Freelance fundraising and development opportunity

Applications are invited for the role of Consultant to the Textile Conservation Foundation (TCF).  The Consultant’s main task will be to raise funds for bursaries for students on the world-leading MPhil Textile Conservation (TC) and the MPhil Book & Paper Conservation (BAPC, which is expected to begin in 2025) at the Kelvin Centre for Conservation and Cultural Heritage Research (Kelvin Centre), University of Glasgow. 

This is a unique opportunity to make a really significant and lasting contribution to the sector.  You will build on the outstanding and decades-long record of successful fundraising by the TCF to help talented young people to train as conservators.  Graduates from this Centre and its predecessor (the TCC) now work in over 40 countries, caring for heritage collections in the UK and around the world. 

The TCF has benefitted from generous and consistent support from many funders, often for many decades, and has excellent relationships with these funders.  A key task for the Consultant will be to foster and develop these relationships in addition to developing new ones.

The Consultant will have a background in conservation or heritage plus experience of fundraising.  The Consultant will normally work from home/own office, visiting the Kelvin Centre in Glasgow for Trustee and other meetings; it will therefore suit someone who lives in Scotland or can travel to Glasgow reasonably easily.

The fee offered is £9,000 per annum; the number of days are expected to be 22 so the day rate will be £400. Reasonable expenses will be paid.  The workload varies over the course of the year with the busiest periods being June – October as detailed below.

The current Consultant, Nell Hoare, will retire from the role at the end of July; she was previously Director of the TCC and, since 2009, has been Consultant to the Foundation.  Ideally we would like to engage her successor with sufficient time to allow a good handover period.

For details about the TCF, the role and the skills and experience needed follow this link to download the job information here; you can download the TC Foundation’s most recent annual report here.

Applications

Please apply by 8th May, emailing your application to info@tccfoundation.org.uk

You should include a letter summarising your relevant skills and experience and explaining what you feel you could bring to the role plus a 2-page CV and details of two referees whom we can approach. 

If you would like an informal conversation about the role please email the above email address giving a phone number on which we can reach you.

MPhil Textile Conservation students in the news!

For some years, students on the MPhil Textile Conservation course have benefitted from the chance to conserve textiles from Paisley Museum. Such experience is a core part of the MPhil programme and is fundamental to the students’ ability to gain the skills and practical experience they will need as professional Textile Conservators.

In a £45m project, Paisley Museum, which opened in 1871, is undergoing major re-development and will re-open to the public in 2025.

The objects being conserved by the MPhil Textile Conservation students will feature in the new displays. Their work was highlighted in this report on Scottish Television (STV) on 8th February, 2024.

Supporting the future of textile conservation

The TC Foundation Trustees are enormously grateful to all of the organisations that have generously funded bursaries for students on the MPhil Textile Conservation in the 2022/23 academic year.

The 2-year MPhil Textile Conservation is a world-leading programme - excellence is the hallmark of the MPhil Textile Conservation and this means extensive facilities and a much higher number of contact hours that most Masters programmes.

Our funders enable talented young people to take up their places on the course, on graduating they then pursue careers in the field and spend decades preserving our cultural heritage. The TC Foundation’s Chair, Clare Meredith ACR, said: “The outcome of our funders’ support, over nearly five decades, is that many hundreds of individuals have been able to pursue careers as textile conservators and curators and the contribution these professionals make to heritage across the globe is both inspiring and incalculable.”

Among the funders of MPhil Textile Conservation students in 2022/23 are:

The Arts Society

The Binks Trust

The Clothworkers’ Company

The Coats Foundation Trust

The Drapers’ Company

The Dulverton Trust

The Elizabeth Frankland Moore and Star Foundation

The Inchcape Foundation

The Anna Plowden Trust

The Radcliffe Trust

The Scouloudi Foundation

The South Square Trust

The Barbara Whatmore Trust

We are enormously grateful to each one.

A new name and new premises!

The Centre for Textile Conservation and Technical Art History has been renamed The Kelvin Centre for Conservation and Cultural Heritage Research - follow the link to find out more.

This name better reflects the increasingly wide range of the Centre’s work, which encompasses textile conservation, textile and dress history, technical art history, conservation science and, from late 2023, book and paper conservation.

The Kelvin Centre is now located in Kelvin Hall, a huge building adjacent to the main university campus which is being developed as a major cultural centre by a consortium of Glasgow Life, the University of Glasgow and the National Library of Scotland.

A key benefit of the move is the co-location of the Kelvin Centre’s staff and students for the first time. The proximity to the staff and collections of the University’s Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery is another major benefit of the relocation.

Celebrating the legacy of Karen Finch OBE

The family and friends of Karen Finch OBE, who founded the original Textile Conservation Centre (TCC) in 1975, have created a website in her honour.

Karen, who was born in 1921 and died in 2018, was Principal of the TCC from 1975 to 1986. After her retirement she took an unfailing interest in the careers of those who graduated from the Centre during her time in charge, as well as in the work and progress of current students of the Centre.

Sadly, Karen was never able to visit the Centre’s successor, the Centre for Textile Conservation, at its new home as part of the University of Glasgow, but was delighted to hear all about the success of the Centre and its students. The Textile Conservation Foundation created an annual student prize in her honour, the Karen Finch Prize. The image below shows Karen with Geraldine Sim, who won the Karen Finch Prize in 2015 and who is now forging a successful career as a textile conservator in Singapore’s Heritage Conservation Centre.

