Siôn Davies-Rollinson, Engagement and Volunteer Co-ordinator

Hi Siôn, tell us about yourself and your role at Amgueddfa Cymru.

I’m Siôn and I first joined Amgueddfa Cymru in 2012 as part of the Front of House team at St Fagans. For the past three years, I’ve been the Engagement & Volunteer Co-ordinator based at St Fagans. In this role, I support our volunteers and community groups to engage with Amgueddfa Cymru across a wide range of roles. One of the best aspects of my role which I really enjoy is getting to know our diverse mix of volunteers and to learn the reasons why they choose to volunteer at Amgueddfa Cymru.

Recently I have also become the Engagement & Volunteer Co-ordinator at Big Pit to help develop a volunteering programme, which is very exciting!

How many volunteers are there across the estate and what sort of things do they do?

There are over 850 volunteers involved with different programmes across Amgueddfa Cymru. At St Fagans we have over eight volunteering roles alone! Just to name a few, the garden volunteers help maintain the historical gardens on the Castle side, and our Book Project volunteers help collect and sell second-hand books in order to raise donations for Amgueddfa Cymru. Explore volunteers use our handling trolleys in the galleries, allowing our visitors to get up close to some of our collections. You may also see large groups of volunteers from community groups helping us with tasks such as fence painting, hedge cutting, and limewashing. We recently had Cardiff and Vale College students volunteering with us for the third year running. It’s really rewarding to see the students’ confidence develop through volunteering, whilst they give some of these tasks a go for the very first time.

Volunteer-led Book Project at St Fagans

We once saw old miners’ helmets from Big Pit become hanging baskets at St Fagans. They were brilliant. Are there any similar projects in the pipeline?

The miners’ helmets hanging baskets were a fun project, and the volunteers really enjoyed getting involved. The flowers also added a lot of colour to our Volunteering Hub. We’re always on the lookout for new ways to support sustainability and finding new way to reuse and recycle. One of our most recent projects was having volunteers plant over 2,000 native bluebell and snowdrop bulbs at St Fagans. Once they bloom next Spring, there’ll be a lovely trail of flowers stretching from Llys Llywelyn to Bryn Eryr. Not only will it look beautiful in early spring, but it’ll also support local pollinators like bees, which rely on early blooms for nectar and pollen when there’s little else in flower. It’s a small step that make a big difference for local biodiversity.

What’s been your favourite project to date?

Celtic-inspired garden outside Bryn Eryr, St Fagans

My favourite project that I’ve been involved in has been the Bryn Eryr Volunteers’ Garden at St Fagans. We brought a group of volunteers together to help make and maintain a Celtic-inspired garden as part of the Bryn Eryr roundhouses. The garden consists of four different beds growing a mixture of peas, beans and parsnips, various types of herbs, and one bed dedicated to different dye plants. We have also recently planted some flax seeds in the garden, so it’ll be exciting to see how they turn out. I also enjoy that the project is mainly volunteer-led and allows the volunteers to help make decisions on how to further develop the garden. We’re hoping to clear a small area in the garden in order to plant some crab apple trees for next year.

Bryn Eryr garden, St Fagans

How can people get involved with volunteering at Amgueddfa Cymru?

There are many different ways that people can get in involved with volunteering at Amgueddfa Cymru. The easiest way for people to find out about different opportunities is to visit our website. We advertise all our roles and opportunities online; here’s a link.

People can also sign up to our mailing list to get alerts about new roles as they appear. If people have any questions, they can get in contact with our Volunteering team via volunteering@museumwales.ac.uk.

And the one question we ask everyone – what’s your favourite piece in the collection?

Rhyd y Car, St Fagans

That’s a tough one! Working in Front of House, I got to spend a lot of time around the historic buildings at St Fagans, and each one has its own unique story and feel. If I had to pick, I’d say the Rhyd-y-Car Cottages. I really enjoy how each cottage goes up in a timeline and that you can see how the interiors and the adjoining gardens change. You can really tell that the visitors enjoy making their way through and experiencing each cottage. Plus, the feel of the cottages and gardens change with the season, meaning there’s always something new to notice and see.

