Sarah Hawkins

Sarah Hawkins Museum Activities & Engagement Officer

Female / 54 / Leo

Sarah moved to Wimbledon about 20 years ago, when her children started school here. She has done lots of volunteering work, and she works as a freelance editor.

Actually, she and Jacqueline have done a lot of different charitable things over the years. For instance, they used to run clubs for children to fundraise money.

Sarah likes events and activity planning.

How is volunteering at Wimbledon Museum engagement group like?

It’s the most magical group. it really is.

I do a lot of volunteering, and I’m involved with English Speaking Union and all sorts of bigger charities and organisations, but I’ve never had it where the group of people who are working work so well together and everyone is honest. We really like one another’s company.

We’re really lucky.

Actually, Jacqueline mentioned that the museum is a really magical place and said that I should talk with you, you would tell me about the magic and you just did.

How magical!

Yeah, it’s so true because at the very beginning, there were only a few of us involved at that point and then just as we needed somebody else at every point, somebody has just appeared. We’ve never gone out and had to look for anyone. There’s always just been someone coming at the right time and fitting in straight away.

I don’t think there’s ever been a disagreement in all that time about the direction or about which way to go. So we’ve got some really strong women who have all been in charge in that group. I mean, everybody in there all did their own thing, but it just fit perfectly.

At times when Jacqueline was really worried about the museum and with it open and when people came in and I said that

‘You just got to trust the magic because, you know, if fate is telling you so strongly that it’s right, you just have to believe that it will all work out that way.’

But, sometimes we have to draw a line in it and say that we could do lots of things, but it’s going to make people feel under pressure and they’re taking on too much because we’re volunteers.

We also want to include some students from the special educational need school that we did the outreach work. The idea is that if they can come in here and get some work experience, that will also encourage other people who have disabilities to see them working.

Our volunteer base is just getting bigger and bigger. I think we’ve got to find ways for people to do that because it’s

Sarah, what does ‘at home’ mean to you?

For me, when I first got involved, it was about the community. And because it matters to me, that people feel welcome in our community. And that they feel at home, no matter where they have come from, whether they’re just visiting, whether this is a place that they’ve moved to, whether this is where they’re born.

not just the visitors, the people volunteering are part of the engagement.

Everybody wants to feel that they’ve got a place in community and that they’ve got a value and the stories that they bring are as valuable to the stories that they’re looking at.

When we started looking at how people would engage with the museum, That’s one of the reasons we wanted the object of the month or to have a case where people could put their own work in there because then it’s an equal value to everything else that they see in the museum.

We wanted to be comfortable and the lighting to be suitable and it has become really professional now.

People could come and sit at the table, share and discuss all sorts of things with one another.

I love it when the young people are in here and they’re using it for art and for more creative things.

I also think some of the things that make it quite at home are like the photograph frames. I particularly like them around because it feels like you’re in somebody’s home. It’s really warm.

And the key thing is: the volunteers that welcome people because if you don’t have really welcoming volunteers as people come in, then people feel that they can’t really engage with things or feel a bit nervous coming to the space. Say you want them to feel straight away at ease and happy.

I think the way the space is designed works really well because you can walk around in different ways so you can experience it in whatever way you want to. There’s no sort of flow that you have to go around. You’re not holding anyone up because sometimes in a museum you just have to keep moving.

I finally got the chance to visit the Windmill Museum. In your point of view, what is the biggest difference between Wimbledon Museum and Windmill Museum?

It’s quite difficult to say really because I think they are trying to get very different people. I think they used to attract the same people before. The Windmill Museum is very much about heritage and focuses on the past and tells that story really well.

That’s probably because we’ve got a broader number of stories and I think being surrounded by the shops and by the club below gives it a completely different feeling.

People who come here tend to be people who are walking and going to the club or deliberately just to see the museum. We got so many people passing by who just call in because they see the sign or you know think that we are the tennis museum (laugh), so that changes things I think.

But I think what we are doing here is asking people to share their own stories and reaching out.

Drawings collected from the participants

Museum of The Future Workshop

Museum of The Future Workshop

Museum of The Future Workshop worksheet

How do you become a volunteer here?

When Jacqueline started running the museum, I’ve been here a couple of times before then, it just seemed like a really lovely opportunity to work with her. Our children were at school together. They were just leaving school at the same time, so it was just the perfect timing.

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I’m very organised, so I like planning. We never had an activity plan before and we didn’t have an accessibility policy and those sorts of things. Putting all of those in places is really satisfying.

We spent a lot of time with the Museum of London and they gave us lots of advice about how to set up a really good plan and how to use the money. It was a year of planning to get the engagement plan ready to get the funding. And that’s part of the magic, too. We just reached out and said, can you fund this?

And everyone went, ‘Yes.’

You mentioned before that the museum really wants to work on a life-long learning programme. Could you talk about the plan?

We’re focusing on families at the moment because our research in the audience shows us that there are more young children in Wimbledon than there are in other boroughs in London. So, it seemed like a good way to reach our target audience and also because we knew that

it’s important for families to start visiting museums, then generate learners throughout their life.

This is really important to me because my father in law lives in Wimbledon. And there aren’t many things that people can do when they’re at home. We have this life-long learning project, so that we can make sure everybody of all ages is always learning.

We will have some fantastic reminiscence boxes been made that can handle

One on childhood, one on the common, one on sports, and other different themes. We also want to include the scouts. Working together with Memory Box Foundation, they can be used in schools, in old people’s homes or in other environments to trigger learning in that way.

We’ll run local history sessions here with local chairities so that we can reach those young people who are just coming out of being a child and going into being an adult.

We’ll also outreach to the care homes. We are going to run a friendship group.

We have a friendship group where they’re going to have people who have dementia. We’ll have them do artwork with nursery school children and discuss what they’re doing and respond to the objects in the museum.

What we really want to remember is that it’s a place of friendship.

objects.

I didn’t know a museum could do that much until you tell me everything that is being planned and going on here.

I’d love to have more meetings held here. For example, if you’ve got the school that wants to run a history club here, then we’ll get them in and do that and then host them and make them feel welcomed.

For instance, next to the peacock, there will be a fan with peacock feathers and you can touch it. That’s a real benefit of being small. Lots of the time, people think it’s a disadvantage but actually It feels intimate and it feels like a home. But it also means you can do a trail in here and you only need like one volunteer to help because you can see everything. In a way, it’s lucky to have a really good museum.

This is a place where you make connections across the generations, lifelong learning is exactly that.

And we are doing a sensory trail, so that people who have sensory impairment can come in.

It is amazing and I think it’s more than a museum. It’s actually a real chance to listen to people and to make a difference in people’s lives.

Drawings collected from the participants

Documented by Louise

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