EDUCATE E NTERTAIN INSPIRE

Across the country, volunteers work hard to provide wonderful experiences for school groups and learners. Communications volunteer Matt Huggins highlights a few of the brilliant things they’ve been up to.

Volunteers In The Community

Ateam of education volunteers have been working tirelessly to foster great connections with local communities in Hampshire and on the Isle of Wight, and their efforts are paying off – since 2018, sites in the area have enjoyed a rise in local educational visits.

Challenges

One of the projects they help with is the ‘Termly Challenges’. Local schools are given a brief with different themes throughout the year, including the most recent Christmas challenge to create table decorations representing different kinds of Victorian servants from the 1861 census.

Getting hands-on with history

‘Make and take’ sessions have also provided families with a chance to get hands-on with history at Osborne and Carisbrooke Castle, with activities like making bug castles and Christmas crackers, which are often as popular with adults as they are with children. Other events such as concerts, garden trails and bird surveys have also encouraged local people to spend more time in our historic places. None of these wonderful opportunities would have been possible without the dedicated team of volunteers who work so closely with their communities. ►

Discovery Visits Relaunched

Audley End House and Gardens in Essex is one of 30 sites to offer ‘Discovery Visits’, which are immersive workshops tailored to the national curriculum. Volunteers don costumes to become Mrs Warwick, the formidable housekeeper, and her team of servants before leading children in an interactive tour of the service wing where they get hands-on with traditional chores.

Welcome back

These valuable practical experiences were of course brought to a halt in 2020, and they took some time to bring back. When education visits officer Alice

Trickey-Roberts reached out to her volunteers in January 2021 to start the relaunch, she was delighted to be met with an overwhelmingly positive response. Preparations for the comeback began, and by midSeptember the team was raring to go. Thankfully, the Discovery Visits proved just as popular as before the pandemic, and they have continued to flourish. This is due in no small part to the experience and enthusiasm of the volunteer team who work together to provide an exceptional experience that brings history to life for the next generation of history fans and heritage lovers.

Teacher Twilights

Volunteers are making a big contribution to ‘Teacher Twilights’ – afterschool sessions designed to help teachers prepare for upcoming Free Education Visits and Discovery Visits.

They usually require the help of four volunteers who greet visitors, demonstrate workshop activities, help to define learning objectives and give teachers a chance to enjoy discovering the site. Although of course our education volunteers love spending time with children, these relaxed evening sessions bring a nice change of pace. ■

Memorable Learning By The Coast

All of our sites offer free visits for schools and other educational groups, but few are as idyllic as Chysauster, an Iron Age settlement which offers views of the Cornish coast from the heart of the West Penrith countryside. It’s one of the bestpreserved ancient villages in Britain, dating back as far as the Iron Age.

Here, volunteers are leading sessions where children get to handle stone querns, replica pottery, bone tools and copper and tin ore, helping them understand what life was like for the people who lived here.

Adrian Rodda was the first to volunteer with education visits in August 2019, and he has enjoyed every session since.

‘I enjoy the wonder in the eyes of the children,’ says Adrian. ‘They are struck by the size of the houses and thickness of the walls… there is literally nowhere else like it in the English Heritage portfolio.’

Thank You

English Heritage provides free selfled education visits for schools and learning groups at our properties. Groups can also book hands-on, immersive Discovery Visits, often delivered or supported by volunteers. Over the last year, we’ve welcomed 162,654 education visitors and delivered 1,165 Discovery Visits. Education visits officer Laura Bosworth enthuses: ‘We’re so fortunate to have such a dedicated team of volunteers. Without them our offer would be nowhere near as rich – we’re really grateful for their time and energy. Thank you to all our education volunteers and those who support learning.’ ■

Get Involved

Passionate about education? Get in touch with your local site for opportunities to share your enthusiasm. volunteer.enquiries@english-heritage.org.uk

My volunteering story began one bright spring morning back in 2019, when the route to my parents’ house on the North York Moors was diverted via Coxwold and Ampleforth. It’s possible I’d visited Byland Abbey before, but so many years previously that I couldn’t recall the occasion – or the site – at all. So, rounding the bend, the dramatic, soaring west end of the abbey church with its iconic rose window semi-circle was suddenly revealed to me as if for the fi rst time. Hugely impressed, I vowed to make a leisurely return visit as soon as possible.

A homecoming

That return visit didn’t take place until April 2022, after I had moved permanently back from Wales to North Yorkshire, and was keen to rediscover the land of my childhood. I’d often thought about volunteering for a heritage charity, so I checked the English Heritage website to see if any help was required near my new home. There, I discovered that Byland Abbey was looking to increase its volunteer team. So, it was possible I might finally fulfil my promise of a return to Byland – but in a much more active way than anticipated.

Getting started

After a Zoom meeting with the regional volunteer manager and a lively, in-depth tour of this former Cistercian monastery with lead volunteer Sam Macfi e, I became a visitor volunteer. I met the rest of the team gradually: as we work in twos or threes on a rota, it can be some time before you see the same person twice. To begin with, I was mainly based in the site museum, but my role grew rapidly – once you’re involved, the opportunities come thick and fast. A few weeks later, I’d read, researched and learned from my colleagues suffi ciently to start leading some of the guided tours – not to mention spending a sunny summer’s morning repainting the dilapidated former ticket hut. Best of all was simply spending hours chatting to visitors among the ruins (or in the museum when raining), answering questions and fi nding out about them and what had brought them to Byland.

And when you’ve finished doing that…

By the end of the summer, things moved on again for me. I had enrolled as a parttime MA student at Teesside University, and also answered a call in one of the regular English Heritage volunteer newsletters looking for new writers for Volunteer Focus magazine and Fuse. Again, it was no time at all before I was involved, and I was soon travelling up to Hadrian’s Wall with my husband as photographer/relief driver and my scruffy little dog for moral support. Think Tintin, Captain Haddock and Snowy here! My first two articles for Focus were on the latest developments at the Housesteads and Birdoswald sites, and it was satisfying to see these in print when the next edition came out.

A little while later, I wrote about the new guided tour offering at Easby Abbey near Richmond, North Yorkshire, for Fuse. This was another English Heritage project that I’d recently become involved with. Easby is another magnificent ruin in my local area, this time of the Premonstratensian (or Norbertine, if you prefer) order. I learned that its former inhabitants were not monks, but a community of priests who would have been very active and visible in the parishes of the Richmond area. The layout and functions of the various buildings are slightly different from those at Byland, so there was more training and reading to do and site plans to study. By mid-September, however, our small team was ready to lead free tours of the site for the first time, initially for the annual Heritage Open Days events. These were well attended and resulted in very positive feedback. During winter opening, we offered monthly tours and are looking forward to welcoming people to more events over the summer season.

Pressing the reset switch

My English Heritage volunteering role fi ts in well with my family responsibilities, part-time study and enthusiasm for Yorkshire and its history. I fi rmly believe that you can’t beat fresh air and a good ruin when you need to clear your head, banish woes and refocus on what really matters. Even better if you can write about it afterwards. ■