Placement Opportunities
This page contains information about placements developed with Techne partner organisations for Techne students to apply for. Please note that you need to be within your funded period when the placement begins in order to apply. You can find out more about funding for placements here.
Studio Wayne McGregor Knowledge
Exchange Champion
Studio Wayne McGregor is the creative engine for choreographer and director Wayne McGregor CBE, and the home of his life-long enquiry into physical intelligence – thinking through and with the body. A multi-award-winning artist, McGregor is internationally renowned for trailblazing innovations in performance that have radically redefined dance in the modern era. He is driven by an insatiable curiosity about movement and its creative potential, and his experiments have led him into collaborative dialogue with an array of artistic forms, scientific disciplines, and technological interventions. Studio Wayne McGregor exists to support this enquiry; designing, developing and delivering innovative projects that challenge and explore the edges of where the body, mind, and technology intersect. Our underlining vision is to push the frontiers of physical intelligence, through dance, design and technology, and to connect everybody to their physical potential.
Studio Wayne McGregor fuels the breadth of Wayne’s creative work including the development and touring of signature works on his ensemble of world-class dancers, Company Wayne McGregor; a portfolio of international commissions across genres including dance, visual arts, film, theatre and opera; specialised learning and engagement programmes emboldening individuals in their own creative expression; mentoring and cultivating of other artists; and inquisitive research enterprises which look across science, technology and the arts to provoke questions about some of the extraordinary phenomena of physical thinking.
Studio Wayne McGregor opened a new world class creative arts space in April 2017 at Here East in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Designed by We Not I, Studio Wayne McGregor comprises three dance studios, including two of the largest in London, and a series of playful spaces in which to collaborate, make and create. The first arts organisation to be based on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, it is a place for making, developing creative practice, and collaboration across arts, science, technology and research.
Studio Wayne McGregor’s technē Knowledge Exchange Champion will have the opportunity to involve themselves fully with the work of the whole organisation with a specific focus on engagement and communications. There will be a piece of work looking at the potential future development of the local programme which delivers dance and arts outreach activity to our local community, including planning and delivery of a consultation event for local partners. Also the development of a new ‘lates’ programme of talks and workshops for the public that expose the artistic and interdisciplinary practice housed within the Studio.
The technē Champion will also gain experience with the Marketing and Content Department. Here, they will learn what goes into designing long-term communications strategies, alongside managing and actioning day-to-day narratives and requests. This could include insights into digital, printed materials and managing PR.
The benefits for the Champion would not only be to become part of a small and fast paced arts organisation working at the cutting edge of interdisciplinary contemporary arts practice but they will also specifically gain an insight into the local arts and community landscape, experience of community consultation and outreach, marketing and content development, event planning and management.
The technē Champion will also meet with and shadow the work of other teams across the organisation including Company touring, comms and marketing, building management and special projects.
The placement can either be taken up full time over 6 weeks or can be stretched out part-time for up to 4 months and will take place at our building on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. We would work with the successful candidate to set up the best working pattern for them. They will be fully managed and supported within the team.
To apply please send a one-page CV and 250 words on why Studio Wayne McGregor would be the right place for you to work as a technē Knowledge Exchange Champion in terms of
- Your skills and experience (design skills such as FCP, Adobe Premiere Pro, Photoshop, InDesign etc are desirable, but not mandator
- How you might gain from undertaking this placement
Please apply in writing to Jasmine Wilson, Director of Learning and Engagement
Email: jasmine@waynemcgregor.com
Deadline for Applications: Friday 10 January 2020
Interviews: February 2020
Curatorial Placement:
Historic Royal Palaces
Curatorial Placement: Historic Royal Palaces
Historic Royal Palaces is the independent charity that looks after the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, the Banqueting House, Kensington Palace, Kew Palace and Hillsborough Castle.
In 2021, we are holding a major exhibition exploring both the visual and cultural connections between the the royal court between c1700 and c1820 and the spectacle of contemporary high-fashion. The exhibition takes place across 30 rooms in one of our palacesand the spaces are being designed by an Emmy award winning production designer. As well as objects from HRP’s own rich collection of historic dress we will also be displaying objects from major national and international institutions and major fashion houses.
The successful candidate will work closely with the exhibition curators, Eleri Lynn and Polly Putnam. They will receive training in collections management software, basic object handling and collections management practice. As a member of the project team, they will gain first-hand experience of working on a major exhibition.
In return, the successful candidate will:
assist with producing and maintaining object documentation
assist with exhibition and object research by using their specialist subject knowledge
potentially producing research reports and other such documents, e.g. articles
assist in the production of exhibition interpretation (which may include text, blogs or content for social media) in a range of media for members of the general public.
