend out.

Cassie

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Hello Readers

My days at the museums are anything but normal and as usual full of variety and special experiences. I’ve spent a week in the functions office helping where I can and meeting the happy couples planning on having their marriage at the Royal Pavilion. Sometimes it’s just the soon to be in-laws visiting on behalf of the couple without them knowing.

I also started work in Facilities Management with Louise and Robin.

But I’ll talk more about Facilities another time; right now let me tell you of some weird and wonderful things that I’ve discovered up in the Booth Museum.

Myself and Cassie were asked to help the clearing of books and shelves in the Booth because of the new disabled access that’s going to be put in.

When we started to clear one shelf at a time it didn’t take long to start finding the hidden history of the Booth, we found VHS tapes of the Booth from the past and also found pictures of some of the staff in their youth at the Booth including our mentor John! (He hasn’t changed a bit!)

I later came across something hidden in the book shelf, what looked like to me a red snake skin in a long plastic bag. On further investigation I discovered that it was an original part of Mr Booth’s chair, the arm to be precise. It really came to life to me when I saw the picture that the Booth Museum has of Mr Booth himself sitting in it.

Here is a list of some of the other items found in the Booth:

Montgomery, the name given to the Rattlesnake head sealed in a plastic orb
A book titled “My thoughts on a pebble”
An endless supply of animal books dating back into the 18th Century.
DUST LIKE YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE!
The list goes on.

It’s funny how you build a tolerance to dead animals after spending time at the Booth.

For instance when sitting down having my lunch the phone rang and was answered by one of the taxidermists, he advised the caller step by step in great detail on how best they should remove the skull and boil it in water and let it simmer for a day. He went on to explain that after this process it is much easier to remove the brain and cartilage so your left with nothing but the skull of the rabbit. (I may have got the details wrong but I did feel a bit sick!)

Needless to say if I had not already been at the Booth a few times there’s no way my meal would have been finished!


Zak

Happy New Year!
The new decade has got off to a very busy start as I have spent most of it in catering so far.
Here’s a statistic for you, apparently 97% of people that visit the Royal Pavilion Tea Room are new visitors. This is in sharp contrast to the Hove Museum Tea Room that is a regular meeting place for friends and families alike.
I have been surprised at the things that I have learned in catering. Besides the obvious hygiene best practice, basic food preparation, cleaning and serving the public, my preconceptions of the coffee/ Café culture in Brighton & Hove has been turned on its head with the realization that Tea is the most ordered beverage in both ‘Tea’ Rooms (obvious really, the clue’s in the name). English Breakfast is the most popular blend with Earl Grey well behind in second. However just as I felt I was getting a grip on tea varieties I realized that I still had a lot to learn when I was asked for Red Bush! As ever my colleagues were extremely helpful in educating me when they saw my blushes! You learn something every day.
Despite all the grim weather we’ve endured so far this year, the happiest moment was the free opening day at the Royal Pavilion. It was wonderful to see the looks on people’s faces when they saw the unique décor that has been so beautifully and sympathtically restored and maintained. It reminded me of the amazing team whose talent, experience, energy and sheer hard work ensure the survival of this unique building for generations to come.
Next it’s on to Bookings and another learning curve.

Zak

Week Five

Last week was our last week with the ISO teams. We spent Monday and Tuesday at the Pavilion and Museum, patrolling and in the control room, as well as going on a staircase hunt with Nick and Graham (we found it in the end, but it wasn’t as exciting as we’d all hoped).

On Wednesday we spent the day at Hove museum. When we arrived we were given glass cleaner and cloths and instructed to clean the cabinets! The ISO’s who work at Hove Museum, Preston Manor and the Booth Museum have a much more active job which involves looking after the building a lot more than the ISO’s at the Pavilion and Brighton Museum. After the cleaning, we got a chance to have a proper look around the museum displays before having a tour of the storage spaces and roof.
After having a very good jacket potato from the Tearoom for lunch, we spent the afternoon on the front desk, helping out with visitor queries and selling products in the shop.

