E113 – The Role of Class in Museum Work (w/ Sam Bean)

Hello. This is James and this is Jane, and

here we are again with another episode of a world of work podcast. We've got a guest today, Jane, who are we speaking to and what are we speaking about?

So today we have the wonderful guest, Dr Sam Evans. And Sam has recently completed her PhD, and she's been looking at issues of class in museum work in the UK, that's a

fascinating subject. I'm really looking forward to it. I think class is a really important conversation that we don't often engage in in the workplace, so I'm really interested to see what we learn. Let's get into the conversation. Okay, so welcome to the main part of today's podcast, and we've got a really exciting conversation lined up today. We're going to be speaking to Dr be speaking to Dr Sam Evans, and we're going to be exploring the role that class plays to some extent, in our careers, in our workplace. But before we get into that, Sam, would you be able to say a few words about yourself, maybe about your background and the things that you're working on at the

minute? Yeah, sure. Hello, everyone. My name is Sam Evans. I've just completed a my PhD at Birkbeck, the Department of organizational psychology. As James said, I was looking at class and careers within museum work. I actually did my PhD full time, and I've been teaching at Birkbeck as well, but it was a bit of a career change. So I did do a MSc in occupational psychology at Birkbeck. Prior to that, I was working within sort of charity and art sector, okay, for quite a long time, and I did work in museums, so I do have that sort of connection to that field. Worked in marketing and management for a long time, and a lot of my what I was sort of doing really sort of ended up being more around organizational change, and that's where I became interested in Organizational Psychology. And, yeah, so, so there's a sort of journey there towards organization organizational psychology, which is

where I am now, excellent. Well, we really like the sort of career changers. I'm a career changer. My background, as people know, is I was actually a chartered accountant. That's how I started, and I sort of transitioned out, and Jane's background is very much in the third sector as well. So that's really interesting. So as I said in the beginning, we're going to be speaking a little bit about the role that class plays in careers, in workplace, and particularly in your research in the world of museums. But if we start at the beginning, I'm going to check out one of these horribly open questions and just see, see where you want to go with it. We're talking about class today and and I guess if we're starting that conversation about class, if we think about class, I guess for a lay audience, what are we really what do we mean by class? And what are some of the things that that people think about when they think

about class? It seems like quite a straightforward question, but it's quite complex. And actually, when we think about class, it's something that academics have been debating for over 150 years. And when I say academics, that's mainly sort of sociologists. So actually, within the sort of organizational field, it's not really being looked at at all. There's different ways of looking at class. And I mean, a lot of scholars would probably argue that there's no one right way of looking at class. So I just give you a sort of brief overview. There's there's the sort of understanding of class as basic economic inequality. And so you can understand that, as you know, how someone might be positioned in the labor market. You know, the very sort of founding father of class was Karl Marx, Max Faber, and this idea of having labor market value, so how much economic power you have, that sort of thinking has informed what we would use, or what some people would use, or the government certainly uses. It's the NS sec, which is a way of classifying occupations according to the sort of skill required, the size of organization, and the sort of power you have within that organization, whether you're self employed, like yourselves, or, you know, whether you, you know, own your own company, or whether you're sort of somewhere within a hierarchy. So that there's that sort of approach which is economic, but then there's also another approach, which is that it's more culturally ascribed. So it sort of depends on your geography, your community, and actually there's, there's a whole lot of work around how, you know, there's no such thing, even if we talk about like working class, there's no one sort of monolithic idea of what working. Classes? Yeah, so people talk about class as a sort of subjective identity. There's a sort of disconnect between how people understand their own class and how academics might try and define class, and so this has led to this interest in trying to understand a bit more about how people talk about class in the everyday, and what does that actually mean. So there's a lot of complexity to that in terms of how I understood class, and I wanted to take quite an inductive view of class, and this was partly because what's tended to happen is there's been a sort of decoupling of what we might think of as class, or how class is talked about and how classed inequality is talked about. So there's been a sort of a discourse, I mean, a lot of people attribute this to Neo liberal going back into, you know, time of Thatcher and Reagan, that there's no such thing as class, that it's all about this sort of hard working, enterprising individual who can get on come what may. And so this sort of led to this idea that that class is no longer an important category, and researchers have actually found that while there's been this sort of confusion around class and this idea that class doesn't matter, at the same time, things like economic inequality, precariousness at work, declining social mobility, have all taken place. So this is sort of separation between what you might call class inequality and what you might call class that's sort of where my research sort of entered, if you like. I wanted to look at how people talk about class and how a particular field work might actually be constructed classed in itself.

