I have been volunteering one morning a week for the past 11 years and my tasks include welcoming visitors, selling tickets and shop items, answering reception calls and stewarding the galleries.
I spent most of my working life teaching in primary schools and lecturing on the Early Years BEd course, and became familiar with the work of the Coram Centre in the 1970s through students working in the nursery school there. So I applied to be a volunteer shortly after the museum opened in 2004.
The Threads of Feeling exhibition was a stand-out event; the title referred to the small pieces of fabric left at the Founding Hospital (founded in 1739) by mothers when they handed their babies into its care.
These pieces were pinned to the baby’s registration form as an identifier in case the mother felt able to reclaim her baby at any point. The handwritten forms with basic details of the child and a piece of cloth from the dress the mother wore on the day that she and her child would be separated – probably forever – make very immediate links between them and us today.
Working alongside young people helps me keep in touch with their lives, aspirations and the issues that concern them. The challenges we face – the workings of the till, questions from visitors, and changing exhibitions and exhibits – all help to keep the brain working.
Interview by John Holt
I spent most of my working life teaching in primary schools and lecturing on the Early Years BEd course, and became familiar with the work of the Coram Centre in the 1970s through students working in the nursery school there. So I applied to be a volunteer shortly after the museum opened in 2004.
The Threads of Feeling exhibition was a stand-out event; the title referred to the small pieces of fabric left at the Founding Hospital (founded in 1739) by mothers when they handed their babies into its care.
These pieces were pinned to the baby’s registration form as an identifier in case the mother felt able to reclaim her baby at any point. The handwritten forms with basic details of the child and a piece of cloth from the dress the mother wore on the day that she and her child would be separated – probably forever – make very immediate links between them and us today.
Working alongside young people helps me keep in touch with their lives, aspirations and the issues that concern them. The challenges we face – the workings of the till, questions from visitors, and changing exhibitions and exhibits – all help to keep the brain working.
Interview by John Holt
