My Life as a Starving (not literally, don't worry mum) Volunteer

So much of the field that I want to go into is experience-based; while the material that I am learning in my classes is important, it is also essential that I start volunteering with community arts organizations and museum education departments. I have spent the first month of my time in London e-mailing galleries and museums my CV and inquiring about volunteering/internship opportunities. Unfortunately, at the level of experience and training that I am at right now the majority of opportunities are unpaid, but I have learned a lot more about paid positions that I will hopefully be able to start applying for after my masters and volunteering experiences. Currently I am volunteering at the South London Gallery on Sunday afternoons for their “Sunday Spot” family workshops based on the gallery exhibition. I was really unsure of how this volunteering would go, but I learned so much from my first session volunteering. The workshop leaders are also young and are very interested in getting my feedback and having me involved in the ongoing development of the project. The Sunday Spot works as a drop-in workshop in which activities are set up for families to interact in to create art and develop imaginative play. In comparison to other workshops that I have worked on in the past, this was more about creating an experience for the community rather than a physical piece of art to walk away with. I am keeping notes reflecting on my different community arts volunteering experiences to incorporate into my coursework for my MA.

On Monday I had the opportunity to volunteer at Gasworks Gallery, also in South London, with their community outreach programming for families. It’s interesting to study the dynamic of family workshops since my past experiences have been solely working with children. On paper this workshop seemed much more structured and had an end goal of creating a film. There was a very clear “narrative,” as we discuss in our course for the workshop, but we ran into a lot of issues throughout the day with the children. After an exhausting day we had a debriefing and reflecting session in which we talked about how we could adapt the workshop to take into account some of the problems and contingencies that came up based on today’s workshop. It was a really positive learning experience for me, and I’m looking forward to volunteering at the gallery again in November. I have sent a few more inquiries about volunteering positions and have also been researching paid jobs (this volunteering thing isn’t exactly paying the bills), so we’ll see what develops within the next few weeks. There is one volunteering gig that I’m particularly hoping to get involved with that focuses on children’s literacy programming through creative practices.