Thursday was spent at Preston Manor, where we were greeted with the task of vacuuming the big centre staircase! At 10 o’clock, John arrived with Marcus and Jean from City College. We went through a LOT of paperwork and questions (we get NUS cards! Hurrah!), before we arranged to have our first proper meeting with Marcus, who will be our assessor for the duration of our apprenticeship, on Friday afternoon. It sounds like a very fun and interesting course!
During the afternoon, we were allowed to observe the school Role-Play activities. We followed the actors Greg and Pam (playing James the footman and Mrs Story the head housekeeper) around the building with the children who were visiting to learn about Victorian life and were pretending to be interviewed for servant positions. Greg was being very silly which, for me, meant I was forced to become a mute (which one of the boys from the school thought meant “short”. I wasn’t very pleased!) and Zak became Tomkins, which the children thought was a funny name!
We spent the rest of the afternoon tidying and locking up the building which involved going into the cellars which was interesting, but a bit too damp and spider-y for me to really enjoy!

We were at the Booth Museum on Friday. When we arrived, the ISO’s on duty made us very welcome and showed us how the shop worked. After this, we helped set up some tables and materials for a children’s art workshop that was happening in the morning. I thought that it was a really nice idea as the workshop was held in the insect part of the museum and many of the children left with models of spiders with glittery bodies and pipe cleaner legs, which showed that they were absorbing and being influenced by their surroundings, even if they were sparkled up a bit!! The afternoon was rather quiet so we spent quite a while helping Gerald move cases (which I didn’t look inside) upstairs to the storage area whilst asking him questions about everything we could think of and generally learning more about the museum and it’s contents.

I have really enjoyed being an ISO, but I am looking forward to doing something with a more active role. I am very pleased with the amount I’ve learnt in a month and how much of it I am able to remember!

Cassie

Weeks Three and Four

This past fortnight we’ve been out on our own! Patrolling individually or together, we are quickly learning how to be an ISO. We’ve spent an even time between the Pavilion and the Museum, finding out the most common questions from the public and quirky facts about the buildings and their history from the ISO’s who have worked here for a few years.

The main aim of being an Information and Security Officer is to give the customers a pleasant and safe experience of the venue they are visiting. This is mainly achieved by greeting the customers and providing information when asked, but often staff will go out of their way to answer questions – one ISO was so keen to find out what Dropsy was for a visitor, she found a member of staff who could Google it (it’s called Oedema now, an accumulation of fluid under the skin. It was one of George IV’s numerous impairments)!

Many of the ISO’s have worked here for several years and are currently gaining qualifications, in areas such as Customer Service and Sign Language, to enhance the customer’s experience.

I have spent a number of hours over the past two weeks in the Control Room which I’ve found really interesting as I’ve learnt a lot about Health and Safety and data protection amongst other very important things. We spent a couple of hours learning how the ISO roster is made, which is more complicated than you’d think!
One of our afternoons was spent running around the outside of the Pavilion with Graham which, even though it was cold and muddy, provided us with a really good overview of how the building is secured from the outside.

This week, we spent Tuesday evening on a lock up of the Pavilion with Terry. We now know the building inside out! It’s a very different place in the dark; everything seems bigger and a lot noisier! As well as taking us to all the underground storage areas, tunnels and having an opportunity to lie on the carpet of the Music Room and see the ceiling properly, we were taken up on the roof of the Pavilion which was amazing. You could see everything and all the tourists taking photos and people waiting at the bus stop could see you!

(Photo from www.royalpavilion.org.uk/palace/the_palace.asp)

Sadly another ISO on the late shift decided it would be a good idea to rattle doors and hide behind curtains. Although this is funny now, at the time it was horrible! I wasn’t the only one scared by it though…

This week is our last week of ISO-ing. We’ll spend Monday and Tuesday in the Pavilion and Brighton Museum before spending Wednesday at Hove Museum, Thursday at Preston Manor (where we’ll also meet our Apprenticeship Assessor and City College Skills Advisor for the first time) and Friday at the Booth Museum. It’s going to be really good to spend some time in the different locations and hopefully learn some more facts!

Cassie

Weeks One and Two

I must start off with saying that I have had a fantastic first week, I’ve been spending my days visiting the various venues and museums scatted around Brighton and Hove, also meeting the staff within them.

The places I have visited this week, Blatchington Mill, Brighton Pavilion, Brighton Museum, Foredown Tower, Preston Manor, and last but not least The Booth Museum.

I didn’t realise that there were so many different parts to Brighton and Hove’s Museums. So for the first week Cassie and I were shown many of the historic buildings that they look after.

