Messing About on the River: Volunteering and well-being on the Thames Foreshore
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 04/04/2019

Is volunteering in archaeology good for you? What impact does visiting the Thames foreshore have on people’s reported well-being? How important is considering the sense of place and emotional attachment when working with volunteers? Thames Discovery Programme has been running for 9 years, and has trained over 675 volunteers as FROG members to monitor and record archaeology on the Thames foreshore. Drawing on recent work around volunteering, well-being, and emotional labour, I will examine how spending time in the historic landscape of the Thames foreshore is a key motivation for Thames Discovery Programme volunteers. The link between volunteering and a higher sense of well-being is increasingly being recognised and has now started to influence policy and practice through the development of models such as social prescribing in the NHS. This creates potential for new ways of working and opportunities for involvement in archaeology. I will use our experiences at Thames Discovery Programme to explore how considering people's well-being in historic landscapes can influence our volunteer management practices and the possibility of new ways to work with communities. 


Helen Johnston (Thames Discovery Programme, Museum of London Archaeology)