Archive of all the random notes and journal writing I did while working at the Science Museum in London. 2023 - 2024
Some of this may be interesting to you, maybe some of it will only be interesting (or make sense) to my former colleagues, and a lot of it will be interesting to no one. I was a museum attendant; I suppose you might think I spent hours standing about in the corner of galleries and exhibitions, staring at old telescopes or test tubes, but unfortunately (or thankfully?(probably not)) I spent most of the time pointlessly scanning meaningless tickets. These notes are my thoughts on museum management, service design, observations of London general public, protesting, boredom, the nature of big old public institutions. ENTRY On my last month was the opening of the new Adani Green Energy sponsored green energy gallery at the Science Museum. Adani being an Indian conglomerate with a green energy subsidiary all controlled and largely owned by the Adani family, Gautam Adani as the big boss man on top, one of the richest men in the world. Another subsidiary of this being their coal mining operation, one project of which has started recently in Queensland Australia and drawn criticism for its potential, and even measured, ecological impact on the Great Barrier Reef, water usage and carbon emissions, and its infringement on aboriginal land and communities. Let me insert here a nice fat damning quote. " Adani is planning more new coal than any other private company on Earth. The Adani Group wants to rebrand itself as a leader on climate change and clean energy in order to access more funds from global banks for its growing empire. But there's a big problem - Adani are mining, handling, and burning record volumes of coal - the number one driver of the climate crisis. To make matters worse, Adani plans to massively expand its coal operations, not reduce them. Adani's rapid coal expansion is being funded by the world's biggest financial institutions, including Blackrock, JP Morgan Chase, TIAA, MUFG, the State Bank of India, and HSBC. " https://www.stopadani.com/adanis_big_coal_problem As you can imagine, this is generally the main topic highlighted by protestors in and around the museum (a common occurrence). The museum management tends to be able to predict protests before they happen long before, and this is because of the steady adaption to, and acceptance of, regular protesting in London. Protesting in the capital is a regular occurrence, it is part of the city, protestors immovable, part on the infrastructure, something that is to be accounted for by individuals as they move through the city, accounted for by institutions, by TFL, by the Met. Like planned rail works disrupting my commute, I account for protests and police cordons. They are inevitable and they are like to a sight annoyance if blocking the road ahead of you, as if a traffic collision has happened - "oh darn it, oh well, I'll be a bit late". The museum has in this vein adapted to suit protests and in as civil way as possible reduced the impact that protests - the kind we have gotten used to - can have on the visiting public and their effectiveness to make news. I would say that protests happen enough to qualify as 'regular'. The nature of how these protests are organized allows for easy monitoring before even going fully public with planned protesting, it is widely known that the met do this, that they are in the 'group chats' and that they have in the past even attended meetings and protests undercover. It is my understanding that the Met do tip of the museum sometimes, but the museum also pays an agency to supply this information. I've witnessed undercover personnel be briefed in front of the museum with duty managers on a protest day, we know that usually a few officers wait in a police transport van on Prince Consort Road or Imperial College Road I suppose in case anything 'got out of hand' which never happens. The undercover security are renowned among FOH as being obnoxious and rude, and particularly conspicuous, doing things like taking pictures of members of the public or standing right behind people and folling them. There is speculation among us their purpose is to beat up protestors and then the museum can say it was just fierce public interference, but that's just a joke really, I'm not sure what they do. On protest day(Saturday before opening) the museum builds a kind of perimeter queue fence around the front, bigger than the one they normally for peak days. The museum operates a free ticketing system, everyone must have a ticket, giving name and email, this must be presented on entry. This system is used every day by the museum for several reasons but in this case it discourages some who think this information might incriminate them or be used against them - also this online system was cut midday the day before to discourage potential casual protestors from joining, allowing them to think if they can't get a ticket it would be difficult to join the protest, people could still visit the museum without a ticket, but this had to be presumed and the power to change policy halfway through the day and say only ticket holders can enter was always there. This technique for discouragement of swelling crowds was introduced after the main protest organizer had started encouraging people to book a ticket as to join the protest inside the museum. It is hard to gauge how effective this is at discouraging, there is the main protest crowd which have their organized itinerary of actions in the museum, all those in the know of that will have parts to play. These people know the ticket means nothing or they do not care. The crowd on Saturday was, I'd say, impressive, though not immense. The museum operated on a full bag search of every visitor, since a main method of protest is signs and placards. There is also the risk of carrot-based paints and the unlikely threat of offensive weapons carried my persons with intent to disrupt or disturb civility in the museum, but we all know that is unlikely with climate protestors. So - the main reason is to seize protest material, which always proves ineffective since security always take any such threat casually. Protestors also cleverly hide and signs and banners well, and it would be scandalous to deny entry to someone wearing a costume. The protestors on Saturday, I think, had gauged that a mass crowd was unlikely, perhaps based on prior protests and therefore opted for the dramatics and strategy of a fairly organized bunch. They slung a banner from the inside balcony, they chant slogans, they read speeches and unfurl reals of dead sea creature bunting for each point made, they do a 'die-in', they do a kind of funeral procession. Outside the museum front a few keep up a constant drumming and effectively hand out convincing Science Museum branded leaflets to everyone going down the queue, which inform on them