Minister of the Month – Jane Rollason

Meet our Minister of the Month Jane Rollason. Jane is a fantastic mentor, who never misses a Thursday club and favours reading in an air balloon where you can’t be interrupted.

Name: Jane Rollason

Volunteer role: Thursday Club writing mentor

Live: In a old brick house in the country with desiccated frogs in the cellar and a mummified cat in the attic.

Favourite story and why:

You mean favourite stories, of course. The perfect place to read is in a hot air balloon, where it’s really quiet and nobody can interrupt you. The stories in my basket would take me to Canada for The Shipping News by Annie Proulx, Russia for The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov and back to Hoxton for The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens.

Tell us a little bit about yourself:

I’m a freelance writer and part-time printmaker so I’ve always got inky fingers.

Why did you decide to volunteer with Ministry of Stories?

I’d read about the whole project from the start-up so as soon as I had a slot in my week back in 2015, I headed to Hoxton.

Were you nervous about anything before starting?

Of course! Where exactly was Igor?

What has been the best experience of volunteering?

Getting to know some amazing kids and watching their wonderful stories flow or painstakingly appear word by word!

What has been the most unexpected thing about volunteering?

The ambition of the Ministry projects from podcasts, to audio books, to public performances, to cookery books to animations …

Has volunteering changed anything in your life?

I work mainly on my own as a freelance, so it’s great to be welcomed into a team.

Describe the Ministry of Stories in three words:

Well, just, Wow!

What would you say to other people thinking of volunteering with the Ministry?

What are you waiting for?