Written by Dan Gordon, Keeper of Biology, The Great North Museum: Hancock.

So, how did I get started in museums? Like perhaps many people, it began with a stroke of luck.

I’d decided to study Biology at university—I suppose I’d vaguely pictured myself at some point in the future, white-coated in the lab, pouring over spectrophotometer readings or agar plates. But by the end of the first year, I found myself staring out of the window during practicals. Nineteen-year-old me was slowly becoming disillusioned: Botany was biochemistry; Zoology was elegant mathematics; even Ecology was really an intricate forest of statistics, not trees. There was beauty in the numbers, but it was all a long way from my childhood passion for birdwatching, rock pooling and reading travel books. One day, peering at smudges on a petri dish and trying to work out if I’d just induced gene expression, I realised I might not be cut out for that imagined future. I was fascinated by the soul of the subject, but the finer points of its language were losing their magic.

So, what did that mean for me? Well, as I mulled this over that first summer break, I took part in a university open day, showing prospective students the campus, including the University Museum. During a short break between tours, as we stood in front of a heavy wooden door, it opened. Someone stepped out and asked, “Is anyone interested in a summer job?” So, I said yes. After filling out the application form and a successful interview, I was delighted to find myself with two whole months of paid employment, climbing the stone steps each day to a room filled with glass jars and boxes full of papers. It was my task, I discovered, to sort the recently acquired archive of a myriapodologist—E.H. Eason.¹

The rest of that summer, I spent the long sunny days indoors, surrounded by specimens and descriptive keys, learning the language of centipedes—Maxilliped, Forcipule, the Organ of Tömösváry. In that cool, quiet room, with the distant sound of visitors outside and the cries of swifts nesting in the roof, I discovered, not only the centipedes, but Eason’s life and work. Travel across the world, papers describing everything from academic gossip to collecting trips in the caves of the Azores.  They mapped more than taxonomy—they charted the contours of a man’s life and the habits of a whole tribe of living beings. Who knew that a few cardboard boxes could contain a whole world? And, at the end of eight weeks they revealed a future I could see myself in.

But that was just the beginning. Finding work in the sector has always been a challenge, and it took a while before I found something that matched my skills. Luckily, at that time, the New Opportunities Fund (NOF) had been established by the National Lottery Act 1998 to distribute National Lottery funding. It was part of the wave of Third Way policy thinking under New Labour—using Lottery money for social and educational initiatives. NOF Digitise (NOF-digi) was an early attempt to digitise museum collections and put them online. A friend spotted something in her local paper and gave me a call—six months of work to research and write online ‘captions’ for digitised museum objects at the Hancock Museum in Newcastle. I rushed to apply just before the deadline, armed with little more than A level results, a cover letter, and two months’ experience knee-deep in centipedes. Then, a few days before my first final exam, I got a letter: would I come for an interview?

It was a bit of a gamble—a long train journey there and back, a few days before exams—but I went. I had a long interview in the old Council Room at the Hancock, where I met my future boss and the project team. I was a little distracted by the looming exams, but I was absolutely elated when I heard the voicemail, after my finals, to say I’d got the job.

In this role, I spent months alongside a photographer, researching everything from the food plants of butterflies to the feathers of Turacos. It was my first real lesson in how to translate complex ideas in a way that might hold the public’s attention.

I also learned that in a museum, it’s all hands on deck. I might have been employed to help digitise collections, but I sometimes found myself cleaning out fish tanks, painting plinths, and helping with tours. That general experience helped me understand the many strands of work that go on inside museums.

Then, as now, museum jobs were full of uncertainty. There was no guarantee that a six-month post would lead anywhere. There was always the possibility of a contract extension, but you often felt in limbo, waiting to see what else might come along. Those NOF projects popped up around the country and then evaporated after six months or a year.

The money eventually dried up and was absorbed into the Big Lottery Fund in 2004, but the experience I’d gained helped me secure year-long stints as an assistant Learning Officer helping prepare online learning tools, and as a Documentation Assistant, working through a storeroom full of old miners’ lamps and watchmakers’ tools. I was switching between disciplines in the region’s various museums for a few months at a time. It wasn’t quite the career path I’d envisioned after working my guts out to get into a good university—scraping together short-term contracts, leapfrogging from museum to museum just to pay the rent.

Then—my big break—a job as a researcher and Curatorial Assistant for the Great North Museum project in 2006. The project was a big partnership among Newcastle University, Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums (now Northeast Museums), Newcastle City Council, the Natural History Society of Northumbria, and the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne—a £26 million redevelopment aimed at modernizing the museum and consolidating several key collections under one roof.

For the first time, some job security—several years, at least—and a chance to get into curatorial work. Anyone who’s worked on a big capital project will know what a rollercoaster it can be—late nights, deadlines, complicated problems that you’re not sure how to solve. I was combing through drawers of beetles, tracking down a life-sized model elephant, and ringing Defra to sort out importing a dead Reindeer from Finland. I worked with scientists, artists, people from all walks of life. And I wrote, re-wrote and re-re-wrote endless object labels until late into the night. Learning to be a communicator. Three years later, I’d help make a museum, and I felt like I could finally call myself a Curator. And the rest, as they say, is Natural History.

I think, if there’s one thing that opened that door for me, it was the New Opportunities Fund. As frustrating as those short-term, ephemeral jobs could be, they were nevertheless a chance for people to get a foot through the door of a notoriously difficult industry to get into.

The museum sector can’t thrive without sustained investment in its people. Entry routes are so often concentrated in traditional centres and remain disproportionately accessible to those with connections, privilege, or the means to work unpaid.²  Those early opportunities gave me a foothold—but wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have to rely on luck or happenstance to build a workforce? We want a vibrant, representative sector, and we need public investment not just in buildings and exhibitions, but in skills, careers, and potential.

Organisations like NatSCA are essential to that ecosystem—supporting those bright, passionate, early-career professionals through networks, shared knowledge, and a sense of belonging. At the start of a museum career, when uncertainty is highest and opportunities fewest, that support makes all the difference. A museum is only as strong as the people who care for its stories—and someone needs to open the door, let them in – and then maybe leave them open, too.