Skip to content

Volunteers' Voice: Shreeya & Rasmi

Author
Alison Hilton
Published Date
June 4, 2015

Today’s Volunteers’ Week post is by Shreeya & Rasmi, students from a local secondary school, who volunteered to help us brainstorm ideas for the new museum. They ranked different types of interactives, compiled a possible teenagers’ book club reading list and a list of national days related to the museum that we could highlight on social media…

We contributed to different elements regarding the new renovations occurring in the museum. It allowed us to hone our creativity and gave us the valuable opportunity to explore our ideas, for which we are very grateful. This process involved quite a lot of researching and brainstorming, alongside the ability to come to conclusions justified by the evidence in front of us. For example, with the brainstorming for ideas regarding the interactive activities for the new museum where we attempted to enlist as many new means of attracting both demographics; whilst still evaluating whether our ideas will be successful or not.

We started our volunteering on January the 13th. We contributed one hour, every Wednesday for 16 weeks.

Although we enjoyed the whole volunteering experience, the activity we particularly enjoyed was  researching calendar dates relating to rural life as we got to acknowledge different dates such as “Kiss A Farmer Day”  we were once not aware of!

This volunteering experience gave us a platform to communicate our ideas which improved our interpersonal skills alongside providing us with an opportunity to further our potential. It also adds to our CV! It allowed us to broaden our horizons which hopefully will help us in our future.

Guy Baxter at The MERL
Author
Joe
/
Published Date
September 30, 2026

Leadership changes: Guy Baxter becomes our new Director

Guy Baxter becomes the new Director of the University of Reading’s Museums and Collections, as Kate Arnold-Forster and Isabel Hughes depart.

Richard Watts with a tractor and film reels
Author
Joe
/
Published Date
September 23, 2026

Beyond nostalgia

How do we help audiences of today encounter films from the past?

Friday Fledglings brand logo – a cartoon bird jumps through autumnal leaves
Author
Joe
/
Published Date
September 17, 2026

A new Friday Fledglings brand has hatched

An iconic under-5s group deserves iconic design.

Author
Joe
/
Published Date
September 15, 2026

Digitising the Fowler archives

Learn about our project to improve access to our Fowler archives of engine drawings, including 7,171 new drawings in our database.

Robert Davey
Author
Joe
/
Published Date
September 1, 2026

Remembering Robert Davey

All of us at The Museum of English Rural Life are deeply saddened by the recent passing of Robert Davey – a valued member of our community.

Merle the bat, asleep in a glove
Author
Joe
/
Published Date
August 19, 2026

So we found a live bat in our galleries (again)

Seven years after we gave a bat a library card, another bat has visited The Museum of English Rural Life.