Inside the Museum of London

Every now and then this job gives me an enormous sense of well-being. This week, as our current project heads towards its finishing line, I’ve been able to step back a little and observe the excellent work our volunteers do at the museum.

Our volunteers are amazing. Week after week, they give up their time to work on improving our collections. And over the past eight weeks they’ve taken it to another level by packing pottery, animal bone and building material in front of everyone, whilst talking to visitors about what they’re finding at the same time. Each day, there’s new boxes with new finds, so they never really know what they’re going to discover and get to talk about until that day, and each day is different. Yet each volunteer has risen to this challenge and performed brilliantly.

But our volunteers have always been brilliant. Since the LAARC (London Archaeological Archive & Research Centre) opened in 2002, we have had over 800 people join us. Some for just a week of work experience, some for a few months, some for our 10 week projects and some have been here for almost as long as we have. All of them have packed finds, all of them have contributed in some way or another to improving the storage and accessibility of London’s archaeology.

And now the museum visitors are joining in too as participants in our hour long Hands-On Archaeology workshops. If you fancy joining us for a workshop there’s still a couple more weeks to go. For the next two Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays, you can come and learn how we store our archaeology whilst handling real roman pottery. Workshops are from 15.15 – 16.15.

In the meantime, check out our Volunteer Profile pages to find out more about the current team.