Queen's Award for Stanley Spencer Gallery volunteers

The country’s highest accolade for volunteering has been granted to the staff of the Stanley Spencer Gallery.

The team which runs the venue, in Cookham High Street, officially received the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service on Thursday, June 2.

The gong was created in 2002 to celebrate the monarch’s Golden Jubilee and is given to a range of groups and organisations every year to recognise ‘outstanding work in their communities’.

The Sir Stanley Spencer Memorial Trust, which maintains the gallery, was chosen as a winner for ‘exhibiting, promoting and educating on the works and life of the Cookham artist’.

Shez Courtney Smith, a volunteer at the Stanley Spencer Gallery, said: “Here we are, a group of volunteers with no single paid person in the gallery and no regular funding from government or anyone else.

“But the work that’s done is holding together this wonderful set of paintings.”