In June 2023 Amgueddfa Lechi Cymru started a craft volunteering role to create 6 rag rugs for the education programme. We recruited 6 volunteers, and Isabel de Silva was part of the group. She started volunteering while she was finishing her master's degree at Bangor University, and her reason for volunteering was to gain experience for a job or career.

As well as creating rag rugs, Isabel and the volunteers had to engage with visitors at the Chief Engineer's House to explain how they were made and share the history of the tradition. When Isabel started volunteering, she was quite shy and lacked confidence. To work on this further, Isabel volunteered to help us at Christmas with rag wreath making workshops too – it was a busy and lively environment! Her confidence grew as she spoke to more and more visitors and dealt with the many questions about the rugs from enthusiastic visitors.

"Volunteering with the Slate Museum helped me to improve my confidence, improve my communication skills and learn a new practical skill." - Isabel de Silva

Isabel has since graduated and completed her master’s degree, and since gaining confidence and developing work skills, has now got a job with the Gwynedd Libraries Service and at Storiel, Gwynedd's museum and gallery. Isabel also completed a wonderful rug by herself by July 2024… it took a year of volunteering once a week!

"Through my volunteering I learned so much about the history of the local area, and the impact of the quarry on the lives of the people of North Wales today. That knowledge inspired me to do my part in preserving and sharing the history of Wales, and I have had the opportunity to do that through my job at Storiel." - Isabel de Silva

To celebrate Pride Month this year, some of our amazing ACPs will be hosting Pride themed workshops across some of our museums this June. As part of that celebration, we asked them to reflect on the themes and inspiration behind their workshop and what Pride means to them. 

The Workshop: Breaking, Repairing, Becoming 

Pride Month is more than celebration — it’s also about restoration. About finding stillness. About reclaiming space — not only in the world around us but within ourselves. My workshop Broken Yet Beautiful lives in that in-between space. It’s where creative expression meets personal healing, where fragments are not failures, but materials for something new. 

This project began during my final year, born out of a personal journey exploring identity, repair, and resilience. It wasn’t just a project — it became a way of understanding the world and our place within it. Over time, it has grown into something deeply collective: a workshop where people are invited to break a ceramic object and rebuild it using fast-drying clay. There’s a strange beauty in that process — a catharsis, a stillness, a soft power. 

At the end of my internship, I wrote a detailed blog for Cynfas reflecting on how Broken Yet Beautiful grew out of my final project and personal journey. 

So, when I brought Broken Yet Beautiful to the National Waterfront Museum this Pride Month, I wasn’t introducing something new. I was holding space for others to experience what I had: the quiet liberation of breaking and rebuilding, of letting go, and of forming something new with care.

During the workshop, participants chose objects, gently broke them, and spent time thoughtfully reassembling each piece — no longer what it was, but still full of meaning. The soundscape of breaking ceramics echoed in the background, not as destruction, but as release.

Fragments of History: Artworks That Spoke to Me 

While reflecting on this work, I spent time looking through the LGBTQ+ collection at Amgueddfa Cymru. A few pieces in particular resonated with me - Cup, Theatre Container and Extended Teapot by Suttie,Angus (1946-1993). When I came across Ladies of Llangollen – Dillwyn and Cow Creamers by Paul Scott, I stopped. Just for a moment — I froze. It felt like I’d stumbled into a story that didn’t need to shout to be heard. 

This work — a wooden tray filled with ceramic fragments — reads like a memory map. A cabinet of echoes. Each shard of blue-and-white domestic ware holds something: a glimpse into time, place, love, rupture. It’s not just ceramic — it’s a landscape of emotion. A kind of quiet archive. And as both an artist and a curator working with themes of identity and repair, I felt an immediate kinship with what Scott was doing. 

We do not mend to hide the scar, but 

trace its curve and let it sing. The 

past may splinter — still, we hold 

each shard like it remembers spring. 

The reference to the Ladies of Llangollen — Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby — adds a tender depth. Two women who defied 18th-century expectations and lived together in a self-declared romantic friendship, they turned their home into a sanctuary for intellectuals, artists, and thinkers. Their story is often romanticised — but here, in Scott’s work, it is made material. Grounded. The fragments of everyday domestic life — plates, cups, cow creamers — become vessels of queer memory, intimacy, and resistance. 

What moved me most was the way the piece doesn’t try to “fix” anything. The broken pieces aren’t disguised or forced back into their original form. They’re framed. Held. Given new meaning. There’s a quiet dignity in that. A soft resilience that speaks more truthfully than restoration ever could. 

