jennifer katherine @jenkshields@witches.town

We submit feedback in the form of a similar structure that's the same amount of hours, with comms part time, a 1 day a week sponsorship position, and our two weekend supervisors - one is our designer and could do design on her weekend shifts as well as one day a fortnight. They say theyve read and appreciate the constructive feedback

In end of September/early November they inform us of their proposal to restructure; new is one director/curator, one gallery manager (my job), one full time comms/marketing/design/AND sponsorship (current comms is part time because she has a young kid; they know this) and a weekend supervisor

Apparently that's enough because it's temporary; this was September, it's now Jan.

They agree to bring on the other weekend supervisor as programming support one day a week, and the designer a full day a week as well, alongside one of them managing sponsorship one day a week. 3 days for the lost 8 per week

After hitting breaking point like 5 times we make a formal letter to the board asking to discuss staff health and safety and demanding action. We go to the board meeting, they let us sit there for an hour before they kick us out to talk about it

We managed to bring on one of our weekend supervisors to help under the guise of being a contractor designer (she did mostly design but also helped with other stuff a lot). Board have still not done anything at this point. The whole remaining team are fucking broken. This is like, only august last year

The board also does not replace the business development director, so we're down a part time and full time staff member, or eight days worth of capacity

In this same period of time my suspected fibro has worsened into a state where after five years of trying my doctor formally diagnoses it, I end up taking a week's leave in the mountains because I'm about to break down

Few months later, the stress has caused health problems for our business development director, her doctor gets her to take two weeks leave, she comes back and resigns because she's developed/the stress has triggered a condition really similar to my fibromyalgia

She resigned (was encouraged to leave by the board) and was not replaced. Board brought on our pt curator to full time, we only lost 3 days of staff hours & capacity

As a result, we lost a LOT of money and ended the financial year with a half mil deficit, which is HUGE for a gallery like ours

(Dang, this app doesn't carry forward cws, sorry)

Throughout the exhibition she lied to the board about how much revenue we were gonna make back - I was giving her updates on attendance, ticket sales, and merchandise and she was inflating them

Thing is, David Shrigley is not really nz humour. Definitely not chch humour. She was expecting lines out the door on opening day, it ended up being not even our highest visited exhibition

So I started there a little over a year ago, with a team of 3 full time, 2 part time, 1 weekends. My first project was this huge exhibition by David Shrigley - expensive but our director was sure it would pay off through ticket sales (we're usually free) and HUGE public interest

Alright I need to talk about the work stuff. It's confidential but there's a zero chance of this getting back to them and I need to get it out and if anyone has comments or just "wow that sucks" it'd be appreciated. I'll cw it from here on out; it's not really triggering I guess just long and stressful and about poor management

Flights are paid, I'd probs be in an office all day... But...

It's like a passion project but also the last time I was there for literally 12 hours, five of them asleep, I still managed to come literally face to face with trauma

I got asked to be on a community advisory group for a big trans health survey but it involves having to go to a city that I literally still have nightmares about. Like the whole ten years I lived there were traumatic

Ohhhh there is just too much information coming at me right now

It's difficult to think about properly bc I think my goals back then were... Undefined and also there's a lotta tricky memory stuff but I think I'd never thought I'd look like this or be this happy about my body so it's a nice thing https://witches.town/media/JbW6QNK18DZIW-XkVJo