That's a really, really helpful framing and a contextualization of what we're focusing on today. And we are recording this in january 2021, and a lot of the things that you speak about there feel like they're very much of this time or of the past decade. And obviously, you know, class Sam Bean a topical issue throughout a lot of modern history, but but at the moment, it feels really quite Zeitgeist in some ways, with some of the things that we've seen when when we look at what specifically you're focusing on, you're looking really at a role of class, or social class in museum work. And I guess you explained a little bit about your background being in the sort of museum sector. What specifically is it about that sector and the role of class in that domain, if you will? That's interesting to you. I mean, it intuitively seems like it's an interesting place for me, but, but what makes it stand up for you? Is an interesting area to explore, class in the

workplace. Yeah, nice. It's a good question. I mean it yes, there is a sort of personal connection. But there were lots of places I was interested in looking at this. There's been this whole sort of research focus on the cultural sector, the cultural Creative Industries, not just in the UK, across across the West, and this idea that actually they could be very meritocratic. So this, there was this sort of research surge, if you like, this interest that actually, okay, anyone can be creative, so anyone can work in these sorts of sectors. So therefore these are good places to sort of encourage social mobility. But this has sort of been largely been debunked, because actually, to get on in a lot of cultural sectors, you need to be able to sort of deal with the precariousness of the work, so you need some hacking. But museums within all of that have been overlooked. And obviously I, having worked in them, I sort of knew that there'd been lots of conversations about issues of, I mean, when I was there, the discourse was around social inclusion, exclusion, exclusion. It was that sort of, that was very new labor sort of discourse. But there Sam Bean very little talk about class, and it just felt like it was sort of, you know, sort of very overlooked in the sector, and yet I was pretty sure I'd bumped up against it. I had that sort of intuition. And, you know, for my research, I actually look at how museums in the UK have developed, and it's quite interesting in that they have, they've have quite a sort of public sector focus within this country. I mean, it's different in different countries, a lot of the sort of bigger museums, national museums have, there's an argument that they've had this almost, sort of, they emerged in Victorian times, and this sort of educational, almost, sort of disciplining, disciplinary role, in terms of sort of classing the working class, you know, disciplining them. And so there's this sort of great book by Tony Bennett, the birth of the museum, which talks about, you know, how within the sort of museum space, you'd have people in their sort of Sunday best walking around and hashed tones. And yes, so there is this sort of debate around, you know, our museums actually producing this sort of very dominant cultural capital, and at the same time that sort of tends to sort of distinguish the middle so there's a lot of constantly, sort of measuring the audience profile of people who visited museums, and it never shifted. It was always quite middle class, if you like, or people at least, who had a sort of education. So it was quite interesting, because obviously there's, there's museum to talk implicated in. In class, and also, you know, they do the job of actually constructing our histories and our identities. So it's quite important to understand who can do that work on our behalf. So for those reasons, it just turned out to be a very interesting sector.

It sounds it sounds like a sounds like a brilliant sector. And some of the things that you spoke about there resonate to some extent with my lived experience of people who've worked in this domain. So when you spoke about the need for the security to let you deal with the precarious nature of particularly when you spoke about the art space earlier, that connected with me. And when we get into things like the museum space, you know, I do know somebody who's done their masters in curation at one of the UK universities. And that's that feels like a very niche thing. And it feels like there are probably certain aspects of class, or at least social capital, and certain things that are imbued in the way one develops in society that shape opportunities and things in there. So I think that's really interesting. And I really liked one of your last points there, where you where you spoke about what the roles of museums are, to some extent, and what it feels like going in. So are they sort of a disciplinarians, or do they reinforce and one of the things that popped into my mind is that, you know, the emotional responses that people have going into museums are going to be fundamentally hugely different based on how comfortable and accepted and validated they feel within those spaces. So to some extent, they are these kind of monuments defining what we value, or where we choose to invest in, to some extent, as a society, and what we value. So that's just a fascinating it's

