Stewarding at Glastonbury 2013

With tickets for Glastonbury 2014 going on sale yesterday, I felt the urge to do a post about the fabulous time I had at Glasto 2013!

Like I did with WoMAD last year, I attended Glastonbury as a volunteer steward with Oxfam. This meant that I did 3x 8 hour shifts in return for my ticket, hot showers (with no queue), clean toilets, a quiet, secure campsite, free phone charging (rarely a queue) and 5 free meals. Oh, and I got to see the Rolling Stones.

For Glastonbury, Oxfam even put on a free bus from Bristol station direct to the steward campsite if you book in advance. Brilliant.

As you might expect, places at Glasto go remarkably quickly, despite the fact that this year Oxfam had 2400 stewards on site. Handily, if you’ve stewarded any festival with Oxfam in the past three years, you get priority applications which providing there’s nothing wrong with your application pretty much guarantees you a place!

2400 stewards sounds like a lot, but for Glastonbury that’s nothing. All the Oxfam stewards were responsible for, from Wednesday until Monday, were the gates. That’s it. Other companies providing other stewards did the rest. That’s how big this place is.

There are downsides to working the festival. Whatever your shift pattern, there’s always going to be something your missing. I had my fingers crossed for days before I got there that I wouldn’t have to work Saturday night and miss the Rolling Stones. I would have cried. I got lucky (and it was amazing).

The other downside is the night shift. It can be intensely boring if you’re on a quiet gate. Standing around doing nothing for 8 hours can make your legs, back and feet really ache if you’re nut used to it. And when you finish and want to go to bed and rest your aching limbs, you remember that you are in a tent and are sleeping on the floor. Even worse – if the weather’s good, you’ve got to try and go to sleep at maybe 9am in a boiling tent in bright sunlight. Good luck. After my night shift I dragged my air bed out into the shade created by a campervan, popped on an eye mask and slept outside.

Despite these downsides stewarding Glastonbury, or indeed any other festival, with Oxfam is an amazing experience. I’ve loved every festival I’ve been to with them.

But for next year, does anyone fancy buying me a campervan?

Street Theatre

I’ve spent the last two days walking around Liverpool city centre with a group of street performers, ostensibly for purposes of crowd control and ‘artist protection’ – basically trying to make sure members of the public don’t start fights with the performers. What I could actually do to prevent this happening I’m not sure, but I had an important looking lanyard and staff t shirt which I think helped. In reality, all I really did was watch the performers do their thing and have a really good time.

There were three pieces of work on show over the weekend, as part of Physical Fest, the physical theatre festival I’ve been interning at.The first was called ‘the Tip’, and the promotional blurb described it as follows:

It’s time to say goodbye… Waste-deep in a rubble heap of nostalgia, a woman sorts through the myriad broken promises of a life turned to trash. A petrified houseplant, a bin bag of dirty knickers, 100 crumpled copies of Great Expectations. A giant tip provides the arena for an existential battle of epic proportions. It’ll be some scrap…

What actually happened was that there was a big yellow skip plonked at the end of Church Street, right in the middle of town. An assortment of battered and broken objects were placed on top of scaffolds within the skip to form the set, from which the performer would emerge to begin the show.

For us, this meant that the gaps between performances were spent trying to maintain the levels of stuff in the skip – i.e. stopping people from putting new things in and others from taking things out. Particularly popular was a radio, which had no less than two people try and steal it in the first half hour of us standing there. Another man waited for us to stop eyeing him suspiciously (he was a suspicious looking man) before running off with our fridge magnets. Cue Fiona, the stage manager, pegging it down the street after him to get them back.

Not helping Friday’s set maintenance was the presence of some Red Bull promotion girls, handing out an endless supply of Red Bull. People seemed to be oblivious to the presence of huge amounts of bins on the street and decided that they wanted to throw all of their empties into the skip.

 

Saturday’s performances had to compete for attention with a petition stand directly opposite – featuring Ricky Tomlinson and a megaphone. I never quite established what he was protesting about, other than that it was about something that happened a very long time ago. Either way, they agreed not to use the megaphone during the performances, which they stuck to, for the most part. Unfortunately they didn’t seem to realise when the end of the performance was and subsequently caused a lot of racket when Izzie (the performer) got down from the skip to talk to the audience. Ah well.

 

 

The Intern

Thanks to the internship programme run by my university, I currently find myself sitting in the office of a local theatre company as an ‘events assistant’. I applied for a number of marketing vacancies as well (being a marketing student), but this one appealed to me because it was a bit different.

I’m still getting to do very useful marketingy things, but this is an environment totally different to anywhere I’ve been before – an arts organisation.

