The Mary Rose Trust which looks after King Henry VIII’s favourite warship, are looking for volunteer speakers across the country who are able to conduct talks on the Mary Rose on our behalf in an authoritative and entertaining way.
The administrator writes: As you will see, I have included links to our website regarding being a Mary Rose Information Group (MRIG) volunteer. Usually, these talks are addressed to Probus and U3A groups and Women’s Institutes, as well as historical and archaeological societies and other interested parties. Talks normally last up to 45 minutes allowing for a 15-minute Q&A session afterwards.
The talks are a means by which we raise donations – normally £50 minimum per talk (although for groups exceeding 100, we would expect larger donations) – with the volunteer speakers receiving no reimbursement themselves apart from their travelling expenses (which are covered by the talk organisers, currently at 45p per mile if travelling by car).
In the information shown below (see first link) it says that volunteers could expect to conduct 1-2 talks per month. As the administrator of the MRIG programme at the Mary Rose Trust I can advise that, in reality, these tend to be far more infrequent – although, this does depend to a great extent on the volunteer speaker. Some speakers will pro-actively engage with local interested groups and generate talks for themselves, while others will be entirely reactive and simply conduct talks as and when requested, which could be as infrequently as one or two in a year.
One benefit of becoming a registered MRIG speaker is that while on the register the MRIG volunteer will have unlimited free of charge access to the museum and will also be invited to many of the special events the museum holds (either at the museum or remotely).
We are happy for anybody who feels appropriately qualified, to speak on our behalf – although we would, of course, have to determine ourselves whether we feel they were suitably qualified – and so this opportunity is potentially open to any member of staff as well as post-grads and even undergraduates who may be interested. Apart from our determining that a candidate has the requisite degree of knowledge, public speaking ability and enthusiasm there are other more practical considerations candidates would need to take into account – the main ones being the ability to drive, or have access to transportation by car, in order to get to talk venues (quite often located in places poorly served by public transport) and the relative freedom to conduct talks at different times during the day and across the week (many talks, for instance, can take place from midday onwards on weekdays).
For more information on applying to be a Mary Rose Information Group (MRIG) speaker on behalf of the Mary Rose Trust, please see the third section under the heading ‘Volunteering’ at: https://maryrose.org/recruitment/#volunteering
To see the page explaining the role of the MRIG to those interested parties visiting our website please see: https://maryrose.org/information-group/