quite interesting because, I mean, there's been a lot of there is a whole sort of field of research around museum studies and museology, but it tends to focus on that the people who visit museums or the collections. There's very little research on museums as a place to work. And I was interested in sort of understanding, you know, class of this very sort of, not just understanding it as a person has a class, and then they go into a sector and how do they get on, but understanding how the sector shapes class and contributes to it, because, you know, organizations are implicated in class processes, and that's really not been examined very much. There's work by she's a sociologist, Joan Acker, who looks at organizations as sort of regimes of inequality, and there's been a lot of look at gender and race, but not, not so much at how they contribute to class processes. So that was my interest. Was looking at how museums themselves as a place, as a field to work in. How are they classed as a context, and how does that then class people? And so how, how do people within all of that understand what might be sort of class inequality, if you like. So what that? Because, you know, there's a sort of difference between understanding, you know, you have a socially stratified society or sort of differentiated, I mean, you can't really get away from that, you know. And a lot of class analysts will say, you know, it's, it's quite difficult to tackle, it's a very hard topic to tackle, inequality. You're always going to have differences. But what you really need to understand is the sort of the processes by which things are unfair. So is it really a level playing field? Is it really meritocratic? And so that those are the sorts of things I was looking at. And so my sort of whole approach and my PhD was very inductive, very sort of critical, really taking that step back and just sort of understanding, how do people who work in museums understand their field, what's important to them, what's valued? Why do they work in it? Like you said, you know, doing this sort of post grad and curatorial work, it's very hard decision, I think, to sort of invest quite a small field. And that's definitely what came out in the sort of findings that, you know, the more more specialist you are is, the more sort of valued the work. You know, there's a sort of hierarchy based on this sort of like being very, very specialist to the sector, and yet that limits your career, and it's also very difficult to achieve. I think James going to

jump in with some questions about your research specifically in a minute, and maybe some of the lessons heard about. I guess you focused mainly on the you know, that domain in the museums world. Do you think, though, that this is a field that has broader applications. Do you think that our relationship with class applies across a range of sectors and industries? Oh,

definitely, absolutely. And there's a sort of body of research now that's growing that's looking at class in particular sectors. So I've there's this, this concept actually called the class ceiling, which Friedman and laurison have actually researched, which shows that you know, for people from a working class background trying to get into what they call elite occupations, and then they research architecture, acting, TV and accountancy, they show how you know people from from sort of. Are, I mean, they have a particular way of measuring class, but people from those backgrounds will not get into the most prestigious type of work, like TV commissioning. They might get into, like marketing TV rather than commissioning TV. And there's very sort of subtle processes as to why. So it's definitely not just museums. You know. It sort of intuitively makes sense that, you know, class, the idea of class came from the world of work, so it, and it's so sort of embedded within how work is organized, that I think, you know, every organization is is sort of, in a way, contributing to class processes, right? I think that you can't sort of get away from it, really. So yes, it's my answer to that. I think it definitely is relevant, sort of beyond museums. It's relevant to any workplace. It's

It's so interesting you talk about it's clear that you have a very close relationship with sector in terms of understanding it. And I just, I just wondered how my understanding is the sector is relatively small, similar to some of the other sectors we've we've spoken to people about before, and my own sector in sport, and I just wondered, was there an awareness of the project in the sector? Did you get a sense of what the reception was from the sector, or whether, indeed there was, like a homogeneous reception, or whether it was different depending on what parts of the sector you spoke to, it's