of the coal operations of Adani and its relationship to the museum. So - it may seem in vain, the efforts by the museum to prevent anything, as the protest still happens and seems to me at face value effective in informing, and demonstrating disdain, and drawing attention. But actually, it is the evolved form of protest management places like the science museum have developed as it has been found to conclude with the best outcome for the museum interests, protecting its neo-liberal line of support of peaceful protest while maintaining a light resistance defending the funding it has taken from Adani. The protest is inevitable; therefore, the museum accommodates them but using the softest power they can to damage control, means the protest is largely ineffective. It did not make the news other than a Guardian article, which they do about every protest. A visitor asked me in the museum what was happening and I told them it was a protest, they seemed surprised, saying they thought it was something the museum was hosting or part of an exhibit. There is not really much denial of the truth of the collar-pulling embarrassment of accepting fossil fuel tainted funding. I always gotten the sense the off-record account can be that we are taking money from a bad company for good ends. and without loudly public defending Adani means this view is assumed by media and public. I imagine this is how BOH justify the Adani dance in their own conscience, but only if an individual feels the need to internally address the reasons for why they follow institutions will they do so, I believe most people don't if they can help it. When this partnership was announced there were inevitably a few people who stepped down, resigned or now refuse to work with the museum in protest. That was a few years back, but interestingly, recently, for the private viewing of the new Adani green energy sponsored gallery on Thursday 21st March, when the museum was hosting a cushy suck-up suited big-wig party for the Adani family, someone tipped off the protestors. There must have been a great worry about this happening since the private viewing was so hush hush, no one knew and no one was telling anyone I knew that it was happening. Only on the afternoon of the day it was happening was it figured out by most staff. It was known by the protestors who showed up much before myself. Security that day was immense, bag searches even at the staff entrance, lots of grim looking suited bodyguards marching about all day, stress looking curators and planners running here and there. I feel the museum has changed. From talk, gossip and an understanding of how the museum layout and structure has changed in recent and not so recent history, I've gotten an idea of . The science museum is an old institution, and as such has a ridiculous bureaucratic hierarchy of management and departmental compartmentalization. My FOH department has a structure like this - myself, supervisor, my line manager, their manager, the department leader, the FOH leader, the museum director, the group wide director, and then the board of trustees. I obviously large companies often find themselves needing a lot of management, and from what I have learnt it seems that the large national museums operate with similar structures to universities and big educational institutions but with the added FOH and utilities to provide for public visitation. BOH all operate remotely from satellite buildings away from the main museum, this has not historically always been the case as many archive, masterplan, exhibition and curatorial offices used to be in the main building. Rarely will they ever encounter visitors let alone protestors now, and when BOH 'put on a show' for FOH or engage with visitors, it will be in a carefully curated way by upper management, and most of them will be completely unaware of the amount of infrastructure and planning, staff and resources put into managing the protests. On the Saturday protest I had a protestor give me a hefty talk about how they don't have anything against me and they only have a problem with management. This lady was very nice but I wanted her to know that management will only experience the effectiveness of the protest through the debrief reports of the duty managers on Monday, really, she should come back on the official opening day of the gallery on Tuesday(which they did not). The Science Museum is in an underrated position, it is far from being the most famous museum taking oil money, but it still receives millions of people each year and the most school groups out of all of them. The same protest group targets the British Museum and I believe their efforts are focused more in that direction. But the BM has a mix of problems, socio-geographical controversy around taken objects, and also the oil funding they receive. Personally, I believe these protest groups dilute their voice and message when championing Mutiple separate arguments. If they focused on just the SM I think it could be more effective when championing opposition against fossil fuel funding in public institutions. In short, the museum effectively damage-controlled the protest, respected the protest, and, all in all, everyone had a fairly pleasant experience, no disruption. I'm not sure how this kind of peaceful protest effort thinks it is going to achieve anything major these days, The news will not report on it because they don't want to, and if they do most people will not see it as anything new and will blank it out nullifying it. Maybe it's the community action side of this that keeps these people coming back to protest. Maybe the unspoken hope is that they will be disrespected, forcefully ejected from the building but everyone knows what will happen if the museum did that, therefore they don't, so I don't think anyone expects it to happen. I may sound like a Fanon advocate of violence, like I think this protest is futile without a Molotov cocktail or at least some egging. Obviously a more effective action would be internal and organized, but I never thought I'd be here long enough to organize anything myself, was not truly aware for a while, but I feel guilty. Everyone who opposed it left when it was first announced, and I sympathize with the museum curators people etc who stayed, but I don't like them. ENTRY The gallery itself is what you'd expect. I think it's quite good. The entrance wall text reads like this. " ENERGY REVOLUTION Everyone needs energy to thrive. But burning fossil fuels to power our lives emits carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, causing global heating. To avert the worst impacts a of climate change, we must urgently transition towards lower-carbon sources and uses of energy. This energy transition won't be easy. Low-carbon energy is not accessible to everyone and global energy consumption is increasing. There are many routes to a low-carbon energy future if