A RESEARCH RABBIT HOLE: STUDENT EMPLOYMENT AS CULTURAL POLICY

RESEARCH COLUMN

BY: ROBIN NELSON

In light of Katie’s post on research addiction that discussed her ‘research rabbit holes,’ I am going to talk about one of mine, which has turned into a chapter in my thesis. Prior to beginning my thesis, I had defined cultural policy as whatever a government says it is, varying across jurisdictions (Grey 2010). However, during my interviews I kept hearing about the benefits and challenges associated with the Student Employment and Experience Development (SEED) program. Through SEED the provincial government provides non profits with student employees for eight to ten weeks. While SEED does not fit within my original definition of cultural policy, the program provides museums with student employees during the summer and, therefore, has a major influence on public programming. As such, I began looking at other policy definitions and employment programs as cultural policy – entering a research rabbit hole.

There is just so much I could learn!

An alternate definition of cultural policy, which I am now using, is any state action that effects “the cultural life of its citizens” (Mulcahy 2006, 267), including the SEED program. Within this definition, I have distinguished between implicit and explicit policies. An explicit cultural policy “deals directly with culture” (Throsby 2009, 179). An implicit cultural policy “influences culture only indirectly, the overt intention of the policy being directed elsewhere” (Ibid, 179). For instance, SEED’s objective - that is, to “provide students with employment related to their skills and education…. while enabling them to finance the continuation of their education” (PETL 2013, 3) - is not explicitly cultural. However, SEED has a direct impact on culture when museum employment is effected.

Student employees allow museums to accomplish more than they can with only volunteers and/or limited permanent staff.

SEED influences museum public programming because museums need people to plan and implement their public programs. In museums with few or no permanent staff, one paid employee for two months completely changes what they are able to offer and how they can operate. For instance, many New Brunswick community museums only open regularly for the eight to ten weeks that they have students to work as guides

On the surface, SEED sounds like a great government program for museums and students – museums get employees that they would not otherwise be able to afford and students gain skills and money. However, there are several longstanding issues with its implementation:

1. Politicians distribute SEED to the nonprofits and, as such, the selection criteria is  unclear.
2. SEED positions are usually eight weeks (There is also a longer Priority Employment program through SEED, but those positions are only ten weeks.)
3. The SEED jobs have gotten shorter over time.
4. There are delays in notifying museums as to whether they will receive SEED/PEP, meaning some summers museums have been preparing to open for the summer before they know how many, if any, students they will receive.
5. There is a lack of consistency as there are no multi-year contracts.

These issues raise questions regarding the best use of government funding. For instance, the quantity and quality of the student applicants may be effected because the contracts are shorter than a university summer, museums do not know what positions they have until May or June, and museums cannot guarantee a good employee can have the same position the following year.

SEED is not the only student employment program influencing museums in Canada. Most notable, the federal government provides funding through Young Canada Works. I am interesting in hearing about people’s experience with this form of employment. Do you have any experiences with student employment programs? What other challenges do you think this employment structure presents for museums? What are some benefits for the students and employer?

"KILLING OUR BABIES": A WISE ADVISOR'S ADVICE

RESEARCH COLUMN

BY: ROBIN NELSON, KATIE METHOT, NICOLE RITCHIE

In order to feature a greater variety of student research, we are changing the content of the Thesis Column to a Research Column that will highlight a different student’s research every second Thursday. For the first post, the three thesis writers, Katie, Nicole, and Robin (me!), collaborated to write on a concept that we have all been thinking about: killing our babies.

We get very attached to our ideas

Killing our babies is something that our advisor, Alan Stanbridge, recommended. He meant we cannot research everything we have found interesting and we need to learn how to put aside something we have written or engaged with. This has proved difficult but necessary in order to focus our research as we move forward.

Nicole's babies....she prefers kittens to tiny humans

NICOLE RITCHIE

Well, I have spent the last year developing my thesis. This cycle included drafting my initial thesis concept, focusing and researching it, formatting it into a SSHRC proposal and an official thesis proposal, and then reading throughout the summer. Now, it is September and I am faced by a committee that wants a (fluid) structure drafted as well as a tentative first draft deadline and proposed defense date. While part of me wants to panic, Alan’s advice to kill my babies (or maybe shelve them for later?) is undeniably useful. Sitting down to craft this framework for my ~100 page project, I start to notice where I can plug my summer reading in, where my reading needs to focus, and, most importantly, what really isn’t necessary. Luckily, in my opinion, I am currently applying to doctoral programs, so I can shelve my babies for future research, reading lists, and exploration. Thus, for my thesis, I need to direct myself towards only what matters, using my time and energy effectively in order to get the project done within its parameters, not beyond. The most difficult part to accept is that I can’t read everything relevant or potentially relevant for my thesis. Sometimes that maternal instinct is hard to kick, who knew? Anyone else suffer from this parental affliction?

