The Fledgling Arts Collective Central

British law states that the second a volunteer wishes to stop volunteering, they must be allowed to, irrespective of any previous agreements. However, at this place, people that wished to leave were told that they must work, even when they did not want to. To top it up, not only was I told that I must work when I clearly stated that I did not want to, my confidentiality was breached. I had a counselling session at this place that was supposed to be confidential, but this place did not honour that, by breaching my confidentiality.

After a couple of weeks of volunteering here, I had seen several instances where I felt the founder was insensitive in questioning some authors about whether they'd really been abused and considered suicide. I felt like everything I said was constantly misconstrued by the founder and responded to with a condescending tone. When I quit, she emailed me to tell me that she'd been receiving complaints about me and even had 2 senior volunteers suggest she let me go. I informed her that I had received nothing but praise from my fellow volunteers and had not been given any criticism prior to quitting. I then asked that she not contact me again. She did so one more time, to inform me that she wasn't lying. I felt completely belittled, hurt, and abused. I'd worked daily, even though Id only committed to two days a week, and had received all wonderful feedback and praise from my fellow volunteers. I felt that I could at least walk away with that knowledge, but she took that from me.