Thank you to our volunteers!

We are lucky at Birmingham Museums to have hundreds of volunteers support us each year. By the end of 2014 we will have had the help of over 600 volunteers! As the Volunteer Development Officer I feel incredibly lucky to work with such talented people and as an organisation we are so grateful for the generosity of our volunteer team!

Some of our University of Birmingham Meet the Expert volunteers

Some volunteers join us for a day, like our fantastic Experts who run our Meet the Expert Days at Thinktank, inspiring the scientists of the future. Others are with us each week running guided tours, documenting our collections, working on conservation projects and much much more. You can read about many of our volunteers’ personal experiences through this blog.

So it was a real pleasure for us to host over 100 of our volunteers on 10^th December at our annual Thank You party.

Eileen, David, Deborah, Yvonne and Margaret

This year the event took place in our newly refurbished Edwardian Tea rooms at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. For us, this event is a chance for us to thank our team for all that they have done over the course of the year, but also a lovely opportunity to bring together volunteers from across all nine of our museums.

Some of the Castle Keepers from Weoley Castle

We had some lovely speeches of thanks from Ellen McAdam, Director of Birmingham Museums and  Simon Cane, Deputy Director, and a fantastic team of 15 members of staff volunteered to make sure our team were well looked after!

This year we had a photo booth (with plenty of fancy dress options) and asked our team to tell us why they volunteer. The results were heart warming and are a true demonstration of the passion and enthusiasm in our volunteer team!

Mince pies always help in the fight to preserve our heritage

Our goal for this event was to make sure every single one of our volunteers was thanked and understood how much they are valued within the organisation. So this blog post is for the members of the team who were unable to make the party.

Valentina, Angela and Carol from Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

You are part of the life and soul of Birmingham Museums and we are so grateful for your time. We hope that you enjoy volunteering with us as much as we enjoy having you.

We also created a Thank You Board with messages from staff across the organisation who could not join us on the night. There are so many people at Birmingham Museums who wanted to thank the volunteer team who have made so much possible for us over the course of 2014.

Thank you board

So, to all our wonderful volunteers – thank you for everything you do for us and we look forward to 2015 with you all.

Alex Nicholson-Evans,
Volunteer Development Officer