Volunteering at the Whitechapel Gallery, East London

I picked Whitechapel Gallery as the venue for my Volunteering Exchange. I first visited the gallery in 2005 while studying in London, and it has remained a firm favourite ever since.

Last year, after a voluntary internship at the Collective Gallery in Edinburgh, the opportunity to volunteer at another gallery came in the form of the Wave of Friendship. Whitechapel stood out as the gallery in London I'd most like to be involved with; the gallery was founded in 1901 and stands in East London. It has been committed to showing world class visual art since it opened, and has displayed artists such as Picasso and Mark Rothko, as well as today's most interesting contemporary artists.

I volunteered at the gallery for just 6 days, which I thought may limit my opportunities to get involved in any meaningful way. However, I was able to get involved in many areas, and help out in practical ways. This included helping prepare departmental presentations for the MA Curating The Contemporary course, led by Whitechapel and London Metropolitan University. The presentation was aimed at giving the students (and consequently gave me) a great overview and some useful insights into the Education department's diverse activities. It was at this point that I realised how big a role the department played in the gallery, and how busy my week was likely to be!

I also worked on sessions involving teachers planning school trips to the gallery; we worked together to test out activities that had been designed to engage visiting school children with the themes of the exhibition (Mona Hatoum's Current Disturbance), providing feedback on the activities to the Schools curator. This gave me a tangible insight into how such resources are put together, as well as helping me engage with the exhibition in a new way, in considering how younger audiences relate to contemporary art.

Since finishing my internship at Collective I've worked in Communications, and so I was given the chance to contribute to this side of the gallery. I worked on preparing e-newsletters for the Families and Schools audiences, as well as contributing copy for the Whitechapel website. This gave me a greater understanding of the gallery's objectives through awareness of its current and upcoming programme, and allowed me to make a substantial contribution to the gallery.

During the latter part of the week, I worked hands-on to support an Artist In Residence project that is being piloted in Hermitage Primary School in Wapping. After sourcing the materials necessary for the project, I worked with the Yorkshire-born artist Yara El-Sherbini to prepare for the workshops involving the school children. Throughout this process I was learning about Yara's practice, the details of the schools residency, and how this fitted into the gallery's aims.

The placement ended with a further session with the MA students at the Institute of International Visual Arts, which focussed on their own approach to their Education programme. This served as a useful comparison to what I had learnt at Whitechapel.

My time at Whitechapel Gallery, although short, was very rewarding. I was (pleasantly!) surprised by the variety of experience I gained and the opportunities to get involved, and met some great people along the way. Finally, I felt like I'd realised a personal ambition in getting a glimpse behind the scenes of one of my favourite galleries, and am looking forward to returning again as a visitor!