a good question. And I think because I approached it at that sort of field level, rather than going into a particular organization where you've got lots of I think more there's more difficulty in people talking about some of these things. But people were talking outside of their organization. When I approached, I approached organizations to begin with that, like trade unions, that professional bodies that were representing the whole sector, and at that level, it was that was sort of right at the beginning of the research. It was just quite interesting, because people then were, oh, you know, yes, we don't really know what class is. We don't know how to measure it. We don't know where there's no initiatives in the sector to sort of tackle it, but they were very willing to help. And so when it came to sort of going out and doing all my I did focus groups and I did interviews, I could use those sort of channels to actually communicate with with whole sector. And I was quite surprised at the response. Actually, I was really slightly overwhelmed that everybody suddenly this was their opportunity to talk about class, and there was a huge interest in it. And that in itself, I've actually used that in my PhD, because a lot of people said to me, Oh, you've got focus groups in London. We should have them up in the, you know, in the north, you know, this is about class. We need to have a voice. And in that way, then they're sort of, they're constructing a version of class as sort of geography, if you like. And there was a lot of places that wanted to, you know, they wanted to have it in their particular museum. And a lot of people who wanted to take part didn't want to take part in focus groups. They could take part in interviews I had. I definitely had more data than I could actually deal with. I think the interest because they'd never really spoken about it. And like you say, it is quite a discrete sector, and it's that people are, what was quite interesting was how they're quite networked. And, you know, since I'd I had worked in sector in the past, but I hadn't really been like social media was really important to it. But the other, the sort of other side of that was I, what I what I found was a lot of people who said, yes, yes, you know, I'm from a working class background, and I'm trying to develop a career in museums, and I'm finding it really hard, because, you know, it's very difficult to get these very prestigious jobs. You need these. It's like a sort of Bank of mum and dad, you know, you need, you need to be able to, everyone talked about having to volunteer and having to work for free, or work for, you know, with very low pay to do expensive qualifications. People talked about, you know, the issues of accent as well that actually, that, you know, they were made to feel that they weren't as intelligent as some people. So they're very definite examples of what you could call classism. And people were very willing to talk about this within focus groups and so on. But all the people that were in those sorts of jobs that, and I asked people, you know, who took part to actually sort of reconstruct a hierarchy of museum work. So all those jobs, like Front of House, security, cleaning, retail, all those sorts of jobs were considered quite low status, and people from those those areas, didn't really take part in the research. And this wasn't for a once trying, you know, I really was having conversations, I remember, with one museum to sort of try and have a very. Specific focus group with them for their sort of whole front of house department. So there's a whole sort of group of people that just sort of self excluded, which I found quite interesting as well, that you know, it's very careful not to use the word career, to use the word museum work, because there's a sort of class dimension to the word, the discourse of career in itself. So, so yes, there was, there was a lot of interest and but, but only from certain sorts of groups. So I think that was quite interesting.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the things we talked we've talked about before, is where you've got a sector that is quite like you say discrete. But also has, I hesitate to use this phrase, but in simplest terms, it's got to be the cult following. So there are people that really want to work in it, then the people who work in in roles that maybe aren't specific to that sector. So Front of House, obviously is important to museum, but exists in other sectors as well. One of the things we sometimes talk about is whether they identify as being part of that sector or part of just the hospitality sector or part of the administrative Business Administration sector. Because I think, I think it's interesting who even who sees themselves as in those sectors or not in those sectors, by coincidence or by deliberateness?

Absolutely, yeah, yeah. And I think that's a very insightful point, because that that's exactly, it's like they're sort of their own identity, isn't it? Is. How much is that sort of connected to their field of work? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And

we, I mean, James, James and I quite often talk about, like to talk about sort of issues around identity, because we think it's a really think it's really interesting and often unexplored by people who would find it a really useful way of thinking about their own experiences of work. I just wanted to ask you I was having a look at the version, original version of your sort of website when you first talked about your research early doors, and you mentioned the notions of economic kind of symbolic capital. Now, at the very beginning, you sort of mentioned why you were interested in how you got involved, and I just wondered, could you explain a little bit more about what you mean by economic and symbolic capital and how they relate to your research? Yeah, sure.