Watch this film to find out all about the MPhil Textile Conservation!

Ever wondered what it takes to become a Textile Conservator? This short film tells you all you need to know about the MPhil Textile Conservation course. Students and staff tell you about the key features of the course and some graduates tell you why they find a career in textile conservation so rewarding.

The film features staff and students at the Centre as well as graduates of the Masters programme who are now working in the sector.

Feel inspired? You can find out more from the Centre’s website. You can also read the students’ own blog posts about the course and their recent projects here.

Centre staff and students out and about

Visits to museums and conservation studios are always fascinating and certainly add richness to the course for the students of the Centre for Textile Conservation.

As Sarah Foskett, Lecturer, writes: “our visit to Perth Museum and Art Gallery last week was a great example of how important it is to look up and beyond our everyday practice and how enjoyable, informative and inspiring it is to engage with other museum colleagues and projects.

The future of The City Hall, one of Perth’s most significant buildings since it was opened in 1908, had been uncertain for more than a decade when in 2017 Perth and Kinross Council voted to develop the museum to tell the story of Perth’s place at the heart of Scotland’s history as well as hosting major touring exhibitions. JP talked through the stages of development of the project that will form the permanent and temporary displays – from interpretation of the narrative (including applying for the return of the Stone of Destiny) to theme mapping and layout (Pictish stones are very heavy!) and from environmental modelling (the existing building is filled with light) to selection of the approximately 7,000 objects (from a collection of +/- 430,000). What was both clear and inspiring was how the project was being driven by a combination of good communication and extreme multi-tasking – there was definitely a sense of shared purpose between the Exhibition Curator, JP Reid, and Conservation Officer, Anna Zwagerman, and it was clear that the dialogue with the architects and designers was similarly positive.

One of the objects going into the new displays is Ta-Kr-Hb, an Egyptian mummy which has fascinated visitors since its entry into the collection in the 1930’s and Anna has seized the opportunity to use the conservation of this iconic object to engage visitors with both the practical process of conservation and the ethical dilemmas associated with objects and their display. Anna talked through the evolution of the Conservation in action: Saving the Perth Mummy exhibition, highlighting both the logistic and moral challenges faced by showcasing the conservation of such sensitive (in all meanings of the word) materials.

Our visit had been arranged to coincide with lead conservator, Will Murray of the Scottish Conservation Studio being ‘in residence’ and in small groups we were able to go inside the glazed conservation studio built temporarily within the gallery where Will talked about the treatment being undertaken to stabilise and support the mummy, linens and sarcophagus for their long term preservation and display in the new museum. Whilst not ‘inside the box’ we looked at cleverly designed displays focused on highlighting the impact of agents of deterioration on objects as well as the complexities of displaying objects with multiple biographies. A highlight for the students was seeing a rare 17th century doublet which features as the cover image for one of their textbooks!

Sometimes an ‘away day’ is in fact just what you need to enliven and invigorate your own practice, broaden your perspectives and benefit from the experience of others and this is certainly how we all felt after our visit to Perth.”

Will Murray, of the Scottish Conservation Studio, working in the galleries giving visitors the chance to see conservation in action.

Experience as a textile conservation intern

Many of the graduates of the Centre for Textile Conservation secure paid internships after graduating. This is an ideal first step on their career ladder. For some years, the Bowes Museum, in Barnard Castle, has hosted one-year textile conservation internships from which very many Centre graduates have benefited.

MPhil Textile Conservation graduate Aisling Macken described her experience as an intern at the Bowes in a film which you can watch below.

The lost dress of Elizabeth 1

Graduate of the Textile Conservation Centre, Libby Thompson, is now Senior Textile Conservator at Historic Royal Palaces.

Libby, who graduated in 2008, was instrumental in conserving a length of richly embroidered chamblet silk, which is woven with silver and known as ‘cloth of silver. It was used as an altar cloth in the parish church at Bacton in Herefordshire; Bacton was the parish church of Blanche Parry, a Lady in Waiting to Elizabeth I. After detailed research, the curatorial staff and Hampton Court Palace concluded that this was likely to be a section of dress from the wardrobe of Elizabeth I, as sumptuary law dictated that only the Queen could wear clothing of such quality and richness.

You can see Libby talking about this wonderful fabric and its conservation by following this link: The Lost Dress of Elizabeth I

Libby talking about the conservation of the Bacton ‘altar cloth’

MPhil Textile Conservation students supported thanks to our funders

The Trustees of the Textile Conservation Foundation are enormously grateful to all those funders whose generous bursaries enabled so many MPhil Textile Conservation students to take up their places on the course or continue into their final year.

High quality conservation training must have a significant element of practical work, which requires close supervision, and there must be extensive facilities to support the students’ teaching and enable them to undertake practical and research projects. These are not cheap and it means that course fees on conservation programmes are unavoidably high.

Students increasingly apply to the programme already burdened with substantial loans from their undergraduate studies, so the support the Foundation provides, both in bursaries and help with students’ own fundraising, becomes more vital every year.

We can only support all those students who require it thanks to the help of so many generous funders. This year, those funders include: The Arts Society, the Binks Trust, The Clothworkers’ Foundation, the South Square Trust and the Barbara Whatmore Trust among many others.

We are indebted to them all.

You can see some images below of the MPhil Textile Conservation students at work - and able to train as conservators thanks to the support of our many funders.