I’m creating events listings, designing programmes and flyers, creating and monitoring content for Facebook and Twitter, editing the website, and later on doing street promotion work. I’m also going to be at some of the performances – doing God knows what.

On Wednesday I was standing with a choir in Lime Street station singing “welcome to Liverpool” to a group of acrobats that had just travelling in from Zambia. Yeah. Not your average internship.

Even better, the office is tiny, everyone is very friendly, I’ve been given lots of responsibility and left alone to get on with things, there’s a biscuit budget and I can wear jeans and converse to work. What’s not to love?

This is experience I won’t get anywhere else – working for the only physical theatre festival in Europe, doing a huge variety of different things – best internship ever!

And of course, I can’t finish this without a plug for the festival… check out http://www.physicalfest.com http://www.facebook.com/physicalfest @physicalfest
We’ve been working very hard on it, and it’s going to be brilliant!

WoMAD 2012

I don’t think there are many festivals in the world like WoMAD. My usual habit with festivals is to make a note of all the acts I want to see, get a programme and try and work my way around all of them as best as I can. Not WoMAD. I had only ever heard of three performers on the bill (Cornershop [remember Brimful of Asha?], Jimmy Cliff and of course Robert Plant [of Led Zeppelin!]).

This led to my musical experience at this festival being guided by recommendations, interesting sounding names, and what I heard from walking around the site. Some of my favourite acts to see included Narasirato, a group from the Solomon Islands who play handmade instruments (notably pan pipes) and dance, Batida, an Angolan-Portuguese group not to be confused with the cocktail of the same name, and Grupo Fantasma, an American 10 piece group who play Latin funk and are an awful lot of fun!

The music however, only makes up one part of this amazing festival. Inside the arena, they also have an old fashioned steam fair with a number of rides and a penny arcade – as well as a stall selling the biggest sticks of candy floss I have ever seen!

They have a huge array of stalls selling food from all over the world – greek, spanish, italian, french, north african, lebanese, carribean… and a brilliant hog roast! – and others providing a range of services. One stall sold jewellery made out of recycled coloured pencils (check out http://www.zincwhite.co.uk), one fabulous stall sold hammocks, one for fire toys, numerous charities, a stall where you could charge up your phone by cycling, lots of art & sculpture, clothing, henna tattoos and hair braiding and face paints… basically you’d be hard pressed to get bored.

They had architecture workshops running throughout the weekend which by the Sunday night meant that not only was there some cool stuff to look at, but they’d built a small stage, powered by cycling, where they had open mic performers all evening! All the bars sold a selection of real ales and some played some fantastic music too – a nod to the San Frans Disco Bar, and to Molly’s Bar, where they played the Olympic opening ceremony on a big screen for anyone who felt they were missing out!

So far, this has all just been inside the arena. Outside, in the Arboretum, there was the Radio 3 stage (where many stewards were called out to stop people trying to jump the ditch), Taste the World (a cookery-cum-performance area) and a section called the World of Wellbeing. This was a wonderful place, very easy to get lost in, where in the numerous tents and yurts there were people offering shiatsu/thai massage, reflexology, reiki, indian head massage, psychics, past life regression, laughter yoga (check out the Cornwall Laughter Club), ear candling and all sorts of other things. I would personally recommend Bow-Emm Therapy, offered by some practitioners in Portsmouth, which helped ease the pain in my legs from all my walking around and meant that I didn’t ache in the morning (a huge achievement!!!).

It’s hard to succinctly describe the atmosphere at WoMAD. A huge mix of people, from old to young, more dreadlocks and tie dye than I’ve ever seen in one place before, parents bringing sleepy children home in little wagons at the end of the night, acts where instead of just nodding or cheering the crowd actually dances along, the pervasive smell of cannabis mixed with the variety of food smells, the smoke from the carribean barbecues, the sound of drums from every corner… it’s a truly unique place. Well worth a visit, even if it’s just the once. Though, as friends of mine who’ve been going since they were small children will testify, it’s going to be very hard not to go back!

Links:
http://www.womad.co.uk

Benicassim (Visit Two)

Last year I had the sudden urge to go to Benicassim again. Some friends of mine were already going, but had decided to get a hotel rather than camp. An understandable decision once you’ve experienced the sweltering heat of the campsite. However, this was not only a VERY expensive option, but they’d booked long ago and the hotel was full.

Solo camping it was then.

Arriving this time was nice and easy. Just chilled out in the airport for a while, then got a coach direct to the campsite. This is where the trouble started. Having arrived on the second day of camping (the Thursday), many people had already arrived and pitched their tents – making it near impossible to find a space. After two circuits of the site (remember, very hot and heavy bag) I found a space to squeeze my tent on the very edge. Half grass, half stones, and it was very hard to drive the tent pegs into the ground.