we act now. Which will we choose? " The Energy Revolution gallery is replacing another gallery which occupied the same space in the museum called Atmosphere. As you can guess it had a similar theme, and though I missed seeing it myself before in closed to be changed into what it is now, I've heard a few things that are interesting in comparison to what it's become. It is unusual that a gallery in a museum like this will live according to its 'lifespan', I mean it will usually end up staying far longer than planned. the lifespan is determined through a number of things such as the fragility of the objects, and also projections of how relevant and publicly in demand they will be. In this case you could think that objects and exhibits in Atmosphere could have been swapped out or updated, especially since the gallery was within its lifespan before it was completely stripped and reworked. The company line is, of course, that the technology has been fast developing and that climate science is unexpectedly different to predictions when Atmosphere was opened, but we all know that it would not have happened quite like this if not for Adani and its money. I admit it is quite a good gallery, it is informative and enlightening to green energy solutions, but you can still plainly read the bias in its creation. The first line "everyone needs energy to thrive" can be used to sum up what I mean. The Science Museum has always, from its creation and roots in the celebration of the British industrial revolution, found itself in a tricky place when it comes to presenting objects that have contributed an arguably negative social and environmental impact on us or the planet. Without coal power and without things like rockets and mill engines there would be no SM and therefore there is inert political conflict in how you curate and present objects once celebrated and now in critical review. The museum deals with this with the assumption of a set of liberal and neo-liberal assumptions on what 'everyone needs' and that everyone must 'thrive'. Industrial sciences have always been rather wasteful and there has always obviously been market driven demand etc. Energy itself is a product sold to every individual, and this gallery therefore presents a lot of individualistic consumer developments in green energy - allowing us to understand each our own impact on the environment and the difference we as individuals can make. Obviously, they leave out anything about the massive carbon producing problems of large industries that refuse to adapt to greener practices, or even anything positive about changes to production or global shipping. Some galleries deal with this 'tricky place' that I describe well, and some not so well. Some are cultly adored, having objects that are celebrated in communities and have clear social significance, for example cars enthusiasts come for the old cars such as the Ford model T, there is a clear pro and con to be determined from the significance of this object which is appreciated by many people. Other galleries deal with it by inserting personal stories and objects. I see this as a trend in museum curation and sometimes it can be very good and interesting, but sometimes it feels as though I'm being told what to think about an exhibit via a carefully selected first-hand social context rather than through critical analysis. Energy Revolution presents cutting edge tech and therefore has the responsibility to define the line, a fair judgement on the exhibits, before it has been openly accessed, leaving it without scrutiny. What I mean is there is no general public knowledge of such things so people will generally go and eat up anything they're told about it. Our Future Planet, a Shell sponsored temporary exhibition pushing for developing carbon capture technology as the only solution to the climate problem. It claimed it was not possible for us to shake fossil fuels, that greener energy is only a part solution and that to counter the supposedly inevitable continuation of fuel burning we must develop effective CCS - carbon capture and storage. Obviously, Shell is an oil company = bias, and they are one of the leading developers of CCS = bias. No mention of the evidence against CCS as effective or about the wide doubt against it being viable in the future. The curators are careful in their language, and there is little mention in Energy Revolution as why not use less energy part of the picture. There are assumption of what is inevitable, they are careful to say it won't be easy but who's to say and the capitalist realist ideas of us thriving and economical development being parallel to what is being argued in the exhibit. Electric cars are celebrated consumer products. ENTRY Museums are where people come to stand and look at old things. All museums are somewhat static. You are not coming to watch a show or for an 'experience'.(This is still lost on some people) I concede that different museums can vary, however. Art gallery museums vs industrial museums could be two extremes. Museums can focus on the conveyance of information, history. Or they plainly present their contents in encouragement or flat defeat for visitors to understand themselves. The Science Museum is rather the latter, with its focus being, after its conception after the great exhibition, to present historical objects in a frozen state, against a white background in general abstract of context and societal implications. This curatorial and institutional mode is probably because it was its original mission to preserve and present what is thought as objects that innovated technologically (but also now sometimes because of social impact). This is white cube and is a necessary mode based on the connotations and bias inherent with this context and collection. On the similar alternative, The Natural History Museum was started from amateur collections of wealthy enthusiasts. That kind of knowledge and science is academic, centered around figuring out reality and facts of history, and the museum teaches it findings and contents. The Science Museum however is built from objects that drove industry and innovated on the industrial revolution. It has rockets, steam engines, looms and airplanes. They are all very social and human objects that demonstrate the application of scientific knowledge in the innovation of technology. So, my point - The Science Museum IS the establishment denial of capitalist and human impact on the earth and society. It presents these objects (doesn't deny) but avoids wider contexts such as the impact on society or on the climate. It honours these innovations and solidifies their value as a record of great achievement. Obviously, the museum does try to address this in the information they present alongside the objects(tombstone), but it can't reverse or change this without starting afresh(a revolution) because it built on the 'object study' or 