MOPOP Youth Volunteer (Summer Session)

Position Summary

The Museum of Popular Culture’s (MOPOP) Youth Volunteers will perform various volunteer roles, interact with the diverse visiting population of the museum visitors and staff, get to know other youth interested in the museum field, and learn about career opportunities at nonprofit institutions and museums. We're seeking applicants who are excited about pop culture and who are interested in building their customer service and public speaking skills. Youth will primarily perform three of our standard volunteer positions, including Information Desk, Sound Lab, and our educational POPStops. These roles are an excellent opportunity to be a museum ambassador while building confidence and interpersonal skills. Youth will meet with MOPOP Staff over the course of the summer to learn about museum careers.

Qualities Desired

• A passion for pop culture.
• A curiosity for museums, curation, and arts education.
• Welcoming personality, enthusiasm for customer service, and ability to work with the museum’s diverse visitors.
• Ability to exercise sound judgement and flexibility should difficult situations arise.
• Ability to present oneself in a professional manner with regards to personal appearance and hygiene.
• Punctuality and reliability.

Program Requirements

• Must be 16 or older, and currently attending high school.
• July 10- August 25some text
  • 7 weeks, 3-hour shifts, two or three times a week
• Attendance every other Wednesday from 10am-3pm is mandatory
  • July 10, 10am-3pm - Orientation & Onboarding
  • July 24, 10am-3pm - Guest Career Talk & Group Project
  • August 7, 10am-3pm - Guest Career Talk & Group Project
  • August 21, 10am-3pm - Guest Career Talk & Closing Celebration
• Within these parameters, you can choose your own schedule. Weekend availability is a plus!
• The ability to sit or stand for three hours, while interacting with people in a high-stimulus environment (overlapping sounds; voices and music; crowds; moving and colored lights, etc.) That being said, we are flexible to each individual’s physical and sensory needs, and accommodations can be made to fit individual volunteers.
• Successfully complete a criminal background check and reference check.
• Apply by June 3, 2024.

Why MOPOP

We’re really glad you’re thinking about joining the team at MOPOP! We believe pop culture is a universal language capable of building connections across a range of people, no matter our differences in race, religion, gender, age, sexual orientation, ability, education, socio-economic status, ethnicity, country of origin, or any other characteristic that makes us who we are. For more than twenty years, we have been showcasing how music, film, fashion, video games, sports, and more spark those connections and create a lasting cultural impact.

MOPOP provides both a physical space and an emotional and intellectual opportunity for people from any background to explore, find and build community, and recognize their own creative potential. This applies not only to our guests, but also to our staff — be it in designing an educational program to engage the next generation of creators, trying to reach a new audience with a marketing initiative, preserving an artifact in our collection, or providing excellent customer service to a visitor. If this sounds like something you’d be into, we’d love to hear from you!

MOPOP’s Mission and Commitment to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility 

Our mission is to make creative expression a life-changing force by offering experiences that inspire and connect our communities. A nonprofit grounded in five core values — open arms, creative exchanges, light bulb moments, pursuing excellence, and excitement — MOPOP is actively committed to ongoing learning in the areas of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA). In partnership with our community, we hope to also develop safe spaces for their application. This includes taking steps to continue increasing our awareness of institutional “-isms,” as well as uncovering and undoing the ways they show up in museum culture. We recognize this is a process that requires intentionality, energy, and resources, and we are developing a DEIA framework that can cultivate a work environment and museum experience that is truly welcoming for all.

We are committed to creating an inclusive and equitable workplace, and we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We believe that having staff, interns, and volunteers with diverse backgrounds enables us to better meet our mission and encourage BIPOC, women, and LGBTQIA+ individuals to apply. We acknowledge that our work to build safe spaces and better systems for traditionally marginalized groups is ongoing and will require constant vigilance and expect all MOPOP employees to be part of our DEIA journey.