Volunteering with the Museum Collections Team

It was early 2026 and I felt very stuck. After finishing my Masters the year prior I began looking for a job in the heritage sector and found, unfortunately, very little joy. While I had the qualifications, I did not have the real-world experience to be successful in the job hunt. I very quickly began to feel de-motivated and I needed a productive outlet, so I contacted Helen Sharp (the Curator of Archaeology for Leicestershire County Council Museums) to ask if I could start volunteering. It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

I developed in a professional capacity immensely during my time at with the Museum Collections team, in strong part due to the willingness of the team to involve me in many different projects and activities. Each week I would be jumping between different tasks, from searching the collections archives for objects, to helping out at a public history festival (you never know how heavy a Roman armour is until you lift it dozens of times in one afternoon!), to writing out social media posts. I helped conserve the timbers of a Medieval mine, designed display cases for local libraries, trained staff on emergency heritage disaster preparedness, helped do the spring cleaning to open The 1620s House and Garden at Donington le Heath, and more!

The greatest, both in enjoyment and scope, project I became involved in was preparing for the Walking Through Time: 50 Years of Leicestershire Fieldworkers exhibition. It was the first major exhibition I had ever been a part of, and I didn’t appreciate how large an undertaking it would become. My first task was to look through hundreds of boxes finding archaeological objects brought in by fieldworkers in Leicestershire: I will admit, I was quite sick of pottery and flint by the end of it all! But it was worth it. I felt such pride seeing the exhibition up in Harborough Museum and in all the satellite sites. I felt unreal seeing display cases I designed and interpretation I wrote up in an actual museum. My skills and confidence have grown leaps and bounds from when I first started volunteering and it is all down to the backing of a great team, one which I felt privileged to be a part of. I say ‘felt’ because, directly due to the experience from my volunteering, I did get a job in the heritage sector working in collections. I want to say a massive thank you to my managers while I was volunteering – Helen Sharp and Claire Wells-Cole – and all the people at Culture Leicestershire. I wouldn’t be where I am now without you.