Volunteering at Bishopsgate Institute

Volunteers at the Institute offer a fresh and diverse perspective on the services we offer, and are an asset in enabling us to fulfil our objectives, in particular to appreciate and share our library and archive collections. 

Volunteers give their time freely to support the Institute and are not paid.  We are hugely grateful for their time, abilities and enthusiasm, and in return we hope to give an opportunity to develop skills and interests and to make new friends.

The Institute involves volunteers in a range of roles, which include the following:

Cultural Events

Cultural Events Volunteers help with ticketing, cloakroom, serving drinks at the bar and roving microphone duties for audience questions at the evening talks and discussions, door duties at the lunchtime concerts, and leafleting and flyering to promote Cultural Events and courses.

 Bishopsgate Voices

Volunteers make recorded Oral History interviews with people who would like to share their memories of life and work in the East End.  They also play an active role in leading the Bishopsgate Institute Reminiscence group, and undertake administrative tasks related to the project.

Community

Community Volunteers support the community-giving scheme in a range of activities and programmes, from the monthly Pensioners’ Lunch to the annual Awards Evening, as well as occasional visits to local charities.

Learning

Volunteers support workshops with schools and community groups, helping with room set-up and tidying away, making groups feel welcome and supporting participants in engaging with workshop activities.

Conservation

The Conservation team meet in the library or one of our other rooms to conserve pamphlets from the archives.  They remove the staples (usually rusting) and stitch the pamphlets back together.  They also do occasional repair work to damaged pamphlets. The Conservation team are members of NADFAS.

Library

Library volunteers are working to catalogue the books in the London Collection so that they can be found on our digital catalogue and ultimately on bigger online catalogues such as COPAC. We currently do not have any vacancies for library volunteers.

Archives

Archives volunteers work independently on specific projects which involve digitising images from specific archives collections.  Digitising images which are on glass slides or negatives means that they can be made more easily accessible for researchers, and that the images are conserved in the long run. We currently do not have any vacancies for archives volunteers.

If you are interested in volunteering at the Institute, please email volunteering@bishopsgate.org.uk to find out which roles have spaces and how to apply.

One Volunteer’s Story

Seilna Misfud

I moved to the area 4 years ago and was struck by the lovely Arts and Crafts  façade of the Institute, which led me to wander in off Bishopsgate.  I was instantly charmed by the library, in particular the way its pleasingly traditional furnishings contrast with the radical nature of some of its collections!   I emailed on the off-chance there might be a volunteering vacancy, and was delighted to meet Stefan Dickers, then chief archivist, and learn that a wonderful collection of late C19th/early C20th images of London on glass slides were being scanned and catalogued.  Many of the slides not yet scanned were of City churches, a special interest of mine, so I felt serendipity must be at work!

Currently I’m working on scanning a collection of black and white negatives donated to the library archives by Phil Maxwell, a local photographer specialising in images of street life and political events in East London.  The collection provides an interesting record of recent social and political local history.  Prior to that I scanned an extensive collection of photographs taken of Spitalfields market just before it ceased trading as a fruit and vegetable market in 1991.

I really enjoy coming into the library every week as the staff are warm and welcoming, and the atmosphere is purposeful yet relaxed.  It’s good to be involved in a small way in conserving my neighbourhood’s history, and indeed to learn more about that history in the process.