Knowing it is time to let something go doesn't make it easy

 ROBIN NELSON

At the moment, I am transcribing my interviews (it takes forever) and, at first, I thought I had to transcribe everything because anything could be useful at some point (right?). My babies are massive sections of individual interviews and in one case an entire interview that, while interesting, are not relevant to the themes I plan on discussing. As I talk about my research, I have realized that I will write about the relationship between community museums and the Heritage Branch, the Exhibit Renewal Program, and (possibly) the SEED program (student summer employment). I do not have the time to discuss everything the government does that influences museum public programming in only a hundred pages. As such, sections dealing with the Collection Inventory Program and other financial programs are no longer being transcribed. While an argument could be made (and is by some of my participants) that funding to collections increases knowledge of the collections leading to better programming, sacrifices have to be made! This has sped up the transcription process, my hands hurt less, and I am left with shorter documents to analyse with a better focus. Does anyone have transcription horror stories they would like to share?

Some concepts are more gleefully disposed of than others

KATIE METHOT

Meeting with Alan, chatting about my summer research, and introducing the concept of 'killing our babies' couldn't have come at a more opportune time. Over the last week I've been interested in German broadsheet prints from the sixteenth century. Is it necessary for my thesis? No. Do I think they're super interesting? Yes. Despite how much I have enjoyed researching broadsheet prints, this topic is for another time or perhaps for my PhD (hopefully sometime in the not-so-distant future). Consequently, I've chopped it from my research and set it aside for later. Instead, I am refocusing to continue my interviews and to begin categorizing my existing research into chapters. Over the next few months, I will be structuring my arguments, and adding to holes in my research, not looking at German broadsheet prints (regardless of how clearly interesting they are). Now I am looking realistically at what I want to get accomplished with this project, while also seeing how it can grow in the future. For now, I'll be leaving my babies alone for another time. Can anyone else offer advice (or sympathy) for staying focused on a research topic?

THESIS REFLECTION: TRAINS VS. SHIPS...

BY: ROBIN NELSON

There are some interesting museums in New Brunswick. This post is about some of the museums that I am discovering in the province that deal with the railroad, raising certain question about the museums we open and why.

NB seems to have a number of railway museums. There are two dealing primarily with the railway: the New Brunswick Railway Museum and the Le Musée - Du Réel au Miniature.

Le Musée - Du Réel au Miniature

Other museums that deal with the railway and advertise the objects on display with this focus include:

TDC Model

Resurgo Place in Moncton has been renovated to add the Transportation Discovery centre (TDC). The front of the renovated building was designed to look like the front of a locomotive. The Chipman Museum deals with the history of the community and is housed in an old railway caboose. The Agriculture Museum of New Brunswick and the Antique Automobile Museum have a caboose and locomotive on display respectively.

There are a number railway sites that have become visitor information centers (VIC):

Hampton Station

The Hampton Station was the area’s first railway station and now houses the VIC, a gift shop, and railway artifacts from the Kings County Museum.

Personal photo of the exhibition that I discovered at the Edmundston C.P.R Railway Station (a VIC)

The McAdam Station is open for guided tours from June-October and serves as a VIC. Wikipedia seems to think it includes a museum as well. This discrepancy raises the question, at what point does a “site” or VIC become a museum? For instance, why is the Bristol CPR Station only a railway site?

The Bristol CPR Station

For those who do not know, the timber trade was huge in the development of NB because the province has a lot of wood and access to rivers. Further, there were wooden shipbuilding sites along the coast and rivers but, with the end of the Crimean War and the rise of steam-driven iron-hulled ships, the shipbuilding industry crashed in the late 19th century. Transportation industries, including shipbuilding and the railroad, are very important to the history and development of the province.

While you can learn about the lumber trade at the Kedgwick Forestry Museum or the Woodmen’s Museum, where is the museum devoted to shipbuilding?

Why are there so many railway museums, “sites,” and museums advertising that they deal with the railway? The shipbuilding industry is at least as important to the province’s development. Do people simply find trains more interesting then ships? Or, as the province is involved in funding and advertising, is this a deliberate decision?

Old Train Station Tourist Centre in Saint-Quentin, which display artifacts related to the CN

The simple explanation for more (or better advertised?) railway sites than shipbuilding ones is that ships were built and then floated away. However, the Old Train Station Tourist Centre in Saint-Quentin is a replica of the old train station built in 1920 and destroyed in the fall of 1983. Railway sites that burnt down have been rebuilt and are advertised by the province.

The New Brunswick Railway Heritage Association

For those clicking on my links, you may have noticed this provincially funded site: http://www.nbrailways.ca/index.html, which provides a guide to the museums and sites significant to the railway in the province. No such guide exists for shipbuilding sites (that I’ve found) or other industry in the province. Is this a deliberate cultural policy decision? How is what is funded, preserved, and built influenced by wider policy decisions? Are there large living groups of people with an interest in the railroad who are responsible for the large number of railway heritage sites? In this case, does the province guide decisions regarding heritage or are decisions made at the community level and then supported by government?