Celebrating Harbourfront Centre’s Volunteers
Sketching Harbourfront Centre’s volunteer network
For National Volunteer Week, we’d like to celebrate the countless volunteers who help make Harbourfront Centre the supportive place it is. What many people don’t know is that Harbourfront Centre maintains a network of hundreds of volunteers at any given time. While the COVID-19 pandemic has temporarily changed the way we operate, we’ve continued to maintain this network, using it to provide support to volunteers and helping them stay connected to a larger community. Later this week, we’ll be sharing the stories of four volunteers, each representing a different kind of relationship with Harbourfront Centre. We can’t wait for you to read them. Until then, we want to give you a sense of what the volunteer world at Harbourfront Centre is like.
Pre-pandemic, volunteers would come to our campus to help out. Some would aid with wayfinding — answering questions from visitors, welcoming them and helping them navigate through our many festivals. Others would provide specialized skills. For example, when we would run cooking demonstrations, volunteers would come in and provide support. Those who had food handler certificates would ensure that people follow health and safety protocols, while those without certification would help with clean up, ensuring that demonstrations ran smoothly as people learned about global cuisines.
That’s just one example of many. Here’s another: when our buildings were open to the public (as they eventually will be again), specialized volunteers would come into our offices to assist with grant research. Their work helped fundraise for new programs, expanding our community services to ensure that more Canadians could enjoy access to arts and culture. Many of these volunteers would also do more direct forms of fundraising, walking around campus with donation bins and informing the public of the fact that, as a non-profit, we rely on donations to thrive.
A particularly moving example of volunteer engagement is a group of 12 women who help out our School Visits program. This program brings kids from all over the city to our campus so they can learn about art, empowering them to express themselves through making puppets, masks, textiles and other creative initiatives. Every year, thousands of kids experience our School Visits program. Running artistic workshops at that scale takes a lot of work. These women would come in and help us set up, putting out and organizing materials, cleaning up where needed. They became friends with each other. Volunteering is a cherished social tradition for them. While this is on pause because of the pandemic, these women have been eager to come back. They miss us and they miss each other.
Community-building and inclusion is integral to what we do. Our volunteers often cite a feeling of belonging as something they cherish and which keeps them coming back. We are always thinking of ways to use that to help others. In 2019, we began working with a program called Canada Connects through CultureLink. The program connects newcomers with established Canadians, creating a conduit through which newcomers can better settle into their new city. In the first year, we created two “circles” (in each circle, a Harbourfront Centre volunteer would be matched with two to four newcomers). Together, they would volunteer at events, interacting with the public. Not only did this introduce them to Toronto’s cultural scene, but newcomers were connected with services that they might not have otherwise known about. They were also provided with access to opportunities to build new job skills and experiences. The program is rewarding for everyone, and these newcomers tend to stay with us through visiting our programming.
What are our volunteers like?
Our volunteers come from all walks of life. Some of them are students who need to fulfill their high school community service requirements. We think of their engagement as an opportunity to foster the seeds of social responsibility, nurturing a lifelong commitment to community involvement. Many volunteers are seniors who enjoy the feeling of connection that comes from collaboratively helping people. We also have working professionals who want to come by, enjoy art and give back using their skills. You’d be surprised at the breadth of talent here. There are research lawyers, finance professionals, architects, professional artists and much more. Each of them finds some program or initiative that they enjoy, which they then commit themselves to. The diversity of what we do is what brings these people together.
Some volunteers are episodic, visiting us for specific events. This is particularly relevant because our diverse programming, festivals particularly, service so many different cultural niches. People have opportunities to zero in on their own cultural communities. Other volunteers build a lifelong and more comprehensive relationship with us. There are volunteers who we’ve known for years, sometimes decades. However much anyone wants to get involved, we’re here to welcome and support them.
Adapting to COVID-19
The pandemic changed everything, of course. We strive to have two-way relationships with our volunteers, to give as much as we ask, and so when crisis hit, we asked: how can we support the people who, for years, have been supporting us? Almost immediately, we began to put together special programming to keep volunteers engaged. By assessing what our volunteers needed, taking care to listen to them rather than make assumptions, we’ve put together initiatives that have meaningfully enriched their lockdown experiences.
The first and most important part of our COVID-19 plan was to keep people connected during a time of isolation. Since socializing is critical to many of our volunteers, we strived to recreate that remotely. We created an email and call exchange platform where volunteers can reach out to each other to have conversations, check in and give support. To do that, we developed a system where volunteers could register for “shifts,” signing up to either contact another volunteer or to be contacted. Aided by the personal insights we had into our volunteers through working with them, we took this information to connect people while respecting the privacy of people’s personal information. New friendships emerged, bonded by a shared interest in the arts and a common connection to Harbourfront Centre. Volunteers even started to follow each other on social media, eager to meet up in real life when they can.
Building on that, we started organizing workshops and other clubs. Our workshops are designed by volunteers who are highly skilled in a specific area. For instance, we have two textile artists on the volunteer team. They offered to create a workshop series on patchworking and weaving. We supported them and now we have a program where, at the end, volunteers will be able to showcase their work to each other. We understand, though, that people’s finances can be strained right now, so we ensure that our workshops have few financial barriers. In this particular workshop, our workshop leads will be teaching participants how to build their own looms out of wood or cardboard, and how to use fabrics that they have at home. We want to give people educational programming that’s connected to the arts and prioritizes creativity and innovation over spending money.
Similarly, we have a creative writing and illustration workshop, also led by a volunteer. Last year we did a workshop on natural dyeing at home. We also have a committee where five volunteers work with a staff member to produce a monthly educational newsletter. We run a monthly book club in partnership with the Toronto International Festival of Authors, where over a dozen volunteers regularly meet online to discuss and bond over literature. There’s no shortage of what we do, and, if something positive has come from COVID-19, it’s the permission to experiment. Not everyone participates in our workshops, but the ones who do have walked away with enormously positive experiences. They like knowing that they volunteer with an organization that cares about them and their mental health — and we do care. We care a lot.
Lastly, we’ve put together a Youth Committee. It’s brand new, having only launched in October 2020, and provides four youth with a platform to create opportunities for their peers, putting together programming that resonates better with their age group. Right now, they’re still in the planning stage, but are exploring ideas like culturally-specific cooking classes (for youth who want to build culinary skills) and developing a peer support system for doing homework. We’re excited to support them as they build their leadership skills and can’t wait to see what they come up with — both during the pandemic and afterwards.
Tying it all up
We’re proud of our volunteers. Working with dedicated community members is one of the best parts of being at Harbourfront Centre. Visit our social media from April 21 to 24 to learn more about the stories behind individual volunteers — what drives them; what inspires them to do more? If you’re interested in volunteering with us, you can always contact us here. Join our community — let’s support each other.
