Falmouth Art Gallery with Volunteer Makers recognised in Cornish award for its innovation

Volunteer Makers is becoming used to getting great feedback from partner organisations and users, but it is always pleasing to be recognised by external judges.

We are therefore very proud to announce that Love Falmouth Volunteers has been recognised for its use of the Volunteer Makers platform by Falmouth Art Gallery and partner organisations.  Love Falmouth Volunteers was Highly Commended in the Innovation category of the Cornwall Heritage Awards.

The Gallery also won awards for Audience Initiative and Cornish Heritage.

The awards were presented by South West Museum Development in collaboration with Cornwall Museums Partnership. They come with a cash prize, courtesy of the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Henrietta Boex, Director of Falmouth Cultural Services, commented: “There are so many wonderful projects happening in Cornwall’s museums and it is encouraging to see all of these achievements being recognised and celebrated.”

Volunteer Makers model and tech enables the Gallery and other cultural bodies involved to grow, manage and inspire a volunteer and supporter community by blending volunteering with public participation through effective digital engagement.  The small team behind Love Famouth Volunteers is led by Tamsin Bough, who commented:

“We were really keen to implement the Volunteer Makers initiative after an enthusiastic workshop with Claire. We had recently started a new collaboration across our different cultural services venues and wanted to change the way we engaged with our visitors and potential volunteers. Lovefalmouth volunteers evolved from an already successful #lovefalmouth campaign.

We ‘soft’ launched our platform last year and within a few months have reached over 80 new sign ups. We have been pleased with the positive response and look forward to developing our digital engagement offer over the coming months.”

Volunteer Makers’ Claire Sully said: “Falmouth Art Gallery ‘got’ the concept straight away, and it is great to see how enthusiastic they have been in using Volunteer Makers – work that has now been recognised with this award.”