Young Volunteers lead Graffiti project in York

Holy Trinity, Goodramgate has been working closely with colleagues from Volunteering, Communications and Education to pull together a project looking at the marks that people have left on Holy Trinity over the years. The aim of the project is to develop a toolkit for other CCT sites to use when talking about their historical graffiti. As well as allowing us to work with local universities (University of York and York St Johns), it has offered some of the more long standing young volunteers at York a chance to take on a leadership role. It is also an opportunity to build on work done over the summer to explore how we can offer micro volunteering opportunities and open up volunteering beyond our traditional base. The project will culminate in a Takeover Day on Friday 22 November (which is more broadly Kids in Museums Takeover Day).

One of our leading young volunteers, Ellen, tells the story of the project to date and looks forward to what we still have to come:

"To start, we took a closer look at graffiti that we’d already known about, like a window inscription claiming that a John Jackson ‘robed’ the church in 1808 (was he dressing it somehow or stealing from it?) and the variety of mason’s marks carved into the stones. Perhaps most excitingly, we found a carved pentangle, or ‘witch mark’! During the Festival of Archaeology on the 13th of July we ran a graffiti hunt, inviting visitors to find and catalog markings in the church. This was an open ended activity, aimed at both adults and kids, with the goal of getting people to look closer at the architecture of the church as they walked around. 

Miriam (Communications Officer) came to deliver a social media and photography workshop in August, which was incredibly valuable. After this, we were able to take much clearer photographs of our graffiti, having learnt editing techniques that really brought out the markings. This prepared us for our second public event, York’s Heritage Open Day on the 7th of September. We distributed a ‘spot it sheet’ to visitors, with clear photos and some introductory explanations of eight particularly interesting examples of our graffiti. 

Looking forward, we have a number of exciting workshops and events planned as the academic year begins and we begin recruiting more student volunteers. We have Dr Crystal Hollis, who specialises in Medieval graffiti, coming to deliver a public workshop and a talk in October. Later that month Sarah Cowling, our resident blue badge guide, will be delivering a workshop on preparing and delivering tours. We will put that learning to use on the 1st of November, running guided tours of Holy Trinity’s graffiti. Steve Tarling is visiting to deliver a workshop on storytelling, preparing us for our final test event, a family day at Holy Trinity. With Gemma Murray’s event management workshop, and the learning from that trial run, we hope to present an educational and entertaining series of activities to the public during our takeover day!"

We can't wait to see what the students have in store for us on 22nd November!