The Costume Society Museum Placement Award

The Costume Society encourages museums with dress and textile collections to apply for next year’s award.

 Deadline for next year’s award is 1 April 2009

The award has been introduced to fund a student volunteer working on a clothing/ fashion/dress/costume-related project in a public museum collection in the United Kingdom.

It is intended to support students seeking museum work experience with a clothing/fashion/ dress/costume collection and to help UK museums accomplish projects essential to the care, knowledge and interpretation of these types of collections.

The museum project/work experience should at least one of the following activities: documentation, numbering objects, preparing mannequins, mounting garments for display or photography, improving storage. Other appropriate object-related museum activities will be considered.
 
The placement must be for a minimum of two months, either full or part-time
.
In each year an award of up to £1000 will be offered to a student applying jointly with an appropriate museum.

The Costume Society was extremely pleased with the response to the announcement of the first Museum Placement Award. There were seven applicants and all were of very high quality.

For information on how to apply next year see terms below.

Terms of the award

1. Applications should be made by the curator/administrator of a publicly funded UK museum who will supervise the volunteer. Applicant museums must be accredited with the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council.

2. The volunteer should be a student (minimum 2nd year) or graduate of an appropriate UK university course, such as dress/fashion history, museum studies, fashion design, theatre costume design, history, social history, art history.

3. The curator/administrator shall submit the name of the proposed volunteer and his/her CV and a proposal of not more than 500 words detailing the work the volunteer will be engaged in, its benefits to the museum and to the volunteer.

4. The co-ordinator of the award will receive applications and each year select a sub-committee consisting of three members of the Executive Committee, who are not currently employed by any applicant museums. The sub-committee will review the applications and recommend an award recipient. The award co-ordinator will communicate with all applicants, receive progress and final reports from the winning volunteer and museum, and arrange payments.

5. The award (pro-rated for part-time work) will be paid to the volunteer in two instalments. The first payment will be made two weeks after the start of the project, upon notification from the supervisor that the work is progressing as planned. The second payment will be made one month later, upon receipt of a progress report from the supervisor.

6. The application deadline is 1 April with the expectation that the work will be carried out sometime during the following summer between June and September. However, the project can be carried out at any time of the year so long as the grant is used within 12 months of being awarded. Notification of the winner will be on 15 May.

7. The supervising museum curator/administrator and the volunteer shall each submit a report of between 250 and 500 words when the work is completed and these may be included in the Society’s publications if appropriate..

 For further information on this award, please contact Susan North, Co-ordinator of the Museum Placement Award at s.north@vam.ac.uk or on 0207 942 2667.