Esther Amis-Hughes, Leeds Museums and Galleries In 2018 a wonderful opportunity stumbled into my lap – Tim Boardman from the Study Programme within Swarthmore Education Centre (a setting for 16-24 year olds with learning disabilities and additional support needs) was looking for placements for students. I had very little experience of working with autistic or neurodivergent young adults – which …
Jake’s Volunteering – with a tiny bit of support from Autism in Museums, Feb 2020
Volunteering at ‘Ludlow Museum and Resource Centre’ by Jake. In July 2018 I began working as a volunteer at Ludlow Museum and Resource Centre, cataloguing hundreds of finds onto a database called the Portable Antiquities Scheme. This taught me vital lessons in presentation, using photoshop and allowed me to develop my vocabulary when describing archaeological finds. This experience saw me …
Volunteering at ‘Devil’s Porridge Museum’ – Alastair’s story
I have been volunteering at Devil’s Porridge Museum for about 4 months now, along with 3-months of work experience I did back in 2016. I came back with ‘Employability Scotland’ to expand my work experience, gain more understanding in museum activities and improve my social skills with staff. Since returning I have tried to prove myself a cable (or at …
Ryan’s story, Brunel’s SS Great Britain
I first started volunteering at Brunel’s SS Great Britain as a Visitor Services Assistant back in December 2015. It feels like ages ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday. My co-volunteers remember me as a white ghost – I was shy and very quiet, due to how nervous I was, but that would all soon change! I started …
Week 9 – The end is just the beginning – Team CASPA
How wrong was I? I was worried that not all of Team CASPA would make it to the Museum of London Docklands to take part in the final piece of their work experience project – public engagement. In fact everyone turned up, all eight, supported by Sarah from CASPA. I can’t tell you what it felt like to see all …
Week 8 – Go on give it a go, public engagement for ‘newbies’, Team CASPA
I can’t believe I am writing about the last few weeks of our Team CASPA project. Tomorrow is our final day, when we will be leaving the Museum of London archive behind to visit the museums’ Docklands site and carry out a little public engagement. We will be sharing what we have learnt about Fulham Pottery over the last few …
Week 7 – Give us a job – Team CASPA
Volunteer Inclusion Projects (VIPs) are run regularly at the Museum of London Archive, but part of the challenge of working with Team CASPA, who are young autistic adults, is providing more of a work experience environment. Only 16% of autistic adults are in work, research from the National Autistic Society (NAS) has revealed this figure has remained the same for …
Week 5 – Sharing London’s History – Team CASPA
I have written a lot in the last few weeks about thoughts and feelings. This is all well and good but sometimes you need to focus on the work too! As I have mentioned at the start of these blogs (and no doubt will do again) this volunteer inclusion project is carrying out ‘real work’. We are making material in …
Week 4 – Recalling the first time – Team CASPA
It is a big commitment blogging each week of a project and sometimes I wonder why I do it. The first time I blogged a project was right at the start of my volunteering at the Museum of London. For 9 weeks I wrote about a volunteering inclusion project that saw me repacking archaeology from a Roman villa just down …
Week 3 – Can you be too supportive? – Team CASPA
One of the disadvantages of volunteering in different roles at different museums is you sometimes get a clash of dates. Week 3 of Team CASPA finds me heading off to South London for an Access Advisory Group meeting at the Horniman Museum rather than heading to the Museum of London archive. I am anxious about how Team CASPA are getting …
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