A focus on volunteer training
Winter is coming, and with it the busyness of Christmas and New Year, but before that is the calm of autumn. And so far, a lovely and peaceful autumn for the Minster it has been. September and October has been a time of preparation and training for our volunteers, a chance for them to deepen their knowledge of our church and supplement their skills with new ones, oriented towards public engagement.
Our Volunteering Manager, Shirley, has been busy recruiting volunteers to work in all areas of the church. She has also had success bringing volunteers back to volunteering following periods of absence due to COVID. Volunteers have been trained by Zoe, the cafe manager, to help in the cafe, while others contribute to welcoming, maintainance, and heritage research and engagement.
Heritage Guide Training
Jane and Stephen organised a series of workshops for our volunteers focussed on tour guiding and communication skills. One of our volunteers, Michael, has kindly given us his thoughts on the training activities:
‘Our first session, which was led Hull Maritime Guides group, was about taking visitors round and how to keep them interested in what there is to see; an important factor being to make sure you are always looking at the people you are speaking to. Next we had a session trying to identify the most interesting aspects of the church. As a group our list came to 22 items including the nave and chancel ceilings, the Font, J H Bromby, the ledger stones, the Mariners’ Chapel, Parmentier’s painting of the Last Supper, the pews, the pulpit, the Sanctuary, the de Selby effigy and Crane’s stained glass windows as our top choices, though everyone had their own favourites. For the next session members picked out a favourite item and researched it then delivered a short talk to the group. Everyone did a super job on their topic and delivered highly interesting talks about the Gelder window, the Milner memorial and other items.