'artifact study'. An often-discussed topic between myself and fellow visitor facing employees is of the museum as a learning Centre vs museum vs tourist attraction. Can it be both? Should it be? Conveniently, or maybe dependently or crucially, the Science Museum's existence is dependent on perpetually boosting the value of these industrialist, world destroying artifacts, - is symbiotic in its dependence on the support from oil giants like Equinor and Shell, its main funding contributors. The SM would be branded a hypocrite if it denied this funding, since it honours drilling equipment and oil manufacturing in its East Hall. And if it rejected it, it would be rejecting these objects as valuable to us in the importance of understanding how things have been discovered and developed, rather valuing why things have happened, the story and its impact. I think at its conception, the SM had been a celebrated collection of objects because at that time they positively impacted the world. Now it feels it can't outright honour, but its establishment bureaucracy can't shake itself of responsibility to these nostalgic objects. Therefore, these associations come about with Shell and BAE. The SM is branded the evil museum and is constantly occupied by protestors of many ideas perpetuated by the presence of these artifacts. It can't question whether rocket science has actually ever been the right thing for us to develop(environmental, war related, climate defeatist space colonisers, many reasons) because it would be complicit in perpetuating it as worthy and honouring successes in it. Instead, it is 'neutral'. The SM is a museum in the same way as the old colonial museums, but it does not necessarily suffer from the same afflictions. It operates on the belief that these artifacts are worth more in the museum than left out in their original contexts, and they would vanish or be forgotten if not protected. This is why the BM is in constant hot water, because they were not undervalued where the objects came from, and why so many other museums are nothing like they were a hundred years ago. But the SM is British artifacts, only really valuable to the brits and only in the museum. This explains its operation as an industrial nostalgia museum, because no one wants or likes its contents in the landscapes it originally was. Its nostalgia of the oppression of its OWN people, which is far more PC. Museums often start from the collections of rich collector amateurs. There is a culture of employing people who take special interest in specific histories. It is not compatible for the Science Museum to stop taking funding from oil when it is literally the flag ship of their entire justified history. The Wellcome collection is one of these museums trying at situating, explaining context and focusing on learning from history, it is an interesting but failing effort. At their new gallery they try to convey the problems of their origin as a collection, many objects from foreign cultures put together to 'study'. I believe even this cannot be purely innocent. The only way is if it is destroyed, items dispersed or returned, and built anew in a different way, or not at all. Object that toes the line of my argument, the Colston statue in Bristol. Object, a fighter plane, celebrating war. Object, the exploring space gallery, celebrating space colonization and expensive/earth threatening practices, technology used in weapons of war. Object, the mill engine, celebrates UKs industrial past, mass manufacturing and consumerism, worker exploitation. ENTRY "Equinor's gain is our loss" - The banner held by protestors in the museum. "Upholding it's reputation as the evil museum i see" spoken by a visitor to me when at the entrance desk. "Julia Knight is an mi5 agent and she's trying to control you", "she planted bugs in my mothers bedroom when I was a boy living in Northern Ireland", "you're just one of her drones" you make a compelling point, crazy man. ENTRY The notorious Buggy Thief has eluded capture for a long time. Did you know that you can buy a pushchair worth £2000? I did not. 'Buggy', to me, meant a small car or a go-cart or something, I have not, until now, known it to mean 'pram' or 'pushchair'. It must be something to do with the common way words are translated between languages, maybe the continental Europeans call them buggies in their own languages and that's spread and persisted as the common word for them. Anyways, since the first week starting at the SM I have encountered this word almost daily in reference to what I have always known as a pushchair. "Where is the buggy parking?". It's one of these matrix blip moments in which everyone around me is saying it, understanding it, and acting like this is what everyone has always called them. I was taken aback by this. "Hey, Sammy, get back in your buggy". Could the common vernacular have changed in the time from which I was a child encountering pushchairs to now, a time when I am working with children in buggies? Maybe it's a southern thing, maybe (us) northerners call them pushchairs while here they call them buggies. The more I think about it the less it makes sense, since 'pushchair' would probably make more sense as a translation because of its self-descriptive construction. "Is there somewhere I can leave my buggy?" "You'll just have to keep it with you I'm afraid". A pram and a pushchair are two different things, while buggy is a common word for both. I sense that prams have had a revival since I was last often in child-parent vicinity, or again that pram use has persisted in the south but not the north, and therefore a common word for both has been in use and needed here but not where I'm from. All in all, the likelihood is I'm just a dumb f*ck who's forgotten people call them buggies. My mum often told me that prams are bad for child development, that a pushchair, facing out, allows children to see the world and learn, while a pram is closed or only offers a view of the parent, and the child becomes parent dependent. Prams are for vain people, who are obsessed more with their child as a fond possession to look at constantly rather than as a developing human being, and at the museum I have been able to validate this motherly anecdote, seeing and experiencing the parents pushing prams or pushchairs. ENTRY Tipping point, bangers and cash, traffic cops, I always turn over from big bang theory , a bit of lateral action ENTRY Limericks and doodles have been my main output for the past 6 months. As well as a consumption of sudoku puzzles, crosswords and buzzfeed quizes, reading the news and large print booklets. Box office to ops could you give me a call, There's a young man here who didn't like the documentary at all, It was no good He tried everything he could The size of the screen made him feel too small. Supposedly Danny Boyle in the museum today, To bad I'm all out of the way I'm up on the