An inside peep

Did you know that your local Warkworth Museum was not only started by volunteers in the 1970’s but is staffed by an army of some 70 volunteers today? These volunteers manage all sorts of jobs under the leadership of their part-time paid manager/curator. They bring with them skills from their lives, learning new skills where and when needed. As the president of the Museum Committee said recently, “Amateurs run the museum to a professional standard.”

You will find builders and farmers doing maintenance and restoration work, retired store owners and business people managing the front desk and welcoming visitors to the museum or mastering digital and technical skills – cataloguing, researching. There are retired teachers working with visiting school groups to bring our history alive for them. Some volunteers bring history with them, being descendants of local pioneering families and early settlers. Unexpected talents emerge; perhaps hidden artistic skills show up in setting up displays or marketing skills previously untapped or who knows what?

As the museum is self-funded, many of the volunteers are involved in fundraising –whether it is helping to manage the Museum Op Shop, run bingo sessions or supplying and helping with the plant shop at the museum. The volunteers in the textile area, for instance, assess each item that comes in, record the relevant history of the item and go about preserving it according to methods used for years by other museums. Items are embroidery or handmade baby garments made in an era before we had TV and computers to distract us.

Out in the shed, volunteers get ancient engines such as an old Anderson or Lister running sweetly, preserve old farm machinery, maintain the many buildings and signs around the museum, and build items to help with displays. On those open, working days at the museum, their reward is seeing their well-tended machines operating as they did more than a century ago.

Skills and knowledge for preservation and cataloguing are shared. Some volunteers have had professional training for the areas they choose to work in. Others bring skills