Well, I used the theory of Pierre Bourdieu and he developed this idea of this sort of trilogy, this conceptual trilogy between a field which you can consider like a sort of sector, and if you use the meta, his metaphor of the game is actually really quite useful. So if you think of a field, say, like museum work as the sort of, the map of the game, the sort of, then capital is the sort of what you need to actually be able to play it. And there are actually sort of, there's, well, four types of capital. But what I was interested in drawing out at that point was a relationship between economic and symbolic capital. So economic capital is sort of what you would think it would be in terms of, you know, wealth and income and those sorts of things. And I was looking at how one you need that to be able to get on within a museum career, as I mentioned, you know, needing to actually pay for qualifications, needing to be able to work for free, and then at the end of it, you don't actually earn very much anyway. But that has a sort of almost inverse relationship with what this idea of symbolic capital, which, for want of a better words. You could call it status. But it's like, basically, what is particularly valued within that sector, within the field of museum work, that might not be recognized outside. So it's almost like you were saying it's like people who really want to work in there. What? What is it about museum work? You know, why? Why do they, why do they really value it? And what's, the most prestigious thing, what's really sort of the sort of the height of status within museum work. And I asked people in focus groups and also in their interviews to sort of talk about this. And it was a lot of people, you know, they want to either they think about it, becoming a curator is the curatorial work. It's the having a sort of very specialist role. So you can have general curators, you can have very specialist curators, and then you can have, like, working at a national museum, and the prestige of working at a national museum that was a sort of ultimate, of, like symbolic capital. And in I actually look at how it's a bit more so I look at this sort of the way in which, you know, people in the field try and keep museums special. Because actually, you know, although there is this sort of you. You know, having very specialist knowledge is is sort of revered. That doesn't pay for museums. You know, they need money from somewhere. And actually, you know, a lot of museum collections aren't based on money. They're based on wealth. And I sort of draw that, that that it's almost like it's what it's what Bourdieu would call misrecognition, that actually to really be able to get on is seen as this sort of, you know, you are very specialist and knowledgeable, but actually you are supported by, you know, whole wealth of capital that perhaps other people don't have. So it's, it's almost and you can see that within institutions and with individuals, if you like. I call it for the institutions. I call it collections meritocracy, this idea that some collections are so prestigious and amazing that, you know, of course, they warrant government funding and they should be in all the national museums, all the national museums, you know, they do actually come from having considerable amount of economic power in the first place. But that's all sort of, that's all sort of distance. There's all this sort of these, these sort of quite complex processes by which, you know what, basically what is seen as a, seen as sort of, sort of natural and natural neutral thing, this sort of symbolic capital. But it isn't, and that's borders. Argument is actually, it's, it comes from what he would call social, arbitrary. You know, it comes from this. It's basically underpinned by power and money.

It's so it's, I'm really interested in this. One of the reasons is that I'm thinking back to both a podcast we did with a friend of the show, Laura Hamilton, around volunteering, and also my own work on boards and trustees and governance. And I keep thinking about these money can't buy roles, and when you have significant economic capital, if you've described it, the roles that people want are the ones that you can't get. It's not that they are rare and they are there are few and far between, and they also require a very niche expertise. And so we see that a lot in sport, and we see it, I mean, there's there's, there's so, so much of what you're saying rings true with things like one of the challenges about diversity on boards, for example, particularly the nonprofit sector, is that you kind of need really secure employment and money to be able to negotiate with your employer, to take six afternoons off a year, to be able to Help with a significant organization. And but how that relates to those that symbolic capital that you gain, but you kind of sometimes you need to springboard off one or the other to get to that. And that makes, that makes total sense.

Yeah, I think, yeah. I mean, I'm interested in what you're doing as well. It's and I think it's a sort of common pattern. And in a way, it's just, actually, I think it's for sectors to start being a little bit more honest about the ways in which certain people can get on and others can't. That it's, it's, it's, I mean, or do you call these sort of invisible processes, and that's why I use a sort of critical, discursive approach to actually try and, you know, unpick them, really. So I was looking at how this sort of game is is structured. And so the symbolic capital there is, you know, the idea would be working for as a specialist curator in the National Museum, and then perhaps becoming a director in terms of the rules of the game, like how to play the game. There is this need for, on the one hand, it's economic capital, to sort of be able to get that distinct, you know, that distinction. But at the same time, increasingly, within museums, and I haven't looked at this in other sectors, but I'd be interested in doing so. Is this what I call a market for recognition? And so whilst museums sort of resist this idea that they're about money and profit. They are about trying to get profile. And actually, you know, some, you know, national, some national museums are sort of like almost superstar status. There's a there's a paper that looks at that, and so that then actually also shapes people's careers. So those people who can develop their profile, whether it's on, you know, going to conferences, social media, whether they can, increasingly, you know, you've got history on TV, this sort of the idea that the national museum director now is somebody who can actually have that, that not just distinguishing capital or, you know, that sort of knowledge, but it's also this ability to gain the recognition and the profile, and that is a process. I think I

