Project Lead, Project Ark - Southland Regional Heritage Committee

Completing the MMHS programme enabled me to transition careers from the law into the museum and gallery sector. It has been a positive move both professionally and personally. My placements evolved into a job in my home town where I was employed by the Gore District Council as a Heritage Projects Officer. I worked with the Mataura Historical Society co-ordinating the redevelopment of its local history museum and the digitisation of its collection.

Currently I am the project lead for Project Ark which is a two year Pilot to spark the cataloguing and digitising of Southland’s museum collections. The long term goal is for each museum to have its own digital collection, which will be shared online through regional and national portals thereby maximising the collections accessibility.

The structure of the Museum and Heritage programme parallels the sector’s multi-disciplinary nature and is sufficiently flexible to build on students’ existing strengths and interests. It provided me with a good overview of the sector, sharpened my research skills and introduced me to new colleagues, thereby enabling me to launch straight into interesting work.