Celebrating (some of) the City’s volunteers

27th June 2017
News, Volunteer diary

One of the benefits of volunteering with Nottingham Industrial Museum is membership of the Nottingham City Museums and Galleries (NCMG) service.

The service supports 277 volunteers across the city’s museums and galleries (51 of us at Nottingham Industrial Museum) and over the last 12 months we gave 20,342 hours.

Early in June, NCMG held its annual Volunteer Conference and Thank You Celebration. Nottingham Castle played host. As well as getting to meet other volunteers we were treated to three ‘Pick and Mix’ sessions. I chose:

A tour of Mortimer’s hole – the City Curator of Archaeology and Industry dressed up as a Georgian lady and guided us through a series of man-made caves from the top of the Castle Hill to the bottom. And we learned a little of the turbulent history of the castle through a series of misadventures in the 14th Century. Our tour was a dress rehearsal, and you will soon be able to take this walk through history for yourself.

Recent archaeological discoveries – the City Archeologist showed us some of the digs in around the city, culminating with an insight into the discovery of St John’s Hospital, just outside the medieval town walls. This one dig is responsible for improving our understanding of the growth of Nottingham, the discovery of two new caves, a ‘new’ beer recipe and a better understanding of how to identify and protect the caves that punctuate the sandstone foundations of the city.

Eager to learn about recent archaeological finds in Nottingham — Eager to learn about recent archaeological discin Nottingham

Mini maker – the museums and galleries of Nottingham City all complete surveys with our visitors. This session showed the work undertaken by the Illuminate Group (NCMG’s Young Volunteers – link opens in a new tab/ window) to design and build an interactive machine to encourage visitors to complete the survey. I now hope that we will work more closely with the group on the machine and other projects. A little bit more about Illuminate

Unfortunately, I had to leave after the close of the session. But most people (and several who could not make the daytime activities) met in the Brewhouse Yard for the Thank You Celebration for National Volunteers Week 1-7 June. They enjoyed a chip butty and a glass of local beer.