Volunteers…just want to have fun!

Jan Horrell,Museum and Heritage Consultant

Volunteers and staff – ready to rock at Helston Museum!

Jan Horrell, Museum and Heritage Consultant

‘Volunteering’ – getting something done which needs doing!

• My thanks for the inspiration for this presentation go particularly to museum volunteers in Cornwall who you will see pictured in many of the slides.

• Helston Museum combine volunteering with community engagement with volunteers running a sewing bee; ice cream soda stall; and arranging the museum for a fifties Museum at Night event

Jan Horrell, Museum and Heritage Consultant

Jan Horrell, Museum and Heritage Consultant

Community engagement becomes volunteering – do something interesting

• Back to Helston Museum where inspired by their social history exhinition centred on the 1950s and their costume collection – lots of people offered to help the evening along

• Previous events – a Victorian magic evening, a literature festival – everyone wants to know what is next

• Micro-volunteering for people who can give your museum a short amount of time

Jan Horrell, Museum and Heritage Consultant

Choosing to volunteer

Jan Horrell, Museum and Heritage Consultant

Competing for leisure time

• Increasing museums will compete to be the leisure activity of choice for all ages

• People want to be part of something• This is my volunteering activity - across the

world nearly 70,000 people line up in a local park or open space to run 3 miles that is timed each week. Last week 6,329 volunteers enabled these events to take place because it is fun – and they are part of the Parkrun family.

Jan Horrell, Museum and Heritage Consultant

Jan Horrell, Museum and Heritage Consultant

Microvolunteering! – young people; families; working people need it

• Do you have short term opportunities to whet the appetite?

• Mounts Bay Academy TakeOver at Penlee House and Mullion School at Helston Museum could be the next volunteers

• Did they have fun?

Jan Horrell, Museum and Heritage Consultant

Jan Horrell, Museum and Heritage Consultant

Be ready to enthuse!

• At any time members of your community could become volunteers – have projects ready.

• Saltash Heritage – have a large group of supporters – anyone is welcome and lead volunteers keep a list of possible projects to enable them to involve new volunteers when they walk through the door.

• Volunteering is fun first to them – and everyone’s skills are employed.

Jan Horrell, Museum and Heritage Consultant

Jan Horrell, Museum and Heritage Consultant

And from around the country… plus choosing family time with volunteering

• Beginning volunteering at Beaulieu Motor Museum, as a researcher for the National Motor Museum Trust’s project, Caravans & Charabancs – Leisure Motoring After the First World War, this volunteer has become the expert and is enthusiastically on the road across the New Forest.

• English Heritage wanted to give a shout for their volunteer divers – they always look as though they are on holiday.

• Is it a choice between family time or volunteering? – Combine the two! Photos from Can I bring Ivy one mum’s blog about getting involved (and trying to get sometime done) with a small child in tow.