Oral history interview with James Cocks, 16 March 2017

Description

Interview with James Cocks, a volunteer coordinator for the Diffusion Festival by Ffotogallery, discusses his previous voluntary work with Ffotogallery, Made in Roath, and other community arts projects.

Established in 1978, Ffotogallery is the national development agency for photography in Wales. More on the Diffusion Festival can be found by visiting the website here: https://www.diffusionfestival.org/

---------------

The Chronicle Project is a community heritage project supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and run by VCS Cymru with the aims to document the history of volunteering in Cardiff, from 1914 to 2014.

Visit our website at: http://chronicle.vcscymru.org.uk/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chronicleVCS/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/vcs_chronicle

---------------

[Audio Header]

We will now begin recording the interview with James Cocks.
● The recording takes place on the 16th March at Radio Cardiff.
● The volunteers present is Lara Taffer.
And this recording is going to be collected as an oral history and will be part of the Chronicle
Project, a project led by VCS Cymru and funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

LT = Lara Taffer (interviewer), JC = James Cocks
Transcript of interview

LT: Hi James.

JC: Hello, you alright?

LT: Can you introduce yourself?

Hi, I’m James Cocks

LT: And where are you from?

[0:11 - 0:17 : Moving to Cardiff]
JC: I’m originally from Swindon, which is in Wiltshire but I moved down to Cardiff about 4 years ago - 5 years ago.

LT: And what do you do here?

[0:20 - 0:34 : Volunteer and events coordinator]
JC: My current job is working for a photo gallery which is in Cardiff and Penarth. I am working for the fusion festival as the volunteer and events coordinator.

LT: And what does that role entail?

[0:37 - 0:55 : career roles]
JC: It involves getting volunteers to help at the festival with all different types of roles, that’s anything from helping install artists work to invigilating spaces, to documenting the work and so forth.

LT: And before you had this role, you were an active volunteer at the g39 gallery.
[1:02 - 1:33 : G39]
JC: I was the gallery intern there. The g39 is an independent artist led contemporary gallery and within that they have a programme called WARP, which stands for the Wales Artist Resource Programme. And within that I was the intern for that, so aswell as alot of admin roles there was a volunteer programme within that so I was in charge of the volunteer programme there as well.

LT: And so you were kind of a manager of the volunteers?

[1:36 - 2:18 : James’ role within G39]
JC: Yeah, within their system they had about one hundred registered volunteers which then sort of fluctuated between 60 to 40 depending, because I did reviews with the amount of people that were on there. And my role was depending on what the programme was, depending if it was a conventional gallery exhibition to an event, I would get the volunteers to help out whether it be invigilation, helping out at events, to installing, doing publicity, all sorts of things like that.

LT: Have you volunteered for any other organisations in Cardiff?

[2:23 - 3:19 : Different volunteering opportunities]
JC: I volunteered at quite a lot of places in Cardiff, so my first volunteer position was at Arcade Cardiff, which is a gallery in Queens Arcade, and that was in October of 2013 I believe. That's part of ‘made in roath’, so ‘made in roath’ is a community arts festival that happens every October. Within that they have volunteers, so I was in my first or second year I can't quite remember, I volunteered when I was a student at Cardiff School of Art and Design, I volunteered with them and they had a project in collaboration with Arcade Cardiff and that was my first volunteer position.

LT: Were there any other ones?

[3:23 - 4:11 : ‘Made in Roath’]
JC: From that point, that was actually a really positive experience of volunteering with ‘made in roath’ that first year. I loved it so much that from that point right up until I got that position with g39 in February 2016, I volunteered for 3 years solidly in loads of different places, so ‘made in roath’ I have a strong relationship with now. I volunteered with them for about 2 years and then I was able to build up the confidence to do my own sort of - because I’m a visual artist myself I was able to work with them on my own projects through the volunteering I did with them.

LT: Can you explain a little bit about what ‘Made In Roath’ is?

