My Name is Hannah Mather and I’m an emerging museum professional. I recently graduated with my MA in Museum Studies and have been working part time at Jarrow Hall as their Supervisor of Culture and Heritage. I’m also Chair of the North East Emerging Museum Professionals Group, a voluntary group which I founded back in […]
Volunteering plays a significant role in maintaining the heritage sector’s resilience and a week on, I am reflecting on the 2017 Museums Association Conference in relation to this matter. After 15 years working in galleries and museums, 11 of which have been at Rugby Art Gallery and Museum, volunteers have always played a part in […]
On the 10th November,Trowbridge Museum staff attended an excellent Volunteer Makers workshop run by Claire Sully, discovering how they could utilize a pioneering app to enable us to develop an effective strategic approach to volunteering. The software provides you with a digital platform which you then build upon to create a volunteer community which encompasses […]
Vicky Dawson explains how, through the organisation-wide adoption of Volunteer Makers, museums can achieve and evidence their core strategic aims of improving how they are run and the experience of their users. These two aims are cornerstones of Museum Accreditation, the national standard scheme for museums in which over 2,500 public museums of all sizes […]
I first saw the Corinium Volunteer Makers site when I was casually looking for volunteering opportunities in local museums. Most sites were singularly unhelpful in this search but the access to the Corinium Museum’s Volunteer Maker site was very easy. Once I started at the museum, I was bowled over by the welcome I received […]
Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums is a regional museum, art gallery and archives service which manages 9 museums and galleries across Tyneside and the Archives for Tyne and Wear. They have recently launched a new, creative, way to make volunteering with them much simpler and I love it! By clicking this link you can now register online to be […]
“My prediction is that 2017 might just be the year of micro-volunteering and data donation, with cheap technologies allowing everyone to volunteer from home for short and sweet periods of time, no matter how much time they have to give.” NESTA Around one in three of us volunteers in the UK. This ratio could be […]
Digital and social media makes it easy for volunteers to actively engage with their favourite museums, arts organisations and charities, while many more people are prepared to give short bursts of time rather than a longer term commitment to volunteering. Put the two together (digital and short bursts of volunteering activity) you have the rise of micro-volunteering. […]
Innovation foundation Nesta has predicted 2017 to be “the year of microvolunteering” – and more and more organisations are now using this flexible approach to 21st century volunteering. With National Microvolunteering Day coming up this Sunday, the topic is covered in an article in today’s Guardian – with some handy advice on what to think about when […]
A major report into the state of the museum sector shows mixed picture of rising visitor numbers but falling funding – with a shifting relationship between museums and their audiences, the digital revolution and a move towards socially-engaged practice shaping the sector’s future.
The Museum Association’s Museums in the UK Report 2017 shows that trends that led to the development of the Volunteer Makers approach are continuing to impact museums.