Breakthrough – Heritage Collection Assistant

Overview

Breakthrough is a 6‑month employability programme designed as a stepping stone to give you workplace experience and essential employment skills. This short placement offers insight into a future career in the Creative Industry, building confidence and professionalism to help you make a meaningful career.

This role supports Towner’s Historical Collections Curator in organising the Eastbourne Heritage collection. The collection comprises around 20,000 artefacts, photographs and works on paper of local and regional significance, with strengths in local history and archaeology. Extensive photographic material documents Eastbourne’s development over the last 150 years.

• Assist with cataloguing and collections management.
• Help refine documentation for the Heritage collection using both paper and digital archives.
• Update records to reflect industry standards and identify material for potential deaccession.
• Plan and schedule documentation improvement for individual objects.
• Support deaccessioning procedures and find alternative locations for deaccessioned materials.
• Upload digital resources to the Towner server and input data into the Collection database.
• Provide archive images to the Marketing & Communications team for website, press, publicity and social media.

Training will be provided based on your existing skills and may include:

• Management of digital assets
• Database introduction
• Regular one‑to‑one sessions with a member of the curatorial team

The position is split between the Heritage Collections Store in Hampden Park (Eastbourne – 5 min walk from Hampden Park railway station) and Towner Eastbourne (Devonshire Quarter, close to Eastbourne town centre and the seafront). There is also the option to work from home on certain days.