Breakthrough - Heritage Collection Assistant

Breakthrough - Heritage Collection Assistant, Eastbourne

This is an opportunity to work with and learn from Towner’s Historical Collections Curator. You will be supporting them with the organisation of the Eastbourne Heritage collection.

Towner has recently taken on the custodial management of Eastbourne Borough Council’s existing Heritage Collections. This collection comprises approximately 20,000 artefacts, photographs and works on paper of local and regional significance, with strengths in local history and archaeology. Additionally, there is extensive photographic material charting the development of Eastbourne over the last 150 years.

You will be supporting with cataloguing and collections management of this collection.

As part of the curatorial team, you will assist in refining the documentation for the Heritage collection and will work with this system, comprising both a paper and digital archive, to help with its ongoing management, location and storage.

You will ensure records are updated to reflect industry standards, as well as helping to identify material that could be deaccessioned from the collection.

This role will include:

Working with the curatorial team to plan and follow procedures for improving the documentation of the heritage collections.

Helping with the sorting through of material and objects, including assistance with deaccessioning (moving objects out of the collection where appropriate) procedures and finding alternative locations for deaccessioned materials.

Managing and organising the upload of digital resources to the Towner server.

Inputting data into Towner’s Collection database for the Heritage Collections.

Working to a plan/schedule for the process for improving documentation for individual objects.

Liaising with the Marketing & Communications team to provide archive images for website, press, publicity and social media purposes.

Training will be offered to the successful applicant, depending on their existing skills. This may include:

Management of digital assets

Database introduction

Regular one to one sessions with a member of the curatorial team.

The role will be split between the Heritage Collections Store, in Hampden Park (Eastbourne – 5 minutes walk from Hampden Park railway station), and Towner Eastbourne (in Devonshire Quarter close to Eastbourne town centre and the seafront). There will also be the opportunity to work from home/hybrid on certain days if this suits you.

Please note that Eastbourne Digi Fest is unaffliated to this job posting. Please follow the link above to apply.