Hunter Living Histories

What Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen Nightmares Can Teach Us About GLAM.

Lightning Talk. Delivered at GLAMSLAM 2024 at the Australian National Maritime Museum in partnership with the Australian Centre for Public History by Gionni Di Gravio OAM, University Archivist, University of Newcastle (Australia)

Introduction

To the Audience:

Who loves Gordon Ramsay?

Who loves swearing?

At the count of three, yell out your favourite swear word at the top of your voices!

[Audience swears in okay, yet mediocre style (by Gordon Ramsay standards)]

Not good enough. Try again. [Audience swears loudly] Very good.

Now we’re cooking!

Binge Watching Gordon Ramsay over the Christmas Break

Over the Christmas break I binge watched a host of free to air Gordon Ramsay shows on YouTube including his Hell’s Kitchen, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and Gordon Ramsay’s 24 Hours to Hell & Back. The more I watched, the more I could see a metaphor and lessons for our work across GLAM (i.e. Galleries, Libraries, Archives & Museums).

Isn’t the serving of a meal, a metaphor for the way we serve up research materials to people in our reading rooms and public spaces? Each of his shows begins with him visiting the restaurant, to experience the outside of the place, the entrance and inside decor, the vibe, the way he his greeted by the staff, and made to feel welcome, the menu and offerings. He then orders a series of dishes, and from that point experiences the taste, and it generally all  goes belly up. What happens next?

Generally, it breaks down into four areas:

1. The Storage Areas
2. The Preparation Areas
3. The “Team”
4. Enter the Public: “The Serving of the Meal”

 

1. The Storage Areas

Gordon Ramsay visits where the the food is stored; the store room and refrigerators, and it is here that he uncovers the true horrors. Food that is mouldy, that has gone off and rancid, incorrectly stored, incorrectly labelled or not labelled at all, cooked meat stored with uncooked meat, the list of abominations go on and on.

We need to ask ourselves, are our GLAM Storage Areas:

• Safe and Ergonomic?
• Temp/Relative Humidity Environmentally Controlled?
• Are they Data Logged?
• Are they Clean?
• Are the free of pests?
• De-Humidified?
• Are they Culturally Safe?
• Do you provide the best conditions for each format?
• Is there a De-Contamination area?
• Is there a re-frigerated space for AV/Magnetic Tape/Film?
• Are Your Storage Areas Fit for Purpose?
• Are they separated from staff areas?
• Is there space to expand?
• Does your institution have plans that you are working towards?

2. The Preparation Areas

What about the preparation areas, where the staff actually do the physical work of preparing the materials for safe storage custody and future public access?

We need to ask ourselves, are our GLAM Preparation Areas:

• Adequate for the work that is being conducted?
• Office spaces for general queries, searching through boxes?
• Enough room to undertake the cleaning, examination, repairs and restoration of items?
• Enough ergonomic space for the cataloguing of books, archives, museum objects and art works?
• Is there sufficient space for Exhibition preparation works?
• Has institutional space planning consulted with the GLAM professionals in what they need to undertake their duties and work properly and professionally.

3. The “Team”

Gordon Ramsay spends much of his time trying to understand the dynamic between the kitchen staff, the managers and the owners of the restaurants. It is here that the real frustrations emerge, as interpersonal relationships come to the fore, and he has to push through intransigence, arrogance, ignorance, rudeness, incompetence to get to the heart of what’s hindering the team and its people.

We need to ask ourselves, are our GLAM Teams:

• Professionally qualified and educated?
• Trained for the tasks?
• Happy, Passionate & Inspired? Or burnt out?
• Besieged with too many cooks?
• Micromanaged?
• Overrun with managerialists with no idea?
• Psycho-Social harmed?
• Supportive of one another?

4. Serving the Meal

Gordon Ramsay then introduces the owners, managers and kitchen staff to the new make over; painting, new signage, new decor, decorations, new menu and a promotional campaign to involve the local community to be part of the re-brand and re-launch. He invariably always advises them to get out and see what the local community needs, or is missing. Use local and seasonal produce, reduce the number of options, and keep it all fresh and wonderful and the people coming back for more.

We need to ask ourselves: Are our GLAM “Meals”:

• “Serving the Meal” in wonderful and inspired surroundings, with welcoming staff?
• Provided in safe spaces? Culturally safe? Cultural safety should be viewed in a similar way to serving people with a nut allergy. Aboriginal/First Nations people deserve to be warned about the content and context of what is held and how we describe it.
• Mobility sensitive for “People With Abilities”?
• Do we offer Digital options? Is the context there? To understand the physical?
• Is the “Menu” too large? Are we trying to do too many things?
• Go local?
• Relationship with community?
• Fresh, and inspired?
• Striving for a standard? Are we Michelin? Café? Take Away?
• Perishability? The difference is that we aim to retard the effect of time and degradation on our GLAM materials in the way we store and conserve them. Therefore we cannot always throw out items simply because they don’t fit in with today’s paradigms and ethics. The virtues of one age become the vices of the next. So we have to be very careful when making decision of de-accessioning or disposal based upon modern trends.

 

Thanks

Thanks to the Muses  (Including Chef Gordon Ramsay)
Illustrations generated by of Google Gemini AI
Presentation by Gionni Di Gravio, University Archivist University of Newcastle (Australia)