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Trainee Heritage Collection Assistant, Towner Eastbourne

  •  South East
  •  Under £10K (pro rata)
  •  Part time
  •  Closes July 27, 2026
  •  Liz Corkhill
  •  liz.corkhill@townereastbourne.org.uk
  • #Museums
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Description

Job Summary

Breakthrough is Artswork’s paid employability programme for 18 to 25 year olds. The programme provides real workplace experience, training and ongoing support.

Job Description

This placement is an opportunity to work with and learn from Towner's Historical Collections Curator, supporting the organisation and documentation of the Eastbourne Heritage Collection. Recently taken into Towner's custodial management, the collection includes approximately 20,000 artefacts, photographs and works on paper of local and regional significance, with strengths in local history, archaeology and photographic material charting the development of Eastbourne over the last 150 years.

The role will include supporting cataloguing and collections management, helping to refine paper and digital records, assisting with storage and location information, uploading digital resources, inputting data into Towner's collection database and liaising with the Marketing & Communications team to provide archive images for web, press, publicity and social media. Training may include object handling, cataloguing, digital asset management, database use and regular one-to-one support from the heritage team.

The placement will mainly based at the Heritage Collections Store in Hampden Park, with some working at Towner and remotely.

Successful applicants must be available to start on Monday 28 September 2026 and remain available for the full placement, which runs until Saturday 28 March 2027.

This is a part time role (4 days per week) at £12.71 per hour. More information can be found in the Job Information Pack.

Job Requirements

We are looking for a trainee who is:
- Confident communicating with a broad range of people - Enthusiastic, able to manage your own workload and work within a team
- Comfortable using basic digital tools - Outlook, Word and Excel and willing to learn new systems
- Comfortable with administrative duties in a busy environment
- Confident working with digital images and using image software such as Adobe photoshop

Desirable but not essential:
Experience and/or awareness of collections management
Experience of collection databases
Interest in and knowledge of archaeology, local history or military
histories

Employers advice: To demonstrate your excitement for this role we would recommend that in your application candidates talk about:
- An interest or focus on historical objects or local history
- What you think is exciting about working in a collection store
- How you think the skills, experience and interests you already have will be helpful to you in this role.

Job Responsibilities

This is an opportunity to work with and learn from Towner's Historical Collections Curator. You will be supporting them with the organisation of the Eastbourne Heritage collection.

This role will include:
- Working with the curatorial team to plan and follow procedures for improving the documentation of the heritage collections
- Helping with the sorting through of material and objects, including assistance with deaccessioning (moving objects out of the collection where appropriate) procedures and finding alternative locations for deaccessioned materials
- Managing and organising the upload of digital resources to the Towner server.
- Inputting data into Towner's Collection database for the Heritage Collections
- Working to a plan/schedule for the process for improving documentation for individual objects.
- Liaising with the Marketing & Communications team to provide archive images for website, press, publicity and social media purposes.

Useful Links

How to Apply

You can download the job description and submit your application via the Artwork website linked here.

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