NEoN achieves Volunteer Friendly Award
We are delighted to announce that NEoN has achieved the Volunteer Friendly Award from Volunteer Dundee, an independent voluntary organisation that provides a ‘Volunteer Centre’ service in Dundee.
Volunteer Dundee exists to involve more people more efficiently in volunteering to help make Dundee a better place to live. Originally established in 1997 as “The Volunteer Information Point”, Volunteer Centre Dundee is an independent voluntary organisation that provides a ‘Volunteer Centre’ service in Dundee by:
- Gathering up to date information about local volunteer opportunities
- Putting people in touch with organisations where they can volunteer
- Providing information and advice to those who work with volunteers
- Promoting and publicising the values of volunteering
In addition to the above, Volunteer Dundee celebrate organisations who look after their volunteers through their ‘Volunteer Friendly Awards’, praising organisations that meet their requirements for effectively managing volunteers.
Each year NEoN takes on volunteers to help make the festival a success. This includes everything from artist liaison, marketing, events production, exhibition assistants and an installation team to help assemble exhibitions that take place throughout the festival.
Over the past 7 years we have found the input from our dedicated volunteers invaluable and inspiring, and as the festival grows even bigger each year, new volunteer opportunities come up.
Kirsty Cameron, a Master of Arts Culture-Language-Media student at Europa-Universität Flensburg volunteered with NEoN for 3 months. She stayed with relatives in the city and took the opportunity to advance upon her knowledge of digital art for her University work. When asked about volunteering with NEoN she said:
Volunteering with NEoN was a great and important experience for me. The people from NEoN (colleagues and other volunteers) were very friendly, welcoming and helpful whenever I needed their support. It was able to experience different fields of work, which was important for me since I wanted to have a look into different things. I was given some responsibilities whist volunteering with NEoN which was a great experience and not too daunting.
I carried out a number of different activities such as research, drawing plans of exhibition spaces, helping to build parts of the exhibitions and assisting artists at workshops. The things I enjoyed most were assisting the artists, helping out with the workshops, and liaising with visitors. It was really interesting to hear thoughts and experiences from attendees.
The whole team-experience was wonderful and I can only hope I’ll have the chance to work with a team like those working on NEoN 2016 in any future job. For my university work the volunteering has given me a direction to focus on and the experience of taking part in an internship abroad has increased my self-confidence and skills set.
We are thrilled to receive the award and would welcome anybody who wishes to volunteer for NEoN to get in touch via [email protected].
