While people might not be familiar with the term "voluntary arts", they are probably either involved with some voluntary arts activity themselves or they know someone who is. They use "voluntary arts" to mean any situation in which someone is voluntarily participating in an art form for pleasure, social reasons, skills development, and so on, but not primarily for profit. The voluntary arts encompass a wide range of ways in which people participate in the arts, but the majority of voluntary arts activities happen through the massive number of local self-organised amateur arts groups. In this article, the author talks about informal learning and the voluntary arts. Few of the millions of people involved in the amateur arts would think of themselves as engaging in informal learning. Yet, the author explains that, in continuously striving to develop and learn from one another, amateur arts groups and the individuals who take part in them embody much of what is best in informal adult learning.