Creative Volunteering

 

Summary The vTeam Central London worked in partnership with Museums, Libraries and Archives and CityZen to arrange a Creative Volunteering Work Placement for two students of St. Mary Magdalene Academy, Islington during their February 2010 half term. The students, Daisy Peak and Detzi Chocieszynski where given £1000 to provide a resource to make the London Metropolitain Archives more appealing to young people.

A week of freedom, £1000 spending money and the youthfulness of being 16 and not having a care in the world; an image most would yearn for. For two individuals however, Daisy and Detzi, they’re spending that week in a museum, more precisely the London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), and haven’t spent a penny yet.

The LMA is home to thousands of collections, from family records to numerous maps to prints and drawings. The LMA houses a copy of the 1927 Magna Carta, illuminated medieval manuscripts, letters from Florence Nightingale and thousands of archives in its 72km of shelving and high-security vaults.

Daisy Peak and Detzi Chocieszynski, both 16 years of age and studying the International Baccalaureate (IB) at St Mary Magdalene Academy, volunteered to get involved with the project at the LMA. For them, it was an opportunity too good to miss. Although the placement was accredited, for Detzi gaining valuable experience was the main aspect of it. Conceding that they would never have gone into an archive before coming to the LMA Daisy and Detzi were educated on how archives are stored, retrieved and viewed. Once they had been orientated to the ins and outs of the LMA the pair went and looked through the archives for things relating to their interests. The most significant thing about the Archives is that because the collections are so vast and varied that most interests are catered for. Having a keen interest in music Daisy and Detzi discovered old music scores, and photographs from concerts and events. Their objective is to produce a leaflet that endorses the archives and promotes it towards young people. They plan on incorporating all the interesting material that they’ve found during their week at the LMA to create something that is attractive and informative for young people. A particular point that they are keen to emphasise is that the Archives is very useful for those carrying out research, doing essays or just to help with subjects that they may be studying. Furthermore, they will also highlight that the Archives are free; and not a lot of people may know that given its ‘fancy’ surroundings.

....... it’s “very good here; to have the opportunity to make something, produce something by ourselves. We’ve been given so much freedom.”

It would seem wasteful to spend the whole £1000 on leaflets, so in addition to that, Daisy and Detzi have decided to hold a performance at Keats House in Hampstead. The performance will be based on the original musical scores that the pair found, which someone had written down on a piece of paper. Daisy considers that “if we’re doing a performance of the (musical) arrangements that we found we can demonstrate how you can come to the Archives, find stuff and apply it to your interests outside of the archives”.

 
With half of the budget going towards the printing of the flyers, the remaining £500 will be used to hire 1950s jazz-style costumes for the performance at Keats House. With that in mind, Daisy acknowledges that they might not be able to spend all of it since “it’s quite a lot of money for 16 year olds to handle”.

 
Upon being asked how they found the placement so far, Daisy said that it’s “very good here; to have the opportunity to make something, produce something by ourselves. We’ve been given so much freedom. Maureen was very good at allowing us to develop our own ideas and then steering us in the right direction making sure we didn’t go too off course”. To which Detzi added with regards to the “independence, I was very impressed. Because I thought that we would have had our day structured by someone. It’s been good because we’ve been able to take it where we want; every suggestion we’ve made no-one has said ‘oh no, you can’t do that’”.

Both students have said that they will definitely visit the London Metropolitan Archives in the future; the resources available will be extremely useful for the extended essay that is compulsory with the IB.

When asked on their general views on volunteering and whether more young people should get involved the consensus was that “more young people should definitely volunteer. I think that if I had been doing A levels I’d never have been volunteering. Unless you have the Vimpact and things like that you wouldn’t have any incentive for going out and doing stuff. A lot of people think that “you know for volunteering you don’t get money from that and what are you going to get from it?” I personally think you do get loads of stuff from it and you can put stuff down on your CV and you can talk with people about it. You actually get to help out and it makes you feel good. Yeah I think more young people should do it.”

Case study and photos by Kumal Tukhoo.