Work experience week at the Royal Mint Museum

In April 2025, the Royal Mint Museum team hosted Jessie, who joined us for a week of work experience and getting to know the challenges involved in the heritage sector. Hear from Jessie below about the experience and the kinds of work being undertaken behind the scenes at the Royal Mint Museum.

Undertaking work experience at the Royal Mint Museum was a most enjoyable, educational, and unique experience that I would highly recommend to other students. During my time at the Royal Mint, I was able to spend time working in different sectors of the museum. This allowed me to understand the different roles required to make a team functional and efficient.

My week consisted of a variety of experience in different areas, starting the week by learning about the history of coinage and ending it in the Museum Tooling Store cataloguing coin dies and plaster models. In between these experiences I also learnt about that technicalities of creating a museum exhibition and all the different factors you must consider in order to make the exhibition engaging. Additionally, I spent a morning in an education session with a group of schoolchildren, learning about the history of the Mint through the story of Dilwyn the dragon. One of my favourite parts of my work experience included working with the Museum’s Public Engagement and Information Officer to authenticate coins. During this time, we even found a counterfeit coin which was very exciting!

Conducting this work experience has helped me enhance many key skills such as adaptability, through carrying out a series of different tasks throughout the week with very different requirements. I had so much fun at the Mint and feel increasingly educated. This experience has also improved my academics in relation to my A level studies. For example, I learnt about the debasement of coinage under Henry VIII at the Mint and the issues this caused in Tudor England. I then went onto discuss this event in my Y12 progression exams as the topic came up. Therefore, not only did I learn lots of new things at the Mint, but I also built on previous knowledge that was relevant to my studies.

The Royal Mint Museum operates work experience placements on a bespoke basis. We are a small team with limited capacity, but if you would like to join us and find out more about working in heritage, collections, or numismatics, get in touch today.