To me, Ladies of Llangollen mirrors what we try to do in Broken Yet Beautiful: not to erase cracks, but to honour them. Not to return something to what it was, but to allow it to become something else — something that tells the truth of what it’s been through. 

It’s in this act of holding — not hiding — that the work finds its power. 

Belonging in the Making 

Through my work with Amgueddfa Cymru, I’ve connected with Bloedd — a youth-led programme uplifting LGBTQ+ voices across Wales. If you're a young person, Bloedd is a space for you. To create, to speak, to belong. 

This Pride Month, I’m celebrating more than identity — I’m honouring the quiet strength it takes to rebuild, and the power of coming together. 

Workshops like this offer more than creativity. They offer space — to reflect, to exist, and to heal. Even in fragments, we are still whole. 

Amgueddfa Cymru Producers [ACPs] are a group of young people aged 16 – 25 living in or from Wales who collaborate with the Museum through participatory and paid opportunities.

This is a space to deepen knowledge and to ensure that cultural and heritage spaces are more representational of the young people and their many cultures that make up Wales today. We are here to make heritage relevant!

We explore art, heritage and identity, environmentalism, natural science, social history and archaeology through our collections and by co-producing events, workshops, exhibitions, digital media, publications, development groups and more! Our ACPs work closely with departments across the Museum to help us deepen representation within our collections and programming, that reflects all communities in Wales. This includes expanding our LGBTQ+ collection, decolonising our collections and gathering working-class history through oral histories. ACPs can also bring their own ideas or topics they wish to explore through our collections!

You can sign up to our mailing list here to keep up to date with news and new opportunities.

If you have any queries you can email us onbloedd.ac@museumwales.ac.uk. Follow us on Instagram to keep updated on all things Bloedd! 

Hello Bulb Buddies!

Climate Cymru’s Great Big Green Week has been running since 7th June, with people across Wales (and the UK!) coming together to help protect our planet. There are fun activities, cool events, and lots of ways for you and your school to get involved.  

What is The Great Big Green Week?

The Great Big Green Week is the UK’s biggest celebration of community action to tackle climate change and protect nature. All sorts of people are making swaps and taking small steps that make a difference to the planet. From planting flowers to picking up litter, every action counts! 

Who are Climate Cymru?

Climate Cymru is a movement made up of hundreds of organisations and thousands of people from all across Wales, working together to tackle the climate and nature emergencies. By bringing together voices from every part of Welsh society (schools, businesses, community groups, and more) Climate Cymru makes sure that everyone is heard and that leaders take meaningful action for a greener, fairer future for Wales and the planet. 

What is the Spring Bulbs for Schools Investigation?

The Spring Bulbs for Schools Investigation engages thousands of children from across the UK every year in a scientific study around the effects of climate change on the flowering dates of Spring Bulbs. Pupils adopt, care for and study their plants. They take weather readings every day that they are in school between November and March and share their findings to the Amgueddfa Cymru website. Our reports from last year’s investigation can be found here, along with many other educational resources. The bilingual reports from this year will be published in early July. 

If you’ve participated in this year’s project by planting and growing spring bulbs, then you’re already a climate champion! If you’re looking for a Great Big Green Week Action that your school could take, applications for schools in Wales are open, and you can apply here! 2025-2026 will be the 20^th anniversary year of this fantastic project!

Who are The Edina Trust?

The Edina Trust are partners and funders of Amgueddfa Cymru’s Spring Bulbs for Schools Investigation. They are a charity that helps primary schools with science by offering non-competitive grants for exciting projects like gardening, science resources, and outdoor learning. This year, schools in Denbighshire, Newport, and Torfaen can apply for Edina Trust grants, so if your school is in one of these areas, you’re guaranteed to get funding to help develop your science adventures! Find out more here!

Try the Climate Quiz by Amgueddfa Cymru!

To celebrate The Great Big Green Week, Amgueddfa Cymru (National Museum Wales) has created a special Climate Quiz just for you. It’s part of the Spring Bulbs for Schools Investigation, and it’s a fun way to test your knowledge about the climate and how we can all help protect nature.

