Archaeology volunteering v.2.0

( Over the last few months I've read an awful lot about volunteering in the archaeological sector. A lot of it has been interesting, but almost all of it has been written from an archaeologists perspective. It has also dealt with what you might call 'traditional' volunteering. Old school volunteering. A type of volunteering that is becoming increasingly far from the norm. A lot of it has, quite rightly, emphasised just how important volunteers are. How we can't do without them. How they add value to projects, and fill the gaps left by funding cuts and deficits. However, what many people don't seem to grasp is that perhaps the single most important thing volunteers can bring to any project is far less tangible. It isn't something easily measurable, and certainly not something that you can put a cash value on. And this elusive benefit is - Advocacy. The enthusiasm to talk about, and promote, the project within social groups that even the best PR machine or social media campaign may find hard to reach. The ability to create the goodwill and enthusiasm to ensure the project is a success - and the success of future projects too. Promoting your projects in unconventional, but far reaching ways. And so I asked some of our volunteers to write short guest blog posts on what THEY value about volunteering. The first is Jess, one of the more vocal volunteers for the NMGS - and I 'may' have edited out some of the swearing...)

Hello, my name is Jess and I’m an alcoholic. Sorry, wrong notes. My name is Jess and I am a volunteer for the Norfolk Medieval Graffiti Survey. If you’re reading this, then you probably already know a fair bit about the survey, and what it’s aiming to achieve, so you can skip to the third paragraph, well done, you’ve saved yourself some time. If you don’t know about it, then read this bit: volunteers for the survey are responsible for an amazing and entirely new corpus of data relating to the understanding of medieval churches, religion, magic, belief, and the lives of the ordinary people in those times. Very simply, volunteers are attempting to go out to each little treasure of Norfolk’s medieval churches, shining light across the walls and recording the centuries old inscriptions left there, both photographically and on basic recording forms, detailing where each inscription is to be found within the churches.

It’s quite an undertaking. Hundreds of thousands of hours spent by people with little or no background in archaeology quietly undertaking a revolution in research and understanding. Hundreds of thousand of hours spent in chilly, damp churches, squinting at peeling lime wash, brushing aside cobwebs, smiling politely at other visitors as who try to nervously ignore the person with their nose pressed to the base of a font, wielding a £3 LED torch.

Yep, that’s what the marvellous, dedicated, and inspiring NMGS volunteers do. Visit churches, take photos, submit surveys. That’s it, that’s what being a volunteer is, no room for anything else, that’s what we contribute. My name is Jess and I’m a volunteer.

Except that I don’t own a camera, can’t take a raking light photo to save my life, and I have not, in my three years of being involved in the project, surveyed one church. I’ve never even made a single entry on a photo record sheet, still less actually held one (I don’t have a printer, which might explain that one). And yet, as far as I’m concerned, I am a volunteer, and I do contribute, in my own way. How? Erm. Well, I just sort of do… stuff. Usually sitting on my living room floor, ancient and creaking laptop on the coffee table in front of me, occasionally on my phone in the pub, sometimes I even do stuff in my fully 3D incarnation at Norwich Cathedral. Yebbut, what do I actually do?

I read, I write. I creatively google things. I enthuse to the point of banging on about medieval graffiti to the point where people start pleading with me to shut up. I spend an entire weekend trawling antique dealer websites to look for furniture that may or may not feature apotropaic markings. I am happily whored out by my mum to give tours of the graffiti at the cathedral to her friends (I always start these tours shy and halting, stumbling over my words, and quivering with nerves. By the end I have to stuff my tongue back into my mouth with both hands and need to be sat on to stop me racing off down the aisle again) I may also sometimes have a hand in being a spectacularly sweary first reader of certain articles, book chapters, etc, and provide my own rather personal form of feedback to the writer. Just be grateful you’re not the recipient of emails headed ‘that powercrazed fuckwit bunny’ or, possibly worse, ‘oh dear…’.

