As ASHG is completely volunteer run, there are many ways of getting involved depending on your interests, your availability and the way you like to work.
Bring along your love of history and sense of fun and see what appeals to you.
Some of the volunteering opportunities include:
Joining our drop-in day team at the history room – a great way to talk to people about local history
Participating in a community history project e.g. collaborating on researching a geographic area, organising a history walk, and gathering oral histories, photos and documents
Programming and organising history events such as conferences, talks and workshops. Volunteers are also needed to help set these events up
Participating in community events such as festivals and fetes to reach out to new people about history
Assisting with publicity, displays, social media and the website
Videoing, photographing and sound recording interviews and events
Researching local history and staying abreast of new developments in local history research
Joining the committee and planning other ways to engage with the community.
Joining a history group is a way of discussing history with like-minded people and to share your own personal history. We all have a story to tell.
It is also a great way of connecting your history to the local area and reliving memories of days past. We provide opportunities to volunteer and will keep you informed of all of our events and special projects.
ASHG is also affiliated with Brisbane Living History and the Royal Historical Society of Queensland, so you get to hear about events and activities from outside our part of Brisbane.
For just $10.00 annually you can be a part of our ASHG family. We are a very pro-active group – there is always lots happening! You can participate as little or as much as you like.
The short answer is talks, walks, opportunities to participate in history projects, and good online resources.
ASHG recently conducted a small survey on what history and heritage activities and topics members and locals were interested in. Surveys were handed out at an ASHG monthly meeting, at the Annerley Festival, and at the Memories of Stephen’s conference.
Survey placesBreak up between members and non-members
The results of the survey will help us hone our aims with the history room, plan our programs and understand how best to engage people in local history and heritage.
This survey is just a starting point – a guide and point for discussion. From time to time we will check in on how we are doing, or conduct quick online polls.
Activities of interest
People rated their interest in each activity as high, medium and low. Responses were scored 3 for high, 3 for medium, 1 for low and zero if not checked.
Scores were averaged, making ‘3’ the highest possible score. Here are the things you are saying to us:
Tell us about the history – Guest speakers at the monthly meetings, and history talks scored the highest for everyone, members and non-members.
Walk us through the streets – Heritage walks rated next. ASHG’s first self-guided walk is being published next week.
Let us help tell the stories – people are keen to participate in heritage projects. There are many ways people can participate, through activities like:
researching on Trove, and other online archives
visiting archives – city, state and national archives, state library and specialty archives
taking oral histories, telling oral histories,
exploring family histories
writing about our heritage
digital story-telling -sharing stories through video clips, podcasts and posts
creating tiny exhibitions in our history room’s storefront ‘curiosity cabinet’.
Make our history easily accessible to us through online publications and websites
Teach us skills to uncover our history through skills focused workshops
Keep up conferences and books
Full survey results for activities – highest possible score is 3.
Topics of interest
The second part of the survey was topics of interest. These were grouped into categories of history approaches, history areas, periods, places and things and social history.
Topics of high ranking are early 20th century, women, oral history, heritage places and First Nations heritage.
Below the topics are ranked in order based on percentages of those taking the survey. Some of the rankings changed to the above as a few topics were introduced after the test survey.
That’s a quick snapshot of what people want. Our new history room at Yeronga will help us to deliver these things – ASHG just received the key!
