Unveiling the Future – Exploring New Opportunities in the World of Museums

Above image: Museums sector panel (From left to right) Tomoyo Miyakawa, Brendan Cormier, Sarah Byrne, Ailsa Hendry and Dhikshana Turakhia Pering.

On 20 March 2025, Tomoyo Miyakawa, Careers and Partnerships Lead from the UCL School for the Creative and Cultural Industries (SCCI) hosted a panel event entitled ‘Unveiling the Future – Exploring New Opportunities in the World of Museums’. This event formed part of UCL Careers Sector Insight Programme for Museums, Arts and Cultural Heritage.

Attendees had the opportunity to hear from established Museums professionals including SCCI’s own Sarah Byrne who welcomed participants to the venue she curates: The UCL Culture Lab. Joining her was Museum Studies MA Alumna Ailsa Hendry, who is now working as Collections Manager for the Museum of the Home (opens in new tab), where she notably oversees the Museum’s policies for acquisitions and loans. Speaking from his decade of experience at the V&A was Chief Curator Brendan Cormier, who is leading the curatorial team for the new V&A East Storehouse and V&A East Museum (opens in new tab), both significant sites offering a new immersive experience of ‘behind the scenes’ of the collection and celebrating global diversity. Completing the panel was Dhikshana Turakhia Pering who recently joined London Museum (opens in new tab) as Head of Creative Programmes, a new role set to re-imagine how the museum delivers a day to night creative programme with Londoners.

Developing museums for the future

Following introductions where panellists shared their career journey to date – which included being inspired by a sleepover at the Science Museum for Dhikshana – our guests outlined the future-focussed initiatives each of their institutions are working towards. Brendan shared his current exploration of how to make the vast V&A collections accessible to the public and how the new V&A East Storehouse might ‘display storage’. Dhikshana told the story of how the development of the new London Museum started by their Director asking for a new front door as the museum was previously accessed through The Barbican Centre. London Museum will be relocating to two historic former Smithfield Market buildings, the formerly derelict Victorian General Market and the adjacent 1960s Poultry Market. This simple ask is now driving a vision for a democratic museum which embraces the Smithfield marketplace heritage in its design as a shared place bringing people together in the heart of the city.

Ailsa offered a comprehensive overview of the Museum of the Home’s history, from its inception as the Geffrye Museum which aimed to celebrate the local furniture trade, to now being an access-driven cultural venue showcasing a range of period rooms co-curated with the communities they represent: from an 1910s room showing Jewish Family life, to a 2005 queer house share and the 2048 home of the future. Sarah concluded this first segment by pointing out the peculiarity of Culture Lab being a space without a collection, and the opportunity this represents to call for proposals from community artists and to gradually build the space’s identity.

The importance of equality, diversity and inclusion

The panel then turned their attention to equality, diversity and inclusion and outlined that in their collective view, the future of museums is dependent on careful consideration of equality, diversity and inclusion principles across the board, from collections management and programming to staff recruitment. Ailsa pointed out the choice the Museum of the Home has made to move to a competency-based hiring model, inviting applicants to show how their skills and behaviours meet the requirements of the role rather than solely based on their previous work experience or qualifications. Dhikshana and Sarah echoed each other by inviting us to question the notion of a museum as a sanctuary and how museums need to be mindful when they diversify their staff about the amount of emotional labour staff are asked to undertake.

Digital transformation

No conversation on new opportunities within the world of museums would be complete without addressing the digital realm. Brendan shared that the V&A are in the process of exploring the relationship between their digital collection and their digitised collection. For Ailsa at the Museum of the Home, technology-led developments include developing access to the large collections of oral histories held by the Museum and making exhibits more dynamic through the integration of sounds and smells. Dhikshana shared that London Museum has a significant Digital Transformation Strategic Plan, which includes an exploration of how Artificial Intelligence might be leveraged to encourage audiences to speak and ask questions during their visit.

Career top tips

Concluding the event was a sharing of ‘top tips’ for developing a career in the museum sector, these included:

• Leveraging opportunities for networking (both online and in-person).
• Engaging with sector news.
• Making the most of resources such as the Museums Journal, the Museums Association, Arts Council England the National Heritage Lottery Fund.

The panel also agreed that prospective museum professionals should not overlook small institutions as places to gain significant experience and as a UCL alum Ailsa reminded students to ‘look around the room’ as their first professional collaborators might in fact be sitting right next to them!