Our Executive Director started his career in the arts as a volunteer and our Operations Manager used a volunteering role to give him the necessary experience to be able to move from the commercial to the charitable sector, so we truly appreciate and champion the impact that our volunteers make each and every day.
Volunteering with us
We have a holistic approach to volunteering programme, the work you do whilst you are on your placement must be beneficial to you, as well as adding to our impact as a charity.
Most placements start with an interview where we will ask you a few short questions to find out more about you and try and narrow down what you are seeking to get out of your time with us and how that might align with our current priorities.
Take your time to read through some of the stories of past volunteers below, as well of some of the programmes of activity we are currently working on with our existing volunteers.
Volunteering Stories
Megan’s Story
Megan came to us in her first year of her A-Levels at Prior Pursglove having found out about our volunteering programme through this website.
She was interested in finding out more about publishing and has helped us to re-organise our library, supported the Tees Valley Arts Benefit Auction including managing the process of publishing the catalogue for us.
She is now taking some time off from volunteering so that she can focus on her final year of A-Levels. We hope to see her back soon!
Chris’ Story
Chris has come to us from a film-making background and is looking to keep his skills fresh and up-to-date whilst he searches for the right role in the creative sector.
He has been spending some time working through the rushes that filmmakers generate when we have commissioned them to make a film for us.
The aim of his work has been to find stories such as the this little clip below, where the chair of our board of trustees, succinctly summarises the Green TV project that he worked on with us a number of years ago, whilst being interviewed for another film we were producing.
This footage had ended up on the cutting room floor in that instance, but Chris has been able to extract it and create a clip that now sits on the Green TV project page and where Mike is able to give a great overview of the project and its impact.
Without Chris’s hard work, spending hours watching through footage, we might never have found this clip and been able to tell this small part of the Green TV story.
Read More Stories from Volunteers in our Cultural Volunteering Programme
Current Volunteering Opportunities
Cultural Alumni
Our Cultural Alumni programme of activity is currently the main focus of our volunteering programme and through it, we’re seeking to re-discover and understand our interactions with people, communities, artists, organisations since our foundation in order to be able to better understand and celebrate our impact.
The image above is a graphic visualisation was created by Ashleigh Ellis, whilst on her work experience with Tees Valley Arts, and it shows the intersections between artists who have been commissioned by Cleveland Arts, Tees Valley Arts and both in a period between 1998 and 2018. This is one of the many innovative ways we are looking to explore our alumni and document the impact we have had.
By making this the focus of our volunteering programme, it enables you – the volunteer – to really be able to craft and shape your experiences with us, allowing you to focus on the art form you are interested in and/or the aspect of the arts you would like to gain more knowledge of, whilst uncovering and telling these stories for us.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Over the last three decades, we have built an incredible collection of over 40,000 photographs documenting our work across Teesside.
We’re looking for people who are interested in helping us to sort, select, show and investigate this valuable resource so we can start to tell some of the stories hidden within.
We use Adobe Lightroom to manage our Photographic Library and experience in Photoshop is also very helpful (though not necessary!).
Public Art
From our foundation in 1983 and throughout the 1990s Cleveland Arts was one of the largest commissioners of Public Art in the North East and perhaps the entire United Kingdom.
We’re looking for volunteers who are interested in helping us to document these pieces of public art, discover the stories behind them and find out whats happened to them since they were installed.
We first began this work back in 2015 as part of the mima localism project.