My first 'term' as a volunteer

I have been volunteering with art + power since October 12^th and have had 12 days of working in the office. In this time I have been developing my personal role at art + power and working out what I’d like to do within the organisation, I really like having this freedom to do my own thing and discover my own place within the organisation. I originally volunteered so I could get to work with a range of different people, all brought together through the power of art – a concept I think is really amazing.

The first few weeks I mostly carried out admin tasks like updating the database of participants and projects which, while necessary, was a little dull. In week 4 I worked with Dave at the UWE ‘meet the employer day’ which I really loved as I got to talk to lots of different people about art + power and what we do and had some really interesting conversations with people as passionate about art as I am. It was so nice to get out of the office and in to the real world! After that I knew I wanted to take on more of a people role and got involved with contacting the 100 Projects people and keeping up to date with what they were achieving.

The last few weeks have been a lot more creative and people-based, I went to meet Susan Lawrence who is working on a Dramatherapy project and have kept in regular contact with her since as her project develops and forms. I have also learnt a lot more about the participants through creating profile pages for them on backpack. I’ve really enjoyed working on the newsletter and bringing together all that has happened each week to share the information with others at the regular Monday meet ups.

I’d now like to get to know participants better by running creative journaling sessions with them once a week. I see these sessions as being a calm space to sit and write about our thoughts, ideas, really anything that is on our mind as I know this can be quite a good way to express yourself and make things clearer in your head. We could visit exhibitions together and then write about our responses to them. People will be free to keep their writing private or share it as they wish. I am really keen to get started on this and would love to see it come together in the new year.