Beyond the Castle – Volunteer Training

In the afternoon, we had seventeen people to work with and in the evening, a perfectly formed group of five as we engaged the volunteers in a series of exercises that will be echoed our co-design processes themselves.

Each volunteer had become involved for a whole variety of reasons – some came along because they live in the immediate castle area, some because they represent particular constituencies of interest. Some were volunteering to offer additional technical or logistical support on the event days, and some were there because they were interested in learning more about, and getting the opportunity to practise, some co-design techniques themselves. All the volunteers came together in great spirits and worked really well together in the sessions as they focussed on making the Beyond the Castle events as successful as possible in using really meaningful ways to engage Lancaster people in the future plans for their park.

Everyone who came along found out more about the co-design events and the roles they would have in them. They solved some Olympic scale challenges, they asked lots of questions, they came up with great ideas, they co-designed their volunteer support resources and they had some laughs.

We had a wide range of ages and experiences and everyone threw themselves into the sessions with great generosity of spirit (and a little bravery!) guaranteeing we got everyone off to a great, confident start.  We are all delighted to have so many fantastic people on board, so committed to what we will be doing together over the next couple of months in bringing the Beyond the Castle events to life. Thank you everyone.