Volunteering Two!

Meet Andrew.


Andrew had a new careworker and she suggested he attend one of our courses to get him out of the house after so long being isolated. He came on one of our fused glass courses with our lovely tutor Karen and this was the first thing he had done in years. He thought that he was "no good at art", as many people who attend our courses do.

He really enjoyed making things in our course and then his careworker encouraged him to think about volunteering once the course had ended. Originally he wanted to volunteer on our cookery course, but we placed him on the photography course. (Not to be mean or anything, just sometimes we can't let someone volunteer on the course they want, it's not easy to timetable all the volunteers and courses!) Andrew looked forward to the next twelve weeks but he was nervous.

"I took my camera and hoped for the best. I thought everyone would have fancy cameras but I felt better when I realised no one did, and some didn't even have cameras at all".

This, by the way, is a motto of ours. You don't need to have anything but yourself to join in on any of our courses and we try not to teach techniques that require lots of materials or expensive items. We hope that people can continue what they have learnt with us a hobby and don't want people to feel they can't afford this.

Back to Andrew. He settled into the group well and enjoyed making brews (see before post). He didn't enjoy the course as much as the fused glass as you didn't make things on this course. He did find the course interesting and learnt how to use his camera while volunteering. He enjoyed the fact that he wasn't the oldest on this course and found it easier to get on with people who were a bit older. He looked forward to going every week as it got him out of the house.

This spurred Andrew on and he also started volunteering with the food bank. He has found his confidence improving and has recently started a computer course, which he hopes to follow with a course involving Photoshop as he enjoyed editing images.

Andrew brought some photographs along to show what he had been up to in the course.

He learnt a lot about camera functions; removing red eye, how to zoom, what the various symbols meant. From only knowing the basics on his camera he can now understand it and use it to its full potential. He's very proud of the photographs he has taken (rightly so) and explained "I'm really happy with the results, you learn by your mistakes and the more you do it the better you get".

Andrews advice to anyone thinking about joining Arts on Prescription is simply...

"Give it a go."

Thanks for sharing your story Andrew.

Thanks for reading.




Kirsty