From the pioneers of the first Pride in 1970s, to Queer voices in the illusive Bhangra scene of the 1990s. Through a vast public open submission programme ‘Grown Up in Britain’ supported by specially appointed ‘Outreach Champions’, the project has proudly received over 2500 publicly submitted photographs, 6500 new photographic scans, 67 hours of Oral Histories, launched a podcast series, YouTube videos, and fully researched music mixes with support of 83 volunteers contributing over 5000 hours and learning archival skills in transcribing and metadata renovation. Supporting this incredible undertaking of new content, and in spite of COVID-19, the Museum of Youth Culture has conducted 3 major physical & online exhibitions, 5 public online symposiums, scanning socials, a volunteer training programme, and undergone a full re-cataloguing of it’s digital and physical collections geared towards inclusivity, hosted digitally on a new freely accessible archival platform, a new storytelling Museum website and backed up by collaborations with the Institute of Historical Research (IHR), Homeless Youth Charity ‘Accumulate’, Fred Perry, Google Arts & Culture and Printworks.

The project saw vast improvements in public engagement, with a 121% increase in online activity, a press reach of over 2.5 million people, and a newly developed framework for tackling the future challenges of a modern museum, vitally setting the tone for a radical new Museum of Youth Culture dedicated to the specialist treatment and conservation of youth culture heritage for years to come.

Project Partners

Due to lockdown restrictions in Govt response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was agreed that all roles were now to be carried out by the existing YOUTH CLUB team, apart from the x10 Outreach Champions whom were appointed remotely to collect youth culture memories.

As part of the project we recruited over 83 volunteers remotely and managed through an online booking system on our website. Volunteers were recruited through social media ads on Facebook, Instagram and though Mailers. We were pleased to find that online recruitment numbers beat number our previous projects, and we found that more volunteers were available to work remotely due to flexibility or furloughed careers.

On July 22, 2020 we approached Create Jobs NPO in order to direct some recruitment budget towards employing a Project Assistant to take up the extra workloads faced by the team as the project began to recover from previous lockdown restrictions.

Create Jobs looked at previous participants from their New Museum School programme (of which we have conducted workshops with in 2018, 2019, and 2020). We provided a job statement and Rachel Baskeyfield of Create Jobs advertised across their programmes and selected 5 shortlisted candidates.

We conducted interviews with two shortlisted candidates on the week of 17 August 2020, and on merit of working with Southbank Centre and having archival project experience, we employed Jasper Van Der Kort on 25th of August 2020 on a part time basis, x3 days per week on London Living Wage to deal with the incredible incoming stream of daily public submissions and a increase in social media activity. As a result Jasper has gone on to become a permanent member of the team with a long term and permanent contract as Projects Assistant.

The project employed 83 volunteers who were recruited remotely and contributed an incredible 5360 hours to the project. Volunteers are able to book slots any day of the week on an online booking system so we are able to daily brief them and manage workflow.

In order to train all 83 volunteers effectively, we conducted x5 online open training sessions via Zoom. We advertised the volunteer training sessions and programme via our internal mailer and volunteer network, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter with a total reach of 36k followers and 6k mailing list. In order to provide volunteer support, we started a volunteer Whatsapp Group with 7 days a week support, which currently has over 40 member still actively asking questions about keywording metadata, and helping each other to answer questions or fill in blanks on youth culture history. This is a community led forum that we will continue to run beyond the project.

Through five online streamed training sessions volunteers learnt vital conservation skills in keywording and metadata in order to carry out specialist work updating, recataloguing and making previously inaccessible collections within our archive public.

For volunteers who were unable to make the training sessions we were able to provide them with pre-recorded video footage and training documents in order for them to learn how to work with our public submissions

.We found in comparison to working with volunteers in person, remote management of the volunteer workforce was much more effective, and this became apparent in the amount of volunteer hours contributed to the project. A remote booking system allowed volunteers to work weekends and outside of office hours, which appealed to many who were working at home during the day and could only contribute evenings and weekends - something we would have had difficulty accomodating before the project.

As a result of the project we now have a very active remote volunteer network who continue to work with us beyong the scope of the project, including international volunteers working from Europe or the US.

Quote from Volunteer

'It’s been really fun, the subject matter is so engaging it doesn’t feel much at all like work.

