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Bloomsbury Festival
Come and join the Bloomsbury Festival team as a volunteer and be part of a global festival here on your doorstep. Bloomsbury Festival is a festival of arts, culture, science, literature and fun that explodes onto the streets of Bloomsbury every October. You will have the opportunity to work with leading artists and world class institutions of London to produce one of the most distinctive cultural…
Description

Festival Volunteering – Steward and Hosting

volunteers

Festival Steward and Hosting Volunteer applications are now open! A great way to gain new skills and work experience with a busy but fun festival team. And most of all have an enjoyable and sociable experience.

Each year Bloomsbury Festival offers Volunteer Opportunities to help steward festival events and welcome audiences. You will get to meet a variety of people, partners, professionals and creatives while also experiencing the behind-the-scenes tasks of an annual festival. You will also see some of the events at which you steward.

At every shift you will be representing the festival at live events (indoors and outdoors). We have a wide range of cultural events including theatre, performance, film, music (mainly classical and jazz), talks and walks.

Volunteers are required throughout the festival from Thursday 1 October to Saturday 31 October. We work around your availability to confirm your shifts, once we have confirmed and agreed shifts we we ask that you commit to them.

If you are interested in a particular area of the festival (such as music or theatre) please share this information within the application form, we do take this into consideration when allocating shifts. However, we cannot guarantee that all your shifts will align with your interests.

Please submit your application as soon as possible – the final deadline is Tuesday 15 September. 

Duties

Event Stewards

You will be assisting our staff and box office team in welcoming the audience at events, directing them to the correct rooms and any necessary facilities, collecting handwritten feedback forms, and helping our team with audience control on bigger events. Altogether, aiding our Staff to present successful events across the festival. 

Those selected to steward walks for the Festival will be supporting the professional walks guides.

You will be allocated events depending on your availability and we can offer some flexibility about the types of events you steward.

Training
We will be offering 4 training sessions and 2 launch events in the lead up to the festival, plus a social meet and greet.

Though all sessions will be voluntary we encourage you to join where you can:
Wednesday 16 September - Festival preview event - Optional in person. Early evening. Details TBC.
Wednesday 23 September - 6pm - online meeting - Introduction to the Festival and Team
Thursday 24 September - 6pm - In person training in Bloomsbury - Meet and Greet
Friday 25 September - Afternoon - 14:30 to 16:30pm In person Bloomsbury Venue Tour (self-guided tour information available for you to follow if you cannot attend group session).
Wednesday 30 September - 6pm - Operational Briefing - in groups - individual online briefings may also be available
Thursday 1 October - from 4.30pm to 8.30pm - Festival launch event. Details to follow.

If you have not arrived in Bloomsbury by the last week of September we may be able to include you in some training sessions online and catch up on others when you arrive - so as long as you are around in the first week or two of October.
Additional training sessions may be added, including an Introduction to Event Management.

Time commitment

Although, there is no specified number of events that you must volunteer for, we would hope you would be available for several of the festival days for a few hours minimum each time. We do expect you to be committed to attending your shifts once you have volunteered. If you can no longer make a shift for unforeseen reasons, please contact your supervisor as soon as possible.
Application deadline

Causes

UCL Departments

This organisation is one of our community partner organisations.

Like all volunteer recruiters we work with, they have signed up to our service standards, agreeing to abide by our policy on partnership working to keep you safe and supported whilst you volunteer.

You’ll never be out of pocket for volunteering through us – with in-London travel expenses to and from your volunteering guaranteed.

In addition, the team here at Students’ Union UCL Volunteering Service is here to support you throughout your volunteering journey – you can get in touch with us at any time.