Engaging student volunteers

• Creating a student volunteering webpage – with opportunities for young people
• Advertising through word of mouth using existing students
• Advertising to secondary schools
• Developing small projects that were appropriate to the age of the students and achievable within the time-frame
• Talking to young people to find the sort of projects they would like to be involved in
• Developing projects that involve group work, but also individual tasks
• Allocating time to develop the programme and time to supervise projects and participants
• Designating two days a week for students to come in. We chose 4-5pm on a Thursday and Friday

Specific projects we developed included:

• Developing and curating a student volunteering page on the museum website
• Picking ‘unseen’ objects in the collection, researching these and writing articles for the website and content for social media
• Creating an interactive touchscreen display to be placed in the museum gallery
• Creating a children’s trail
• Developing ideas for family craft activities and making examples

• To engage a greater number of under 25s with the museum
• To offer work experience and skills development opportunities
• To inspire the next generation to become involved in museums, archaeology and history
• To increase our presence within local secondary schools
• To attract more family audiences

• Made a list of projects that staff members would like to do, but did not have capacity themselves
• Focused on suitable projects that would work within the three to six month time frame for DoE volunteering
• Allocated students to certain projects – depending on existing abilities and skills they wanted to develop
• Produced a weekly timetable for each student, so they knew what they were working on each week (allowing for flexibility!)
• Put students into groups, making sure they were alongside people they could work with

Craft activity devised by students

• Fourteen students have completed DoE through the museum in the last two years
• Nine have stayed on as regular volunteers after completing their award
• Two interactive touchscreens produced for the museum
• Hundreds of social media engagements through posts produced by participants – including developing content for #MusMemeDay, which was far beyond our understanding!

Social media project devised by students

• Young people feeling they have ownership over their work – they have their name on something that is being used by our visitors
• Participants considering pursuing archaeology, history and museums studies
• Many students continuing to volunteer, becoming a valuable resource
• Families of volunteers engaging with the museum
• Lovely buzz in the museum offices when the students are here
• Young people are able to offer a different input and viewpoint on museum planning and programming
• Many are keen to create and take part in a museum youth panel in the coming years

• Allow staff time for developing and running the programme – in order to be successful a relationship needs to be built with participants
• Allow time to keep participants focused, particularly if they are working with friends

• Digital is a great way to engage young volunteers – many of them are more tech-savvy than museum staff. Utilise them, particularly on social media.

• Dedicate time to sit down and consider possible projects that young people can work on before recruiting
• Advertise with the DoE website or contact local secondary schools
• Make sure your safeguarding policies and procedures are up to date
• Allocate the staff time for developing and maintaining the programme
• Talk to young people about what they want to do

Nicola Trowell
Projects Officer
01380 727369
[email protected]