It’s been nice because I’ve always wanted to work in museums, so getting some experience despite the current climate has been really encouraging.' - Noah Brown

Working with the Institute of Historical Research, we advertised paid fellowships on their website, and supported the initiative on our social media. We were very pleased to have received x50 competitive applications to an incredibly high standards with Oxbridge students included in the mix. We also noticed that the applicants spanned healthily across both the IHR academic community, demographics, and was mixed with people from our own networks.

After a series of remote video meetings with the Institute of Historical Research, we mutually agreed on x4 candidates with the most compelling and relevant research proposals.

As a result of regular bi-monthly Zoom catch-ups and incredible support from the IHR, a series of in-depth and insightful academic essays have been written and now showcased on the Museum of Youth Culture website. In particular Elena Barnett's study on fast food within the culture was printed and exhibited within our pop-up grown up in Britain pop-up exhibition in 14-16 Fouberts Place in Central London in November & December 2020.

- Eleanor Barnett - Fast Food: Eating and Youth Culture in Britain, 1970 - 2000
- Lauren Eglen - Leopard Print’s Many Spots: The Changing Role of Leopard Print in UK Fashion
- Emili Stephenson - Heaven is a Place on Earth: Opening Night in London’s First Gay Superclub
- Jamal Langley - Grime and Space

All essays are now made freely available at www.museumofyouthculture.com and pay a key part in the alternative narrative and storytelling of the museum you culture.

We had difficulty with one candidate Emili Stevenson of whom unfortunately contracted COVID-19 and has been suffering from ensuing physical health complications as a result, so was delayed severely on the project and therefore we accepted that she is unable to provide us with a final essay before project evaluation, instead it will be end of February 2021. This is a an exception we have made in response to current unprecedented events.

The collaboration has definitely increased our confidence in terms of working with academs and academic institutions, and has developed a framework for the Museum to collaborate further with the education and academic sector, something that is vital to our growth.

As a result of this symposium, we were contacted by the City of London who were impressed with the content and expressed interest in the project. We are now discussing a potential Museum of Culture physical space within the city.

Quote from Professor  Catherine Clarke, Director of the Centre for the History of People, Place and Community at the Institute of Historical Research:

“The project has been hugely positive and quite transformative for us in the Centre. The collaboration with the MOYC has helped us think about our core research areas of ‘people, place and community’ in new ways, and has enabled us to reach out to new partners and participants.

The collaboration has helped us build and strengthen our partnership with the MOYC in other ways. For example, the MOYC contributed to our MOOC (massive open online course) in Applied Public History, now available from the University of London on the Coursera platform.

‘Setting the Record Straight’ has provided an excellent model for us in terms of potential future collaboration with other organisations in the GLAM sector, widening our traditional partnerships and diversifying our research topics and methods. We’re grateful to have had this brilliant opportunity.”

Due to COVID-19 restrictions, we repurposed our originally planned physical Outreach Champion training days by conducting individualised online training sessions for each appointed champion. This included regular bi-monthly 1 hour Zoom catchups for each Outreach Champion to ensure they are meeting targets and happy with project progress.

Outreach Champions included;

- Jez Collins (Regional Midlands + BAME)
- Amal Malik (Queer Asian Youth
- Dan Glass (LGBTQ+)
- Mira Makadia (Underground Asian Music)
- Eleanor Affleck (LGBTQ+)
- Sonia Long (Regional North + BAME)
- Siobhan Williams (Black British Creatives)
- Esther Freeman (Womens History)
- Chardine Taylor-Stone (BAME, Queer Subculture)

Every Outreach Champion was provided a digital pack including documentation on how to record oral histories, over Zoom, how to remotely receive photographs despite the lack of a scanner, and how to actively address the imbalance in the archive, steering away from stereotypical storytelling.

View some of the incredible work gathered by our Outreach Champion Network here

We have recorded an example training session and attached to our project records. During training each Outreach Champion is taught how to launch their own social media campaign and call-out for images. Champions learn new skills in terms of content acquisition, remote scanning, artist management, rights and permissions, oral history recording technique and practice, and provided with an introduction video to share with potential contributors on how their submission will be used and processed within the Museum of Youth Culture.

Despite this being a previously very physical activity involving meet-ups, physical events and marketing, we were able to reposition this vital task to a purely online and remote activity, and refocus the budget for expenses to negotiate more remote work hours from each Outreach Champion. Due to its popularity with the general public and it's success rate in terms of numbers, this is element of the project is one we find most successful, particularly as it has empowered and tasked the public to get involved, and has kickstarted our Oral History collections. Outreach Champions programme is something we will continue to grow and develop as we seek future funding to build the online Museum of Youth Culture.