About us

Museums Worcestershire comprises three fantastic venues – The County Museum at Hartlebury Castle, Worcester City Art Gallery & Museum and The Commandery.

Museums Worcestershire is a not-for-profit museums service run in partnership between Worcester City Council and Worcestershire County Council.

The collections and exhibitions at our sites are many and varied, covering centuries of the county’s history right up to the present day. Thousands of objects, including the historic buildings themselves, are brought to life through innovative exhibitions and events throughout the year.

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Museums Worcestershire is part of a richly creative landscape of Worcestershire artists, creative practitioners and businesses.

The three museums we manage have national reach and ambition, bringing visitors into Worcestershire and Worcester City both to come to our museums, but also to enjoy the local area. Each year, these visitors bring a love of art and heritage and £2million of additional spending into our immediate localities.

Commissioning

We recognise that our business has important spending power that can be used to help more local creative practitioners develop their own enterprises. We believe that successful creative businesses in our local economy will benefit our own museums, our visitors and the residents in our local communities.

Throughout the year, we commission:

• Photographers
• Film makers
• Create facilitators to deliver workshops
• Actors, poets, musicians and performers who enrich our special events and private views
• Designers and illustrators for our leaflets, signage, adverts, digital marketing, interpretation, catalogues and informal learning resources
• Craft-makers, card designers, authors and artisan food suppliers for our shops

We offer industry-standard pay (including a-n’s guidance artist payment levels) and commission rates, and are committed to Arts Council England fair pay engagement.

We are committed, in 2022 and 2023, to investigate where we are unintentionally bypassing local suppliers, and identify more local businesses we can ask to quote to work with us.

We always welcome new suppliers, so if you are a Worcestershire-based creative practitioner who would like to work with us on one of the above areas, please contact us on gallerymuseum@museumsworcestershire.org.uk and we will let you know the most appropriate staff member to send examples of your work.

Programming

We work in partnership with a range of community networks, groups, specialists and curators to create content for our exhibition and projects programmes. We regularly display the fruits of this partnership working within exhibitions, digitally, and at the Art Gallery & Museum on the Open Gallery wall.

We consider Museums Worcestershire to be a cultural organisation with a regional impact, and, where appropriate, we prioritise partnerships connected to our local region.

Although we accept unsolicited exhibition proposals it is rare that our programming starts from these. If you are primarily looking for exhibition space, we would instead encourage you to join Worcestershire County Council’s Arts Mailing List, co-ordinated by the library service. Please contact your local library to sign up.

Employing

We are a large cultural employer, and ourselves and our partners at our sites recognise the many creative skills of our employees. We actively promote our recruitment opportunities through local creative networks. Where appropriate, we encourage the development of our staff’s creative opportunities and businesses.