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Organising explainers' teams

Science centres and museums are all facing the same question: how to organise their explainers' team. Some institutions work with freelance students and a high turnover rate. Others developed long-term career strategies for their guides. And there are many different ways in between.

How you manage explainer human resources not only has a great impact on your explainers' performance. It also influences the tasks and challenges of your education department and institution altogether and shapes the way you interact with audiences.

This session's speakers have found different solutions to this question. Why have they chosen a particular system? What works great, where are the bugs? Is it just strict budgets that keep institutions from offering explainers long-term contracts? How do we keep the good ones? Is there something like the golden solution?

We want your opinions and experience in this session! Let’s discuss the possibilities of explainer careers and organisation.

Facilitator

Development Manager
Techniquest
Cardiff
United Kingdom

Session speakers

Deputy Head of Department, Museum Education
Vienna
Austria
Working as a guide offers much more possibilities than a seasonal student job for the individual as well as the institution. It pays of to hire your explainers and offer your team realistic and attractive career plans extending beyond explainer trainings. The institution, visitors and staff will profit from stable circumstances, growing responsibilities & possibilities, bottom up training plans and institutional knowledge transfer. I'll share with you our experiences we've made at the TMW.
Director
Tartu
Estonia
AHHAA has 40 young explainers -mostly students & part-time workers. Only a few have been here for 5 years. The best ones keep on moving to better jobs after two or three years. We have to look for new explainers in every 6 months. It takes time & money to educate a good explainer. Now we have developed a 3-year career-model for newcomers. This idea maybe helps both of us- the employer to keep the good ones for a few more years - & the employee- to better understand what is expected from him.
Head of Learning and Operations
KCA London Ltd
London
United Kingdom
Anthony began at the Science Museum, London & oversaw the development of the team to a respected science engagement force. This was done with focused recruitment, management techniques, risk taking & commitment to the audience. The team developed to the most stable & experienced team in the Museum, with joy and tears on the way. This approach formed the model for the Facilitators team at Mishkat, Saudi Arabia, where training &development are reaching new audiences in a very different environment
Project manager
EPPDCSI-universcience
Paris
France
N. Auboin F. Kletz and O. Lenay have observed the many organizational configurations existing for the mediators in different institutions in France and analyzed their advantages and limits. Inspired by this work Anne Lise Mathieu, will present the case of Universcience in Paris, born in 2010 from the merging of two of the greatest French institutions of scientific and technical culture. She will present their organization before the merging, will discuss the developments and difficulties encountered in this merging and will question the place of Science mediators in the new institution.
Manager of Public and Youth Engagement
Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History
New Haven
United States
The Sci.CORPS Program offers paid work experiences to youth who have completed at least one year in the museum’s after school program. The young people, many from low-income families, work in galleries for 2-3 years, & are often hired into supervisory roles & into other departments of the museum upon graduation. The professional development provided is well worth the effort. The young people go on to become scientists & educators. The museum would not have many visitor interactions without them.