Sounds of the South West volunteer

Do you love listening to stories? Are you passionate about the past? Want to hear people talking about their lives in days gone by? Then we may have the role for you! We need volunteers to help us catalogue our audio collections.

Join our small friendly team! We are running Sounds of the South West, an audio digitisation and access project for all of south-west England. We are based at Bristol Archives.

We are digitising old, rare, unique and at-risk audio recordings. Many of them will not have been listened to in decades. We have only the most basic information about what the recordings are about. We need volunteers to listen to the recordings and make notes about what they are.

Initially, at least, the role is based at Bristol Archives. We are looking for people who can give at least four hours a week, ideally one day a week, but do get in touch as we can be flexible if you are looking for more or fewer hours.

Once you have completed your training, have had some practice and are confident in what you’re doing, you can do the task from home if you’d prefer to.

Volunteers will need to have basic IT and literary skills and good attention to detail.

We will provide all the training you’ll need to perform the task.

We can pay travel expenses and other occasional and reasonable out-of-pocket expenses.

You can contact either Katie Scaife (katie.scaife@bristol.gov.uk) or Heather Milward (heather.milward@bristol.gov.uk) if you have any questions about the role. They job-share the management of the project.