was just going to say one of the, one of the, you know, battles that I hear people talking about now is for, you know, the battle for attention, right? And the ability to attract and maintain attention is hugely powerful thing. And then so. Ways we can think about as another form of capital that exists in different ways, and that's probably inextricably linked to a lot of the other factors that we're talking about. Is that fair? Do you think, yeah, and I think

I actually, I mean, I could see these patterns in the research, but I actually got the idea of the recognition economy. I nicked that from a journalist who was, I can't remember their names. They were talking very much about that, the attention economy. And I suppose, yeah, that that's a sort of more day to day granular thing, isn't it? It's like, you know when, when you get lost in social media, and what you're actually looking at, but, but I think it is, is so I was trying to look at something a bit more. It's not just about attention. It is about getting that status, because if you get the recognition, then that boosts your symbolic battle and the rest of it. So it's all sort of connected.

So I've got a question. You know, some people suggest that class maybe isn't as much of an issue as it used to be in our careers, in our workplace. And you've obviously looked in one specific area, I guess if we, if we were to sort of hypothesize or broaden the conversation out a little bit more, do you think class plays a large role still in the, you know, the careers or work, I should say, given our conversation, you know, the work that people do and their ability to progress in their work. I mean, how important of a factor do you think it is at a minute more broadly? Yeah, I think

that's a good question. I think obviously there is a sort of issue that I touched on the beginning, which is this idea that perhaps people don't it might not be in the forefront of their own minds when they're thinking about their own career paths.

relevant, if you think about it from the point of view of rather than a category, but more sort of how particular ways of having and being, if you like, are valued within particular sectors, and those are more difficult to achieve for certain people. Then, then, yes, I think it is. And, you know, I could think about my own experience, and I, you know, asked this, you know, how would I because, obviously, a lot of people think the problem of class is being working class, but there's, there's a real difficulty in defining what that is. And I, I, and I asked people this, you know, how, how would they know their own class, and how would they know the class of others? And it's quite people are quite confused by it, and I think this is because the whole sort of landscape of class Sam Bean sort of muddied by it's not a political concept. It's quite political. It's not neutral. When we're talking about class, we're talking about a way of seeing society and how it's structured and what's there and what isn't so. And personally, I think that's why it probably hasn't been looked at in organization studies. Because I think organizations, to be honest, are complicit in in how class is constructed. You know, they construct hierarchies and they allocate rewards, you know, economic costing for it,

absolutely, yeah. And everybody who works in an organization is at some level, engaged within the society that they live in, more broadly and in their organization. So they've got some interests and desires and games to play and, you know, all that stuff. So, so it's kind of that perpetuating thing, which is, which is difficult, um, some of the, some of the other ways that, you know, individual differences and characteristics, uh, manifests, are protected in the UK. So we talk about things like gender and race and disability and sexual orientation and things like that. So, so those are kind of legally protected, and there's certain rules around that. Now, do you think that class could ever fall into that type of category? Do you think it matters that it's not a protected characteristic? Is it something that could be protected?

Yeah? I mean, because there's a lot of other researchers now looking at class, and there's a social mobility commission, and I'm pretty sure that they would be looking at some of these things, it just comes back to that how, how would you then define what you mean by class? And I think a lot of the the discussion would be around this idea of social mobility. I mean, I, I do criticize that in my PhD, because not everybody can be socially mobile. So my way of thinking about it is, rather than just saying everyone can get to those sort of very desired positions, is actually try and change how we think of different types of work. You know, why is certain work valued more than others? Or at least, be honest about those processes sort of bring them out into the open, so in terms of whether it can be a legally protected characteristic, on this, if it was then, obviously it would get a lot more attention, along the lines of, you know, what gets measured matters. And I mean, I went to, I was on a attended this sort of refreshing diversity and inclusivity event yesterday in the age of the pandemic. And they were talking about race and they were talking about gender. They didn't talk about class, but all of these things were class, you know, there's, you know, race and a lot of the issues around