third floor Oh what a bore Can't I go wander about a bit if I may. Fish Key gone walk about, scuttle? Hi its Allen, from the shuttle? Strictly speaking I'm one of several avatars that represent the ships central intelligence. You get the idea. Bye Allen, hope I don't see ya, Hope she catches on to my rebuttal. The ugly truth, the popcorns not fresh, And uh Shell might as well own my flesh, Half the displays are replica. The font is helvetica The tickets are to harvest your data, easy guess. ENTRY Covid denier, such as Piers Corbyn have been know to protest in and against the new Injecting Hope gallery about the Covid-19 vaccine. Anti vaxxers vs climate protestors. ENTRY Some of the people who work here hate it. It's cliche among our team to hate work, specifically here the reason is because we so rarely get to do the job that, in our minds, we were signing up for. Bombarded with "where's the wonderlab?" "why can't I let my infant child in the simulators?" "My 3D glasses don't work". So many people regard this as a FUNFAIR then we only get the occasional visitors who come here to actually go to a MUSEUM. Some people actually come here to look at specific things or learn about something they're interested in, funny that huh? Someone might ask me "where is the 7-toed cat?" Rather than "where is the nearest loo?" And I could weep at actually having someone to engage with. "Why is it there?" "Oh that interesting" "could you tell of anything similar?" "Tracy the sheep?". The job ad description was fairly clear that we would be the grunts of the museum; the till monkeys, the stand-next-to-simulator-red-button idlers, and the popcorn servers. That's not what you would usually think of when you see "gallery attendant" in a job ad. You think: standing around, talking to visitors, wayfinding. Moments where I do what I imagined myself doing seem like a gift. One genuine complaint I have is that we are rarely given time to study the galleries. From the moment I started I was stationed at a till or at some attraction, given no time to learn what I needed in order to answer questions such as "where is the 7-toed cat?" There is an ancient rumour among attendant staff of something put on rotas called "gallery time". The job used to include walking galleries and learning about the museum, but it no longer does. The museum is a museum, but it is also a learning Centre and even again it is also a tourist attraction. My job applies to its existence as the latter two, mainly the last. I am a Fairground ride operator with potension. Where is the earthquake room? Where is the escalator with the planets? Where are the dinosaurs? common questions, because the museums are often confused, reasons such as Natural History Museum is often translated to museum of natural sciences. ENTRY So many French people in the area, so many French people visit. French schools and French presidential hopefuls tour here because of all the french people. ENTRY Technological paradoxes. The original scanners not used because of covid, now are, now the app doesn't work, now we have ipads to generate qr codes to scan, a ticket made code made qr code made code made qr code then scanned. ENTRY The museum is used and abused by posh rich geezers who use it as a private party space and write off the cost as s charitable contribution. ENTRY ENTRY Mary Archer, wife of Jeffrey Archer, is to step down as chairman to be replaced by Tim Laurence, husband of Princess Anne. My colleagues can recall working Jeffery Archer's parties he'd throw in the museum. Jeffery Archer is hard to sum up in one sentence because of his many varied scandals and controversies. The museum partly exists to be used and abused by posh rich big wigs who use it as a private party space and write off the cost as s charitable contribution. There used to be a gallery on the 4th floor but it's now a private event space often used by companies like Lloyds or similar organizations, often kept hush. It's a really nice space, huge skyline windows and cast-iron riveted factory ceilings, much better cared for as a space than the normal museum. Something like almost half of funding, before government funding, comes from events, and events are given crazy priority. It's the same for the IMAX theater in the museum - Imax : The Ronson Theatre. Sponsored by The Gerald And Gail Ronson Family Foundation. Mark Ronson's uncle. Ronson was known in the UK as one of the Guinness Four for his involvement in the Guinness share-trading fraud of the 1980s. The Imax is often hired out by companies to do annual conferences or pseudointellectual Ted-talk-like-talks by CEOs to bored employees. Vice Admiral Sir Timothy James Hamilton Laurence, KCVO, CB, CSM, ADC is brother-in-law to the king and the new chairman of the Science museum. A pleasant man by various accounts. ENTRY Today there is the Great Exhibition Road Festival, an apparent "celebration of science and the arts". We have been warned of protests - in fact, this morning's commute was entertained by the actions of two women in masks changing the advertisements on the district line. Right in front of where I was sitting, she stuck on top of a Vita biotics ad for iron tablets, a mock ad about the science museum funding from big oil companies. Little did she know that present was an individual in the employ of the oil monkey museum. Little did she know how entertaining I found it. https://www.fossilfreesciencemuseum.com/ The science museum is involved only a little in the festival. I'm not entirely sure why but I can make a good guess. Just outside the entrance to the museum the festival is running a day long workshop drop in giving the opportunity to make your very own climate change protest sign. " Find your personal environmental cause with an interactive climate action simulator and create placards and banners to take out amongst the Festival crowds. How can we make lifestyle adjustments to help avert climate disaster? What role can we all play in bringing about the future we envision? Find your personal environmental cause with an interactive climate action simulator and create placards and banners to take out amongst the festival crowds. " We have been instructed to bar entry to anyone with any protest material, while partaking in a festival that encourages the making and use of protest material. Down the road the protesters have set up camp, half literally, having erected a tent of operations. The museum knew this because the protesters made it quite known what they intended to do, but they'd also been told by the festival's organisers, who had parlayed with protesters agreeing to boundaries and accommodation. You might begin to see the absurdity of things now. The protesters and the science museum are in a way both participating in the festival. Obviously, the protesters think they are using it to spread a message to a crowd who has come to listen, but the line of who