Exeter Heritage Volunteers

March 2023-April 2024

A pilot programme funded by National Lottery Heritage Fund to explore the efficacy of a collaborative volunteering offer across the city’s heritage sites.

As part of its role on the Exeter Heritage Partnership – an informal network of the city’s heritage organisations established to encourage knowledge-sharing across the sector – Exeter Culture applied for funding to the National Lottery Heritage Fund to initiate a pilot project called Exeter Heritage Volunteers (EHV). This project aimed to trial the establishment of a collaborative volunteering programme across a number of the city’s heritage organisations: Exeter Historic Buildings Trust (St Nicholas Priory), Exeter Cathedral, Exeter Canal & Quay Trust (Custom House), Devon & Exeter Institution, RAMM, South West Heritage Trust and Tucker’s Hall.

While the larger heritage organisations already have a sizeable cohort of volunteers (400+ at the Cathedral, 180+ at RAMM), the numbers of volunteers across the sector has fallen, with a proportion not returning post-pandemic. In addition, across the sector, current volunteers come largely from an older demographic, and there is a preference among a large number of these volunteers to stick to a specific roster of activities. As heritage organisations diversify their activity, by programming non-traditional activities in their own spaces (such as film screenings, non-classical music concerts, art installations) and in pop-up locations (discussion events and engagement sessions in empty shops, as part of outdoor festivals), it can be difficult to get buy-in from existing volunteers used to fulfilling specific roles.

The EHV pilot was predicated on the need to broaden the sector’s pool of volunteers post-Covid, as well as providing an easy route in to volunteering for people interested in engaging with various locations and one-off events, rather than committing to a specific organisation/site.

A fundamental aspect of the pilot was to purchase the licence for the Better Impact volunteer management system, which allows for a much more ‘volunteer-centred’ approach to participation: users have their own system profile, and can log on to find volunteering opportunities from across the project partners, thereby managing their own hours and locations. RAMM already uses this system, and provided training as part of the programme.

We also used the pilot to create a new training offer for volunteers, which was also offered to existing volunteers across all partners. This included standard sessions (such as First Aid, Safeguarding, Disability Awareness, etc), but also offered additional skills development around awareness of equality and diversity issues including LGBTQ+ and ethnic diversity, plus confidence to engage, and mentoring and leadership skills. A member of the fantastic Red Coats team provided sessions on Exeter’s history and archives, raising awareness about the city’s rich heritage outside specific buildings. In addition to this, volunteers learned skills in Heritage cleaning, book cleaning, conservation of objects and more specific tasks ‘on the job’, with volunteers also identifying future areas for development.

The pilot ran from March 2023 until April 2024. During this time, volunteers supported events and activities across the majority of the Partner organisations. Activities included:

• Silver polishing at the Historic Guildhall

• Exhibition stewarding at Exeter Custom House

• Participation (as actors, costume and documentation support) in a film-making project at Exeter Custom House as part of Heritage Open Days

• Re-enactment events at St Nicholas Priory

• Front-of house, book cleaning and other conservation activities at Devon & Exeter Institution

• Across the whole project, our volunteers contributed 581 hours.

We have successfully created a ‘pool’ of volunteers who sit outside (but adjacent to) the regular volunteer pools of heritage organisations in the city. Whilst the original vision was that this group would largely work on large outward-facing events, one of the key successes of the pool has been the volunteers’ willingness and ability to work behind-the-scenes on ad hoc projects which grant them access to the more hidden areas of the heritage sector.

Another success has been their versatility. Although not intended to take over the roles of other organisation-based volunteers, the Exeter Heritage Volunteer programme is flexible, allowing organisations to call on our volunteers for last-minute projects and one-off activities for which they do not have a regular volunteer. EHVs’ training has given them a wide overview of heritage in the city and most volunteers have undertaken introductory sessions at a variety of different organisations so they have proven that they can step in when needed. Most of the volunteers have other commitments and also want to be flexible so this works very well.

Lastly, a key value of the EHVs is that organisations who do not have regular volunteers (eg. Custom House and their cultural partners, Historic Guildhall) have been able to undertake activity they would otherwise not have done because they have had access to this group of volunteers.

Feedback on the project

Partner quotes taken from one-to-one evaluation meetings:

• ‘Very little effort went in and all the impact has been positive: it helped demystify the building by chatting together as a group with volunteers. It was really useful to be seeing it through different eyes.’

• ‘Want to continue working together on this. There is so much history to share and seeing people care for it and appreciate it helps us remember the value behind it.’

• ‘What works best is having mutually beneficial activities. It's been a weight off for me! it was apparent they’d had some level of training and knew expectations and boundaries. They were confident and professional’.

• ‘[The volunteers have] impacted us Positively. We have had extra specialist support in areas where we had space to accommodate more people. They were all of a high calibre, had people skills and host skills.’

Volunteer quotes taken from formal and informal feedback:

• ‘I was very nervous but the other volunteers made me feel very welcome and supported. We felt like we were all in it together.’

• ‘I have had lots of health worries recently but coming here to do silver polishing I forget my troubles for a couple of hours: it's so mindful, and I’m surrounded by friendly people and doing something useful.’

• ‘It has been wonderful to get a ‘taster’ of volunteering at different heritage venues in the city. I have wanted to get involved in the past but found it daunting and not known where to start. They all made us feel so welcome and I have been able to choose what I want to do.’

• ‘I tried lots of things I never thought I would and ended up enjoying them. I feel useful and a part of something.’

• ‘I’d love to volunteer in one place regularly but caring responsibilities and other life pressures mean I can’t be consistent with my time and I hate letting people down. So being able to sign up for ad hoc activities is brilliant for me.’

• ‘My favourite part has been meeting other interesting people, book cleaning and silver polishing.’

• ‘Training was very good; so well organised, thorough and delivered really well.’

• ‘Dynamic and interesting variety of opportunities, new experiences on offer to meet new interesting people and to discover new places.’

Next steps

Following a successful Expression of Interest to NLHF to develop an application for three years’ worth of funding, we are currently working on the next iteration of the Exeter Heritage Volunteers programme.