How can a nonprofit community-based museum and farm like The Curran Homestead serve the public more effectively?
…through your volunteerism!
Our recent construction of a smithy and our ongoing blacksmithing and workshops have brought many new faces to The Curran Homestead in the last six months. Volunteers have helped to build and equip a working smithy for the purpose of offering classes in this traditional art form. Also, last summer, volunteers disassembled a late nineteenth century mill building and moved it to the museum site for the purpose of reconstruction. We need volunteers to realize not only reconstruction but restoration of several period machines that will eventually be housed in this building, including a large 19th century wood planer, table saw, shingle milling machine, and a shingle planer. We need your help to continue to realize such projects and to offer even more educational opportunities.
People volunteer for all kinds of reasons at The Curran Homestead and some of them are:
- Making new friends
- Having fun!
- Making use of the time you have now that you are retired
- Learning new skills like driving a circa 1950 tractor or forging a set of strap hinges for a barn door!
- Keeping a little bit of the past alive by helping us to share skills and knowledge in venues provided at our living history museum
- Sharing unique skills you may have with others
- Making a contribution to a younger generation
- Learning more about your community and your neighbors
- Trying something never before attempted by you or your friends
- Feeling needed and important
- Feeling satisfaction at getting things done and helping others
- Creating things using the facilities and equipment on hand at the museum
- Relieving stress
- Spending time doing something you really care about
…and the reason given most often is that you can make a difference
As a part of The Curran Homestead you help us preserve a bit of our rural Maine heritage.
The opportunities available now include:
- Assist in documenting a collection of farm, smithy, and domestic items from the 19th century and early 20th century. We need people to photograph and research our various collections so that we can share it more effectively with the public we serve.
- Assist in fundraising for current projects and The Curran Homestead Endowment Fund
- Educational Programs: We needC volunteers to assist in our newly created educational programs. People with backgrounds in education could be especially helpful in developing our educational outreach to local schools further.
- Oral History Archive: Interview and record people’s stories of the past and present for our digital archive
- Assist in creating future tour group presentations
- Construction Projects
- Assist in the building of our collections
- Grounds and Minor Building Maintenance
- Interior Painting and Wallpapering in the Curran Farmhouse
- Creating early 20th century costumes for our living history presentation
- Blazing trails for our recreational trail system
- Participate by helping to plan, staff, and help to create an exhibit
- Administration/Office support
- Membership Recruitment
- Phone Circle Group
What will you chose to contribute?
We need people, and your contribution can be as little as a few hours each week.
Do you like to meet new people?
Become a docent or living history interpreter and assist visitors at our events and our future weekly programming.
Do you like objects and materials from the past?
Assist in the documentation, research, presentation of our collections. Help create
exhibitions, living history programming using our collection, and static displays, draft display texts, and create signage.
Are you the type who likes to work outdoors?
There is the potential to grow produce and perennial herbs, as well as enjoy the beautiful seasonal changes of this rural Maine site. We plan to have limited livestock in the future, and we will need people with experience raising goats, chickens, and sheep. We have plans to cultivate the apple trees on the property for our seasonal cider making, and if you have this experience, you could share it with others at the farm. Help us tap maple trees and produce maple syrup on a small scale for our yearly sugaring event.
Would you like to help spread the word about The Curran Homestead and the great things that go on here?
If you have skills with traditional crafts and would like to share them as they were once shared with you, contact us.
Contact Us.
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