is and isn't a protester has been so strangely blurred by this ontology of agency and opposing powers. walking about are protesters and people all holding the same signs, holding them for the same reason but with an origin conflicting or opposed. The science museum is putting placards in people's hands, telling them activism is good, while people are going round speaking a similar argument against them. The difference can be put like this - there is a vagueness in the SMs and festivals message of 'climate activism = good' while these protesters are saying 'the SM accepting funds from oil companies is bad' and demanding they stop. Just now I hear on the radio "uh, queue to ops?" "go ahead" "There are protesters here at the front door handing out anti-science museum pamphlets.... they want to talk to you". They've styled the pamphlets really well in my opinion, with all the same graphical identity as the museum. There is something to often think about in how much exposure this gives these companies. Maybe this position is one from bias, but I will stress it is only as a thought and not as my stance. There are two reasons they give the museum money, one is positive exposure, but another is for tax reasons. These protests could be argued as bolstering publicity, and not just because 'all publicity is good publicity', but because of how balanced they play it in the press. The tone of this is a generally 'well why shouldn't they take oil money?'. It's easy to think of it as 'taking the money and running' and that is the way the big wigs of the SM talk about it behind doors. I think that - these protests happening against SM taking funding from oil companies, the museum then defending the oil companies(SM being an authority on science) - does damage to the climate cause. This is the most upsetting thing about all of this. The actual money taking does not bother me, the defense does. Even then, the public defense centres around why it is fine for the museum to take the money, rather than trying to say that what these companies are doing is ok. Overall, I approve of these protests and think they are daring and effective at putting pressure on the SM to drop oil sponsorship, and I resent my position here. Even with how interesting it may seem I find it in this writing, I feel bad about my involvement despite my underling drone job. If the SM stops accepting oil money, it will be a first and an example to many institutions in the science world. ENTRY Earlier this week, Tuesday, we had a colleague meeting with the directors of the SM Sir Ian Blatchford and Dr Julia Knight. “Even if the Science Museum were lavishly publicly funded I would still want to have sponsorship from the oil companies.” Ian Blatchford, Director, Science Museum Group They thank us for having to deal with protesters, they say they're putting pressure on the oil sponsors and we get free cake and coffee. It was annoying, mostly because they didn't warn us of the free cake, I wouldn't have had a big breakfast that day if they had. What was funny was he seemed genuinely unnerved by how young we all were, not being sure how to communicate with us knowing we basically all dislike him. Still, he opted for a "when I was a banker..." analogy and then preceded to bore us until we had too little time to actually open the museum by 10am. If I knew we were to have that meeting I might have prepared a juicy cutting corker of a question like one of us did last time, but I wasn't quick enough in the moment. Perhaps that's why it was unannounced. On the rota we could see the meeting in the morning but were not privy to reason. Many people who work here resent the protesters' entitlement or self-righteousness. They have nothing against the message or even much against their actions. Here, the cliche of middle-class white climate activist is a reality, against the majority Bame front-of-house workforce of the museum. For this, I see the same hero complex in every activist I see, because all the ones I have encountered definitely have one. ENTRY Imax : The Ronson Theatre. Sponsored by The Gerald And Gail Ronson Family Foundation. Mark Ronson's uncle. Ronson was known in the UK as one of the Guinness Four for his involvement in the Guinness share-trading fraud of the 1980s. ENTRY Popcorngate In the Imax at the SM the popcorn is not popped but bought in large bags pre-kernelled and then heated up. This is a disgrace. I lie to every visitor who asks because it is so embarrassing. ENTRY Morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting morning meeting Don't jump the rope. ENTRY Story Exhibiting, showcasing new computer technology. A new kind of organic computing that uses rats as mechanical turks to generate data fed into an ai supercomputer, but actually visitors are being plugged in rather than rats, building a human supercomputer. You see, it's looking at how technology can be attached to us to help us individually, but actually it was discovered that this tech being attached can harvests data. E.V.I.L Museum - Every Visitor Is Loved - Electric Vehicle something something - every visitor lured in is melted down to make battery acid Electronic Virtual intelligent Life - every visitor lured in is uploaded to a mega computer Exotic Versatile Impact lifeforms - New exhibit featuring an exotic plant that has been discovered recently which cures aging BUT no one realises is actually turning people evil Experimental Visual Interactive Level Exhibitions Vital Instruments for Life - Museum of medical equipment, An exhibit of a new technology that might extend life, but actually visitors are being harvested to extend the life of big wigs of the museum. Exhibitions on Visions of Inteligent Leaders - Museum with fake history about authoritarian leader and past. re-education centre Exhibitions Vital Instruments for Life - combination of above two. tecnology to reverse aging, people are turned into children and then re-educated to suite establishment. Kid horror. Two kids go to a museum with their parents. The parents seem unawares on how creepy the museum is but the kids are scared. The parents seem to act like they're interested and understand the stuff in the museum but the kids rightly don't get it. The parents enter an exhibit while the two kids are sitting and waiting. they wait but the parents don't return, they realise everyone entering doesn't leave. they are lost in the museum trying to find their parents they talk to creepy museum attendants for help but don't trust them. they make their way back to the exhibit entrance and decide the last thing they can try is go in after their parents. At first it seems friendly and inviting. but one thing makes them stumble through a crack in the wall and they discover what's actually going on. ~something like parents and visitors are getting indoctrinated, harvested, transformed~ At first they just want to escape but they decide they can't abandon their parents and must rescue them. They're discovered by management who set their goons on them and they're chased into a room of ~people being experimented on? body bags? life pods?