[4:14 - 5:22 : Art exhibitions, open houses and performances]
JC: ‘Made in Roath’ is a community Arts festival that happens every October, within Roath. And it’s sort of ETHOS of commanding mission statement, is to take Art into the communities. So within the month of October you have Art exhibition, open houses, performances, theatre, music, dance. And it occupies 60 different venues, that was last year I believe, all across Roath and it’s really really valuable to not only the artist community within Roath but to a lot of the residents of Roath. They’ve taken it, and really embraced it and look forward to it every year.

LT: Do you have any favourite memories during those times?

[5:26 - 7:07 : Paint spinning stall]
JC: My favourite memory for volunteering - I remember I was actually talking to it with Helen clifford who’s one of the organisers from ‘made in roath’ about it on Sunday. We were looking back on one particular time, it was the first time I volunteered with them for a closed road event, which is like - ‘Made in Roath’ is a festival that happens in October, and lasts one week, and the last Saturday they have a closed road on Plasnewydd Road, and I was still quite nervous with volunteering, but she was like why don’t you do the paint spinning stall so I was having to be on this paint spinning stall for a couple of hours working with children, putting paint on a paper plate and spinning it round. I remember I wanted to look smart because sometimes I look a bit scruffy, and I wore a white shirt, one of my favourite white shirts and it got covered in paint. And then it was like a torrential downpour, but it was such a great experience because i’m volunteering but it felt like I was really getting to know people within Roath within the community, because this was kind of early on that I lived in Cardiff, getting to know the place that I’m in.

LT: That was one of my next questions, how do you think volunteering has helped you get to know your community better?

[7:12 - 8:40 : Meeting new people]
JC: It’s been the main thing that’s made Cardiff my home, because Swindon, although it does have its own artist community it's very small and not as well funded and is nowhere near as vibrant as Cardiff. Every opportunity, every paid job that i've had in Cardiff has come from volunteering with an organisation so like I said earlier ‘Made in Roath’ working for them made it so that I can do my own personal art projects with them. With g39 you could get a job there, and that job made me have this job here. But it meant that I also met all the people within the artist community who are now close friends, I met my girlfriend through volunteering and it helped me geographically know the place because they’d say “James you’ve got to go down to work in Cardiff Bay to do some art project there” and it made me understand the geographics of getting from place to place.

LT: Was there an art project in Cardiff Bay that you worked on?

[8:43 - 9:55 : Invigilating in the shed]
JC: Yes I did, it was for Cardiff Contemporary in 2015. Cardiff contemporary is a bi-annual contemporary arts festival, take over Cardiff city centre and beyond. And it was a project for, I can’t remember the artist's name, basically it was an art project where an outpost that looks out onto the sea, and basically I had to invigilate this wooden shed. It was very cold but it was a good experience.

LT: Was it in winter?

[9:57 - 10:11]
JC: It was October. So it was very cold, it had an old fashioned mariners blanket which kept us from freezing, I remember I wrote my dissertation there as well.

LT: While volunteering have you met anyone that has greatly impacted your life?

[10:16 - 11:01]
JC: Well on a personal level, I met my girlfriend volunteering at G39. I met my boss at photo gallery volunteering. I would go as far as to say the majority of the people within the art community has come through volunteering, so pretty much everyone who has helped me in my career I have volunteered with them in some capacity.

LT: Normal definitions of volunteering kind of can enccompass things like going to collect funds or painting a shed or something. How do you see volunteering within the art community, how do you see that fitting in with other kinds of traditional ideas of volunteering?

[11:24 - 13:00 : varied roles within volunteering experiences]
JC: The sort of roles that I have done within the art community volunteering, it can be anything from painting a shed, moving a shed and doing a lot of practical stuff. A lot of traditional volunteering roles are within that because the nature of a lot of community based art projects there is a lot of like you said, gardening, or more traditional methods, “made in Roath” do a lot of community art projects which involve the sort of traditional volunteering roles. All the way up to invigilating, for those who don’t know what invigilating is; it’s looking after an exhibition or a venue during it’s opening hours. A lot of volunteering roles can be helping out doing talks with people that come into the exhibition, so it’s learning about the artists, what project is being contained and then being able to articulate that to the visitors that come in, so that’s quite a highly skilled role but if you're doing something like that there's a lot of training that comes along with that. So it’s really varied, the types of roles I’m getting involved with.

LT: Did you have to go through any training as a volunteer?

