Museums Journal publishes an unofficial account (based in an alleged full transcript filtered by an anonymous Brontë Society member) of the Brontë Society EGM held on 18 October. Deeply disturbing and sad:
“I’m worried that this will all just be swept under the carpet again,” said the member, who asked to remain anonymous.
According to the transcript, the EGM was told that employees at the Brontë Parsonage Museum were unhappy with their treatment by trustees and had asked to join a union.
One speaker described an “atmosphere of bullying and criticism” at the museum and another said staff felt undermined and were “afraid to put their heads above the parapet”. The meeting heard that there was a “depressingly cyclical nature” to the departure of the museum's directors. Read more on: bronteblog/the-bronte-society-civil-war
More on the Brontë Society's inner troubles in the Yorkshire Post today:
The Brontë Society is in “crisis” and urgently needs to change the way it operates and address poor morale among staff at the Parsonage Museum, according to an expert.
The literary society’s recent extraordinary general meeting, called by 53 disgruntled members, was told by an independent adviser that it needed to review its structure and ask “whether it is now fit for purpose”.
In minutes seen by The Yorkshire Post, the adviser says that four problems faced by the Society added up to a “crisis situation”.
“You are currently without a chief executive of the museum, without a chair of your Council, you’ve got a body of staff who are asking for recognition by a union and you’ve got a group of members who have called an EGM. Any one of those individual situations would put any society under stress and pressure but having four at once is a very, very unusual situation.” Read more on: bronteblog/a-bronte-crisis
“I’m worried that this will all just be swept under the carpet again,” said the member, who asked to remain anonymous.
According to the transcript, the EGM was told that employees at the Brontë Parsonage Museum were unhappy with their treatment by trustees and had asked to join a union.
One speaker described an “atmosphere of bullying and criticism” at the museum and another said staff felt undermined and were “afraid to put their heads above the parapet”. The meeting heard that there was a “depressingly cyclical nature” to the departure of the museum's directors. Read more on: bronteblog/the-bronte-society-civil-war
More on the Brontë Society's inner troubles in the Yorkshire Post today:
The Brontë Society is in “crisis” and urgently needs to change the way it operates and address poor morale among staff at the Parsonage Museum, according to an expert.
The literary society’s recent extraordinary general meeting, called by 53 disgruntled members, was told by an independent adviser that it needed to review its structure and ask “whether it is now fit for purpose”.
In minutes seen by The Yorkshire Post, the adviser says that four problems faced by the Society added up to a “crisis situation”.
“You are currently without a chief executive of the museum, without a chair of your Council, you’ve got a body of staff who are asking for recognition by a union and you’ve got a group of members who have called an EGM. Any one of those individual situations would put any society under stress and pressure but having four at once is a very, very unusual situation.” Read more on: bronteblog/a-bronte-crisis
Call me cynical, but I believe the protesters have more interest in things like grants of 100,000 for the Bronte bicentennials than with an allegedly unhappy staff. I also believe they got little satisfaction at the emergency meeting and so have started a press campaign .
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