Event Support Volunteer, Stourbridge Glass Museum

The museum hosts various events at the museum such as evening events at the museum, tunnel tours and heritage walking tours in the area.

Also participating the external events to promote the museum. (Previously the museum had a stall at the event on Black Country Day in Halesowen and Visit Dudley Promotion Event at the visitor centre of Dudley Canal Trust.)

This role will be supporting the events as follows:

• Stewarding the tunnel tours and heritage walking tours
• Greeting people at the museum stall at external events
• Serving drinks, being at the reception and tiding up after evening events.

Event Volunteer, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

This year the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust has some exciting events taking place and we would like you to help the museum create a wonderful experience for the visitors of the Shakespeare family homes, and get the chance to enjoy the events yourself.

What are the events?
• Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations – April
• Big Green Day – June
• Jan Kochanowski Picnic – June
• Odd Socks Theatre Performances – July
• Heritage Open Days – September
• Apple Picking Days – October

What are skills the museum are looking for?
• Good people skills with the ability to talk confidently to both individuals and small groups
• The ability to remain calm in a busy environment
• The ability to make people feel welcomed and valued
• The ability to be practical and down to earth helping to facilitate the smooth running of the event
• Good team work and good communication skills
• An open mind

Apply now: https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/support-us/volunteer/how-apply/

Learning Activity Volunteer, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

Learning Activity Volunteers assist in running the high quality informal learning activities across the sites. This includes setting up and packing away the informal learning spaces, engaging visitors with the activities on offer, providing visitors with information about current and future activities and events, and encouraging them to provide feedback.

Skills we are looking for:
• Experience of, or an interest in, working with children
• A desire to bring Shakespeare and his family homes to life for visitors
• Good people skills with the ability to talk confidently to both individuals and groups from different age groups, varying backgrounds and with a range of needs. If volunteers can do this in a second language, even better!
• Enthusiasm for delivering craft-based or practical learning activities
• Willingness to learn and share with visitors the points of interest at the Shakespeare family homes
• Willingness to undergo training in facilitation, working with families, customer service, access issues and health and safety as appropriate
• Ability to ensure health and safety guidelines are followed and be responsible for your own health and safety
• Volunteers may be asked to undertake a DBS check as part of this role

Pop Up Museum/Paint Your Own Pottery Volunteer Assistant, Museum of Royal Worcester

The Museum of Royal Worcester is an independent museum and charitable trust that cares for and connects people with the largest collection of Worcester porcelain in the world, together with our unique factory and design archive, in the place where it was made. They aim to inspire, surprise and delight people across the world with Worcester’s porcelain heritage, sharing this with future generations from the heart of Worcester.

The Museum is located in historic premises in Severn Street adjacent to the regenerated Royal Porcelain Works complex and minutes from the centre of Worcester and cathedral. They are on walking and cycle routes, and can be accessed by public transport.

The Pop-up Museum is a brightly coloured beautifully designed gazebo, which allows the museum to take creative heritage engagement activities out into local communities, such as shopping centres, schools, festivals, community centres and care homes. Museum of Royal Worcester also have a new ceramic studio for Paint-Your-Own-Pottery activities. They are a small friendly team of staff supported by around 25 volunteers who provide a warm welcome to a wide range of visitors, supporting group visits and experiences, admin and marketing support, behind the scenes research and delivery of their programme of events and creative workshops.

Role Purpose:

To support staff with creative heritage outreach and engagement activities via our new Pop-Up Museum, and Paint-Your-Own-Pottery(PYOP) hands-on activity. Assisting with the preparation and delivery of creative activities for families, adults and groups. Acting as an ambassador for the Museum, welcoming and engaging audiences with activities and our handling collection. Assisting with monitoring visitor numbers and surveys and providing administrative and practical support tasks. At times the role will support these activities off-site as part of Museum outreach and promotion, especially with the Pop-up Museum; PYOP is mainly delivered on-site in the Museum’s Ceramic Studio. This is a flexible role in terms of what you would like to take on and there is a flexible time commitment.

Main duties and responsibilities

With the support of Museum staff:

• Greet and welcome visitors and public to the Pop Up Museum and PYOP events and activities, inviting and enabling them to take part, orienting them to activities, and facilities
• Support the preparation, set up and take down of events and activities – setting up and tidying away of pop-up gazebo, chairs, tables and other creative equipment
• Assist the set-up, running and tidying away of PYOP sessions, including restocking shelves and equipment, washing brushes and palettes, etc; under supervision glazing items, packing kiln, packing fired items for postage, etc
• Assist with preparation of materials and delivery of hands-on outreach creative activities for families, adults and educational/social/community groups
• Be an advocate for the Museum at on and off-site events, telling people more about its history, collections and visitor offer
• Take payment using a mobile payment device for PYOP, refreshments, activities, retail items offered via the Pop-Up Museum
• Support with preparation and serving light refreshments to PYOP customers in the Ceramic Studio
• Accurately record numbers at events and engaged in activities, including PYOP customer data for order collection/postage

Useful skills and experience:

• Experience of volunteering or working with people and providing customer service
• Experience of supporting events or group activities
• Interest in/experience of art and craft activities, art and/or ceramic techniques
• Administrative or data entry experience

Personal qualities: This role would suit a friendly and approachable individual who enjoys meeting new people and trying new things. You will have good communication skills and enjoy working as part of a team. You will meet with a member of staff from the Museum to discuss elements of the role agreeing the aspects most suited to you. Enthusiasm for creative artistic and craft activities would support the delivery of this role.