• What's the difference between weather and climate?
• How much of the UK's total energy comes from renewable sources?
• Why are insects important for the climate?
• What actions could you take to help?

Find out by taking the quiz with your classmates or family. You might be surprised at what you learn!

Let’s Be Planet Protectors!

Remember, even small changes can make a big difference. By joining in with The Great Big Green Week and the Climate Quiz, you’re helping to raise awareness of how we can all look after the Earth for animals, plants, and people everywhere.

Share what you’ve learnt:

Tell your teacher about The Great Big Green Week and The Spring Bulbs for Schools Investigation. There are loads of great resources that can be used in class. 

Spring Bulbs for Schools

The Edina Trust

Climate Cymru

Amgueddfa Cymru School Learning

Amgueddfa Cymru Family Learning

Amgueddfa Cymru Adult Learning

Have a Great Green Week Bulb Buddies!  

Professor Plant

Victoria Hillman, Project Lead: Sustainable Development and Decarbonisation

Hi Victoria, can you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your role here at Amgueddfa Cymru?

Of course! I was born and brought up in Cardiff, so, like many people, my earliest memories of Amgueddfa Cymru are school trips to St Fagans and Big Pit! The immersive experiences provided were so vivid and inspirational – especially as a child when your mind is open to all possibilities. A “few” years after these formative experiences, I was fortunate enough to join Amgueddfa Cymru in April 2024 as the Project Lead for Sustainable Development and Decarbonisation. My remit is organisation-wide, so I interact with all Museum sites and with every team. It’s a privilege being able to work with so many different people. Each site is unique and colleagues across the organisation are extremely knowledgeable and incredibly passionate about their roles.

I am responsible for ensuring Amgueddfa Cymru remains compliant with environmental legislation and for driving improvements in other aspects relating to environmental sustainability across the organisation. This ranges from looking at procurement practices, to how exhibitions are designed; from optimising environmental conditions within galleries to promoting active travel with staff and volunteers; from enhancing biodiversity to decarbonising the estate.  

In the last 10 months, I have also worked part time on the sustainability aspects of the Redevelopment Project at the National Slate Museum. The design work is now complete, and May is the month when the site is handed over to contractors for construction work to begin – it’s a very exciting time for the project!

As citizens of the world, we know how crucial sustainability is, in practice. What can you tell us about the work we're doing at Amgueddfa Cymru to meet the targets set out across Wales?

Heat pump being installed in St Fagans

Indeed. Amgueddfa Cymru declared a climate emergency and a nature emergency in 2019. We have long taken our commitment to protecting the environment seriously, but since this important milestone, we’ve increased our efforts and provided inspiration for others to follow. Our 2030 Strategy set out six commitments, one of which was “putting the planet first”. This commitment underpins our desire to contribute to the Welsh public sector achieving carbon net zero by 2030. Across the estate, work has been on-going to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels by upgrading equipment to more efficient versions and by replacing heating systems with electrically powered alternatives (e.g. air source heat pumps). Over 5 years (2019/20 to 2023/24), the consumption of natural gas has reduced by 36%.

In addition to decarbonising the estate, Amgueddfa Cymru operates in a way that fully aligns with the requirements of the Well-being of Future Generations Act. Consideration of the five ways of working (Collaboration, Integration, Involvement, Prevention and Long Term) is embedded in internal processes and reporting.

You talk about ‘Putting the planet first’; what projects happening across our museums today are helping us create a sustainable Wales?

I’ve already mentioned the great progress in decarbonising the estate and that work is continuing thanks to funding made available by the Public Sector Low Carbon Heat Grant. From January to March 2025, eight buildings at four sites had fossil fuel heating systems (natural gas, LPG and oil) replaced with air source heat pumps. We have plans in place to carry out similar work in 2025/26, pending the approval of funding applications.

Our Roman Garden in the National Roman Legion Museum

On a larger and longer-term scale, there are two projects currently in the design stage which will embed sustainability in the culture sector over the coming 5–10 years. The first is the redevelopment of Roman Caerleon which is a joint effort between Amgueddfa Cymru, Cadw and Newport City Council. The project aims to maximise the potential of Caerleon’s Roman heritage while improving the visitor experience and attracting more people. One key to project success will be ensuring sufficient works are carried out in order to adapt the sites to the impacts that changing climate will bring. In a similar vein, the second project where a focus on climate change adaptation will be key is the redevelopment of National Museum Cardiff. It is no secret that the 100-year-old building has experienced challenges in recent times and there is no simple fix. A multi-disciplinary team has been established in order to plan the optimum way forward to both preserve and modernise this beautiful and iconic building.

