Welcome to my little page on the internet where I am diaries my time at the brilliant Cheltenham Literature Festival. I am going to give you a brief update each time of the ins and outs of being a festival volunteer. So without further ado, welcome to my Diary of a #Cheltlitfest Volunteer Days 1-2 (pre-festival)!
Hi Everyone!
Before I get into the ins and outs of the festival I just wanted to have a bit of an introduction. Something I should have done a couple of days ago but oh well!
So if you didn’t already know I’ve volunteered at the Cheltenham Literature Festival for three years now so I can be considered an old hand. Maybe… It’s a lot of fun and you get to meet a whole host of people (other volunteers, the event manager, the public, and a celeb writer or two), and talk books for THE ENTIRE WEEK!!
So the aim of this ‘diary’ is to give you a little bit of an idea of what it is like to be a volunteer and maybe some behind the scenes gossip if you are lucky.
The Last Two Days:
So I arrived at the train station at about lunch time and went straight to lunch and catching up with everyone. There are so many returning faces this year and it’s a nice way to start the week. If you have never volunteered before it is a good way to get to know everyone
Then we headed off for a briefing where the production, educational and development teams talked about their roles at the festival Andy what some of the job roles must be. Then we had the health and safely talk before doing a site tour. This year everyone is pretty much on one site which is so so nice. One because we will get to know everyone better and two there is less running between the sites to do. Which is a bonus trust me.
Then we split some little jobs. My teams job was to put up the cabin some sign so everyone knows where they are. We do not want any lost people.
And then we went out for a lovely Italian. Which was obviously the lost important part of the day.
So I have to be honest the first two days are a mixture of boredom and excitement (sorry team!!). Boredom because there IS A LOT OF HANGING AROUND but exciting because meeting new people and starting to set up the site.
There is so much furniture moving to do to. But luckily volunteers know how to queue and are super organised at this sort of stuff. Most of the second day was spent unloading lorries, taking furniture to venues and setting the venues up to make them pretty for the public.
However THE FURNITURE IS HEAVY AND LOTS OF PEOPLE ARE NEEDED TO MOVE IT. But this way if anyone gets to sit on the white sofas and you know who you are (ok you probably don’t) but just be grateful and send a little thank you to the volunteers.
We also had a team briefing which runs through how an event works and what all the roles are. And then to make sure everyone is happy we had a mock events. This is a super quick run through of how an event will play out and it gives everyone an idea of what may happen.
After that we got pizzas so everyone left happy.
Sorry for the short piece today but I am really tired!
Edit note: it’s a good job I looked at this morning because so many mistakes! However I think I’ve sorted it…
Up Next:
Tomorrow I am in the Times Forum, while I’m on ‘duty’ I get to see Miranda Hart and Andy Hamilton.
So that is my Diary of a #Cheltlitfest Volunteer Days 1-2 (pre-festival)! Pretty busy huh, let me know if you would attend any of these events or if you have! Also would you volunteer?
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