the pandemic, and how, you know certain people front line and front line jobs is to do with sort of economic inequality. So there's lots of intersecting things there. And I think class is almost sort of like a sort of a master discourse, if you like, that actually shapes all of these is sort of understanding how things are valued within particular work context, context, but within broader society as well. So I think it should be, I think it's problematic because, partly because it's quite difficult to define, but also because it does have that political overtone, but I'm sure I haven't, personally, haven't actually been looking at that, but I'm pretty sure that that people are on the case. So my short answer to that is yes. I think it should be,

yeah, it's interesting. When you talk about it as like a master taxonomy or a master sort of index, I It's quite often the way that I, in my sort of very naive head, think about class. It's this, it's this sort of labeling and indexation for the purposes of positioning people to have access. So my logical, my logic is, well, if people are using it to do that, then of course it should be protected. But I understand it is far more complicated. Um, yeah. I just ask you one last question for me, because I know we are running short time, but from the research that you did and the conducting the research as you did, what what lessons or suggestions would you have to organizations that want to start you said in your section, there was a huge appetite that you initially saw in certain places. How would you encourage organizations to, sort of at the very beginning, start examining the issue with their with their staff? Yes.

I mean, I guess when you say organizations, it sort of depends on who does it, because, in a way, it was easy for people to take part in my research, because I was sort of like an outsider. And sometimes you find that it's easier for people to actually have those conversations when they're not sort of stuck within some hierarchy. You know, don't want to be seen to be sort of critical of your organization. But I think it's encouraging alongside other issues like

we've touched on this race and gender and all the rest of it is just include class and start asking people to talk about their own journey so far. I mean, that's one thing that I talk about in my PhD, is that actually you know, when people describe their own career journey, then class comes it really comes to light and it comes to life. You know, you can sort of see where the challenge Sam Bean for them, from where they've started to where they are now. And I think that actually then highlights some of these things that perhaps other people don't see. So it's, it's important to start having those conversations. It's quite difficult to know where to take if you're a small organization and you don't have the resources, then I think there needs to be more support at sort of sector level. So I mean, a lot of the work I've done is at that level, like with professional associations, with membership bodies, with trade unions, and that's probably where it sits more comfortably, because then you can actually start really taking a look at the whole sector to think, Okay, what, what, what opportunities really are here, and what, what do people have to do to get them? And is that fair? Are we really, really encouraging the best people? That's, I mean, that's another sort of side of it. Is that actually, you know, if you're just encouraging people who have got a certain sort of education and have got the money to get on, you know, are you just creating this sort of homogenous way of thinking? It's probably there is definitely some benefit to try and encourage people who come have had a different journey into your sector. And I'm one thing I want to do is work with the museum sector, but beyond, because I've done some other research with sort of outside of my PhD, with the NHS and with theater directing different career paths, but there's still similar issues, and very few people are talking about it. So I think just talking about it, thinking about the sort of career, giving people the chance to think, talk about their career paths, but also think about what, what the expectations are, and how those might actually, then not actually be as fair as you think they are. I mean, just a small example, somebody, they were talking about, they've gone for an interview for a job at a national museum, and they were asked in the interview, you know, if they'd visit, you know, they there was an assumption that they would have visited the National Museum and looked around and be very familiar with their exhibitions. And this person said they didn't have the money for the train fair to travel from where they were to actually go and just have a look at the museum. So you just don't even really think about those things. Because. Is, you know, a lot of people are, you know, from a different class background, so yeah, I mean, obviously that's sort of stuck in my mind, because I think that,

yeah, that's a great story, isn't it? It's a really bringing to life our assumptions and expectations. We are in the process of running out of time. I guess if we could ask you one, one question, which is, if there was one thing that you'd like somebody who was maybe managing a team, you know, somebody who's out there managing a small team, to take away from this conversation, what would your key

