By Vick Gwyn
The Kulture Kid Digest has been almost two years in the making. And by making, I mean rattling around in my head, on post-it-notes, untitled word documents and hounding of friends and colleagues to see if they would be interested.
The day has finally come! This wouldn’t have been possible without someone in particular – my buddy in crime, Laura Wiles. Laura has encouraged me to develop this idea over the past year into the format you see today (I think she may have also been a little bit over me ranting over certain things and this outlet might give her a bit of a break 😛 ).
At the end of last year I returned to tertiary study after almost a decade since graduating from my Bachelors degree. I can’t believe that this year has seen 10 years fly by and that I find myself once again, sharing classes with passionate and creative people who are just starting to walk their own career path in the Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) world.
I always knew that I wanted a career in the Arts/humanities. But had I known that 10 years on from graduating I would find myself in a museum, traversing a stint in arts policy, I would have thought you had the wrong person – I was an archaeologist! An anthropologist! To me those professions were either the proviso of the hallowed and cut-throat halls of academia or the expansive opportunities of fieldwork and the mining industry.
I was so wrong.
I got to where I am today on lots of hard work, broadening my perspective and a bit of lucky timing. But if I knew now what I did as an enthusiastic but very silly 16 year-old starting my undergrad degree, my GLAM journey may have been a bit different. Certainly, I would have felt better equiped. This is the inspiration for the first issue of the Digest – Keeping Your Head Above Water: emerging GLAM professionals and the challenges they face.
We’ve reached out to people who consider themselves emerging professionals as well as those that are a bit more experienced to ask them to share their experiences and advice – things that would have helped me all those years ago when I was faced with a cross-roads or sunk deep in the doldrums of trying to find paid work.
The Digest is still in its infancy, so please bear with us if there are few glitches on the site while I sort out the wonders of technology. More so than anything, I, and my fellow Kulture Kids would like to hear from you – do you have feedback? What would you like to see on here?
The next issue (April) of the Kulture Kid digest is Colour and Culture, exploring not only representation and advocacy of people of colour in exhibitions, publications and GLAM and artistic output, but also the experiences of GLAM practitioners of colour in Australia.
We’re looking for interested kulture kids to contribute to our upcoming issue on The F Word (Issue 3) please get in touch at kulturekiddigest@gmail.com – we would love to hear from you and tell you a bit more about our upcoming monthly themes!
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Vick – a Kulture Kid
Kulture Kid Digest 
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