Digital | New voices

Staff-led podcasts offer a twist on the usual museum podcasts, as they showcase the favourite stories of those working behind the scenes, especially those who are less confident or unlikely to be heard often. 

Whether it is an anecdote about a museum object, exhibition, community project or outreach activity, pressing “record” on your staff and volunteers encourages more informal forms of storytelling as opposed to the prescribed responses you may hear from the same speaker in a public setting. Making a staff-led museum podcast is a creative and collective endeavour that involves using affordable and easy-to-use technology to construct imaginative digital content for your museum.

Voices of the Royal Pavilion & Museums has just been launched by staff and volunteers in Brighton and Hove. The podcast offers a variety of voices reflecting on their experiences of working for the service. It features insights from the head gardener, a museum trainee, the keeper of world art and visitor services officers. 

The process of making it nurtured a greater sense of individual agency among staff, while developing their courage to use digital technology in new and different ways. It also fulfilled a larger purpose: reframing the objects, collection and buildings of the museum as part of the staff and volunteers themselves, intrinsically linked to their diverse identities as citizens of Brighton and Hove.