News 8-week Internship at the Headstone Manor and Museum

By Josie (Intern at Headstone Manor)

Summer is a curious phenomenon in time, with long days, short nights, and heatwaves that seem to grip the hands of the clock, slowing temporal progress to a crawl until cooler air comes to relieve that weight. For students like myself, facing an impending graduation from university, summer’s dragging sense of time is tempered with an urgent drive to fill that time with something valuable, something that will help fill the prospect of our futures with promise. That is exactly what brought me to apply for an 8-week summer internship here at the Headstone Manor and Museum.

As a student of English and Theatre, I had never really considered working in a museum or in heritage before, but I was drawn to the sense of camaraderie and community that I saw among the current team during my interview. Even without specific heritage experience, they welcomed me and trusted me with tasks, some of which were familiar, and some of which were completely new to me. I was determined to make myself as useful as possible, counting on the transferable skills of communication, flexibility, and creativity that my life and studies have given me. Approaching the end of my time here, I can definitely say that these skills have been exercised, as I’ve balanced working between 3 teams, all fortunately housed in the same office, but each with slightly different responsibilities and expectations.

Each day I walked into the office, I could anticipate that the tasks I would work on would cover a wide range. They stretched from hands-on tasks like cleaning and laminating, through writing object labels and mounting them in the exhibition space, through looking for files in the archives to answer enquiries, and all the way to making guides and exercises for a variety of audiences who use Headstone Manor and Museum as a trusted source of engaging information about their local history and preservation advice.

The adjective that keeps circling my head with which to talk about my time here is “rewarding.” I have gotten so much out of this experience because I have been willing to invest myself in it, which means rolling with a bit of chaos and accepting whatever task comes my way, regardless of whether or not that was featured in my contract. In doing so, though, I have also managed to carve out a miniature niche for myself in my work here. My particular specialty is writing, which I will not pretend is an uncommon skill, but is something that occupies my time and mental energy in a way that is not true for most of my co-workers. As such, even once I board a plane and go back across the Atlantic Ocean to my home in the United States, part of me will be left behind in the writing I have done here, which is a cheering thought. They might not know it, but I have shared my voice with all the kids who have picked up the summer sensory trail, and all the people who have taken the time to read some of the item descriptions in the Making Harrow Home exhibit. I have had the privilege of seeing my writing go almost immediately from the digital drafting document to the public sphere, and for that opportunity, as small-scale as it is, I am immensely grateful.

In a workplace as small as this one is, every little thing I accomplished felt significant. The best thing I can wish for someone in their workplace is the knowledge that what they are doing is meeting some kind of need, whether that is global, like Headstone Manor and Museum’s commitment to making space for sensitive and diverse representation in their exhibition spaces, or extremely local like making sure the pencils are sharpened so kids can colour in the café. I can’t speak for the full impact my time will have on Headstone Manor, but I can attest that this place has helped my life feel full and purposeful, and I’m sure I will always look back on my time here with utmost warmth and fondness.