Do you have a passion for art and history? Would you like to share your experience, have fun, inspire others, feel valued and give back to your community? Come and volunteer with us!
Volunteers make an important contribution to the work of Aberdeen Archives, Gallery & Museums. Last year we benefited from over 3,000 hours of volunteer time from 73 people. Their commitment and dedication help us to research, interpret, share and care for our culturally important collection.
Volunteers provide a fresh approach and a diversity of knowledge and experience, as well as enabling us to undertake new projects. We love working with people to improve access to our collections and encourage a lifelong passion for art, archive records and history!
And it’s not all about the benefit to us! There’s lots of evidence to show that volunteering can provide a healthy boost to your self-confidence, self-esteem and life satisfaction.
What kind of volunteer opportunities do we offer?
We offer opportunities both public-facing and behind-the-scenes opportunities in our venues which are: the City Archives in the Town House, the Art Gallery, Maritime Museum, Provost Skene’s House and the Treasure Hub Museum Centre. The Tolbooth Museum will re-open in 2025.
Examples of the sorts of tasks our volunteers support us with include:
- Cleaning and repackaging records and collections
- Supervised appraisal, sorting and weeding of collections
- Event support and visitor experience in our venues including our Wellbeing programmes, Musical Memories and Our Aberdeen
- Collection digitisation
- Research, for example, for the Aberdeen-built ships database
- Supporting researchers and members of the public to access the McBey Library
You can find out more on the Volunteer newsletter page of our website (coming soon) and in our most recent Annual Review.
“ Thank you for having me volunteer with you today, it was something new for me and it was lots of fun, I hope I can do it again some time.” Volunteer at North East Scotland College (NESCol) fashion show at the Maritime Museum
“Invaluable volunteer support has helped fast track the cataloguing of a new acquisition of a private collection of 480 ceramics.” AAGM Curator
Who can volunteer with us?
Anyone who has the right to work in the UK is welcome to volunteer with us.
No experience is necessary. We provide training for each well-defined volunteer role, so you will always feel comfortable and confident when you volunteer with us.
We accept volunteers under the age of 18 through established school placement programmes or the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme.
How to become a volunteer
We promote volunteer opportunities on the Aberdeen City Council website.
