Wellcome’s Dirtbusters: Behind the scenes with the people who keep us clean

So often the unsung heroes of organisations such as ours, the cleaning team at the Wellcome Trust and Collection are in fact a vital part of our whole enterprise. The buildings are vast and have high numbers of visitors; they also have specialist requirements (and even a ghost, apparently!), so keeping us dirt free is quite an undertaking. It seemed obvious to go behind the scenes and find out more about this as part of our current Dirt themed activities.

So I took my camera, followed Ashley and Alejandro around the galleries while they cleaned up the weekend’s mess, and interviewed them alongside Vicki Escobar, who manages the contract for Strand. I was absolutely amazed at the sheer scale of the operation. It requires everything from window cleaners to abseilers, and the film took me to parts of the building I had never seen before.