That’s what I do. For free, gratis, nada, nothing other than the promise of lemon drizzle cake that has yet to materialise two and half years later, not that I’m counting or anything, MATTHEW CHAMPION*. So I suppose the obvious question is why? Why have notebooks stuffed with lists of churches, notes in margins, a phone crammed with photos, and a head full of inconsequent ional information that may or may not be of use at some point in the future? Why would someone give up so much of their time to volunteering to a project, to something that is, whilst groundbreaking and important, relatively niche, even allowing for the specialisms of archaeology? We-elll… it’s simple really. I fell in love with medieval graffiti, head over heels, gazing at walls. It just bypassed any pretence at rationality I may gamely attempt, and connected. And when you feel that connection to something, then you want to explain it, you want people to understand, you want to grab people and squeal ‘Look at THAT! Isn’t it mindblowing???’ Essentially, you want to do what you can to help, too. And that’s where volunteering comes in.

I don’t have the skills, knowledge, or talent to be a traditional volunteer. My addition to the database of medieval graffiti is pretty much nil (Except for the DAYS she spent building a Google map of all the currently known graffiti churches in the UK - Ed). I’ve got no previous experience of history, archaeology, research or academia, so there’s no hope of me helping out there, either. But I do contribute in my own idiosyncratic way, I think (bloody hope so, anyway, or all of this is a waste of time). By bringing medieval graffiti to a wider audience who wouldn’t perhaps have heard of it before they read an article I write, or by a chance remark at a parent teacher evening that gets me invited in to talk to schoolchildren. Or perhaps by emailing a photo of an old bed, or getting inventively sweary about a first draft, or gabbling away to strangers in Norwich Castle.
I don’t fit the model of what a community archaeology volunteer should be. And yet, I know my contribution is valued, unconventional as it is. And because it’s valued, because I feel that I am helping, I want to do more, I want to continue to help, I am encouraged to do more. Any project that uses volunteers needs to think of them as individuals, not as one bland, faceless homogenous mass, to not assume that ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to volunteering, and that theories of how to appeal to more people are a relatively superficial way of engaging. Treat volunteers as individuals, play to their strengths, and you’ll end up with a group of fiercely loyal, enthusiastic, passionate people who will do their best to support your work. Oh, and you might end up with me too. Sorry about that.

*(I would point out, in my defence, that since the establishment of this agreement, Norwich cathedral refectory appears to have increasingly limited its production of lemon drizzle cake. Many, many alternatives have been offered. Many of these have involved chocolate in VAST quantities. None have apparently been acceptable. So if anyone knows of a good lemon drizzle cake mail order company - I'd be very grateful... Ed)

Tea, cake and graffiti - National Volunteer Week

This week is National Volunteer Week - just in case it may have escaped your notice. Just in case you've had your head stuck down a dark hole or something. Just in case you are just emerging from rehab for the seventh time - that sort of thing. National Volunteer Week - seven days in which to sing the praises of volunteers from all walks of life, undertaking voluntary roles within all sorts of organisations. Over 21,000,000 people volunteer in the UK each year, contributing an estimated £23.9bn to the economy - so we aren't talking small beer here. To put it into perspective, if all the UK' volunteers were members of a single organisation, it would be the largest organisation in the country. So massive is volunteering in the UK that this year Volunteer's Week actually runs from the 1st to the 12th of June.... although they might want to look at the name... just saying...

A week such as this is particularly relevant to anyone who works within the heritage field at the moment, and even more so within the field of community archaeology. You see, the things is, without the input and help from any number of amazing volunteers, most community archaeology simply wouldn't happen. It couldn't. Without the thousands of hours these amazing people put in to doing something that they love these projects just could not take place. Take the graffiti surveys for example. With over 1150 surviving medieval churches in Norfolk and Suffolk alone - and a couple of cathedrals - any attempt at fully surveying them all with any degree of thoroughness would take an individual many, many years to do. If undertaken by a commercial organisation it would cost tens of millions of pounds - at a time when that sort of money is barely available to even keep the buildings water-tight. The only way in which to carry out surveys on this scale has been with a fantastic band of loyal, and slightly barmy, volunteers.

