I missed the Museums & Heritage Show this week but I have Regret. Covid really broke the rhythm of meeting up with people in the sector, Twitter dying killed the online community and I feel like I need to see faces again.

Partly it’s also that Reading is only full of people that work in Reading’s cultural venues, we just don’t have the critical mass that can bring people together for things. And getting into London peak costs me £70.

This is the most boring newsletter introduction I’ve ever written.

Content of this week

• I never appreciated how hard it was to avoid cliches until I started doing more theatre work.

• Speaking of theatre, it’s particularly susceptible to ‘everyone doing the same thing’. Reviews. Rehearsal photos. Bows. And interviewing the cast. I feel like Harrison Ford is the audience for most cast interviews, and maybe we should start asking ‘did your mother love you?’.

• These divas format. Replace with middle aged people wearing cargo shorts for heritage sites.

• I did some training on social media for collections recently, and for paintings I still feel like you can’t go wrong with a voiceover and swooping around the details.

• There is something intensely satisfying about the ‘pop’ sound effect in this.

The bullet point bit

• Do you fancy knowing how much data you give up for free when you visit a website? On desktop I’m pretty stacked with privacy plug-ins but my mobile is an open book.

• The V&A launched a website called Mused to reach 10-13 year olds who shouldn’t be on social media (but let’s face it, even with age restrictions, they are on it). It’s done well because they listened to young people, and I particularly like how they didn’t tell the people they consulted it was for the V&A.

• Ash Mann’s published an article on his research into hidden digital work. I was at a crossroads in 2018 when I could have gone down a content or digital route. And even before the absolute unit tweet I was leaning to the former because of the many reasons listed in this article (leadership, organisation, clarity). A lot of the same issues affect content too, but at least content is fun to do.

• Speaking of Ash, he linked to the very nice Dr Laura Crossley’s research on burnout in the cultural sector. Weirdly, even though I haven’t had a full week off since Christmas (not a humble brag, I’ve just overloaded myself) I don’t feel anywhere close to the burnout I experienced working in-house. A defined scope, choosing who you work with and being responsible for your own working hours can work wonders.

Personal stuff I do for me and you can just skip this if you like

🎮📖 what I’m consuming as a consumer

We just watched the second season of Beef, which is worth it just for Charles Melton’s character being a blissful idiot.

🐕 Keith

Here he is