Arts and Heritage Volunteer

This voluntary role is to support our exciting Arts and Heritage programme and our community project ‘Care, Create, Conserve’, funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund. This role will support the successful delivery of the project with volunteers acting as ambassadors, engaging the public with the heritage on display in a new Healthcare Heritage Hub in Wolverhampton’s Mander Centre. Volunteers will also assist with the events and workshops which take place in the space.

Volunteers will be a friendly face to invite the public to explore the exhibition, and will facilitate conversations around Wolverhampton’s healthcare heritage and the experience of healthcare today. As a part of this role, volunteers will also have the opportunity to attend specialised training, learning new skills and gaining experience in areas including collections management, conservation, and curation.

The main duties of this role will be to steward the Healthcare Heritage Hub, engaging the public with the heritage and art on display, and assisting with the delivery of activities in the space.

The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust is one of the largest NHS trusts in the West Midlands providing primary, acute and community services and we are incredibly proud of the diversity of both our staff and the communities we serve. We are building a workforce that can help us to fulfil our values, improve the quality of care for patients, and solve the health care problems of tomorrow. We’re passionate about the value that diversity of thinking and lived experience brings in enabling us to become a learning organisation and leader in delivering compassionate care for our patients.

We are delighted that we have been rated as “Good” by CQC. We have achieved numerous awards; The Nursing Times Best Diversity and Inclusion Practice and Best UK Employer of the Year for Nursing Staff in 2020.

The Trust is a supportive working environment committed to creating flexible working arrangements that suit your needs and as such will consider all requests from applicants who wish to work flexibly.

We require volunteers who are able to fulfil all of the following criteria:
Over the age of 18;
Be able to clearly and confidently communicate in English (additional languages are also welcomed);
Be comfortable approaching and speaking to members of the public;
Be welcoming and friendly to all visitors, and know when to respect personal boundaries;
Be willing to dedicate time towards stewarding the Healthcare Heritage Hub, performing tasks such as recording visitor numbers and collecting feedback;
No prior knowledge of local history or healthcare heritage is required, but volunteers must display a willingness to learn new information;
Be prepared to be on a rota, and be able to provide times/dates of their availability;
If opting into additional training, volunteers must be able to manage their own time in order to fulfil what is required from the training course;
As per Trust policy, we will require volunteers to complete a brief Occupational Health assessment and be DBS checked (The Trust will support this)

**Tasks that the volunteers will perform include**:
Be a friendly and welcoming face for visitors to the Healthcare Heritage Hub

Engage members of the public with the exhibitions on display

Be an ambassador for the heritage collection, spreading word of the Hub and its activity with their communities and networks

Support the delivery of events and workshops as required

Record numbers of visitors to the Hub

Collect and record feedback from visitors

Promote upcoming events and activities with visitors

Attend special training in areas such as collections management and conservation (optional)