Last month, key stakeholders from across Medway’s cultural sector came together to discuss the impact of volunteering on Medway’s cultural landscape, at a round table event hosted by the Medway Change Makers cultural volunteering programme. Discussions covered perceptions of volunteering, the challenges of working with volunteers to ensure a positive volunteer experience, and what additional support cultural sector organisations need to work more effectively with volunteers going forward.
Medway Change Makers is a bespoke cultural volunteering programme that connects people with events based (short term and fixed) volunteering opportunities at host organisations from Medway’s cultural sector, with the aim of making creative volunteering more accessible for the people of Medway. The programme is funded through Spirit of 2012’s Volunteering Cities grant, and is delivered in partnership by Ideas Test, Creative Medway, Medway Voluntary Action and the Medway Place Board. Since its launch in early 2023, Medway Change Makers has developed a pool of volunteers who have completed over 600 hours of volunteering in Medway’s cultural sector. Through this work, Medway Change Makers identified that some cultural sector organisations were facing challenges to working with volunteers (particularly events based volunteers) in a way that ensured that volunteers had positive experiences, felt informed and valued, and were likely to carry out more volunteering in the future. This event allowed organisations to share their experiences and challenges so that Medway Change Makers can respond by providing support to these organisations in line with their needs, as they plan for the future of the project.
A number of Medway Change Makers volunteers also attended the event to share their experiences of volunteering through Medway Change Makers. One volunteer, Peter, presented at the event about what being a part of Medway Change Makers has meant to him: “The opportunity to volunteer [through Medway Change Makers] has boosted my self-confidence, mental wellness and happiness. The experience has benefitted me socially as I meet with and interact with new sets of people. I have had the opportunity to observe, advise and give feedback to the organisation I volunteered for. Unlike in an office setting, where targets and deliverables are at the centre of all and motives for work are salary based, the volunteering experience is from my heart and the motive is to create a lasting impact in people and the society in a flexible manner.”