As today is Toddler Time day, our Volunteers’ Week post is by Louise Bell who helps out at this regular event for our youngest visitors… 

Four years ago, I moved to Reading. I didn’t know much about the place and didn’t have any friends in the area. I had previously lived and worked in a small, rural, north Bedfordshire village where I knew just about everyone, even just to say hello.

So, what does one do to meet people? Look for another job? Well I didn’t really want to start that right away, I wanted to get settled in our new house and support my husband in his new role.  Then, maybe look at working again in the future.

Our children were away at university, so no meeting mums in the playground, as I have done in the past (we have moved a lot over the years!).

I had never had the opportunity of going to university myself, so the institution was somewhat alien to me.  What was going on in all of those buildings, and just who were the people working, studying and visiting the campus on a daily basis?

Well the only way to find out was to join them.

So very early on, I discovered the University had a Museum of English Rural Life. What’s more, it actively involved members of the public in a large volunteer programme.  After checking out all the different opportunities that were on offer, there was one that suited me down to the ground – Toddler Time.

I had worked with young children for the last decade or more in our village school. I was missing those little people who grow and become the teenagers, students and adults of the future.  What a privilege it is to play a small part in their journey.

Louise helping some Toddler Time attendees create an extra-large picture!

Toddler Time meets once a week in the Museum (although just monthly at the moment, while the redevelopment works are going on) with the aim of introducing youngsters to life in rural England, past and present.  We sing some farm or animal songs and then move to a purpose-built studio for a craft-related activity, with something that the children can take home with them.  It can be tough getting something suitable for such young children each week but the adults enjoy helping.

Volunteering has given me a great insight to the many facets of the University and, in particular, the Museum of English Rural Life.  I have learned much and seen the very real passion that the staff have for their work. I have also enjoyed feeling part of the Museum community as a newcomer to the area.  Making friends with staff and other volunteers too has been a real privilege.

So, come along and get involved!

Today’s Volunteers’ Week post is by Shreeya & Rasmi, students from a local secondary school, who volunteered to help us brainstorm ideas for the new museum. They ranked different types of interactives, compiled a possible teenagers’ book club reading list and a list of national days related to the museum that we could highlight on social media…

We contributed to different elements regarding the new renovations occurring in the museum. It allowed us to hone our creativity and gave us the valuable opportunity to explore our ideas, for which we are very grateful. This process involved quite a lot of researching and brainstorming, alongside the ability to come to conclusions justified by the evidence in front of us. For example, with the brainstorming for ideas regarding the interactive activities for the new museum where we attempted to enlist as many new means of attracting both demographics; whilst still evaluating whether our ideas will be successful or not.

We started our volunteering on January the 13^th. We contributed one hour, every Wednesday for 16 weeks.

Although we enjoyed the whole volunteering experience, the activity we particularly enjoyed was  researching calendar dates relating to rural life as we got to acknowledge different dates such as “Kiss A Farmer Day”  we were once not aware of!

This volunteering experience gave us a platform to communicate our ideas which improved our interpersonal skills alongside providing us with an opportunity to further our potential. It also adds to our CV! It allowed us to broaden our horizons which hopefully will help us in our future.

This week is Volunteers’ Week and we are celebrating the wonderful work done by our volunteers and thanking them for all the hours and effort they put into making the museum the best it can possibly be.

To showcase our brilliant volunteers every day this week we will be posting blogs written by the volunteers themselves about what they do at the museum, why they volunteer and why they love it. Every day they will give you an insight into the integral work that volunteers carry out across the Univerity’s Museums and Collections in their own words; today’s volunteer is Sophie, who volunteers with our library team…

Since November, I have been working with Library Assistant Helen on various different collections and learning a lot through her willingness to answer questions and also her confidence to let me have a go on my own. I have been learning about lots of the different stages of book processing and it’s great to be able to see the books through from delivery to shelf.

There is a wide range of collections here and, with my love of theology and literature, I have found much that is very interesting. For the last few weeks I have been downloading and updating records for the Wizard of Oz collection which we are trying to get ready quickly as it’s already in use! I didn’t know that there were so many versions of the Wizard of Oz, some cheaply made with slightly creepy illustrations and others with beautifully drawn imaginative illustration, some pop-up, some film-oriented, and aimed at all different ages.

The wonderful thing about volunteering in Special Collections is the sheer diversity in the subjects it is possible to work on. Far from the famous and popular Wizard of Oz, I have also spent some time with the obscure life’s work of Anders Retzius whose beautiful, carefully written and drawn leather-bound book would interest those with a very specific focus on ‘myxine glutinosa’, or ‘hagfish’.

One of the Librarians, Liz, has also been giving short lessons on various elements of librarianship, the most recent being on the history of paper which was fascinating and informative, especially for those of us who were unaware of the mysteries of, for example, watermarks. For me, preparing to begin a Graduate Traineeship in Librarianship, working in Reading University’s Special Collections has given me a good introduction to the many facets of a complex career.

Today’s Volunteers’ Week post is by Lisa, who’s been volunteering at MERL since 2012…

I joined MERL as a Volunteer in 2012 in order to gain some experience in the museum sector. At the time I was studying for my BA and it was MERL that influenced me to study my MFA Fine Art at the University of Reading and I enrolled the following year.

