Year 11 and 12 Work Experience
We host work experience for Year 10 and Year 12 students from secondary schools across Leeds. Students work with different teams during a week’s work experience, such as time on visitor reception and on galleries with the Operations team, time observing school or family workshops with the Learning team and sometimes exhibition related work with the Collections team.
Planning a placement
Think about the questions below to help decide which museum or gallery might be best for you:
- Where can you get to?
We have 8 venues across the city, and they are geographically spread across 14 miles. For instance, Leeds City Museum, Leeds Art Gallery and Leeds Discovery Centre are city centre, Leeds Industrial Museum (Armley) and Abbey House Museum (Kirkstall) are on bus routes, Temple Newsam House is usually a bus / train and a walk, and Lotherton is only accessible by car. - Is there a particular historical period, collection or learning style that fascinates you?
Temple Newsam House is Tudor and there’s a lot of dressing up in their learning programmes; Leeds Industrial Museum has industrial collections and does Victorian schoolroom role play in their school programme (only accepts Yr12 work experience); Abbey House focuses on Victorian History, and is also managed jointly with Kirkstall Abbey; the Gallery contains art, but you’ll be looking at the management of it, not making it; Leeds City Museum has lots of Leeds history and the school programmes focuses on archaeology; and Leeds Discovery Centre is our accessible store with a million objects, which you can only visit on booked tours and in groups. If you are unsure, look through the rest of the website and see what interests you. - Is there a particular team you are interested in working with?
The Operations team and front of house Visitor Assistants welcome people to our venues, run our shops and help with events, the Collections team look after the objects and curate exhibitions, and the Learning team work with schools and families. Every week, and every working day, is different, so we can’t guarantee specific team working experiences; however, we will make sure you try a range a museum, gallery and heritage work and can try to accommodate preferences.
We get more enquiries about work experience than we can have capacity to host, and we take students on a first-come-first-served basis. Each venue takes 1-2 students during work experience weeks, so you are likely to be working with someone else from another school. We try to make work experience as accessible and inclusive as possible, so just let us know if there’s anything we can put in place to help you access experiences with us. If you are a student at a Specialist Inclusive Learning Centre (SILC), then you may want to look at Careers for All.
Enquire now
Still interested? Please complete the enquiry form below and we will be in touch shortly.
What will happen next?
Once we receive the enquiry form, we will get in touch with you to say if we have capacity to host your work experience. If we can, we will ask you to either come into the museum for an informal chat before the work experience week, or we can chat on the phone. This is so you can get to know us, and we can gain a little more understanding about what you want out of the week and find out if there’s ways to make things more accessible for you.
We do have high expectations of students who come on work experience with us. We expect that you arrive on time to your placement, have a professional manner whilst you are with us, and are ready to learn about the workplace. In return, we will offer support and training, and a welcoming (and hopefully fun) work environment.
If we are at capacity and can’t host your work experience, and you are still interested in museum work, then book a tour of the Leeds Discovery Centre in the holidays. This is our museum store, so you get to see ‘behind the scenes’ of a museum. You also might like to look at MyLearning.org for careers information about jobs in museums (Jobs, Jobs, Jobs • Learning About Careers at Leeds Museums and Galleries • MyLearning) or the Museums Association website to find out a bit more about the wider heritage sector.
University Voluntary Work Placements and Experience
We host Undergraduate and Postgraduate level work experience placements of one to 12 weeks where the placement is part of the students accredited course. We prioritise placements from local higher education institutions within Leeds and Yorkshire. Examples of regular placements we host include: undergraduate ‘settings other than schools’ placements for students on education courses, postgraduate museum studies students, and doctoral training for PhD candidates such as The White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities (WRCAH) placements. If you are interested in a placement, please contact the Leeds Museums and Galleries Learning Team on lmg_learning@Leeds.gov.uk