message to them be? Well, just be aware that that that class is an issue, and that actually, if you are able to sort of understand that the journey that somebody has taken is don't think about it just as all down to the individual, that actually there are some very definite sort of structural and historic disadvantages that shape people's journey. And I think you could almost turn it on its head, and think the people that have had the most difficult beginning are probably the most resilient. And we talk about resilience, you know, discourse of resilience, but actually, we don't really value the people who probably are the most resilient. So I think it's just actually the takeaway, really is just knowing that it is an issue, and, you know, it's time, really, that we do start talking about it,

right? Well, that sounds like a great message in terms of opening up a conversation and developing awareness. Unfortunately, that is us out of time. So just as a very last question, How could people learn more about you and the work that you're working on? I do

have a sort of WordPress site, but which I use for my research, but I need to update it. So the best thing, really is for people to follow me on Twitter. So my Twitter is Sam is at work and Sam is at work. Cool. So Sam is at work. Sam is at work,

yeah? So you can find me on that. It's got a link to my WordPress site on that, and I'll actually be updating that. So that's probably the easiest way to follow my work. Yeah, brilliant.

Okay, well, it's just time for me to say thank you. That was really interesting and informative conversation. So thank you very much for me. Yeah, and a massive thank you from me too.

Well, thank you both for asking me to talk about it's been great. Actually, I love it. Thank you very much.

Okay, so that was our conversation with Sam, and you are back in the room with us. We've been speaking about the Robert class plays, particularly within work in the museum space and museums more broadly. But I think it surfaces a lot of other questions and reflections. Shane, is there anything that you'd like to touch on based on that conversation? Yeah,

I think it's a really interesting topic, and it's, as you know, James, it's something I feel quite passionately about, about how, how we start to improve social mobility, and how we start to break down how people are perceived based on what their heritage, background, etc, is, whatever that might be, and in whatever characteristic that might be. So I think that's really interesting. I think there's a couple of things that strike me. One is I really one of the reasons I'm really interested by Sam's work is her choice of industry and sector, as you probably guessed from my questions. And I think I think museums that I mean, we talked about this earlier, didn't we, and we used the words like laden and loaded with meaning. I feel like certainly growing up in in 1980s and 1990s Britain, museums, and those of you who don't know, museums went through a massive period in the UK where they became free at the point of entry, and they were previously not. And it was, it was built on an idea of sort of democratization, of museum entry and stuff like that. And it's not. They're not all free anymore. There's lots of different strats of payment and stuff. But it was a quite a big deal back then, and I feel like part of that is because museums were considered to be in some way exclusive, and therefore that really, really gets me thinking about the idea she introduced about social capital, how it relates to economic capital, and I'm kind of so stuck in that at the moment thinking about it, because I feel like if I'd had the phrase social capital 20 years ago, I would have much more easily been able to pinpoint why people's experience of university, for example, was Different amongst my peers, because it feels like a very helpful concept of being able to sort of navigate that stuff. Yeah,

I think, I think there's some great reflections in there. Like you said, it's a really interesting industry and and really relevant for this type of conversation. And I too, kind of anchor back to that point around social capital and, and I guess the things that we acquire through our social relationships over our lives, the things that we learn, the things that we don't even know, that we know, and the impact of those have on us in the workplace, and, of course, more more broadly, and something that's just come back to me, or sort of surface to me as we think about this, is, I guess, to some extent, the role that our education plays in this, and The fact that a lot of these things are developed through education and and all too often, I think a lot about education stops when we leave our formal education, but I think a lot of these things are types of things that we can continue to explore and bring into conversations in the workplace so that we can broaden our understandings of each. Other and our backgrounds, and I think that understanding gives us better insights and better abilities to connect in a more inclusive way within our organizations. I think as you were speaking about Jane as well, you started to allude to a few things, but I think connect to some of the conversations that we've had about power, and I think that's just an interesting thing to bear in mind. I know we'll be coming back and having more conversations about power, but I think that's an interesting overlap with that subject as well. Okay, well, that was our conversation, the first conversation we've had about class. We might have another at some point, we shall see. So it's just time for us to say goodbye. So it is goodbye from me, and it's goodbye from me too. Hi everyone. This is James. Thank you very much for listening to that podcast, and please do share it and review it if you enjoyed it, and don't forget you can learn more about our coaching, workshops, courses and development programs on our website, that's www, dot World of work.io, again, www.worldwork.io, you.