In the years since Fine Cell work was first established, our community has grown to include more than 100 volunteers involved in directly delivering our programmes. There are multiple ways for volunteers to get involved with Fine Cell Work. Opportunities include running in-prison groups and workshops, mentoring our Open the Gate 'apprentices', assisting our production and commissions teams, as well as helping to run fundraising and sales events.

Many of our volunteers are embroidery enthusiasts and experts. We have a small number of vacancies to join our incredible team of volunteers! These opportunities are incredibly rare but hugely gratifying and require a great deal of patience, empathy and most importantly, commitment.

Recruiting new prison volunteers is a big commitment for both the volunteer and Fine Cell Work. Almost all classes fall within Monday - Friday 9am - 6pm so are best suited to those with a regular time slot of availability in the week. The majority of our prison classes are taught fortnightly and the class lasts about 2 hours. You don't have to be a stitcher to volunteer in prison, although an understanding of needlework is an advantage.

The key duties of our prison volunteers include:

- Teaching our prison stitchers embroidery, needlepoint and/or quilting so they reach a skill level high enough that they can be paid to produce Fine Cell Work products.

- Encouraging and helping stitchers to complete our Open College Network certification in creative needlework, as well as encouraging those who wish to undertake their own creative projects.

- Maintaining good communication with other volunteers and the team in the office to ensure stitchers have work to complete.

- Ensuring accurate records of stitchers' work and other monitoring data are up to date.

- Acting as an ambassador for Fine Cell Work within the prison.

If you are interested in applying to be a prison volunteer, please tell us a little more about yourself by completing this application form and returning it to our Programmes team at volunteer@finecellwork.co.uk (see form for details).