Guest blog by Hannah Rose Mather – How much time do you have?

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 a volunteer.

Once registered you can browse their listed volunteer roles or challenges and choose to accept those which appeal to you. The sign up is simple and you can get started straight away.

The outreach for this is genius, it means that you can choose how much time you want to give and this can be anything from as little as a minute, an hour or a day as well as signing up to do regular volunteer work. One of the most recent challenges I accepted was taking a photo of something I enjoyed on my visit to one of their museums, I then simply had to share it on social media. I completed this challenge after finding that I enjoyed quite a few things from my visit to the Discovery Museum and shared it on Twitter.

This was a great visit and I wouldn’t expect anything less. However, the beauty of this new approach to volunteering means that you don’t even need physical access to a site in order to do some of these challenges. We live in a digital age and museums certainly know it, TWAM have created a great way to explore their collections from home.

You can “Dive” into their collections via their collections dive. This allows you to find things you probably didn’t even know existed and when you find something you like, you can share it with your friends on social media!

Volunteering can make a real difference not only to the organization which you are supporting but it can also have a positive impact on your own life. I know from my own experience how rewarding it can be to give a little. It’s a great way to fill those gaps in your work experience and gain skills. It will also make you stand out to employers as it looks great on a CV.

The Arts and Culture sector are always welcoming volunteers with a diverse skill range to work towards their own missions and vision.