~ There they meet a person who can help ~staff mutineer? half indoctrinated?~ ~on the brink of death?~ who tells them they need to run but then also where their parents are and that there could still be time. They also then say that if the two kids can do that then maybe they can all of it for good. At that moment they hear the goons about to come in through the door, the kids are pushed into a vent and they witness the person that helped them ~torn apart?~ The kids move on through the vent, they spot their parents through the side. ~~~~~ They confront the Museum director in his office, the director says the kids can't ever possibly understand the reasoning. ~~~~~ They leave with their parents and no one is the wiser as to what happened. parents can't remember, museum seems to have reset. The kids are just ready to go home. Characters Museum director - The illusive figure behind what's going on, seen on posters and screen but never in front of a crowd or in real life(until end of story when they are revealed) Kids - smart kids with keen intuition Parents - ignorant and faceless, kids are taking care of them as much as they are back Museum staff - smelly spiney wrinkly gremlin looking people, smoking cigarettes, bags under eyes, follow orders blindly but aren't drones or zombies. Sweaty Tour Guides - Overly excited like dogs and regurgitate information that no one asked for. they are there to ensnare. Scientists? mice on little wheels and with little skull cap brain readers power ai called Allan, Allan has mouse characteristics, actually because director has mouse characteristics data harvesting no one actually knows why they are doing any of this. ENTRY Christmas party gets worse and worse every year. ENTRY The museum is ticketed, but it's free - I know, it's confusing, though you suppose it could make sense for a fair reason, right? These were my assumptions when I started, and later figured were incorrect: At the entrance, what we call the Concourse, the arrangement confuses me. I am never quite sure what to tell visitors in instances such as; them asking why they need to stand in the doorway and struggle with their phones booking a ticket for 10min when they'll just be able to come in anyway; why we need their name, email, address and phone number when it's free; when they get through the whole process on their phone and then the ReCapcha(the thing that tests if you're a robot) error happens and they have to go to the visitor fundraiser ticket desk anyway, who then do it for them. A visitor can then say they don't want to give any name or email and don't want to donate they can enter with a blank ticket. I can tell them it is to reliably keep track of numbers in the museum, or for security, or covid reasons, but all these reasons are flawed and quite obviously flawed to the visitor when I use them as a response. It pains me when I am asked this question 100 times a day on concourse(or when I see someone struggle for over 10min) and I give reasons which I know don't make sense to myself. I understand it was implemented due to covid19 social distancing guidelines, but obviously I can only think it remains for other reasons. If visitors don't want to give any information, we let them in anyway, so it is not for security reasons. If it is to track numbers coming in - because I've been told a door counter is unreliable - then to actually know current numbers inside also depends on the door counter on the exit. This reason also doesn't require the extent of the information we take from the online form. Visitors get offended when they try to do the booking on their phone and find out they could've just walked in saying very little to the VF and I can't blame them. The NHM has a very similar system with e-tickets and bookings, but the difference is in months and months of working at the SM there has not been a single day that the tickets have 'sold' out. While the NHM is fully booked almost every peek day, and to get in without a ticket that you've previously booked earlier on in the week takes a lot of queuing and effort. Off peak days you can just walk in to the NHM without any ticket, but on Off peak days here we still do it. The ticketing may drive donations. If you look at the booking page, the fields on the grid of options start at the top - Adult with £5 donation, Child with £5 donation, Adult free, Child free. The first one is a paid ticket and I get many questions asking about how the museum used to be free, and I have to respond saying it's still free and then I scroll down for them on their phone. You might think that many people, who might be booking prior to their visit and don't have me to ask that previous question, who are press for time or not concentrating, might pay £5 a ticket without realising they don't need to, or even that they do see the options and pay £5 thanks to the convenience and the prompting. The paid option at the top is almost certainly designed that way, but its effectiveness is limited if not deterring. A daily fundraising leaderboard shows us that most days the system API only makes about £200, while the visitor fundraisers who are the manual ticketers who don't need to take emails, will raise averagely £500 a day. The truth as to why we still do it is different to why we first started. It was implemented for covid to limit numbers inside the museum, and it was an available system that functioned for paid tickets therefore taking billing address despite no transaction. This was a good reason to bring it in, but it has not been taken back because the museum is aware of its proven email marketing capabilities. By law, even if you tick no to email marketing, the museum is allowed to send you a reasonable amount of emails about purchases you've made etc. It will send your tickets, it will send you an email about what's on at the museum a few days before you visit, and another after you visit, asking how it was and letting you know about upcoming events. Believe it or not this really works, and ticket sales and website engagement is much better for email marketing. This, I find surprising because personally I hate marketing emails and now subconsciously block them out as I look down my inbox but apparently lots of people do engage with them, and I guess everyone these days has made enough amends with the quantities of emails of this kind they receive that we can get away with it, which I think is sad. So why free tickets? To harvest and send emails. Upper management, the marketing and enterprises department do not deny this is why we do it, stating it clearly in the monthly colleague briefing(which is scheduled at the same time as the museum opens so FOH can't attend) and I understand