Reading Festival or the never ending mud!

My one and only festival of the season and yes I am aware it's been a very long time coming!
Reading started off on a slightly sour note with our crew camp being moved to White, now anyone who knows Reading Festival knows that White is across a river in another county (not kidding) to the main arena, now after an 8 hour shift waking for 30 minutes is never a welcome prospect but add mud, closed roads, flooded paths and another 20 minutes onto that walk and you get the idea of what I spent most of my time doing at Reading.
On a positive note I saw more bands on shift than off we had a perfect review of the main stage from our position and other than the rain then boiling sun thing we had going on I really enjoyed my shifts. We ended up guarding the girls toilets for most of the day, keeping those icky boys out! Originally we were meant to have 'urinelles' or disposable shewees as we described them to hand out to ladies who wanted to make use of the urinal blocks in the toilets and avoid queuing at busy times in the end people had no idea what we were talking about but happily took some for the campsite where toilets were much worse (long drops vs real toilets, we all know the winner)
Highlights: Finding a girl who had been lost for 2 hours asleep in the toilets and reuniting her with her very worried boyfriend
Low-lights: my shift partner and lift home deciding she hated the festival on day two and crying for most of it.
Lesson of Reading: pick your festival buddy wisely and just don't sweat the small stuff.
Also buying a yacht sized boat and parking it on the river next to the festival maybe a future career plan, they looked like some very happy and clean festival goers right there!

And so it begins.... AGAIN??

Well yesterday I signed up for Oxfam... again
I know I moaned last year but I really think it was the person I was with that brought everything down for me.
I was there to gain some experience and to be honest I had dragged my partner at the time along and well he didn't have anything to gain from it so didn't really see the point of it like I did.

The previously mentioned other half is now someone else's other half and I have my career to think about, so back I go into the wild world of festival volunteering!

I'm only doing Reading festival this year and with a good friend from my Uni course. We both are interested in getting into music events when we graduate and she was really interested in what I had done last year.... so I went for it. I hope being a little bit wiser, more realistic and mostly know what a festival is all about will really help me this time around. I really want to grab every opportunity and this time I won't have anyone holding me back or making me feel responsible for them because I had basically dragged them there.

Also I am hoping that it'll give my CV a little continuity that it is lacking now, I had 2 jobs in my gap year, then 3 festivals over the summer so I could come across as not being able to stick at things. Hopefully seeing I went back for another year with Oxfam will show I have some loyalty and the ability to commit to a purpose.

On an semi-related note: My thoughts go out to all those effected by the tragic events in Japan. Volunteers are the backbone of the relief and rescue efforts and I just thought I should give them a little shout out here.
If you want to donate to Japan via the Red Cross, click here.

Confex

Whilst many of you won't know what Confex is, if you work in or around Events you will!


I got a day's work experience on the second day of Confex, held at Earls Court in London. I was really nervous as this was the first volunteer role I had done where we were working for an Event Manager in charge of such a huge event.
Overall I was quite disappointed with the tasks I got given. Because this role had been set up via my Uni, I kind of expected more of a learning experience than just being unpaid labour. Well actually I didn't even feel like that most of the time, I felt like there was actually no need of us volunteers and the event managers kept making up new roles for us so we would have something to do.
This idea was confirmed when we were told at half 12 that we were done and to enjoy the show. Whilst on one had I was very disappointed that I had traveled all that way so early just for some menial task, the fact I got to go round Confex was amazing. This was the first year that Confex actually banned students from attending and held their own conference for them instead but unfortunately my Uni wasn't one of the chosen few who got told about the conference so we missed out on places.
I got a real insight into how open businesses are to student interns, where as before I was under the impression that they were inundated with offers of volunteers for work experience places but from what I experienced talking to some different types of event companies those outside London really struggle to get any students to come work for them. Whilst this isn't much of a help to me, living in Kent, it has actually spurred me on to start contacting more companies about job availability.

I've got a part time job now, so this really limits the time I can commit to volunteer positions. But I am going to keep looking and hopefully if I can save a lot of money from my job I can then allow myself more freedom in terms of working unpaid for more experience.