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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Environment
Fiona McKellar and Linda Mooney

Highlights and updates from Guardian volunteering week 2014: Friday

Barge on a section of the Regent's canal
Regent's canal, London. Photograph: Glyn Thomas Photography/Alamy

We're off for a lemonade...

...volunteering week is over for another year.

A big thank you to all our partners and volunteers who've been involved in some amazing projects this week. Despite being absorbed in what they were doing, they managed to keep sending through pictures, tweets and comments; they were a great help to us and made our job much easier.

We've captured highlights of the week on video and we'll be posting that on the Sustainability site next week, along with galleries of pictures and some blogs from from our partners. So, come back and find out even more about what happened in the week.

Camley Street Natural Park

The volunteers at Camley Street Natural Park have packed up for the day and should be heading back to the office now.

They've obviously heard that we'll be greeting them with a few cold 'lemonades' when the arrive: some of them were planning the route back at lunchtime... (that big building in the background is Guardian HQ).

Scriberia

Did we mention that illustrators from Scriberia have been at the Guardian all week?

They've been creating a series of drawings from tweets, pictures, comments and quotes from all the volunteering projects in real time – so we've been live drawing as well as live blogging the week.

And the comment tweeted by Live Mag (above) about the picture Scriberia created for today is true for the whole week. As if by magic Scriberia have captured volunteering week beautifully in their sometimes hilarious drawings.

They've been working on huge drawing boards at the Guardian, near our staff restaurant, bringing the projects to life for everyone walking past. It's been a great way for staff to find out about what's going on.

Here are some photos of their work from earlier in the week.

The picture below is from yesterday's project with the Education centre and the Media Trust

And from the first day...

Scriberia illustrators, Guardian volunteering week 2014
Scriberia illustrators, Guardian volunteering week 2014. Photograph: /Guardian

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson school (EGA).

Illustrations of Guardian volunteering week 2014
An illustrator from Scriberia working on a drawing for Guardian volunteering week 2014. Photograph: /Guardian

And more from EGA.

Scriberia illustrations, Guardian volunteering week 2014
Scriberia illustrations, Guardian volunteering week 2014. Photograph: /Guardian

There will be a picture gallery of all the illustrations on our website next week.

Here's some feedback from the day with Live:

Love...

...and fire. Sounds like they had a great time.

The Social and Community session in full swing

Then it was on to the video workshop...

...and some 'backpack' journalism.

Live Mag UK

The Live magazine crew are on a break at the moment, before they head into a Social and Community workshop. Carmen Fishwick and Emma Howard will talk them through the legalities surrounding the use of social media, verification and sourcing content.

Earlier this afternoon, they got some blogging tips from Erica Buist:

And they spent some time on both sides of the glass in our UX lab:

It'll all be worth it in the end; the compost is being used to make sweet-smelling flower beds:

Camley Street Natural Park

Our volunteers at Camley are divided into two teams. The ones who were canal side this morning have headed back to the Park itself, to do some composting:

Composting waiting to be done at Camley
Composting waiting to be done back at Camley. Photograph: Julie Salmon/Guardian

Once that's out of the way, it'll be on to repairing the traditional waffle fence on the site. Meanwhile, team two are continuing to clear vegetation by the canal and are giving it a general tidy up:

Working by the canal
Photograph: James Gorrie/Guardian

Live Mag UK

Just before lunch the group had a session with Rob Evans, from our investigative journalism team. Rob spoke about how he approaches a story and answered questions.

Live produce videos on a huge range of topics, such as the recent Stop and search – know your rights and 10 Most Outrageous UKIP Blunders and have their own investigative journalism team.

It seems like session with Rob went really well.

New York Cares

Some of our volunteers in New York spent an afternoon with 3rd graders at the Nathan Straus school. Many of the pupils there live in homeless shelters and move schools frequently, making it difficult for them to make progress with their learning. The New York team ran a Snacktivites afternoon at the school, where they read and played with the children and talked to them about healthy eating.

Here are a few tweets and pictures from the day:


https://twitter.com/KathleenSchnoor/status/477197943296905217

Whoops...

Sorry, as you can see all the posts from this morning have just come through due to a "technical hitch" (ie me!)

But now I've resurrected the page let's chalk it up to it being Friday 13 and get on with bringing you more updates...

Camley Street Natural Park

Camley Street Natural Park is a little oasis of calm, situated bang in the middle of the busy King's Cross area. It's a community-led conservation space, just around the corner from our London offices. The park is part of the London Wildlife Trust which is a charity dedicated to protecting the capital's wildlife and wild spaces.

Today a team of our volunteers are doing some conservation work along the banks of the Regent's Canal. The jobs include planting, picking up litter and some heavy lifting, getting gravel onto the banks of the canal. Let's hope they're all wearing their Factor 50 because it's looking like another scorcher in London today.

Camley Street Natural Park
It's stand by your tools at the Camley Street project Photograph: James Gorrie/Guardian

And today is Friday 13...

...so let's hope spilt coffee is the worst thing that happens.

And we're looking forward to seeing what the Live crew get up to today as well.

This is what the project managers Megan Cox and Molly Caton have got lined up:

Some of our most senior journalists will be taking part today, talking about how to identify your audience and how to engage with them. The Live team will also be spending time in our multimedia area and our user experience (UX) lab. Right now, they're in the middle of a session on investigative journalism.

Live Mag UK was set up in 2001. It re-launched earlier this year with a new website and You Tube channel. The Live team produce video documentaries, news reports and features on a wide range of topics including youth culture and education. The Guardian staff have been working with Live since 2004.

Live Mag UK

First tweet of the day from the Live team:

The day started with a visit to our morning conference, where editors and journalists discuss yesterday's coverage and what's on the news list for the day.

...before introductions at the ice-breaker session.

On the final day of volunteering week...

On the final day of volunteering week, the weather is still being kind to us.

Which is just as well, as we have a team of volunteers working with London Wildlife Trust again. They'll be spending the day outdoors, cleaning up a short stretch of the Regent's Canal near Camley Street.

Meanwhile, here at the Guardian offices, we're running workshops on investigative journalism and audience engagement for some of the young journalists from Live Mag UK

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