Volunteers

Volunteers Image

The Scottish Mining Museum is based in the Lady Victoria Colliery, Newtongrange and was set up to preserve the history of the Scottish coal industry. The Museum welcomes thousands of visitors every year and deals with hundreds of enquiries ranging from local and mining history to family research. Its collections cover all aspects of the industry from mining tools to safety and social history and includes objects, textiles, archive material and a large photographic collection.

What Can I Do To Help?
Behind the scenes the museum relies on a loyal team of volunteers. They carry out a range of work from answering library enquiries and cataloguing the collection to cleaning the winding engine, gardening and helping the technical department. Some of our volunteers used to work in the mining industry but mining knowledge is certainly not essential. An interest in helping the museum preserve an important part of Scotland’s industrial heritage is all that’s needed. The amount of time volunteers spend at the museum depends entirely on what suits them and varies from 2 days a week to a few hours a fortnight. Some work only in the summer and some only during the winter. We’re very flexible.

Curatorial Work
We’re always keen to hear from people interested in helping to catalogue parts of the collection or help out in the library by sorting through new books or answering enquiries. Volunteers could also get involved in ongoing projects such as cleaning objects, digital photography and oral history work. Some of our volunteers also help out with temporary exhibitions, either with research, assembly or hanging.

General Work
Several of our volunteers work under the supervision of our technical manager doing jobs ranging from gardening, and painting the offices to taking care of the winding engine and helping maintain our large object store. There’s a huge range of tasks– you’d never be bored!

Become a Volunteer
If you would like to find out more about volunteering at the Museum please contact Julia Stephen who will be delighted to meet you and show you round. We don’t expect any commitment from you at this stage. You may be able to meet some of our volunteers and find out what they do and what keeps them coming back. Contact us for further information.

The following information and links were researched and written up by some of our volunteers.