National Freelancers Day profile – museum education & community engagement

June 17th 2021 is National Freelancers Day. Veronica Sarmiento has worked as a museum education freelancer with the London Transport Museum and as a volunteer with the Migration Museum and London Youth, alongside a part-time community engagement role in East London. She spoke to us about her experiences.

What first led you into freelancing work?

So I went to uni in Cardiff and did a degree in ancient history and French. At first I thought I wanted to go into teaching, but when I was in France for my year abroad, I did teaching and didn’t really like the curriculum side of it. But what I knew was I wanted to work with young people in some environment. So then when I got back to London, I was looking at work that looked like that. I got involved in the Migration Museum, supporting their museum education workshops – I was working with schools and university students, and I loved it.

After I finished my degree I still didn’t have a specific pathway into museums. I knew these kinds of roles existed, but I’d probably have to volunteer loads and try to find a way in. After applying to full-time positions in museums initially, I found the London Transport Museum Young Freelancers programme online. It was a programme focused on supporting young people into those roles. I didn’t really know what freelancing was then and I didn’t set out for it.

Was there anything you found particularly difficult about it starting out?

So the program is designed to support you to be a freelancer in museums, but you work on different freelance briefs and it was very flexible. There were no guaranteed hours, so I'd have to apply for every brief I wanted to work on, which was challenging at first because it is quite time-consuming.

It also meant that I had to find work elsewhere to support me during that time. Luckily I was living with my parents and in London, so those opportunities were accessible to me. I do think it'd be more difficult if I was trying to pay rent while starting out at the beginning. I took the opportunity and got accepted, but I was doing a lot of temp work alongside it – working on reception, in offices and other kinds of part-time or zero hour work. That was a really big challenge – managing my time and my expectations after uni. But in that sense it was a really good opportunity. The museum was really supportive of my interests and they helped me bring my ideas for projects to life. If it wanted to work in a specific team, they were supportive of that and would help me find opportunities within the museum or with other partners. But it’s still quite hard to find other work beyond the programme initially – it’s building you up to that point, but you’re not quite there at first. I’m still apprehensive about applying to a really big brief sometimes - it’s hard feeling like a young person in this competitive field museum education field, when you don’t always know if you’ve got the experience just yet.

What was your favourite project of the ones you've done with the Transport Museum?

Right toward the end of December 2020, coming to the end of the programme, we did this young people’s project. It was working with a group of young people from the borough of Newham to talk about how transport redevelopment is affecting or changing their local area. Originally it was meant to start in early 2020 and it kept getting put off by the pandemic, but I finally got to work on it. I had to manage all the challenges of recording a podcast on Zoom, with them recording on their phones, and I was sending snacks and resources and materials to their houses so we could all be working with the same stuff. But in the end it was really good, they produced a great podcast episode. Overcoming the challenges to support them made it feel like a really big achievement. And I also finally got to pursue my interest in working with young people – teens and early twenties – when it was exactly what I wanted to do from the beginning. We ended up doing a lot of digital work, which was good and is what a lot of work going forward is going to be like.

You also work with a Big Local project – how did you get into that and how does it intersect with the rest of your work?

So I work at the Aberfeldy Big Local project, near Poplar in Tower Hamlets – it’s a part-time job where I'm a community engagement officer and we’re a really tiny team, but it’s permanent. I got into it when I was coming to the end of the Transport Museum programme. I wanted to work with communities or young people, and then I found the Big Local and it sounded brilliant.

It’s been good in terms of having a job that’s consistent and it also allows me to still freelance on the side, but the project in itself is really great. Big Locals are different areas in the country that have been identified as needing funding, and the residents get to decide how to spend £1m over 10 years. They set up a board of residents who sign off on decisions and then we’re the staff team that do the work on the ground. Compared to when you’re having to compete for funding or applying for projects as a freelancer, it’s nice to know you’ve got money to help people and support their ideas. It’s nice to see both sides of that coin.

So that role gives you some skills and kind of anchors your week?

Yeah it was a job that gives me all the skills that I knew I'd need if I wanted to carry on in museums, working with communities on the ground. A lot of community engagement roles in museum education now require you to have that type of experience of actually working with people or organisations or community groups in different areas. So part of my thinking was that I can go and get that experience elsewhere, and then always come back if I want to. At the moment, I'm happy being on both sides – I’m really enjoying it.

How did you find the culture in the private companies you temped for differs from that in your freelance and community work now?

