#museumwok

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Museum Voluntering

During my summer I got the wonderful chance to volunteer for 4 months in the music museum of Lisbon and I would love to share my experience with you

First, why did I do it? Basically when I signed up for my masters it was still january and not only did I have to wait multiple months to know if I got in, I'd only start classes in September so I had a long period of being unsure of what I'd do. Thanfully with a program from my university I knew our public museums and monuments had a volunteer program so as I was looking into it I saw that a few museums offered a spot to volunteer in their archives! This gelt perfect because this way I could test out the area and see if it is truly something that I enjoyed before dedicating money and 2 years in a masters for it

So, how was it? I have to say at first I was extremely nervous. I was mostly working with the library of the museum, looking for references to the space in some exclusive books they had and digitalising mentions and images of their instrument collection, which was fun but definetly nerve wrecking at first as I had never worked with the machines and systems they were utilising, but I got the hang of it eventually. Halfway through the months they put me and another girl looking at all the museum files and sorting them by theme, removing things that weren't useful anymore, replacing some files and putting all the information on a shared document so everyone in the museum could easily discover where documents should go or any personal files. This was wildly difficult for me at first as I'm really bad with tech, even basic programs, and I was feeling very discouraged but eventually the girl I was working with helped me more and I started understanding what should be done

Best memories? There's so many, but the main ones were how lovely and welcoming the team was to us, they'd even include us in team reuinions so we could understand how it works instead of leaving us to the side since we were just volunteers, the fact that as volunteers we got free entrance to a group of monuments and museums so me and the girls would finish our shifts and just go explore freely and had so much fun discovering all the places and sharing insights about the pieces we were seeing. But the most memorable was definetly the greta friendships I made, as me and the girls are still friends and still hangout and help eachother when necessary

Overall the experience was super enriching, it made me understand I love the idea of working in a museum and being in daily contact with art and artifacts, and it made me get out of my confort zone a lot more which is rare for me. Once my summer holidays come next year I intend on signing up again for similar work but in a different museum or monument even!