If you know the Fearless album from Lover and Travis Kelce from Calvin Harris then the Victoria & Albert Museum wants you.
A “Taylor Swift superfan adviser” with expertise in the “culture and artisanry” surrounding the world’s most popular singer is being recruited by the museum to help “inform future exhibitions”.
In order to avoid millions of applications from around the world, however, it said it was only looking for a UK-based Swiftie.
The Swift “superfan” role is one of nine being created by the museum, which said it had already recruited experts in Toby jugs, gorpcore, Lego and the Pokémon media franchise. It has begun seeking “grassroots experts” in Crocs footwear, the art form drag, the tufting textile technique, emojis and Swift.
Tristram Hunt, the museum’s director, said the advisory roles would help it to “learn more about the design stories that are relevant to our audiences today”.
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• What is the future for our museums?
The recruitment of a Swiftie — one of the most common cultural identities among the world’s youth at present — illustrates the drive among museums to lure young audiences.
The V&A’s near neighbour and rival, the Design Museum, is preparing to host a Barbie exhibition this summer, and the V&A spent three years transforming its Museum of Childhood in east London to the Young V&A complete with Minecraft and Manga.
It has also launched the website “mused”, for those aged ten to 14 among Generation Alpha, with the hope of garnering “trends insights” into how “young people engage with contemporary culture”.
The museum, which brands itself the world’s leading museum of art, design and performance, said it wanted to “speak with UK-based Swifties in the run-up to her European tour”.
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The American singer, 34, is due to perform in Edinburgh, Liverpool, Cardiff and London in June and August.
While millions will have encyclopaedic knowledge of Swift’s musical career from her 2006 debut album onwards — not to mention her social scene encompassing the Scottish DJ and producer Harris and the American football star Kelce — the museum said it was after deeper knowledge. It was “looking for insights into the culture of the fandom, and artisanry around handmade signs, friendship bracelets and Taylor Swift memorabilia”.
It said the nine successful superfans covering the “hyper-niche” subjects would have to be over 18 and would be paid a set rate per session.
Its advert says that “whilst acting as cultural trendspotters on what to collect next”, the museum wanted to hear from those with a “hyper niche interest” and why it was important to the history of art and design and future of creativity.
The museum said this week: “Currently we’ve got no plans to host a Taylor Swift exhibition at the V&A or to collect any Taylor-related items.”
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One of the superfans already recruited said it was an “added bonus” being paid to indulge his love of the “quintessentially English” Toby jugs.
“I consider myself extremely fortunate to have been able to turn my love of collecting early English Toby jugs into my full-time job,” Bob Moores said, adding that he had fallen in love with the Lord Rodney Toby jug from the museum’s Willett collection.
Hannah da Silva was recruited as the museum’s gorpcore superfan adviser after setting up an online community, GorpGirl, to showcase women wearing the latest technical outdoor clothing, often in front of wilderness backdrops.
Gorpcore — a term coined in 2017 and inspired by the trail food phrase “good ol’ raisins and peanuts” — tends now to refer to the merging of the fashionable with functional, resulting in puffer jackets, trainers and collaborations between Gucci and The North Face.
She said she had been inspired by the museum’s fashion collections and learning “more about the history of women in sports and how the garments we wear have shifted over time”.