The museum has provided many opportunities to assist at one-off events including the annual Village Fete and the Whiteknights Studio Trail. I have also been involved in longer-term projects, including Toddler Time and more recently the Astor Project, which involves cataloguing the records held in the ‘Papers of Nancy Astor‘ archive held in the University’s Special Collections. I spend 2-3 hours each week transferring notes from the index books to an Excel spreadsheet so that the archive, which dates from around the 1930s, will be stored in a digital format for improved access and searching. I’ve enjoyed taking part in this project as it has shown me how the Special Collections Library operates and how valuable documents are filed and preserved properly in the archive store.

I am interested in writing so my involvement in the archive has had a positive influence on the art practice that I have developed during my time as an MFA student at the University’s Art Department. All the Volunteers and Staff at MERL have been welcoming and supportive and it’s been great meeting people with similar interests as I continue to work towards an academic career within art.

A few months after starting as a volunteer I was offered the opportunity to work on the front desk at the weekend as a Relief Assistant. It’s been fantastic to work directly in the museum with its visitors and to see how much they value the museum as a place to return to regularly. I continue to volunteer at MERL because it is such a great resource and provides many opportunities, but also because it is a place that means something to its whole community. And the cakes aren’t bad either.

This week is Volunteers’ Week and we are celebrating the wonderful work done by our volunteers and thanking them for all the hours and effort they put into making the museum the best it can possibly be.

To showcase our brilliant volunteers every day this week we will be posting blogs written by the volunteers themselves about what they do at the museum, why they volunteer and why they love it. Every day they will give you an insight into the integral work that volunteers carry out across the Univerity’s Museums and Collections in their own words; today’s volunteer is Alessandra, an Erasmus trainee from Italy at the the Ure Museum…

Let’s start by saying that mine is a particular volunteering experience; I’m actually doing an Erasmus traineeship at the Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology, this means that I’m working at the museum all day every day and I’m doing lots of different things.

I started my traineeship in the middle of March and I’m going to finish it in June, three months that will give me an idea of what it’s like to work behind the scenes at a museum and of everything I need to know about the inner mechanisms of this particular workplace.

As I said I’m at the museum every day, some might think that it may be a bit boring, but that’s far from true! Even if this is a small museum there is never a dull moment and there are many things to do.

I help around in any way I can, so I get to spend time with the other volunteers doing archiving or other much needed tasks that are always interesting and sometimes a bit funny, like when we came across some very unusual Christmas cards where instead of reindeers and snowmen there was a drawing of some orientalising style pottery. I also have the opportunity to do some research work and handling ancient objects to try and figure out where, and when, they are from.

This is not my first experience as a volunteer; when I was in high school I used to volunteer at the local kindergarten twice a week so it’s no surprise that my favourite task so far was helping around on the school and family events held at the museum!

It’s always great to be able to see children being excited about history, mythology and archaeology. They remind me of myself when I was a little kid, enchanted by tales of Heracles or Achilles (to be honest I was also quite smitten by Telemachus). Maybe among the children that I met while volunteering at the Ure there are some that will discover they have a passion for history, art history and archaeology and really, that would be the best reward!

Assistant Volunteer Coordinator, Rhiannon Watkinson introduces this week’s celebration of volunteers at MERL…

At The Museum of English Rural Life we could not function without the hard work and dedication of our amazing volunteers. Around 120 volunteers ensure that the museum not only runs smoothly but is a place full of passion and friendly faces. In the past we have had volunteer tour guides, gardeners, archivists and social media whizzes. We have had volunteers who help with front of house, school sessions, our village fete and in our library. In short, volunteers permeate every aspect of our museum and we are all the better for this.

The Museum of English Rural Life is currently closed to the public during our major Heritage Lottery funded redevelopment project which has thrown up new challenges for our volunteers. There is no tour guiding to be done as the collection is packed away for safekeeping and no horticulture to offer as the site of our garden is now occupied by builders!

Our beautiful flower beds certainly brighten up the building site, but don’t worry, it’ll all be restored when work is completed in the garden this summer.

However, our volunteers have come up with new and unique ways to keep supporting the museum. They have thrown themselves into outreach by taking their play about the Berkshire Swing Riots to local libraries and history societies. They have worked through hours & hours of transcriptions for the archive team. They have even tried their hands at object handling (no pun intended) in preparation for the museum’s reopening. This involved learning how to hold pieces from the museum’s collection, how to facilitate visitors interacting with precious objects and researching a rural topic for an object handling session on everything from bodging to wattle hurdle making.

This year we are celebrating Volunteers’ Week with a party to thank our volunteers. There will be wine, fun and games as well as a chance for a good old natter with other volunteers and staff. We are also plunging our volunteers into the world of museums on social media with a blog post every day of Volunteers’ Week written by a different volunteer about their experience. We are looking forward to sharing the experiences of our volunteers and show the huge range of things that they get up to behind the scenes. We’re also going to do this by revealing the weird and wonderful contents of our office (and I’m not talking about the staff!)