1 Taught Ma: Heritage Management Workshop

TAUGHT MA: HERITAGE MANAGEMENT

WORKSHOP LEADERS AND MENTORS: EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST

About the Role

Bath Spa University is introducing a new MA in Heritage Management from October 2011 and wishes to recruit a number of experienced, well-connected and creative heritage practitioners and specialists, to help lead and deliver aspects of the course.

Based in the School of Humanities and Cultural Industries, successful candidates will have the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues in a number of departments including Music and the Performing Arts, Art and Design, and Business and Management.

We are currently looking for a number of talented individuals to act as workshop leaders and mentors, with demonstrable expertise in one or more of the following areas:

Funding and fundraising Developing and managing volunteers Learning for the future: heritage and education; lifelong and informal learning Heritage for teachers A sense of place: urban heritage, landscapes and communities Researching and interpreting collections Researching and interpreting the historic environment Digital strategies for collections, communications and marketing Strategic collections management The arts and heritage Marketing, communications and advocacy Planning for sustainability Project planning and management

Successful applicants will be asked to join a specialist labour pool and may be called upon to deliver in their area(s) of expertise and according to student numbers and demand. Hours of work are not guaranteed and may vary. Please note that fees and expenses will be individually negotiated. For further information please see section 5 ‘Expressions of Interest’, point d.

For further information about the role please refer to the further particulars or for an informal discussion please contact Dr Alison Hems by email [email protected] or phone 01225 876363. The closing date for expressions of interest is Monday 1st August 2011.

Further Particulars

1. Introduction

Bath Spa University is introducing a new taught MA in Heritage Management from October 2011, subject to student enrolment, and wishes to recruit a number of experienced, well-connected and creative heritage practitioners and specialists, to help lead and deliver aspects of the course.

The course is offered by the School of Humanities and Cultural Industries, alongside existing awards in subjects such as – scriptwriting, writing for young people, and literature and landscape; colleagues in the School of Art and Design offer an award in curatorial practice and there are opportunities to work with other departments including Music, Performance, and Business and Management.

Bath and the region provide a wide range of opportunities for teaching and learning in different heritage settings, from the World Heritage Sites of the City of Bath and Stonehenge-Avebury, to major museums and smaller, volunteer-led organisations in a number of local towns. The National Trust has its headquarters in nearby Swindon, which is also home to several English Heritage departments and the National Monuments Record; EH has its regional office in Bristol. This region has seen – or will soon see – the completion of a number of major capital projects – for example, at the Roman Baths Museum and the Holburne Museum in Bath; in Bristol with the opening of the new Museum of Bristol, and the proposed visitor centre at Stonehenge. All of these developments, as well as the ongoing business of welcoming visitors, developing staff and volunteers, managing resources, and designation and research, provide a rich seam for study and analysis.

2. Why Bath Spa – why now?

BSU recognises the challenges inherent in introducing such a course now, as competition for heritage and heritage-related jobs continues to increase and as the sector itself deals with the challenges of reduced funding and new government policy. Changes in the heritage infrastructure, together with broader economic and demographic changes, will have long-term implications for the sector: they may well bring about fundamental shifts in ways of thinking and doing, rather than temporary adjustments to current policy. It is no longer enough simply to seek to wait out the storm.

The course has therefore been designed to support the development of skills and experience relevant outside the sector, while at the same time providing an excellent foundation in heritage management. To do this, we intend to build on BSU’s emerging partnerships with a large number of important national, regional and local heritage organisations, and to support our students through the teaching offered by leading heritage practitioners. We want to develop existing partnerships, and create new ones, in which both the student and the host organisation are properly supported by BSU, not least in order to find ways of dealing with the current financial constraints and to imagine more sustainable ways of working in future. Your contribution may thus be strategic, as well as of enormous value of particular students.

If you are selected to teach on this course, it will be because you have already established the depth and breadth of your expertise in one or more aspects of heritage thinking and practice; it will reflect your ability to bring new approaches, creative challenges and a wealth of hands-on experience to the role.

