Step into Volunteering at Gunnersbury

This volunteer role will be based within Gunnersbury Park's beautiful 185+ acre estate, which is now managed by the Gunnersbury Estate (2026) CIC.

This role involves helping to maintain the parks diverse ecological habitats. The role is hands on carrying out manual work (e.g. mulching, planting, scrub clearance, tree circle creation, hedging, planting, digging, path repair etc). The role involves spending time in all weather and temperatures as you will be based outside.

The role will also include interacting with visitors to help them enjoy their visit – answering questions, providing directions, talking about the history of the park and its wildlife and plants

How you’ll help

• Planting, cutting and maintaining hedge rows
• Dead hedging and habitat creation
• Bramble Bashing
• Coppicing and Pruning
• Making Tree Circles
• Mulching
• Meadow management and woodland management
• Maintaining dead wood habitats and build dead wood stacks
• Bulb planting
• Building Bug Hotels and Bee Stacks
• Watering
• Putting up/making Bird & Bat Boxes
• Litter Picking

Who makes a good volunteer?

We’re looking for enthusiastic and reliable people, who are comfortable learning new skills and information, as well as being self-motivated and able to carry out tasks independently as well as part of a team. If you’re passionate about nature and wildlife, enjoy working in the outdoors and engaging with the public, then this role is for you!

Beginning in April 2018, Room Steward Volunteers will help our visitors enjoy our beautiful, newly refurbished museum. They will spend time in the galleries and historic rooms encouraging visitors to engage with Gunnersbury’s heritage, natural environment and fascinating local history collection. They will employ brilliant communication skills to share their passion and enthusiasm for local social history with a diverse range of people.

When: Weekly

Working with: Gunnersbury Park and Museum Volunteers, Visitor Assistants and the Volunteer & Visitor Experience Officer

Department: Front of House

How you’ll help

• Manning the galleries and historic rooms
• Helping support our many exciting events and activities
• Enthusiastically sharing knowledge about the museum, collection, park and local history with a wide range of visitors

Who makes a good volunteer?

We’re looking for people who enjoy being with, and can communicate well with, a wide variety of people. Reliability and good timekeeping are essential qualities, along with enthusiasm, a positive attitude and a strong interest in helping others to engage with heritage and history. This is a great role for someone who loves sharing their stories, spending time chatting with people who share their interests and learning new things.

Full training will be provided for all volunteers.

This volunteer role will be based within the park's team in the historic walled community garden and wider park. Gunnersbury Park is a beautiful 170+ acre site that is home to a wide collection of local, heritage and exotic plants and trees. The Community Kitchen Garden is situated within one of the original walled gardens that once provided Gunnersbury’s occupants with edible produce and cut flowers. Volunteers have been developing the site since 2012 and are essential to maintaining the garden as an invaluable resource for our Learning programme. Volunteers will have an exciting opportunity to meet new people, learn new gardening skills and to help grow the historically themed park gardens in a really hands-on capacity. This is a lovely opportunity to connect with nature in a chemical free environment, with the support of our highly skilled Head Gardener.

This role is very hands on and may involve manual labour (e.g turning over soil, planting etc). This is optional, please make us aware in your application process if you would prefer not to, so that we can adjust your tasks accordingly. This role will also involve spending time in all weather and temperatures as you will be based outside, so come prepared in appropriate clothing and with sun screen and water if needed.

Please note that this role is voluntary and therefore unpaid, however Gunnersbury CIC is happy to be able to offer travel reimbursement up to a value of £8 upon proof of purchase, for each volunteer shift attended.

How you’ll help

• Seasonal tasks, such as seeding, planting bulbs etc
• Monitoring health of plants
• Maintaining the appearance and tidiness of the garden
• Assisting implement new garden plans and designs

Who makes a good volunteer?

• Enthusiastic
• Reliable
• Interest in or knowledge of horticulture – preferably experience growing vegetables
• Keen to spend time outdoors in a hands on role
• Self-motivated and able to carry out tasks independently as well as part of a team
• Comfortable learning new skills and information

This volunteer role will be based within the Curatorial Team in Gunnersbury's newly refurbished local history museum. Gunnersbury Park Museum serves the London boroughs of Ealing and Hounslow and is housed in a beautiful Grade II* Regency-era mansion. The museum has 9 galleries over 3 floors and tells the varied and fascinating stories of the development of this area of West London, with a unifying theme of migration. Displays look at the archaeology, social history and industrial history, through cases focused on healthcare, education, worship, fashion, TV and film. 

We are looking for volunteers interested in working with the museum archives and library to contribute to two interactive databases in our Home gallery. The first interactive allows visitors to select information and images of significant buildings in west London. The second interactive contains a series of maps with demographic data, dating from 1086 to modern day. Volunteers will research and choose appropriate images, maps and photographs of objects to input into specialist software to help populate these interactives. Volunteers will be telling the diverse histories and stories of our boroughs. Looking at economic, social and political differences, changes and similarities volunteers will use this information to create an informative and engaging part of our museum offer.

Essential Skills

• Keen interest in social and local history
• Excellent written communication skills, and an ability to write concise sections of information
• Self-motivated and able to carry out tasks independently as well as part of a small team
• IT literate, comfortable with Microsoft Office packages such as Excel and Word
• Eagerness to learn how to use scanning and photography equipment, as well as collections management software and other specialist software
• Ability to pay attention to detail

This volunteer role will be based within the Curatorial team in Gunnersbury Park’s newly refurbished local history museum. Gunnersbury Park Museum is housed in a beautiful Regency mansion and serves the local boroughs of Ealing and Hounslow. This team is responsible for safeguarding and maintaining Gunnersbury’s diverse local social history collections. Archive volunteers are essential to uncovering a previously overlooked resource amongst the museum's collections, so that it may be shared and utilised by our diverse range of visitors and researchers. Volunteers will have the privilege of handling unique historic documents, will be eager to learn, will become well versed in the history of our Park and local area and will be keen to share that knowledge with others.

If interested, please send an email to collections@visitgunnersbury.org stating your interest in joining the project. Please let us know if you are interested in volunteering with either: the exhibition, with cataloguing, identifying actors, or anything else!

Please join our Facebook group Shooting Stars: Behind the Scenes at Ealing Studios!