Lore Cambré did a Master of Cultural Studies at KU Leuven and is now employed as a Museum Consultant. She works for the municipal museums of a city in Belgium, and her job includes public relations and participation as well as digital communication. Together with her colleagues from the team Public and Communication, she supervises the public projects and events. This is done in the context of exhibitions, but also in the permanent exhibition and in the general operation of the museums, outside the museum walls and online. In addition, she takes care of their digital communication channels, including social media, websites, and digital newsletters.
In her job, she uses several of the skills that were identified in the ASSET-H skills profile. A first one is the knowledge and information cluster. More precisely, she argues that being curious about research, and being able to interpret results from research is a key skill. As part of her job as a consultant for the public relations section, she also has to look into public research. At regular intervals - for example after a summer holiday - she looks at the visitor numbers and prepares a short analysis for herself and her colleagues. She also looks into the statistics of their digital communication. In 2022, for example, they were able to participate in a large-scale public survey, which gave them a lot of input about the experiences, questions and needs of our visitors and non-visitors.
Organizational skills are also important in her job. Being able to keep an overview of the various projects and tasks that are ongoing or on the schedule is a crucial skill. This is especially the case for her because she works together with an umbrella team for three museums. Lore also argues that project management and flexibility go hand-in-hand: “I myself am someone who likes to work in a planned and structured way, so I can relate to these skills. This certainly does not mean that I am strong in everything or that I cannot be flexible, because that is of course also necessary.”
Lore also uses her intercultural skills at work, by being open to other people’s ways of thinking and by reflecting on social diversity in a nuanced way. As a participation employee, she monitors the participatory reflex in an organization, but she also needs to be aware of diversity, accessibility, and polyphony. “Personally, I also think it is very important that we are working on this, that we try to lower barriers and ensure that visitors feel welcome. There are still many beautiful challenges and opportunities ahead of us.”
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