Blatchington Mill is an old flour windmill that is no longer working but still has most of the original parts. I had no idea that it was open to public but is a really interesting place to visit in the summer.

Foredown Tower is somewhere that I actually hadn’t heard of before. It is a converted water tank that houses the largest camera obscura in South East England. I found the experience truly amazing and would recommend it to anyone looking for something a bit different. It literally gives you a new perspective on the world.

Preston Manor is a manor house decorated in the Edwardian style. As soon as you walk through the door you are transported into another age. Preston Manor is used by many schools as a way of experiencing life as it used to be. One child visitor apparently didn’t believe that they did not have electricity in the old days.

The Booth Museum is slightly out of town but is well worth a visit if you are interested in animals and don’t mind them being stuffed! I met the team behind the scenes who told us all about the processes involved and the care and attention that all the exhibits need.

Hove Museum has a fun Toy section that is interactive that all the young children seem to really enjoy. There is also an exhibit about film, filmmaking and local pioneers of the art form. This is one of my personal favourites and the Tea Room is very popular too.

Brighton Museum is housed in the old stables of the Pavilion. It is full of interesting objects from Egyptian Mummies to fashion, local history and art and furniture. They have an exhibition at the moment about the Land Girls who worked the land during the Second World War and paid an invaluable part in the war effort.

Last but not least in my view is the jewel in the crown The Royal Pavilion. Every time I go there I learn something new and as a cultural apprentice get to see parts that the public don’t see. The servant’s quarters are virtually as they were and there is original wallpaper and gives you a small flavour of life above the Pavilion. Underneath the Pavilion there is a big basement where I was shown the original furnace that used to heat the floor of the Pavilion a very early form of under floor heating.

All in all I have seen some amazing things that have given me a new perspective on the buildings and history of Brighton. Above all I have met some incredibly knowledgeable and dedicated people that look after the whole lot and preserve it for future generations.

Roll on next week!

Zac

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We spent out first week looking around all of the council’s main venues – the Royal Pavilion, Brighton Museum, Hove Museum, The Booth Museum, Preston Manor, West Blatchington Windmill and Foredown Tower and meeting all the staff we could find. After being issued with our keys, door passes, ID and name badge, we were ready to be handed over to the ISO (Information and Security Officers) team where we are to spend the first month of our apprenticeship.

We were shown the fire procedures for the Royal Pavilion and Brighton Museum, all the different patrols and how to get from one end of the Pavilion to the other by Mark, one of the three duty managers. We were then handed over to Vanda and Terry to learn about being an ISO and about the history of the building. We’ve spent much of the second week shadowing various members of the ISO team, learning a lot about the two venues and trying to find the duck in the Music Room of the Pavilion! We’re on our own from next week!

We’ll be spending the next two weeks in the Pavilion and Brighton Museum, before moving between Hove Museum, the Booth Museum and Preston Manor in our forth week.

Cassie

Introductions!

Hi, my name’s Zak Pichon-Flannery, I’m 18 years old and I’ve lived in Brighton for 10 years and love it!

After finishing school at Northease Manor School near Rodmell Village, I have spent the last two years in BIMM (The Brighton Institute of Modern Music) studying level 2 guitar and diploma vocals, with most of my spare time spent being a runner for the studio SMHTP.com.

I love music, especially the melodic side of song writing, and was looking for full time work and found out about the opportunity to be an apprentice for Brighton & Hove Museums for a year though the Connexions service.

What I want to get out of this is to be able to apply the managing, plus all the other valuable skills lent in the museum to any work in the future.

After the apprenticeship I’d like to run my own business, being a entrepreneur, in what? I’m sorting out now.

Really excited about me being here, Cassie and I will be keeping you up to date on our adventures in the world of Brighton & Hove Museums, meeting people and documenting our visits weekly.

Zak

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My name is Cassie Harrison, I’m 19 and accepted this placement after having a year out after completing my A-Levels at Varndean College.
During my time at school, college and throughout my gap-year I have become actively interested in Theatre and have gained practical experience in Stage Management, Production and Technical Theatre amongst other areas.
I hope that completing this apprenticeship will help me extend my knowledge of how cultural venues operate and will provide me with skills to help me further my career into Venue Management.

Zak and I will be working with the Royal Pavilion and Museums for a year. During this time we will gain experience in providing Information and Security, Retail and Catering, Marketing, Facilities Management, Events and Functions as well as other departments.

Cassie