The Little Museum of Dublin’s community outreach policy

We are proud of the museum’s track record within our Community Employment (CE) Scheme. Over the last nine years we have trained dozens of participants in hospitality, performance and tour guiding skills. Many of them have completed accredited tour guide training courses, learned language skills and secured one on one training with professional actors and directors. 

Our CE Scheme participants do not usually come from a tourism or hospitality background. With this in mind, we take pride in the fact that most of them go on to secure work within the Little Museum or neighbouring attractions, as it demonstrates that their experience here has directly contributed to their employment success.

“The main object for which the Company is established is to advance education through or by:

1. establishing, promoting and managing a museum of Dublin. 
2. Promoting education and scholarship about Dublin.
3. Promoting public access to the museum collection. 
4. Securing and safeguarding the long-term public interest in the museum.” 

– From our Memorandum and Articles of Association 

A registered charity, the Little Museum of Dublin is a museum of the city, created by the people of Dublin. We take community outreach seriously. But what does this mean?

Sometimes it means engaging traditional museum audiences by producing compelling exhibitions. Sometimes it means seeking out new audiences. And sometimes it means creating opportunities for people who have struggled to find rewarding work within a cultural institution.

The local community is at the heart of our work, from free daily civics classes for Irish school-children and complimentary admission for job seekers and frontline workers, through to paid internships and a socially valuable Community Employment (CE) Scheme. 

For example, in 2018, we launched a paid six-month fellowship for recent university graduates. Responding to the economic barrier of the unpaid internship culture within the heritage world, this programme makes entry into the museum sector a realistic career goal for individuals from a multitude of backgrounds. We offer one paid fellowship for history and business graduates, and another for performance and theatre graduates.

The museum is also proud to offer tour guide training as part of a Community Employment (CE) Scheme supervised by Ballybough and Inner City Community Employment. This initiative, which is administered by the Department of Employment Affairs & Social Protection, helps people in long term unemployment to find work in the local community and ultimately to secure future opportunities based on the experience and new skills gained with their host organisation. 

For our participants we offer additional paid weekly hours of work where possible, and we also try to hire from within when opportunities emerge. Our senior management and board are committed to cultivating a pipeline of future museum managers.