Standing in front of the perfectly preserved ancient Egyptian doll from a grave, Marge Ainsley found she was pinching herself to prove that this magic moment was really part of her job. Reflecting on this memory at The Atkinson, Southport, where she provided arts consultancy support, Ainsley says: “It’s a real privilege to get behind the scenes. I have to remind myself how fortunate I am to have backstage access to collections and conservation care in action.” Her work as a freelance cultural consultant involves her developing deep understandings of arts organisations up and down the country to help them evaluate what they do, and ultimately to increase the numbers of people benefitting from those cultural offerings. At the time of writing, she was busy on a major evaluation for Carnegie UK involving 14 library services, which began in 2019 overlapping into the period of Covid challenges. The main bulk of her time is spent with museums, libraries, archives, and galleries, ranging in size and complexity from small literary museums such as Shandy Hall, near York (home of the writer Rev Laurence Sterne) to the enormous Manchester International Festival. “I do anything from independent evaluations to devising audience development strategies for organisations,” she explains. She then secured a graduate job with Cadbury’s in Sheffield as a regional business executive – very much a stop gap, but one which gave her ‘real life’ skills including negotiating and experience of working on high profile events such as the Manchester Commonwealth Games in 2002. Her heart was set on working in the cultural sector, so she left Cadbury’s to study an MA in Arts and Heritage Management at the University of Sheffield. She worked as a volunteer at Sheffield Galleries and was fortunate to gain a marketing assistant position there towards the end of her course. She spent the following years working in various in-house marketing roles before going freelance in 2008. “The huge joy I get now from freelancing is working with teams who do not have marketing or evaluation experience and helping them get people through the doors,” she explains. “It’s a pleasure to be able to work with so many different types of organisation by training their staff and volunteers.” Post Covid, a lot of work is required to help in the recovery of the cultural sector. She says: “The pandemic demonstrated to the powers that be that people value the arts, and it can have a powerful, positive impact on health and wellbeing.” To read the full interview visit www.lancaster.ac.uk/alumni She chose to go to Lancaster University to study English Language because of its reputation as a highflying department, but found that her first year choice of Cultural Communication allowed her to do Art History as well. Academically she thrived on the opportunities to explore language in every sense, from analysing grammar and syntax, studying children’s literacy and exploring the copywriting of advertising. These are skills that support her current work, especially with content marketing, report writing, and copywriting leaflets and online materials for different audiences. She also learned to swear fluently - but only in the manner current in 17th and 18th-century England - as she wrote her dissertation on it. “A lot of the words are the same,” she laughs. “But the etymology is so fascinating - why these words are so bad and how they have changed over time.” She points out that her studies did not make swearing a habit. Her Lancaster days were very happy ones, and she is still in touch with the English Language department today. Marge’s post-university path was not easy as a Master’s qualification was needed to enter the cultural sector at that time. She stayed on in Lancaster for a year with university friends and worked for a financial call centre in Preston. GRADUATED: 2000 SUBJECT: ENGLISH LANGUAGEWITHARTHISTORY COLLEGE: BOWLAND PROFESSION: FREELANCE CULTURAL CONSULTANT 13 Spotlight on... Keep in touch www.lancaster.ac.uk/alumni Marge Ainsley
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTI5NzM=