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.

Winter of Volunteering

Well not exactly...
I haven't actually managed to do any more event volunteering this winter because I have been too busy writing a 3000 word essay on... Event Volunteering! Can you say irony?

A lot of the theories I looked at for my report were very helpful when thinking about why people volunteer and how events can keep their volunteers motivated. It's very strange to see the way you behave when volunteering explained almost word for word by an Event Manager for the Winter Olympics almost 20 years ago.

There are a few events which I am interested in volunteering for and very soon I am going to have to decide if I want to do the festival circuit again. The only downside to this is I can't get a 'real' job for the summer. Seeing as it'll be the last summer before I graduate a long term position might be more useful to me in the future.

Autumn of Volunteering

So my first post summer, post festival, job.
A friend from Uni and I decided to take up one of the many emails we get asking for any help we can give at a variety of charitable events.

We chose: The Big Issue Big London Night Walk (yep thats a mouthful!)

We were assigned the registration team, so for once I got to be inside! Inside the IMAX cinema in London to be exact, with a chair and table and everything (can you tell festivals have made me grateful to non-standing roles?) We were marking off people as the arrived, making sure they knew where to get their maps and jackets and to stay safe seeing as it was a night walk through London.

This event was so different to festivals, I really felt like my role had a purpose as opposed to feeling often a little redundant at the bigger festivals. There were only 4 of us ticking off names and really we didn't stop for 2 hours just to keep the line moving and get everyone outside and ready to start on time.

I was actually one of the few who wasn't looking to join the walkers after my shift had finished, unlike festivals I wasn't there for any freebie (well I did get a t-shirt) or an experience I wouldn't have otherwise been able to get. I was simply there to see all the bits of a small budget-ed, charitable event come together.

In comparison to festivals there were no 'paid' staff as such. The employees of The Big Issue were there primarily because they love the charity they work for and also, as one girl told me, because they get an extra holiday day (well they did have to stay up until 9am when all the runners were back again so it is a fair trade).

For this reason there was no pity from security guards who thought we were getting ripped off (Download) and no being laughed at by stewards who often weren't there for the festival but were there for the £6.25 an hour they got paid (Glastonbury).  Just a bunch of volunteers, some events students like me, some serial volunteers who just loved the feeling it gave them the first time they helped out and now are on their 5th Moonwalk and some people who had experienced homelessness and the help The Big Issue can give and wanted to give back. And for this, I felt we all got along very well and I very much enjoyed my first of many post-summer voluntary events.

And so we have arrived at the End of the Road of festival volunteering.

End of the Road Festival,

9th September ~ 13th September

My last festival of the summer and the first one I actually signed up for.

I chose this little festival down in Dorset because a friend of mine really wanted to go but didn't want to go alone, so the easiest and cheapest option was to... volunteer!

This was the first time that I wasn't camped with the other stewards, nor did we have our own facilities other than a medium sized marquee with the comms guys and a little kitchen where for £2 you could have access to hot water, bread, tea, soup and general snacks. Most of this was gone on the second day, I did manage to get a couple of bags of crisps and a roll which made up for the £2 but was a little bit of a shock compared to 3 free meals from Oxfam.
However the 'chicken guy' with his free wings and a whole chicken with potatoes (for 2 people) for £10 was a welcome change from the over priced festival food I had experienced so far.

I got allocated 'Main and Gardens' which is basically the Arena of this festival, I felt a little guilty having a more coveted position considering I actually knew very few of the bands and basically had a front row seat for all of my shifts.

Guard the Pond!
Yes that was my main job, guarding the pond/pool, it was apparently very deep and as part of the festival license it had to guarded and patrolled whenever the public had access to the arena. It was actually a pretty ok job, hang around an ornate garden with a grotto and a statue of Poseidon for 5 hours a day, occasionally telling the naughty bar staff that they weren't allowed to be in there (never had a rude comment from these guys, just a generally lack of knowledge that they shouldn't be there) and generally listening to the radio to laugh at what people were talking about and get the scoop on bands who had missed their ferry from Bestival.

I am glad this was my last festival of the summer, not only because I had totaled 3 weeks of Tent Living, but because 'briefing' consisted of a ten minute group meeting just outside the Stewards' Tent, now compare this to the 3 hour event in London that I had to attend and by had to I mean it was recorded and if we didn't then we couldn't steward at all that summer. This plus my 2 festivals worth of experience really helped me to be pretty confident in what I was doing.

Also a big thumbs up for the stewards wristbands at End of the Road, pink silk, it's like they knew just how to make me question my allegiance to the Dutchband wristbands of Download...

So an uneventful end to an eventful summer of free festivals, a lot of spending money and a lot of miles on my Mini's clock.

So I am officially a 2nd year of Events management and I already have my next stewarding role lined up.

Check back soon for the continuation of my summer of volunteering!

Reading, the festival that never was...

Reading Festival,

Cancelled

Ok calm down, not really.

I'm just not going. I just can't afford it (the woes of a student) and although it was the one I was most looking forward to, it also had a flip side of scaring me a little.

The news reports of the Sunday riots, the general crowd dynamic (wow my lecturer would be impressed with me whipping out that term) just worry me especially as I would be expected to deal with these situations and if my 2 festivals with Oxfam have taught me anything it would be this: Don't expect to learn anything until you have to deal with it.

This can be fine, you can't brief about every eventuality in a 20 minute chat before you go on shift and for Download and Glastonbury this was more often than not perfectly adequate. But I can just imagine being faced with a crowd issue, like surging, or the large amount of unsafe fires that Reading is infamous for without any backup, support or prior training other than a video of a man tackling a bucket fire with a fire extinguisher and how this is not appropriate because the force just knocks it over and only last about 2 seconds.

So yes, no Reading for me. My stint with Oxfam is done.

BUT bring on End of the Road!