The placement will be at Hampton Court Palace with occasional travel to other palaces. This placement can take place up to six months, full-time or over the year. We can be very flexible in accommodating the student. However, the successful candidate may wish to consider taking the placement part time to see the exhibition through from development to completion when it opens in March 2021.
To apply for this position please send a CV and no more than 250 words outlining
1) Why you are interested in this placement
2) What expertise and experience you have that you feel is relevant to this placement
3) What you hope to gain from undertaking this placement.
Please send your application and any questions you may have to polly.putnam@hrp.org.uk
Deadline is Monday 16th December 2019
Interviews will take place during the week commencing January 13th 2020
Autonomy: helping shape the future of work
Autonomy: helping shape the future of work
The think tank Autonomy is offering exciting opportunities for Techne doctoral researchers to engage in the world of innovative and radical policy.
For up to six months, doctoral graduates can work with the Autonomy team on developing new, ambitious research projects that aim to produce the policies necessary for our society to mitigate the ‘crisis of work’ that we are currently experiencing. Some indicative research questions that guide our work are:
How do we deal with automation technologies in the coming years?
How do work and the climate crisis intersect?
How can we guard against the precarity that comes with the ‘gig economy’?
How do we sediment gender equality into the world of work?
Placements at Autonomy offer an opportunity to garner new research skills, learn how the policy world operates, help shift the Overton Window and potentially make public interventions into the debate about the future of work. You will have the chance to work with our wider research network, including leading academics and other voices that are at the heart of contemporary debates (see our website for more details as to who this might be).
If you are interested in engaging with Autonomy’s project, then email info@autonomy.work with a short description of your doctoral research alongside a short paragraph regarding which of Autonomy’s research strands interest you most (see below) by the deadline of 20th December. We can arrange a meeting and discuss details.
Who are Autonomy and what do we do?
Autonomy is a radical, independent think tank that promotes and articulates a world of work that moves beyond precarity, low pay, overwork, mass unemployment and lack of worker democracy. We want to know what the future of work might be, but we also want to articulate what the future of work should be for our societies. We are influenced by heterodox political economy, including Marxism, but also recognise that work is not simply an economic terrain, and involves cultural and political elements all the way down. Unlike most think tanks, we engage with the wider meanings of ‘work’ beyond mere employment.
We put out research papers, policy proposals and other outputs on a range of work-related topics, to be used by journalists, activists, unions and political parties. We regularly appear in the news media as the radical and progressive voice on the future of work, from local radio stations to the BBC, from Al Jazeera to London’s LBC, from the Guardian to the Daily Mail. Our public presence helps us shift the narrative – and the political agenda – around work, allowing us to push a narrative of worker democracy and freedom.
One of Autonomy’s ongoing aims has been to translate excellent academic work into public interventions into the debate around the future of work; research with impact. Towards this goal, we have congregated some of the best minds in the field as part of our research network and advisory board.
Our main interventions came in 2019, when we published the largestreport – to our knowledge – in existence on the topic of working time reduction. Described as a ‘vital contribution’ by Labour Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, it was widely endorsed by trade unions, leading labour economists as well as international voices such as Die Linke’s Katja Kipping.
Our research strands
for 2020, from which placed students are encouraged to select from are as
follows. These strands often intersect and students working on one project will
most likely engage with a number of others during their placement:
2. The Control of Workers and Worker Control
Work intensification and speed up: what is the present and future of technological tracking, evaluating or speed up in the modern British workplace?
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Conversely, we also want to explore possibilities of worker control and/or resistance.
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2. A Welfare State for the 21st Century
Our current welfare system is outdated, disciplinary and falling apart at the seems. Universal Credit has been shown to be a failure, even on the government’s own assessment. We need to design a better system.
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3. Our Automated Future: the future of technology and its potential for freedom
The future will be automated, but who will that benefit? Policy needs to be in place to make sure the gains from advanced technologies can be shared evenly across populations.
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4. Leisure Beyond Consumption
People are getting older, and our working weeks are (hopefully) going to be shorter in the future: what does leisure look like in the next 20 - 30 years?
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5. Flexibility and Precarity: making the ‘gig economy’ work for the worker
The ‘gig economy’ includes some of the most harmful and exploitative employment practices in the UK. How can this be remedied?
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Wellcome Collection Knowledge Exchange Champion Application
Wellcome Collection Knowledge Exchange Champion Application
Deadline for Applications: Friday 29th November 2019
Interviews: January 2020