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The Submarine Museum Volunteers, Winner of the NMRN Volunteer Team of the Year 2024
From the NMRN
This team is made up of 33 volunteers who give up their valuable time to share their knowledge and experience with the wider team and with our visitors, helping to enhance the visitor experience.
Why the Submarine Volunteers are the Volunteer Team of the Year…
The Submarine Museum volunteer team were nominated because they significantly enhance the Submarine Museum visitor experience with their collective vast range of submarine related knowledge (the vast majority of the recent visitor reviews name specific volunteers as having made their visit). The team are extremely passionate about engaging with our visitors, often approaching Jono (Visitor Experience Manager) at the end of the day to tell him about the kinds of visitors they’ve met or interesting questions they’ve been asked during the day.
As Submarines are an incredibly technical concept each volunteer has a unique insight and knowledge base regarding life on board Submarines, and if any volunteer has a question about a specific subject, volunteers will direct them to an expert within the team who can share their knowledge.
The Submarine Museum volunteers are also unique in how closely they work with the Visitor Experience Team, as the limited space on Alliance means that the Team Members and volunteers cooperate to give the best HMS Alliance experience while keeping visitor flow through the submarine running smoothly. Often having to adapt quickly to large swings in visitor numbers as one full waterbus can change the landscape of the day, switching between free flow timings and guided tours on the fly to make sure visitors receive the best possible experience.
Here are some of the visitor reviews:
- “Truly a day well spent, the Royal Navy Submarine Museum is fully loaded to entertain, intrigue & fascinate anyone of any age. To be able to take a guided tour of HMS Alliance was a real privilege, the guide on my tour was a submariner who was able to breathe life into that old submarine. HMS Alliance is a star for the museum but there are many gems to wander at here.”
- “During the time on HMS Alliance we had talks from 3 guides, all of whom had been submariners, so not only did we enjoy actually being on the submarine, but we got some wonderful stories from men who had actually served on submarines such as this one.”
- “The tour around HMS Alliance (WW2) submarine was super interesting. We were guided by a submariner of 30 years’ experience and he really brought it alive for us and was willing to answer all our many questions. We got so much more out of the tour than we would have if we had viewed the submarine ourselves.”
- “Thoroughly enjoyed the experience on HMS Alliance with an ex submariner as our guide. Who provided us with entertaining stories of the past and thoughts of those who protect us.”
The Submarine volunteers also drive volunteer recruitment by advocating volunteering at NMRN to friends, family and interested visitors on Alliance. It is estimated that 90% of emails from potential volunteer’s name one of the existing volunteer team as having sold them on the volunteer role.
I think we can all agree that the submarine volunteers really do enhance the visitor experience and add value to the visitor offer.
I had the pleasure of meeting some of the volunteers at the award event and it was evident they have a wealth of knowledge and experience and are extremely passionate about sharing this!
Thank you to the Submarine volunteers for choosing to volunteer with us and to Jono and Hayley for the support they provide to the volunteer team.
Well done the Submarine Volunteers and thank you for the valuable contribution you make to the NMRN, we really do appreciate it!
Winner of Volunteer Leader Award 2024 – Annabelle Cameron and the Submarine Archive Collection Volunteers.
Annabelle was nominated because of the amazing work she does with her team of volunteers on Wednesday to improve the quality of the submarine archive collection. Annabelle has motivated them so well through sometimes very difficult or dry work to achieve wonderful results. This part of the archive is now incredibly more accessible and easier for internal and external users to access.
Thank you, Annabelle and the Submarine Archive volunteer team, for all the hard work you do.
Well done everyone and thank you for the valuable contribution you have made to your team and the wider NMRN, we really do appreciate it!
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2 comments on “The Submarine Museum Volunteers, Winner of the NMRN Volunteer Team of the Year 2024”
Please tell me more about Annabelle Cameron and her Archive Volunteers. Does this mean that our Archives are accessible again? (At last) – and, if so, as a researcher, how do I access them?
With best wishes,
Mike Harris.
As a labourer in this particular vineyard I offer the following at Tom’s behest:
About two years ago a US visitor the museum queried whether an object on display was too highly classified for public display and, following MoD involvement, the item was removed, placed in quarantine and an audit initiated to see if anything else within the archive required similar restrictions. A small team of volunteers have convened every Wednesday for the past 18 months to comb through the archive in order to thus audit it. That process is nearly complete and some 800 + boxes of material have been sifted through. The original remit was to flag up material relating to nuclear submarine operations which may require further scrutiny regarding their classification but as work progressed, and the highly variable quality of the material held became apparent, it developed into a wider quality control exercise. Thre is quite a lot of dross in the archive with an excess of photocopied newspaper and magazine articles as well as photocopies of items being held in other collections eg The National Archives. Despite this there are a lot of gems in there. Everything from original staff minutes written by Max Horton, patrol reports, wartime Flotilla newsletters and a wealth of personal memoirs and anecdotes which represent a vital social history of our branch of the Service. Some of the more, ahem, raucous extracts from line books and ships’ magazines have also required some advice on viewer discretion!
Very little material has been turned up with concerns over security – Mainly a few SECRET documents from the 1950s and 1960s with no evidence of formal declassification, along with some technical course notes. These along with the originally quarantined items will be forwarded to MoD Directorate of Business Services for a ruling.
The archive can be accessed by researchers through the directions given at this link:
https://www.nmrn.org.uk/collections – Scroll down to the link entitled ‘How Can I View the Collections’.