Combatting social isolation with heritage volunteering

Wellbeing programme proves museums help people recover from economic and social isolation

The if: Volunteering for Wellbeing programme is a social learning programme designed to support participants into volunteering and away from social and economic isolation. It is a working exemplar of social prescribing through the power of connectivity, bringing together a number of Greater Manchester’s heritage organisations, connecting participants with their individual and shared heritage through group and one-to-one work, and creating critical, and often transformative, personal and social connections for participants in their roles as volunteers.

Andy Warby is Senior Partner at Envoy Partnership. He works with participants and the programme’s partner organisations to evaluate the impact of the programme. He suggests that there is something in particular about the role of heritage in its success:

“Many of our volunteers have taken part in other referral programmes, sometimes a multitude and often over years, but they — and the referral services we work with — tell us that being part of this particular programme has done more for their wellbeing than anything they’ve tried before, or been referred to previously.

I think that the heritage factor is key to that. There is something quick and deep and upfront about the type of connection it creates. There’s something about being in museums and galleries that creates an intense awareness of time and place; of shared identity and belonging. Volunteers can’t help but connect with the displays and artefacts, and by extension with the museum environment and other people, because they have to talk about the objects. Often the objects are the catalyst for an individual’s first pro-active steps into social exchange for days, months or even years.”

The programme is aimed at the long-term unemployed and those facing social isolation, with a specific focus on young people aged 16–25, older people aged 50 plus, and veterans. Supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, if: Volunteering for Wellbeing is in its final year of three, and aims to have recruited and trained 225 local people as heritage volunteers over that three-year period. As a supportive model for volunteering practice, participants benefit from a nationally accredited bespoke training course delivered by the awarding body ASDAN. The programme builds on the hugely successful ‘In Touch’ volunteering programme, delivered by GM partners from 2007 to 2010.

“Our volunteers are so diverse. The surrounding learning programme and evaluation process brings together people from different ages, backgrounds, ethnicities and cultures in workshops and class-based training. This is in itself a powerful vehicle for social connectivity and understanding. We give everyone a chance to speak, in a safe space and always with respect for each other. We give people time out if they need it and encourage questions, without judgement. Some people start off terrified, but even at the end of the first session, you see them starting to sit up, to make eye contact, and to smile. It’s a hugely rewarding experience for them, and for us.

People apply to and are referred to the programme for all sorts of reasons, and benefit from their involvement in all sorts of ways. One of our volunteers from the first year of the programme is as a war veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and found an almost cathartic value from working at the Imperial War Museum. We’ve found that those kinds of emotional impacts — that renewed sense of wellbeing and connectedness from engaging with history on a very human scale — can be particularly long-lasting for the individual, compared to other programmes.”

Longitudinal evaluation suggests that those impacts can last two or even three years. Of the 160 people who have taken part in the last two years of the programme, 86 percent report a significant increase in wellbeing, and 26 have gained employment. Other participants continue to volunteer or go on to educational or apprenticeship programmes. The programme has generated approximately £800,000 in social and economic value over the last two years, meaning that for every £1 invested, it has created at least £3 in social and economic worth.

Partner venues have benefited from 11,500 volunteering hours delivered by participants, but the impact is wider than that. Participants have themselves shaped and enhanced the volunteering programme, and helped the organisations involved to develop their family learning offer, and build more effective approaches toward specialist need.

Looking forward, the if: Volunteering for Wellbeing programme offers a proven and compelling case for a focus on wellbeing in strategies for heritage volunteering. The value it creates comes from having a partnership-led programme which can help heritage organisations to achieve their own development goals.

There is a clear opportunity for programmes like this to respond to local commissioners who are gaining new budgets, powers and responsibilities. Heritage organisations bring to bear significant and distinct resources and assets at the local scale. Sitting at the forefront of the devolution agenda, Greater Manchester has the potential to be a pioneer in heritage sector commissioning. Specific reforms include the £6bn budget for health and social care which will be controlled locally.

“We are working at the forefront of best practice, and the model will be shared with local commissioning groups to develop opportunities for a social prescribing pilot across Greater Manchester. Other local services, such as social landlords and housing providers, are missing a trick given the opportunities that this approach to volunteering can deliver in assisting isolated or disadvantaged residents, or tenants with mental health issues. The formation of new bodies such as the National Alliance for Museums, Health & Wellbeing recognises a growing call for more engagement and action from public and clinical health and social care practitioners to use the excellent evidence available in order to drive joined-up cross-sector infrastructure in this area.

This programme, and a wealth of academic evidence, shows that culture and heritage can offer fantastic recovery pathways for people who feel they’re experiencing a loss of choice in their lives. Within the context of devolution in Greater Manchester and with increasing impetus to maximise social value, heritage collections and gallery settings should therefore be considered key assets that can deliver a strong component of the local public health and wellbeing strategy.”

Note: organisations involved include, Manchester Museum, IWM North, Manchester Art Gallery, the Museum of Science and Industry, Dunham Massey, Manchester Jewish Museum, The Whitworth Art Gallery, People’s History Museum and Ordsall Hall.