Volunteers' Voice: Alessandra
This week is Volunteers’ Week and we are celebrating the wonderful work done by our volunteers and thanking them for all the hours and effort they put into making the museum the best it can possibly be. To showcase our brilliant volunteers every day this week we will be posting blogs written by the volunteers […]
Volunteers' Voice: Celebrating Volunteers Week!
Assistant Volunteer Coordinator, Rhiannon Watkinson introduces this week’s celebration of volunteers at MERL… At The Museum of English Rural Life we could not function without the hard work and dedication of our amazing volunteers. Around 120 volunteers ensure that the museum not only runs smoothly but is a place full of passion and friendly faces. […]
Rural Reads review: Far from the Madding Crowd
As the Rural Reads Plus book group is now taking inspiration from the University of Reading’s Special Collections as well as the Museum of English Rural Life, our recent reviews have been published on the Special Collections blog, but this one takes us back to our roots…! Rob Davies, Volunteer Coordinator, is clearly a fan! […]
Volunteers' Voice: Object handling
Volunteer Coordinator, Rob Davies, explains how museum volunteers are learning how to deliver object handling sessions. For the past 6 months we have been working with Museum’s Consultant Charlotte Dew to create, develop object handling sessions for visitors to the museum which will be delivered regularly by our volunteers when we reopen. We’ll also be […]
Volunteers' Voice: Student Volunteering Week
We celebrate Student Volunteering Week with a post by Katie Wise who talks about the benefits of volunteering and the opportunities that her experience at MERL has brought. As a student on a humanities course, one thing I have a lot of is time. What’s a good way to spend it? Instead of pigging out watching […]
Your country lives and your museum
Assistant Curator, Dr Ollie Douglas traces the Museum’s history of building links with communities and invites readers to get involved in our current project In the 1950s, when the Museum of English Rural Life was first established, countryside people were experiencing a period of massive change. Of course, the lives of people who live and […]
Volunteers voice: Meet Rhiannon
Hello, I’m Rhiannon Watkinson the new Assistant Volunteer Coordinator here at MERL. Having been in the post a little over a month now, and no longer getting quite so lost in the maze that is the museum, it seems time to introduce myself. I’m a Reading local and have just returned to the area after […]
'Rural reads plus' review: The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch
Written by Rob Davies, Volunteer Co-ordinator Last month we read The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch; this was the first book we’ve read since the group became ‘Rural Reads plus…’ and we expanded our remit to include books inspired by the University’s Special Collections. The Unicorn was a perfect read to bridge both rural reads and […]
Volunteers' Voice #16: Young people as volunteers
Written by Rob Davies, Volunteer Coordinator As part of the Our Country Lives project we are launching a series of projects to encourage young people (aged 11-25) to volunteer and engage with MERL. The age range is vast, with a wide variety of skills, abilities and interests within this target audience. You may ask: why are […]
Rural Reads review #8: 'Clay' by Melissa Harrison
Rob Davies reviews the latest rural read. For the September meeting, we read Clay by debut author Melissa Harrison. Clay is an unusual novel for Rural Reads because it is set firmly in a city; it is, however, about how people within an urban environment interact with the green spaces available to them. This is a theme […]