Volunteer Opportunities at Black Swan Arts
We always have plenty of tasks and roles for our volunteers to help with or lead on. As a volunteer, we expect you to get involved in something which suits either your skills or interests. Some tasks or roles take slightly more commitment than others.
Our activities and schedule are very varied. Here are some of the types of activities you may want to get involved with.
Office support
General administration
- Helping out with office admin
- Filing
- Updating contact information
- Checking the exhibitions list is accurate
- Dealing with general enquiries by phone, email or in person
- Updating our list of schools and teachers for our Young Open
Trustee meetings
- Attending trustee meetings to take minutes
- Typing up the minutes and adding any new actions to Trello
- Chasing updates on actions ahead of the next meeting
- Distributing the minutes to all the trustees
Researching and writing reports and documents
- Updating volunteer information including guidelines and registration forms for print and web
- Producing a volunteer recruitment leaflet
Other
- Occasional building tidy-ups (normally only a couple of hours)
- Repainting exhibition walls
- Recruiting more volunteers
Exhibitions and events
Stewarding
- Supervising the gallery, engaging with visitors
- Selling the art and processing payments using our card reader, iPad and Shopify app
- Becoming familiar with the artist and their work
Setting up exhibitions
- Assisting artists in the set-up of exhibitions
- Recording any delivered artworks
- Producing exhibition labels
- Producing gallery documentation, such as notes for stewards
- Creating and distributing name badges to volunteers, judges and trustees (for our open exhibitions)
Events
- Helping with set-up for previews
- Attending previews and representing Black Swan Arts
- Organising or helping with our Art Car Boot (normally takes place during Frome Festival)
- Helping with our Art Open or Young Art Open exhibitions
- Helping with applications and set-up for any late-night opening events
Talks and workshops
- Involvement in deciding topics for workshops or talks
- Researching content and speakers
- Conducting surveys to find out what sorts of workshops are needed
- Working with the presenter to ensure they have any equipment they require
- Developing an education programme
- Producing education packs
Running the Round Tower Gallery programme
- Selecting artists to exhibit in the Round Tower from applications received
- Producing and managing the schedule (normally 18 months in advance)
- Promoting any vacancies to ensure we have a full programme
- Liaising with artists
- Sharing supporting images and information with staff and trustees for marketing and promotion
Marketing and digital
Digital and social media
- Capturing important events and activities by film or photo for distribution on our social media platforms. Including:
- exhibition set-ups
- preview evenings
- workshops and school visits,
- tenant activities
- new shop displays or ranges
- seasonal events such as Christmas or summer markets
- volunteer events
- Facebook, Instagram and Twitter:
- updating profile information
- regular posting of our news and events
- collaborating with other artists and organisations on events
- sharing information by local or like-minded organisations and artists from our network
- increasing our following
- assessing the data to see which kinds of posts and channels are more popular
- Updating web content or providing content for our Tech trustee
- Producing our regular Mailchimp newsletter
- Creating preview invites through Mailchimp for targeted lists
Marketing
- Producing marketing materials
- leaflet
- brochures
- posters
- Writing and designing leaflets including images, etc.
- Print and production
- Distributing posters and flyers around the building and Frome