Volunteering at Munroe
Meet new people, make a difference
There are many different ways to help make our town arts scene more vibrant - from a quick project, to event planning, or strategic development work.
Let us know what you are interested in, and we will find a way to plug you in!
For more information, please phone or email the MCA Executive Director, Cristina Burwell
CURRENT VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES
UPCOMING
ON-GOING
- ArtSpan Valentine Workshop - February 2, 2-4pm. Volunteers will help to greet attendees, and staff “stations” for glitter, origami, rubber stamps, etc.
- Makerspace assistant - Assistants are valuable to help guide students to available materials and tools, answer individual questions (e.g., where is the tape?) and to help keep an eye out for safety. Class schedule online here.
ON-GOING
- Programming Committee - Meeting times for this group are dependent on goals and projects of the committee. The goal is to ensure that MCA has community programming throughout the year, and will work with the Executive Director to set goals for the year and reach out to community for volunteers to help staff or plan events.
- Munroe Saturday Nights Committee - Enjoy monthly meetings with a group of people who enjoy the performing arts. This group works to identify new performances, reviews new plays, and provides logistics such as working with artists to schedule events, set up lighting, and more! They also look for volunteers to help at events to meet the artists, greet the audience, and take photographs.
- Event Volunteer - As a community arts center, we are poised to be where the fun is! Volunteers will work with the Programming Committee to run events. This is great for people who want to do fun things in the community, but don't want an on-going commitment. We have lots of ideas, like a community cardboard makerspace day, dog-art day, a New Years' Eve Tableau Vivant event, a haunted house (the non-scary kind), an annual open house with each room full of fun, and a "Tiny Floats" project for the Patriots' Day Parade. What would you like to see happen here?
- Small Party Planning - In the coming year, we would like to better extend our thanks to our volunteers and donors in a more festive way. For starters, we envision thank-you events such as a Patriots' Day event with viewing of the parade from our gallery windows (think about the typical weather), and an end-of-year staff and volunteer appreciation party. All ideas and assistance are gratefully welcomed.
- Finance Committee - This committee is composed of a member of the Board of Directors and two other individuals to meet quarterly to review MCA finances against economic trends and organizational goals and operations.
- Marketing Intern - MCA has an established marketing plan, but often does not have the time to sufficiently push out information on upcoming events and classes to all these sources. A marketing volunteer is valuable to help create press releases (in coordination with program staff), and send this out in different forms to social media, newspapers, etc. This can also include design work for graphics to go on various websites or fliers. Additional help to disseminate brochures or fliers around town is also gratefully received. Volunteers are also encouraged to create new strategies and plans to outreach to the community.
- MCA Newsletter - Work with the Executive Director and MCA programs and tenants to collect and write up information about what is happening in the coming month.
- Interviewing - There are so many interesting people associated with MCA! In the Volunteer Profile (see article below) of Don Bailey, we begin to capture some of the personality behind what happens here. There are many more, including prestigious teachers as well as individuals who came here for elementary school. We would love to both capture the history of the people who make MCA great now, as well as to also archive some of the history of the building.
- Butterfly-Sculpture Garden (Summer) - Join the weeding and watering team! (All ages, children need to come with a responsible adult). Activities are assigned according to volunteers' time and interests. SIGN-UP here
- Gardening - Beyond the new Butterfly-Sculpture Garden, there is a sad area of dirt by the driveway filled with weeds, the odd lupin, and a black-eyed-susan or two. We would love to see this properly weeded, and have some thought given to what might be done to make this area into a garden (with lots of sun and not much water) fit for an arts center!
- Fundraising - There are many needs in this area, the simplest of which is to help identify grants that MCA should be applying for.
- Community Outreach - One of the most enjoyable things about being part of the MCA family is connecting with the community to let folks know what we do, and to discuss things that we could be doing in the future. This might be as simple as hosting a coffee with your friends and having MCA staff there with an activity or a presentation, or helping to staff a booth or activity at a community event such as Discovery Day, or Small Business Saturday's Winter Activity Day for Children.
Volunteer Profiles
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DON BAILEY
Board of Directors Member Building Committee Member Munroe Center for the Arts Handyman Extraordinaire Historian |
Don's many years of service have gifted Munroe not only with much help fixing things around the building but also with perspective: Why, for example, do we have some old copper guttering that transforms into PVC pipe near to the sidewalk? He will tell you about the time when individuals were going around and stealing copper to sell. Don is full of stories to share.
Don spent much of his professional career in the transportation industry. When manufacturing started to move to other countries, Don saw the decline in the need for transportation of materials and goods and set himself up in the building trade with never a dull moment from then onwards.
In the mid-80's he was hired to do some work for one of the school directors at the MCA. "I always went in by the dance studio and there was never anything there but happy faces. This was a place they clearly liked to be" he recalled. It is both this culture of Happy, as well as so many areas in which to lend a helping hand that drew Don to volunteer and ultimately become a Board of Directors member, among other things.
"When we first moved to Lexington" says Don, "our neighbors had five kids and the eldest was an artist who ultimately moved on to be one of the biggest designers in NYC. It is great to see creative people able to achieve things that they would not be able to otherwise if opportunities didn't exist." Don has other ties to the arts with one daughter-in-law who performs in music theater, another who is a TV producer in the DC area, and a granddaughter who is a dancer.
When asked about his long-serving volunteer time here, Don talks about the importance of promoting things we value for the next generation. He also talks about the need for cultivating self-expression and creativity.
"I'd like to believe that the use of smartphones and artificial intelligence has something to do with how we build creative minds. Look at a painting and think, Have I ever seen anything like that before? Someone had to think of it first. And also looking at a painting might inspire you to do something new. We need to start with young minds. We need to teach the next generation."
Don talks about appreciating what we have come to learn so that we can pass it along to the next generation. Certainly his commitment and dedication to MCA over the years is a testament to this, and we are truly grateful.
Stay tuned for a future edition of the MCA monthly newsletter to find out more about Don's look back at the MCA building. . .
Don spent much of his professional career in the transportation industry. When manufacturing started to move to other countries, Don saw the decline in the need for transportation of materials and goods and set himself up in the building trade with never a dull moment from then onwards.
In the mid-80's he was hired to do some work for one of the school directors at the MCA. "I always went in by the dance studio and there was never anything there but happy faces. This was a place they clearly liked to be" he recalled. It is both this culture of Happy, as well as so many areas in which to lend a helping hand that drew Don to volunteer and ultimately become a Board of Directors member, among other things.
"When we first moved to Lexington" says Don, "our neighbors had five kids and the eldest was an artist who ultimately moved on to be one of the biggest designers in NYC. It is great to see creative people able to achieve things that they would not be able to otherwise if opportunities didn't exist." Don has other ties to the arts with one daughter-in-law who performs in music theater, another who is a TV producer in the DC area, and a granddaughter who is a dancer.
When asked about his long-serving volunteer time here, Don talks about the importance of promoting things we value for the next generation. He also talks about the need for cultivating self-expression and creativity.
"I'd like to believe that the use of smartphones and artificial intelligence has something to do with how we build creative minds. Look at a painting and think, Have I ever seen anything like that before? Someone had to think of it first. And also looking at a painting might inspire you to do something new. We need to start with young minds. We need to teach the next generation."
Don talks about appreciating what we have come to learn so that we can pass it along to the next generation. Certainly his commitment and dedication to MCA over the years is a testament to this, and we are truly grateful.
Stay tuned for a future edition of the MCA monthly newsletter to find out more about Don's look back at the MCA building. . .