Digital Preservation Manager at V&A

Cromwell Road, London

Full-Time

This role is open to applicants requiring visa sponsorship.

The V&A is a family of museums dedicated to the power of creativity. Our mission is to champion design and creativity in all its forms, advance cultural knowledge, and inspire makers, creators and innovators everywhere. We share a 5,000-year-old story of creativity through exhibitions, events, educational programmes, digital experiences, conservation, research, and an ever-evolving national collection of over 2.8m objects spanning every creative discipline.

Our collections also include a growing number of born-digital and hybrid objects, ranging from CAD drawings, algorithmic art and emoji to personal organisers and video games. The V&A holds more than 3,000 digital art and design objects dating from the 1950s to the present. Including works created by individuals through to large-scale corporations, the collection explores the interplay between art, design and technology, and how they shape how we live together.

The V&A also accepts born-digital material for inclusion within its archival collections, such as its Theatre and Performance Archives, and the Archive of Art and Design, and the museum generates a large amount of digital corporate information. Digital preservation of both collections and corporate information assets will be within the scope of this role.

The V&A recently commissioned an audit of its digital assets to assess their status and set out priorities for digital preservation. The Digital Preservation Manager is the V&A’s first role in its developing digital strategy and the post holder will work with the Digital Steering Group in implementing the audit’s recommendations, developing preservation strategy, policies, and procedures, and making business cases for further staff and infrastructure investment.

This is an exciting opportunity to spearhead a groundbreaking initiative at the V&A. As the first person to hold this pivotal role in our organization, you will have the unique chance to shape the future of digital preservation in a world-leading museum and set a new standard for digital conservation and preservation excellence.

The Digital Preservation Manager will be responsible for progressing the V&A's overall digital preservation strategy and working closely with those who contribute to its delivery. Within the Collections Care and Access Division you will create and manage preservation workflows, co-design the integration of collections data with other business systems, deliver training and develop documentation, work with Collections Management colleagues to support curatorial and acquisition activities, collaborate with digitisation and conservation teams, and proactively engage with colleagues across the organisation.