John Ellerman Foundation Project Curator – Tullie House

Job Title: John Ellerman Foundation Project Curator
Salary: £25,450
Hours: Full time
Term: 13 months from December 2023 – February 2025
Location: Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Carlisle CA3 8TP
Closing date: 9:00 am 30 November 2023

An exciting opportunity to work on a crucial aspect of collections management with a varied and significant collection

Tullie House Museum & Art Gallery Trust is a major independent regional museum welcoming over 200,000 visitors every year. We are the lead organisation of the Cumbria Museum Consortium, an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation. Our Manifesto places collections at the heart of everything we do: we use them to inspire co-creation and active participation, celebrate diversity and champion equality, and foster a sense of pride in the people of Carlisle and Cumbria for their unique local history.

This post will lead on the delivery of the second year of an innovative John Ellerman Foundation funded project: ‘De-Tabooing Disposal in Regional Museums’. Tullie House has a collection of over 12,000 social history objects, many of which are important to the local area and county, but which are also nationally significant. However, past indiscriminate collecting of objects which are not relevant or useable due to their condition or a lack of data has swamped these collections. The volume of objects has hampered cataloguing and digitisation projects and is stalling plans to create a more active collecting policy which will enhance the current relevant collections and fill gaps in the local stories of Carlisle and Cumbria.

Working in line with the MA Code of Ethics, and the MA Disposal Toolkit, the post holder will streamline the social history and costume collection, leading to improvements in its documentation, storage and display. The post holder will work with a John Ellerman Foundation-supported post at Lakeland Arts (part of the Cumbria Museum Consortium) to deliver skills sharing on the process of rationalisation and disposals for museums across Cumbria.

This role is a fantastic opportunity for candidates to work in a key collections management role within an extensive social history collection, as part of the award-winning Tullie House team.

Purpose of the Role

  • Carry out rationalisation and disposal within identified areas of the Social History and costume collection, under the direction of the Collections and Access Manager and with support from both the Curator of Human History and the Curator of Fine and Decorative Art
  • Co-ordinate the operational activities of project volunteers
  • With support from project partners Lakeland Arts, work closely with their John Ellerman Foundation-supported post to deliver a rationalisation and disposal skills sharing programme for colleagues across the county.

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Application Process

If you are inspired by the role and would like to apply for the position, please send your CV and a covering statement (of no more than 500 words), detailing any relevant experience and knowledge, and what interests you about this role to [email protected] by 9am on Thursday 30 November.

Candidates invited to interview will be notified by 5pm on Friday 1 December 2023.

Interviews will be held on Tuesday 5 December 2023 – we encourage candidates to attend in person but a Zoom option will be made available if this isn’t possible.

If you have any further questions, please contact HR, [email protected] or Sophie Terrett, Collections and Access Manager, at [email protected]