From a people perspective, the really powerful internal project is the roll out of Carbon Literacy training. This started back in 2018 with a small group of dedicated individuals and has snowballed into hundreds of staff members being trained and becoming certified carbon literate. A key benefit of the Carbon Literacy training is that behaviour changes are encouraged at home as well as in the workplace – staff members who have taken the course see this as a strong selling point.

More broadly, daily work across the Museum contributes to a more sustainable Wales. Natural Sciences Curators carry out pioneering research, describe species and monitor invasive species; Curators and Conservators interpret and preserve items so that they can be understood by today’s visitors and enjoyed by future visitors; the Learning Team provide resources to inspire and stimulate enquiring minds; the Engagement Team offer a variety of accessible and inclusive activities and opportunities to people from across Wales; the Visitor Experience team use their extensive knowledge to answer questions and spark imagination in visitors… The list goes on.

We have the Senedd's Biodiversity Day, Endangered Species Day, International Day of Biodiversity and World Bee Day, to name a few, highlighted in our diaries this month! How can we get involved with these key dates, as a collection of seven national museums and a collections centre?

Action Summit 2025 held in National Museum Cardiff

May is certainly a busy month for nature-based celebrations! Such days provide the opportunity to focus on particular campaigns and, more importantly, to collaborate with colleagues in other public sector or third sector organisations. Quite often, individuals have similar goals, but may lack influence or direction alone.  By joining forces (and there are a lot of brilliant organisations across Wales), we are stronger and more targeted. This was never more evident than at the Action Summit held on 29 April at National Museum Cardiff to mark the release of the Future Generations 2025 Report. This inspiring day cemented the fact that nature, culture and a well-being economy are essential to creating the Wales we’d all like to see.

People may know us as indoor and outdoor museums, but they may not know about our gardens and wild meadows! Tell us about these.

Volunteer gardening in our GRAFT garden, National Waterfront Museum

Yes – we have some beautiful gardens, meadows, woodland and wetland habitats across the Museum estate. The site with most outdoor space is St Fagans National Museum of History; this is where our Gardening Team is based. The Gardening Team create and look after formal gardens in the area surrounding St Fagans Castle and in recent years have introduced environmentally friendly methods such as planting perennials rather than annuals, harvesting rainwater for irrigation purposes, using peat-free compost and switching from fossil fuel–powered equipment to electric alternatives. At the National Roman Legion Museum, the Learning Team have recreated what a Roman garden may have looked like, while ensuring there are plenty of species present to attract pollinators.

#NoMowMay in the National Wool Museum

Speaking of pollinators, all museum sites enthusiastically support No Mow May and wildflower plug plants were planted in the urban meadow at National Museum Cardiff and in three areas at St Fagans earlier this year. The GRAFT garden at the National Waterfront Museum proudly combines food production with growing pollinator-friendly species. The National Wool Museum is located next to Nant Bargod and the flood meadow there is full of life – both plants and animals. A family-friendly trail has been created to encourage people to explore more!

And finally, we save the best for last. What's your favourite piece in our collection?

Such a tough question and it’s impossible to answer of course! I really love old, industrial machinery – especially when it’s still working. There are great examples of this on display across the organisation – at the National Wool Museum, National Slate Museum, Big Pit National Coal Museum and National Waterfront Museum. The industrial items at the National Collections Centre are also fantastic and are a real eclectic mix – as you’d expect from the stores of a national museum!

Trilobite from our collection

However, if you’re going to force me to pick one item, my heart lies with the Evolution of Wales gallery in National Museum Cardiff. My degree was in Environmental Geoscience and I am fascinated by natural processes – plate tectonics, ocean currents, rock formation, the variety and adaptability of life on Earth… My favourite collection would therefore have to be the trilobite fossils, while an individual piece would be the imprint of a Megalosaurus jaw, found near Bridgend in 1898. It’s exhilarating to learn that huge carnivores used to roam the place that we now call home!

Imprint of a Megalosaurus jaw