It’s really different - I was doing a lot of reception work in finance offices, banks, really corporate environments. It was how I saved up money, but it showed me the work that I didn’t want to do in a way, being in an office all the time, even though it would be good money and a secure career. I knew I wanted to be working with people directly and feeling like my work made a difference, or that I could support people to do or learn different things (though obviously some jobs you can do that in the corporate world). But yes they were totally different environments and I think it helped me realise what I am and what I wanted to do by seeing what I didn’t.

As a freelancer, have you ever found that you have almost too many projects coming in at once and start having to say no to things – that kind of ‘feast or famine’ over time?

I found that really difficult in the beginning. I had never said no to any work, because I was used to doing all the temp work - I'd always say yes to different things even if it meant I was running around London literally all week. So when it came to freelancing, I was like ‘I’ll just say yes’ because it’ll be great experience, and even if it might not be right for me I’ll try it to see if it like it. And you need the money and want to be working on as many projects as you can so have a steady income.

But now, I find the projects I’m on are longer. So I really want to say yes to loads of things, but I’m having to retrain myself to be like ‘no, you don't actually have the capacity at the moment’ and think it’s only going to be disappointing to someone if you say yes but can’t do it, and that would make me feel worse and more stressed. But it's definitely a lot of juggling and having to be super organised. Loads of spreadsheets and my calendar is colour-coordinated, just so I know where I’m working on what days and who I’m meeting and when. It’s hard and it’s important to know when to take a break, but I do like the variety of all the different work.

How have you found COVID has affected the flow of your freelance projects, and also your Big Local work?

So last year all the work dropped off for a bit because the museum closed and loads of the staff were put on furlough – there was only one staff member per team out of usually hundreds of people. They were still there, supporting us, but there wasn’t much work. My zero-hours work also dried up because offices were closed. Luckily I was at home so in my case I got through it, and I did other stuff to keep me busy. Then towards the end of the programme later in 2020 I started looking for work. It was hard because nowhere was recruiting, but I think it started picking up towards the end of November. Now I see so many jobs going up, but I’m happy where I am now.

With Big Local - going into a community engagement role involved starting online at first, but luckily we’ve now got a community space where we work out of, so we can see people and meet them. But it was difficult and it requires a lot of adapting expectations. And we had to restart all of the social media communications – there’s three of us on the Big Local team, but there was only one person before us so we were starting up the digital stuff, which is quite different to what that role would usually be. It actually has taught me so many new skills, learning to make newsletters online and how to use social media for work, not just personally. So yeah, I think it was just having to adapt to what was required and now things are opening up again we’re getting out to do activities . Obviously trying to keep it safe, but doing what we can. It’s been nice to see people and chat to them – I think everyone’s ready for the social aspects of life to get back to normal.

Yes with Big Local work, how have you found it with digital engagement – I’d imagine older people it must be hard to bring them in, but have you found it had any upside with young people or that any residents did prefer that?

So we've only had very few projects at the moment. We have had signups from our Facebook posts or our Instagram, or to our mailing list. But with older people not so much, not in that way. Sometimes we just bump into people have chats, with people outside our site – that’s the best way we communicate. Zoom meetings aren’t really working that well for us with our board of residents. We get maybe a third of residents that might turn up, because people are busy or they don’t like Zoom, they don’t like having meetings like this.

What advice would you give to someone else considering the same career path?

I’d say when I was on the young freelancers program, I went to so many conferences or things that just interested me. And I had to be really brave, which as a young person in a new field or in a conference full of professionals is really scary to do. I just had to go and do it - I didn’t have a choice. So you start chatting to people and telling them what you're interested in, making connections with people, not knowing where those connections might lead to in the future. It’s how I’ve worked at the Transport Museum, because I just met people in different teams I hadn't worked with before, and they would just be like ‘could you come and do this for us?’

I don’t like to lie to people and tell them ‘freelancing is brilliant, it's going to be so much fun’. It is, but it's also going to be really challenging, and you have to adapt to that. And I think you need a backup or other things to sustain you – whether that’s zero-hours or part-time work, personally I’ve found it’s the only way to make it work. But do it if you want to and think it will work for you. Personally, I have loved it and it’s why I was really happy to get a part-time job as opposed to full-time, even though the security would be great, because it allows me to work on different projects here and there and means I have the flexibility if something interesting comes up. I don't think I'm ready to give up freelancing for a little while at least because I've enjoyed it so much.