it's actually very effective, though our management is reluctant to say this to us and say (to us and to us to say to visitors) it helps with receipts and museum numbers, for safety and security. No doubt they think we would slack if we all understood this better or would be too honest with visitors. The number of emails we take is tracked and it is part of our performance review, not that performance is rewarded in any way. Personally, I've always struggled with it, it is one of my main causes of empathy for visitors, to see old people struggle with technology when they shouldn't have to, but I'm reluctant to profile people as incapable of using their phones since it's wrong to do so and it all causes unneeded confrontations. Concourse is a whole series of unneeded confrontations all day, It infuriates visitors, its ableist, Its invasive and data stealing, it is bad service to make people stand about on their phone in the rain, and it is an un-classy clunky use of technology. It is a known thing that people generally hate QR codes and think they're ugly and finicky, even Ian Blatchford is rumoured to have said this. Another rumour is that this is all being left in place after covid because of the inevitable re-implementation of paid entry to the museum, and with this free-ticket system they can make the switch easily, and with the public comfortable and knowing that you need to book a ticket. It is often discussed among us that it is likely to happen, because of a shift in policy that necessitates it, the cutting of public funding and the financial trouble the museum is in. The government is cutting its contribution to the big museums, having previously matched donations and fundraising. Recently, the museum announced that almost 30 layoffs were to happen group wide in order to cut costs. There is a freeze on new acquisitions and new hiring. I found all this very interesting, perhaps because I wasn't affected. Acquiring new objects or artifacts was limited to only ones of massive importance and ones that would be thrown away without museum intervention, I learn and looked into the process that the Science Museum has for aquiring, and its a bit different to other museums. Curators could pretty much accept anything they wanted, and it would make its way to the new collection center in Wiltshire, and it surprised me the punting on what is going to be historically significant before it is proven. With less public funding, and the pledge to stay free, the museum has to really push its business enterprises - meaning members of the public constantly ask me "Do you have to pay for everything in the museum?" Of course, the museum hasn't always been free and the implementation making all the national museums free and publicly funded is largely credited to the Blair government but support for that has waned and almost ceased with the burden this funding was during lockdowns in 2021. ENTRY The scanners we use to scan tickets are smartphone-shaped touch screen devices with laser barcode scanners at one end. They are Android and have all the things phones have like apps, web browser, camera. Sometimes we hold the scanners, but they're also in these scanner stands that are at the doors of paid exhibits and at the museum entrance. originally for visitors were to scan their own tickets because of covid and social distancing, now i think they're there still here for two reasons - it takes a lot of time for the museum to get rid of anything, and they also make it very obvious that a ticket is needed to pass them. This is obviously a need because most people's memory of the SM is that you can just walk in, not anymore! Show me your ticket! no ticket? Talk to that guy, I only deal with people with a ticket! come back when you got one! Even though we stand in front of the self-scanner stands, while holding a scanner, I suppose this confuses visitors and they try and slip by and scan their ticket themselves at the stand. When this happens to me it can be a little dehumanizing since these people clearly choose to exchange with a phone thing rather than myself, but maybe it's just not clear what they're supposed to do. The ingenious ways people manage to 'scan' their ticket without actually scanning. This is not quite the problem it used to be before we held scanners as well, but now that we have handheld scanners, I cannot think of a good reason for the scanner stands, other than that they keep them charged? I will be standing on the concourse and visitors get so confused by the signage on the stands that they try to walk past me despite my greeting. Why close the lanes up the self-scanners if that is meant to still be an option for visitors? why not make it simpler and change the signage and remove the stands? The contactless app that we still use needs to be consistently switched out for the normal scanner app. The ridiculous work around with the tablet for generating QR codes makes no sense to me when we could use the scanners in the way they are meant to be used. ENTRY The number of comments I've received from clever visitors who inform me that - if there is a set entry time for a ticket it means it's not a "day pass" - has been too many to count. The with or without donation pricing fpr paid galleries is confusing and surely unnecessary. I wonder if it is a tax thing, or a funding thing e.g. does only the donation on the ticket get gift aided? IDK. Also, We have changed to a flat pricing structure. Students, unemployed children, adults - all pay the same price now. Someone told me it was because as a charitable organization we used to get taxed differently on tickets for students or old people and therefore we could discount those tickets, now that has changed, and we get taxed the same. I don't actually believe this, and I think because flat pricing makes more money is the reason. Yet another little evil thing that we have, charging the same for a disabled child as for an employed adult. ENTRY I'm sat in a plastic box, it would be great if I could smoke. ENTRY Redactle this redactle that, wordle this, crossword that, tube map whatever, sporcle capital cities couldn't care less, I just wanna play tetris. ENTRY List of famous people spotted: Nick Frost Reggie Yates Karen from the Apprentice Stand up Puppet lady Miles jupp Susan from narnia Micky from Dr who(cancelled) Theo James Celia Imrie Tim Peake One of the old presenters from countryfile Jamie Redknapp Rupert Grint in the building but I didn't see him Toby Jones Benedict Wong Greta Thunberg but I wasn't in that day Danny Boyle didnt know how to use a qr code ENTRY Dropzone 4 please Ben. ENTRY List of South Kensington hotdogs: Costcutter rollover (8/10) Five Guys (6/10) FiveSixEight Imperial student union (5/10, discontinued) Science Museum Benugo peak special (7/10) Ice cream van on Exhibition Road (9/10) Austrian food truck on Imperial College Road on Tuesdays (10/10, moved on)