Location: This role is based both at the Museum of Royal Worcester and, by prior arrangement, off-site as an ambassador at other locations and events

Commitment: This role is very flexible from a few hours occasionally to more frequent volunteering. Group visits are busier March to October but do take place across the year.

Term: It is an ongoing role

Reporting to: You will be managed by the Museum Director Sophie Heath with day-to-day supervision from Community Outreach and Engagement Officer.

Why Volunteer?

You will gain experience in working with the public and enabling a wide range of events and activities. There will be the opportunity to learn new skills. You will become part of a small, friendly team who are passionate about Worcester porcelain and engaging our visitors. There will be scope to learn and develop knowledge about areas of the collection or Museum’s work that you are interested in.

Training and Development: a full site induction will be provided and information to learn about the Museum and collections. Events and activities support training will be by guidance and shadowing of the staff team. Specific training on PYOP, Pop-Up creative and artistic activities, audience data gathering and working off-site etc will be provided as required, sometimes in-house and sometimes through external training providers.

If you are interested in this volunteer role or have any further questions about volunteering with us please get in touch:

Phone – 01905 21247

Email – info@museumofroyalworcester.org

Events Volunteer, The Lace Guild Museum

The Lace Guild Museum is a small independent accredited Museum run entirely by volunteers, housed in a detached Edwardian building in the heart of the Stourbridge Glass Quarter.

It is a specialist museum with a large collection of lace and lace related artefacts. The Museum collects both antique and contemporary lace. The Lace Guild CIO, a membership organisation and registered Education Charity, was founded nearly 50 years ago to encourage the up take and further knowledge about this fascinating heritage craft.

Volunteers are needed across the range of their activities. Knowledge of lace and lacemaking is not essential,but an interest in textiles helps. They need volunteers in a range of our activities including meeting and greeting visitors to the building, helping other volunteers with the museum, library and archive, photographing the collection and archive, light gardening duties to keep the small garden neat and tidy as well as helping with the sales of donated second hand items and publications.

Events volunteers will

• Assist in the preparation of display materials
• Set up and remove display materials at the event venue in a timely manner
• Be a good ambassador for the Guild and lacemaking
• Organise the return of merchandise and display materials to the Hollies
• Comply with the Lace Guild CIO’s relevant Policies and Procedures
• Represent the professional standards of the charity

Contact www.laceguild.org

Event and Activities Assistant, Brampton Museum

Roles and responsibilities

• Provide a warm welcome to the museum.
• Check event tickets and/or tick names off a guest list.
• Provide directions to the café, toilets, event space etc.
• Hand out leaflets or comment cards.
• Assist with room set up and washing up and tidying up during and after the event
• Follow any Covid restrictions or other health and safety guidance that may be in place

This role would be suitable for someone who enjoys meeting new people and is friendly and polite. They will need to be comfortable working as part of a team and working on their own with minimal supervision. The role is mostly based within the museum but may involve some outdoor work if events take place in the park.

Dialect and Heritage Project – Events Assistant, Avoncroft Museum

Are you interested in helping with public engagement and activities relating to dialect and social history?

Avoncroft Museum is one of five partner museums working with the University of Leeds on the Dialect and Heritage Project to explore and record the richness of dialect around England and how it may have changed over the last 70 years.

What the role will entail: Assisting the Dialect and Heritage Project Engagement Officer in running ‘Dialect Roadshow’ events, at Avoncroft Museum and/or local fairs and shows around the West Midlands region. Volunteers will help the Engagement Officer with setting up a gazebo and various activities relating to dialect in the region and they will help to engage visitors through informal conversation and activities relating to dialect and the words we use. Several of these events may take place at weekends.

Who will this role suit? The Events Assistant volunteering role would suit volunteers who:

• Are confident, friendly and have good verbal communication skills in English
• Enjoy meeting and talking to new people of all backgrounds
• Are reliable and can commit to supporting the Engagement Officer with at least 2 events this summer/autumn
• Are willing to develop new skills and commit to training for the role
• (desirable) Have a full driving licence and access to own transport preferred but not essential

Skills, training and support:

Role-specific training may include: an introduction to dialect, locally and nationally; how to engage people with dialect and heritage; how to use engagement materials and activities to encourage people to contribute their dialect at events; how to contribute dialect to the research online; health and safety.

Volunteers will be able to claim travel and subsistence expenses.

Museum Volunteers, Claymills Victorian Pumping Station

Claymills Pumping Engine Trust operates a unique working steam museum – Claymills Victorian Pumping Station – and, as such, cares for a wide range of operational steam machinery and ancillary equipment from 1885 onwards used in the pumping station, and also an extensive archive including original documentation and other records, including photographs. Claymills Victorian Pumping Station is an Accredited Museum and aims to care for and conserve its collections to professional standards. Claymills is entirely volunteer-led and has no employees.

Claymills is always seeking volunteers to support the museum – everything from engineering to catering, from front-of-house to tour guides, from administration to gardening, from catering to cleaning. If you have a skill, Claymills can probably use it!