Volunteering at Barnsley Museums continues to go from strength to strength, since our last blog about digital volunteering, we have seen the volunteer team grow and new ways to volunteer being offered. Our Programme Development Manager for volunteering, Ben Marsh shares his view on what has happened since and how Barnsley Museums is doing what it can to keep volunteers engaged.

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Since our last blog one of the biggest changes was putting into action the Volunteer Futures funding from Arts Council England. This fund has volunteers at its heart and its ambition is to find ways for as many different people to get involved as possible. It has enabled us to recruit additional volunteer coordinators, who have then created our most flexible volunteer offer to date. At a time when NCVO’s ‘Time Well Spent 2023’ indicates a national decline in volunteering,  ‘UK population who volunteered at least once a month in 2021/22 was 16%, a decline from about 23% in 2019/20’, this flexibility is key.

Young people remain a huge part of our offer, with college work placements across our sites, students studying photography, art and landscape management have all found ways to develop their skills with us. New partnerships with Chilypep, Robert Ogden School and Springwell Academy have seen us offer ‘have a go’ sessions, providing young people hands on skills and learning outside of formal settings and our continued relationship with award winning Opening Doors supports a group of young adults all with additional learning and physical health needs to volunteer on site.

Volunteers at Worsbrough Mill (c)Tim Cleasby

Virtual volunteering is here to stay, Remotely Digital has grown and gone global, with volunteers connecting to us from Romania, Australia and the USA and closer to home Leeds, Edinburgh and Coventry, again this is us adapting to the needs of volunteers, NCVO believe 31% of volunteers over the last 12 months volunteered online or by phone. The popularity of Remotely Digital though also reflects the popularity of Barnsley Archives, with volunteers transcribing, researching and cataloguing a range of fascinating documents, maps and diaries from across the borough.

Over 5,000 hours were given to our green spaces in 2022, volunteers continue to help look after our natural environment, coming together rain or shine and making these areas more accessible and welcoming to all.

We relaunched our offer for Cannon Hall Museum and 12 volunteers have already signed up, they are in the house, helping to tell the story welcome to visitors. This will complement the existing and established garden volunteering, which sees many get involved in the upkeep of the parkland and historic walled garden.

We have delivered a range of micro and one-off opportunities, giving people the chance to have impact, connect to our places and with no pressure of further time commitment. This has included a number of employer supported volunteer days from businesses such as NatWest, Barnsley Council and GXO logistics.

‘Good opportunity to be outside with colleagues in a relaxed learning environment. Great to see this type of work being carried out locally – sustainable activity.’

We are challenging ourselves to take opportunities when they present to us, we have trialled volunteering with our collections team, drawing on the specific skills of two volunteer who have worked on a project looking at our fabric and textiles collections, the results have been incredible and helped us rediscover what we have in our stores.

We have a lot to be positive about with our volunteering, there is interest in being involved across all we do. Numbers appear to be on the rise and while not at pre pandemic levels we have seen growth year on year and in just April to June 2023 we saw 148 volunteers recruited, from one off opportunities to regular attendees and an estimated 11,800 hours of volunteer time given. Increased flexibility is allowing more people to be involved, new roles to be created and we continue to see volunteers stay with us and have positive experiences that impact them.

‘A super welcoming and inclusive environment, lots of opportunities to learn and ask questions. Couldn’t recommend volunteering here more.’

Want to get involved? Message us at museumvolunteering@barnsley.gov.uk and see what we can offer.

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