[13:06 - 14:14]
JC: Yes, for certain things definitely, for my stuff for my volunteering at G39 every volunteer had to go through an induction, that’s just knowing about the organisation. For certain exhibitions there were artist walk arounds, so the artist talks about the work. And then for the fusion festival in May we’re gonna have a training day for all volunteers to tell them all about the different artists contained within the festival and specifically when G39 and through photo gallery and to a certain extent “made in Roath” there's a lot of practical installing of work, whereas learning how to do particular practical tasks are involved in that.

LT: What does volunteering mean to you?

[14:19 - 15:33 : professional and personal value]
JC: It’s kind of a tough question, in a sense, it means a great deal to me because like I said before it’s given me every opportunity that I’ve had within Cardiff. So on a professional level it means a lot because I wouldn’t be in my position doing this interview with you or in this job with photo gallery now, without volunteering. So on a professional level it’s been very very beneficial, it means a great deal to me. On a personal level although I’m not getting paid for the work it's a very valuable experience in the sense that I’m personally feeling very nourished by being involved with very interesting projects, things I wouldn't necessarily get involved with if it was a paid job, so yeah it’s very nourishing on a personal level.

LT: And if you had to define volunteering, how would you define it?

[15:39 - 16:37]
JC: I would define it as - it’s hard because if you say volunteering, your offering up your time for free that's quite a literal definition because you're not getting paid for it but that's not necessarily the emphasis I want to put on it. Because you are getting paid back on a different level, something that's more than money, so volunteering I would say is where you are offering your time and being paid not through money but through a more valuable nourishing experience whether personal or professional.

LT: And before the interview we talked a bit about the volunteering climate in the UK, would you like to comment on that any further for the record?

[16:47 - 20:46 : making volunteering beneficial for both parties]
JC: Yeah, I think it’s something that I Personally think about a lot is because, like I just said in the previous question you're giving up your time for free and I think sometimes you have to strike a balance where your not - because my roles are more to do with managing volunteers. So sometimes the climate, especially around 2010 when David Cameron came in, I’m naming him by his name because he did say it, but the whole big society thing where we’re moving away from paying people to do a job to getting the community and volunteers to take up those roles. And I really try in my managing of volunteers to make it so they're not feeling like we've changed this from a paid position to a volunteer position because we don't want to pay money, so there's a balance there, of making sure that people don't feel like we’re using them. I think with that whole bug society thing I think it gave a lot of organisations, not within Cardiff but I've seen in other places they get rid of a paid position and then they put a volunteer position in instead. And I think that really gives volunteering sometimes a bad name where really it should be a proper two way street where someone is volunteering because they want to be part of that particular organisation or particular project, and the person that's offering that volunteering wants to help that person develop in whatever way they can. And specifically because the roles I’ve been doing are more management roles of volunteers i've been really conscious that I don't want the volunteers to feel like they're being used. So to make sure that that balances right that they're giving their time for free in a sense but that I make sure that if they're giving their time I will help them develop in whatever ways - so basically the reasons why they want to become a volunteer lets help them develop in those ways. So say for example a volunteer has come in because they want to know more about installing an exhibition and working with artists, let’s make sure that they volunteer installing a show, and they get to meet the artist and practical roles, they get to learn working with artists, so they get a lot from it and you can have meetings with them after where you could say “how was that?” “did you get a lot from that?”, so it’s trying to really push against that climate of ‘let's take away a paid position and make it into a voluntary position’ and I want to make sure there's that real balance.

LT: That’s beneficial for both parties.

[20:48 - 21:06 : volunteers being valued]
JC: For both parties, and make sure that they feel that there time is valued, that’s the most important thing, I’m not doing my job properly if they feel their times not valued.

LT: So my last question, it’s a fill in the black question, volunteering is . . .

[21:14 - 21:17]
JC: Really valuable.

LT: Anything you’d like to add?

[21:19 - 21:20]
JC: No, it’s fine.

LT: Thank you for your time.

[21:21 - 21:22]
JC: That’s alright thank you.

• http://chronicle.vcscymru.org.uk/collection/item/vcs_chronicle_oh_51 (link opens in new window)