The Professional Work Experience module will be delivered at one or more of Historic Royal Palace’s London sites: Hampton Court Palace, the Tower of London, and Kensington Palace. This will provide students with the necessary training to begin to develop the skills and ‘real work’ experience that will help enable you to make informed decisions about your own future career development within the heritage sector and make you competitive in the job market.
You will undertake a diet of at least three placements to give you a comprehensive understanding of the heritage sector and its career possibilities, and offer opportunities for networking, further research, and career specialisation. You will gain an insider understanding of the working life of heritage professionals and be guided by, and have personalised access to some of the leading practitioners within HRP’s heritage provision.
You will be assessed on your reflective analysis of the experience during the professional placements, responding to the challenges and opportunities in heritage management, conservation, communication, engagement and operations. You will also be asked to reflect on the placements with a view to further research opportunities in the dissertation and beyond.
Curators at the Historic Royal Palces (HRP) undertake a diverse range of activities, including personal research, exhibition organisation, and input into display, maintenance, projects and other areas. For a brief insight into work being undertaken by curators see our HRP Curator Blog. During this placement you will work on a one-to-one basis with an individual curator. Projects you will work on may cover curating in relation to collections or buildings managed by HRP. Your placement may be at Hampton Court, the Tower of London, or at Kensington Palace or you may be required to undertake offsite activities.
The Conservation and Collections Care department at HRP oversee the preservation, conservation, management and care of a highly diverse and valuable range of building decorations and collections. Its team comprises leading experts in their fields. For an insight into this area’s work see our Conservation and Collections page. During this placement you will gain experience and insight of this department’s work through a combination of training and practice. You will gain experience of environmental and risk management; condition surveys and reporting; storage and packing; collections management; managing records and archiving.
Public Engagement at HRP was formed in September 2017 and comprises the Live Programming, Schools and Communities, Interpretation and Design and Content Production teams. Public Engagement is responsible for creating distinctive HRP experiences to convey the essence and stories of each site, motivating people to visit and revisit, and ensuring that the organisation continues to be recognised for high quality, distinctive and transformative engagement and learning. This is achieved through providing inspiring and memorable experiences for all our on-site visitors, as well as for the wider audiences off-site and online.
During this placement you may be working in one of several vital areas relating to HRP’s commercial activities. These may include ticketing and systems; buying, merchandising and licensing, admissions, catering and retail; membership; and the travel trade. Each of these plays a key part in ensuring that HRP’s heritage remains sustainable. A placement in these areas gives you transferable and vocational skills and knowledge suitable to a wide range of heritage settings.
Our teams ‘people the palace’; we are on hand to ensure that visitors to Hampton Court have the best day they possibly can and that we deliver five star service to everyone who chooses to spend time with us. There are over 150 people in our three teams. We are here 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every single day of the year –yes, even over Christmas–, ensuring the palace is safe, secure and ready to greet our visitors.
We coordinate all activities on site that take place during visitor hours, hold the weekly Operations Meetings to enable departments to exchange information and plan ahead and coordinate the annual public programme. If you need to book space on a public route, find out who to talk to about an event, arrange to close an area that affects the visitor or work out the staffing needed to support your activity, we are the people to talk to!
This placement sits within the Finance Directorate located at Hampton Court Palace. The Finance Directorate is headed by Sue Hall. It includes the departments of financial accounting, payroll and pensions; financial planning and analysis; audit and risk; procurement, contracts and insurance; and information systems. This placement is generally focused on a project helping HRP construct a new staff expenses system – hence you will be contributing to an intricate and important part of the organisation’s functions as well as learning about the particular characteristics of heritage financing.
This placement involves working with the department responsible for mitigating threats from a wide range of emergencies and risks. You will be involved in researching and helping formulate procedures in these areas. Risk and emergency planning is a vital part of any heritage organisation’s activities, and of existential importance. Experience in this area is vital and valuable.