2 3. Scope of services

We want to recruit a number of heritage practitioners and specialists to:

Prepare content for a range of options offered within the course, through its different modules: details of these are given below; Deliver workshops and seminars for postgraduate students registered on the course; sometimes, workshops and seminars will also be available to colleagues from organisations hosting student placements or practitioners taking a particular module as part of their own professional development. These will normally be based at the University’s Graduate School at Corsham Court, a fine historic house set in a small town just outside Chippenham in Wiltshire, but may also involve teaching at the main campus at Newton Park in Bath or at heritage sites across the region. Seminars are timetabled as morning or afternoon sessions; workshops will involve one to two days of intensive teaching, and provide the basis for student research, project work, placements and assignments; Devise appropriate tasks and activities to support these activities and assignments, including formative assessment activities; Provide some follow-up mentoring to individual students working on placement projects or dissertations, typically by email or telephone; Contribute to the ongoing development of the course through the updating of existing or introduction of new units of study, themes and areas for research.

4. The course

The course is informed by a broad definition of ‘heritage’ and encompasses buildings and landscapes and museum and archive collections, as well as the intangible heritage of traditions, language and memory.

It consists of the following modules, in which there are a number of distinct areas of study:

Trimester One: October 2011-February 2012 Developing heritage thinking and practice for the 21st century This module introduces the key concepts we will use throughout the course, and asks how far heritage practice has kept pace with changes in heritage thinking and in society, politics and the economy. It poses two major questions: How did we get here and where next? Leadership, management and governance How are heritage organisations managed? How can they meet current challenges? What skills will you need to meet the future needs of the sector? This module will give everyone the opportunity to consider the practical challenges involved in managing a heritage attraction, as well as to look at the more generic issues of leadership, management and governance. Elements of this module will be delivered by the School of Business and Management and by external specialists. Trimester Two: February 2012-June 2012 Understanding and analysing current practice This module revisits the thinking we explored during the first trimester and applies it to current examples of heritage practice. This module will take participants beneath the surface of a new gallery, a restored garden, or a period interior, and ask them to consider: why this? It is intended to develop a more sophisticated understanding of the ways in which the heritage sector really works and the kind of constraints and challenges it faces. Supported placement The placement provides an opportunity to undertake a substantial piece of work, supported by workshops led by leading heritage practitioners, many of whom will continue to act as mentors throughout the rest of the module. The placement might involve work on funding and fundraising, developing volunteers, researching collections, or marketing, communications and advocacy. We see

3 this as the focal point of the course, and potentially of enormous value to participants and to the organisations with whom they will be working.

Potential areas of study identified thus far include:

In addition, there will be opportunities to support the development of more generic skills in, for example, project planning, project management, presentation and communications skills Trimester Three: June 2012-September 2012 Final project or dissertation The final project may represent an extension of the placement work, the opportunity to complete a new project, or a more traditional, research- based dissertation. Project work might involve preparing a learning programme, accompanied by appropriate materials; producing a film or developing a website, and will be supported by reflective and theoretical analysis.

We see sector specialists as playing a particularly important role in supporting the placement and final project or dissertation, but there will also be opportunities to teach on the Leadership, management and governance module and to contribute to the other modules.

5. Expressions of interest

If you would like to be included among this cohort of specialist practitioners, please provide the following information by email to Dr Alison Hems: [email protected] by 5.00pm on Monday 1st August 2011.

a) A copy of your CV, which should clearly indicate your experience in and of the heritage sector (acquired in any number of different roles) and of teaching, training and professional development; b) A short summary of the areas you are able to cover, based on the course as outlined above and drawn from your own expertise and experience. Because we want to reflect the interests of our students and the needs of our partner organisations, the topics listed here are not definitive, so please include other areas of interest if you would like to; c) A short statement explaining your interest in undertaking this work and what, in particular, you feel you would contribute to the success of the course; d) Your current day rate, including whether or not you are registered for VAT, which should apply to preparatory, teaching and follow-up work. Please note that final fees will be negotiated on an individual basis; e) We welcome applications from people in full- or part-time employment, who see this as an opportunity to refine their own thinking and as part of their own professional development.

4 In this case, please indicate the basis on which you would be taking part and to whom any fees or expenses might be paid, i.e. whether this will be you or your employer.

A detailed course handbook is available on request. This has been written primarily for students taking the course, and provides further information on learning outcomes and methods of assessment; it will be supplemented in due course by handbooks for each of the modules described here.

For an informal discussion of the role and our ambitions for the course, please contact:

Dr Alison Hems School of Humanities and Cultural Industries Bath Spa University Newton Park Bath BA2 9BN 01225 876363 [email protected]

Please note that we cannot guarantee that everyone appointed will be offered an opportunity to teach in any one year: this will depend on student numbers, the range of specific subjects they elect to take, and the projects negotiated with partner organisations.