And what volunteers they have become! Take for example the Norwich cathedral survey volunteers. They began, as I'm sure they won't mind me saying, as a rather disparate bunch. A few had some archaeological or historical experience, but most came to the idea of undertaking a detailed building survey as something entirely new. However, in the last four years they have more than risen to the challenge. They have undertaken measured surveys, and drank tea. They have carried out raking light surveys, and eaten cake. They have tried their hands at doing RTI surveys - and laughed, smiled and joked their way through countless Saturday's. They have led tours of the building, spent hundreds of hours talking to the public about medieval graffiti - and have even been involved with training the cathedral guides. And whilst they were doing all this, whilst they were busy enjoying themselves and educating others, they have become some of the very best graffiti surveyors I have ever come across. I have no reservations in stating that they are now far better than many of their commercial counterparts - and much more fun to be with.

The thing is, much as we value our volunteers, and simply couldn't get along without them, we simply aren't very good at working with them all the time - and it's quite likely that they won't be around too much longer anyway. 

In community archaeology in general it is worth remembering that those people leading the projects - myself included - are first and foremost archaeologists. We aren't volunteer managers, have usually only received the barest training in working with volunteers, and have generally had to make much of it up as we went along. Occasionally we get it wrong - but hopefully learn from the experience. It shouldn't be this way - but it is. However, if we want to continue operating these sorts of projects into the future then that really, really has to change - because volunteering is going to change - and that change is coming very soon...

At the moment there are many, many projects being undertaken in the UK that completely rely upon volunteer input - the medieval graffiti surveys being just a single example. There are also some pretty major heritage organisations, in particular charities like the National Trust and many major museums, whose own business models - essentially their ability to function - is based upon being able to access a large number of volunteers each and every day. Without volunteer input these organisations just couldn't carry on doing what they are doing in the way they are doing it. Only a few weeks ago I was a small part of a much larger team of archaeologists who spent an entire week training National Trust volunteers many different aspects of archaeological fieldwork. During the week the volunteers learnt everything from undertaking a geophysical survey and standing buildings recording, to graffiti surveying and landscape history. By the end of the week the individuals were volunteering for additional archaeological activities - and were already taking an active part in one of the National Trust's largest ever archaeological projects. The problem, of course, is that this level of volunteering quite simply won't be available in the future. There will, unquestionably, be a far reduced number of volunteers available - and they'll be very different volunteers than the ones that so many projects rely upon these days.

The problem is pretty straightforward really - age and economics. As the individuals who currently volunteer get older, but largely remain fit and active (quite possibly in part due to their volunteer activities), they'll want to continue volunteering. And why shouldn't they? They offer a wealth of experience and knowledge that any organisation would be just plain daft to turn down. However, whilst there are only one or two things that volunteers in the 55-70 age group can't currently do, as they get older there will be increasing physical limitations. Certain activities are going to get more difficult or problematic. As a result the volunteer activities they undertake will have to change - and the business models will have to change with them. Now this wouldn't be much of a problem if there were a new generation of volunteers appearing to undertake those tasks once carried out by the older volunteers - but it simply isn't going to happen. The time when people could retire at sixty-five, sixty, or even as young as fifty-five, is soon to be long gone. As life expectancy increases so will the average retirement age, with recent studies suggesting that retirement at seventy could be the new norm by as soon as 2030. What that means is that for those people currently in the forty to fifty-five age group retirement may simply never happen. They'll be too busy working to volunteer for anything.

The end result of this is that many, many organisations - from the National Trust and major museums, all the way down to local community archaeology groups - are going to have to start seriously addressing the issue of future volunteering. In the first instance we are all going to have to make much, much better use of the precious and finite resource that volunteers represent. Large scale volunteer led projects, such as the county graffiti surveys, may have a limited shelf life. If they aren't completed in the next decade or so then it is quite likely that they will never be completed by volunteers at all. For organisations such as the National Trust and many museums the challenges may in fact be far greater - and more long term. They are going to have to fundamentally rethink how they operate. So I suppose the lesson is, in this week where we celebrate all our amazing volunteers, let's make them really understand just how special they really are. We need them more than they need us - and that is going to become increasingly clearer as each year passes...

So - Colin, Pat, Tony, Mark, Jess, Lesley, Paul, Claire, Terry, Ann, Clare, Brian, Hugh, Kathleen, Bev, Sarah, Chris, Simon, Frances, Joy, Louise, Jenny, Robert, David, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike - and all the other Mike's, Kett's rebels and the wonderful tea-drinkers - thank you for ALL of the hard work, the friendship and the support. NONE of this would have happened without you.