The Portsmouth Film Society (PFS) and Southsea Cinema have received a massive boost from the National Lottery, Awards For All to help train their amazing volunteers in the following areas:
Health & Safety Training (Safeguarding for Children & Vulnerable)
Sign Language
Food Hygiene
Manual Handling
Basic Fire Safety at work / Risk Management
First Aid Training
Event Operations
Marketing Tools
The grant will also fund DBS checks for the volunteers.
The cinema relies on volunteers to run the various programmes on offer, including film festivals, outdoor cinema, organization of educational activities, including film-making courses, film clubs and exhibitions. They also help in the cafe and with front of house and ticket sales.
By offering these courses to the volunteers, PFS hopes to offer an even better service to the community. The courses will also provide the volunteers with beneficial skills and qualifications that can be transferred to other areas of work. Currently volunteers come from all areas in the community, and many university students gain valuable experience from helping out at the cinema in all capacities. Portsmouth film society is getting advances from Portsmouth city council for the specific education/training providers for delivery of the training.
The director of the PFS, Aysegul Epengin, is delighted to receive this grant to further the quality of services offered at the cinema and arts centre. She said: ‘Our volunteers have deserved this after one year of hard work and we are most grateful.’
Portsmouth film society has more than 50 volunteers for the cinema and art centre/outdoor cinema events.
