We are very excited that we are about to launch our next heritage volunteer training programme, administered by Legacy West Midlands and supported by other community partners including Recognize Black Heritage, South and City College, St. Mary’s Convent and the Handsworth Association of Schools. This project has been supported by Historic England and the Heritage Lottery Fund, and the volunteer training will equip you with the skills you need to deliver our amazing heritage tours.
If you are ready for a fresh challenge, or you would like to learn some new skills, then this is definitely the course for you! Starting on Wednesday 25th April, our FREE training course runs for eight weeks and includes a wealth of useful training material. You will discover hidden Handsworth histories as well as learning some tricks of the trade to get you started, so you can soon be delivering your own informative and engaging guided tours. The course will be running at various community venues including the Handsworth Campus of South and City College, Soho House Museum and the Handsworth Association of Schools site.
Although we are excited about sharing these hidden Handsworth histories, what is fundamental to a great guided tour is the personal touch. This means that your guided tour will not just be a list of facts and dates, but we also hope that you will gain the confidence to be able to share your own stories of what Handsworth means to you. One of our existing volunteer tour guides tells wonderful stories about living in her old house and growing up in the area around West Pathway and Church Hill Road. These individual stories are what turns a good tour into a great one, and during the course we will look at developing your confidence so you can feel comfortable delivering a tour full of fascinating facts, but with that personal touch that will make your tour shine!
After the course finishes, we will be launching our revamped heritage trails on Sunday 24th June at Soho House, and we have invited the Lord Mayor of Birmingham to officially launch these trails. This will be your opportunity to demonstrate your guided tour skills as all of the trails will be running on this day. After this, regular dates will be set in the Legacy WM diary, and we can discuss how often you would like to volunteer to deliver the tours.
Leading guided tours can be a massively fulfilling experience. Each tour group is different, and the some of the best tours end up becoming a two way experience, where people being guided feel able to share their own stories and contribute to the tour in different ways. To get involved, and begin your own tour guiding story, contact Rachel West or Dawn Carr at rachel@legacy-wm.org / dawn@legacy-wm.org
