Peace Heritage Placement Projects

Peace Heritage Volunteers helped with transcribing ‘Annie’s Diary’, a record of the 1923 Welsh Women’s Peace Petition to America

Are you a student seeking some practical work experience, a volunteer seeking an interesting project to get your teeth into, or a researcher / heritage enthusiast excited about uncovering previously Hidden Histories?

WCIA’s ‘peace heritage’ work has involved many hundreds of volunteers and students over recent years through the ‘Wales for Peace’ project (to 2019). Through the COVID Pandemic the Temple of Peace is closed, and WCIA currently receives no funding towards our heritage or volunteering activities – which limits our ability to offer funded internships or casual volunteering / workplace-based experience.

However, WCIA continue to offer a small number of remote, home working based placement opportunities, driving forward specific projects. These are substantial pieces of work that would suit highly motivated individuals looking to develop new skills and knowledge; to undertake alongside academic assignments as a published project output; or to create a body of work to showcase to future employers.

Placement Projects

Temple Archives Research Features: Turning dusty documents into compelling stories! WCIA are gradually digitising materials from the Temple of Peace Archives on a wide range of themes. Digitisation placements will:

  • organise and upload thematic collections of materials to People’s Collection Wales / Flickr;
  • add captions, tags and metadata;
  • write a ‘peacemakers feature’ article or WCIA web page, drawing together the story behind the documents
  • Connecting heritage material to wider research / current affairs issues.

Creating Interactive Timelines: Illustrating Wales’ Peace history by producing colourful, informative ‘digital timelines’ that can be used on Touchscreens or as online / educational materials.

Peace Trails / Visitor Guides: Setting up Self-Guided Tours of the Temple of Peace spaces, and National Garden of Peace memorials, that visitors can follow on their mobile or tablet devices (or to access / explore remotely).

Hidden Histories Toolkit: Producing a suite of webpages, linking to a wide range of online resources, that volunteers and community groups can use to guide them through the process of creating simple, fun and accessible blogs, short films or social media posts on aspects of Welsh Internationalist Heritage.

Global Connections Mapping: Internet and desk based research into Welsh Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and community groups Wales-wide, active in global issues both current (2020) and historically. We are also piloting a series of articles exploring Wales’ links with different regions of the globe, such as Wales-America, Wales-SE Asia, as a useful reference resource for ongoing expansion.

‘Art of Peace’ and Creative Media: We are open to expressions of interest from artists across a wide range of media / disciplines, wanting to explore or showcase creative interpretations inspired by Wales’ Peace Heritage – writing, poetry, music, sculpture, illustration, graphic design etc. Unfortunately we are unable to assist with funding for arts activities (as WCIA do not receive any); but we are open to partnership or project ideas.

Volunteer Project Blogs

Support

Heritage Placements are usually over 2-4 months, working to a project brief(s) agreed between WCIA and the ‘placee’; with Team Meetings / 121 Mentoring every 2 weeks to review production progress.

We ask placements to keep timesheets, so that WCIA can demonstrate the time value of voluntary contributions to our heritage work – this helps us hugely for potential future funding applications. Each placement will write 1-2 blog articles for the WCIA website, reflecting on their voluntary experience – both for future users of what you’ve produced, and as an online reference to be able to send / show to future employers

If you would be interested in taking on one of the Heritage project placements outlined over 2-4 months (or longer), please fill out our WCIA Volunteering Form here, and send a CV and expression of interest to walesforpeace@wcia.org.uk.