Strengthening Our Common Life

Research Projects

Our innovative, accredited heritage skills training programme offered bursary-supported, work-based traineeships at leading museums, galleries, historic homes and arts organisations.

Supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Skills for the Future initiative, SOCL aimed to meet one of HLF’s core objectives: to increase workforce diversity across the heritage sector by providing work-based training for young people from sections of the population historically under-represented. We aimed to diversify the decision-making levels in the UK heritage sector by providing paid training placements within a broad range of institutions.

Participation and positive engagement with heritage is an important early factor in encouraging individuals to consider, and apply for, heritage roles later in life. Therefore, SOCL host partners also embedded community engagement and reinterpretation activities into all trainee work programmes, as a means of diversifying audiences.

87 young people, the majority of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic heritage, have received training through the programme (SOCL1, SOCL2 and SOCL3). The SOCL3 Year Three cohort graduated in November 2017.

SOCL3, Year Three trainees

Samuel Ali
Heritage Trainee, Museum of Croydon

Charlotte Anderton
Festival Programming, Southbank Centre

Stacey Bagdi
Programming & Learning Trainee, Forty Hall Estate

Tanaya Basu De Sarkar
Collections Information Trainee, Royal Collection Trust

Natasha Cambridge
Trainee Curator, London Transport Museum

Jetmire Dvorani
Study Centre Assistant, National Army Museum

Layla Gatens
Curatorial Assistant: Engagement, Chisenhale Gallery

Carine Harmand
Public Programmes Assistant, National Army Museum

Alice Houghton
Collections Information Trainee, Royal Collection Trust

Donata Miller
Trainee Curator, London Transport Museum

Find out more about our trainees, their traineeships and new roles.

Freya Monk-McGowan
Collections Management Trainee, Norfolk Museums Service

Shereen Hunte
Junior Learning Producer (11-19), Historic Royal Palaces

Jatinder Kailey
Junior Learning Producer (Adult Learning), Historic Royal Palaces

Emma MacNicol
Collections Support Trainee, Birmingham Museums Trust

Mica Mannix
Interpretation Trainee, English Heritage Trust

Amber Perrier
Community Engagement Officer (Trainee), British Library

Camella Veena Ramjet
Community Partnerships Trainee, British Museum

Henrik Yau
Collections Assistant Trainee, Royal Pavilion and Museums Brighton and Hove

Projects

Southbank Centre: Violet Nights

Resonance FM: Heritage at a World in London

London Transport Museum: Poster Parade

Historic Royal Palaces: Build Your Own Discovery

Museum of Croydon: Vignalë Brothers

British Library: Community Engagement

Norfolk Museum Service: Expanding LGBTQ Collections

Find out about some of the diversity-led projects our trainees have completed this year.