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I met up with volunteer Peta Goodman in the tea room for a morning chat over a cup of tea. Peta, a natural born storyteller, can turn even the most mundane conversations into something magical. She’s a fantastic ambassador for the Winterbourne Press.
Natalie: How did you come to volunteer in the Winterbourne Press?
Peta: When I started, I actually didn’t know there was a print press here. I came to Winterbourne House and Garden because I had my sister and brother-in-law with me and we’d already seen all the things one has to see [in Birmingham] because if it’s in the book, my sister has to see it. It was a pretty ordinary Sunday afternoon, and they were going off later that evening. I vaguely remembered that Winterbourne had got gardens, and somebody had said it’s a really nice place to go. I thought, that will do. So, we wandered around the garden. We had a cup of tea. And we were just going out, and there was a thing that said PRINTING PRESS. My sister will always follow an arrow, so we walked up, and the outside doors were propped open. You walked straight into this wonderful place full of Victorian machinery that smelt wonderful, like every art studio you’ve ever been in. And I thought I’d died and gone to heaven when I saw this notice that said VOLUNTEERS NEEDED. I looked at my sister and said, ‘I think I may volunteer here.’ I said, ‘That machine,’ pointing at what I now know as the Arab, ‘looks just like a Morris Minor.’ And the smell, oh my god, it’s fabulous.
Natalie: When you began volunteering, what kind of tasks did you do?
Peta: [Fellow volunteer] Trevor used the Arab, Steven used the flatbed and did all the bags, and Viv and I basically gossiped and did type-sorting. Every time I heard anybody talking to the visitors, I would listen in and eventually, because I couldn’t remember all the facts, I had pieces of card in my apron pocket. Every time I heard a fact, I wrote it down onto a piece of card and popped it in my pocket. So gradually I got all these crazy random facts which began building up, and so it went on.
Peta said the Press runs differently now than it did nearly a decade ago, when she started volunteering.
Peta: The whole print shop was just full of stuff because we kept being asked to produce orders for the shop, and there weren’t enough people to sort it out. We realized that we needed to expand the volunteer team because there wasn’t enough time to do the work. But with all these new volunteers, we had to work out how to protect the machinery and ensure everybody knew how to do it to a safe standard. We thought, what should newbies know? Between the team, myself, and Lee Hale [Head of Winterbourne] — mainly Lee — we worked out the competency sheet. We stripped it back to what’s essential and realized quickly that keeping a tidy press was essential because we were handing over from person to person, day to day.
Natalie: Your passion for the Press and the work that you do there is obvious. What made you fall in love with the Press? Was it love at first sight?
Peta: Well, it was. It feeds into a lot of things that I like. There’s system, there’s artistry, there’s a hell of a lot of technology, which I adore. I did woodwork as a child, and I was always underneath the car with [my dad]. I never did dolls: I did Meccano. I enjoy trying to pass on what I like, working in the Press with the machinery and the metal and the wood and all the weird names and the odd things we use, I enjoy passing that…
She stopped to search for the end of her sentence. ‘Knowledge on?’ I offered.
Peta: It’s passion rather than knowledge, because knowledge you can get from the internet. Passion is different. And making sure people respect the stuff we’re using because some of it won’t be made again in the future. Some of that wooden type, you know, when it’s worn out, that’s it. It’s gone. We really are a museum. We’re always running this balancing act between things being used and usable, and things being conserved and treasured. It’s a delicate balancing act within the whole garden and Winterbourne. I think that’s why I enjoy doing what I do, because it gives me quite an active role in doing the two halves of that bit.
One day we had a box of Letraset arrive. I looked at it and I thought, ‘Oh, I’m not sure we can do anything with this, I think it may have to go,’ because every time you lifted it, it was falling apart. With regret, I lifted the box and realized it had a lid. When I put the lid on, all of a sudden this box became very different. This box had a blue cross drawn on it with an ordinary wax crayon, and there was this beautifully written label from the Letraset company with a London address. On the other side, in the same beautiful hand as the address, was written ‘BY TRAIN’. And so, this box full of Letraset, which would have been used between the late sixties and the late seventies, was sent from that supplier efficiently and cheaply by train. That doesn’t happen anymore. And all of a sudden, the box I had initially dismissed as useless became a print artifact. The whole thing told a story of how [the industry] used to work. It went from waste to gold, just because of that blue line and because I knew what it meant. That blue line meant money had exchanged hands.
Natalie: You have the mindset of a historian. The students who volunteer with you are lucky to be mentored by someone so curious and passionate.
Peta:We give them a space which can be for them what it is for me: a bit of a sanctuary. I treat it almost like a spa day because it does a lot for me. It’s quite a soothing place to be. I find it really great when I see [a student] using the presses and doing a far better job than I ever would or could and taking total pride in getting a perfect print.
Like Peta, on my first visit to Winterbourne, I was taken in by a sign in the Press requesting volunteers. I can say from experience that getting that perfect print really does feel special. Just as special to me are the conversations I have had with Peta during my time volunteering in the Press. Her knowledge, passion, and curiosity are contagious.
She reminds me to look out for the beautiful details in everything and tuck them into my apron pocket.
Natalie D’Allura
Winterbourne Press Volunteer