Pitching a tent on my own for the first time was a difficult task. The problem came when I had to insert the little pegs on the canvas into the poles – definitely a two person task. Eventually, I got so sweaty with the effort that undressing to my bikini top became necessary. Soon the frustrating task of erecting the tent was over, as a couple of people saw my struggles and came to help. Hooray! Probably nothing to do with the bikini.

The rest of the first day was happily taken up with idle sunbathing on the beach – taking advantage of the lack of my friends to mean I could get a nice even tan. Having spent the preceding month sunbathing in unusually good British weather in my back garden, and the month before that sunbathing in Crete, I already had a very good tan.

Normally, I find that when you’re chilling out by yourself people generally come up and chat to you. Not so. It took until Friday afternoon to discover why. A group of English lads were messing around with a football in the campsite, and inevitably it rolled over towards me.

“Er…Hola! Hola! Por favor! Hola! Por favor!” And lots of pointing at the ball. Bloody hell. They thought I was Spanish. No wonder no-one had come up to talk to me. This made me very proud of my tan.

Eventually I had struck up a light friendship with the girls whose “front garden” I had pitched my tent in, and finally the evening came around and my friends from the hotel arrived at the site to get their wristbands. We went for dinner in the town, had some gorgeous food (I only wish I could remember what this place was called) and then spent the majority of the first night of the festival together.

That was the last time I saw them until the Sunday night. Between those times, I had a new friend for every act (and there were many), learnt to count to 20 in Spanish, learnt how to say “a little more please” to the barmen pouring my vodkas (un poco mas por favor) and generally had a fabulous lone festival experience.

I wholeheartedly recommend the lone festival experience to everyone. Festivals are some of those magical places where everyone is there for the same purpose: to have a good time. People are friendlier, more open to having conversations with strangers and a lot of fun. The alcohol probably helps this too.

This is how I’ve ended up booking on to steward at WOMAD next week, and got tickets to go to V festival entirely alone. I only hope the solo British festival experience lives up to my expectations. And that I can find someone to help me pitch my tent.

Benicassim line-up 2011: http://fiberfib.com/en/line-up/fib-benicassim-festival-2011/
WOMAD: http://womad.co.uk/
V Festival:http://www.vfestival.com/

Benicassim (My first time)

Photographs of this year’s Benicassim festival have started appearing on my news feed on Facebook and are creating an insane level of jealousy. Not because I’ve not been before, or because I’m not going to see any of the bands there play this year, or because I’m going to NO OTHER FESTIVALS – because I am. But because the last two years that I went it was absolutely brilliant. Sweaty, sticky, with no shade so no respite from the 35-40 degree sun, freezing cold communal showers, and painfully expensive drinks at the bar… but an amazing atmosphere, fantastic bands and generally a seriously good time.

The first time I went, in 2010, I flew straight from a holiday in Faliraki. First time on a plane by myself, and unfortunately for the girl I went on holiday with, the first time SHE’D flown by herself as well. Still, she got the full package holiday deal and got picked up from Manchester airport by her parents. First, I flew to Milan. Came out of the airport (the shitty budget airline terminal) and tried to get a taxi to the hotel I’d booked so I could get a couple of hours sleep before my next flight. Because the hotel ran a shuttle bus, no taxi would take me. Except the shuttle bus stopped running at 11.30 and it was now 11.45. Eventually, a shuttle bus from another hotel picked me up. After driving around this area of Milan in the dark for a long time, I was deposited at the side of the road. The driver pointed in the direction of my hotel, got back in his shuttle, and drove away.

Standing on the road, on my own, in the dark, in the middle of a place I’d never been, where I didn’t speak the language, with my hotel nowhere in sight, was a particularly scary moment. I wandered around for a while in the direction the man had pointed, and when I found nothing but dark alleys, decided to panic. Found a holiday inn (not my hotel), asked if they had a room free (no). Eventually, after sitting on a bench in the holiday inn car park, crying and chain smoking, I came up with the brilliant plan of RINGING MY HOTEL. Clearly should have thought of that first.

They sent a man out to find me, he found me, I had a solid 4 1/2 hours sleep in my room (for which I paid 50 euros) and then when I woke up, the man had felt sorry for me, so had breakfast available a couple of hours earlier than normal, and then drove me to the airport himself. Much better.

The flight from Milan to Barcelona was fabulous, for the pure reason that there was a spare seat between me and another woman, and by unspoken agreement (neither speaking the others language), we each curled up on our seats and shared the extra space. Got a bit more sleep then.

Finally, there was the train from Barcelona airport to Sants station, a four hour wait, then a nice long train to Benicassim. Handily, I made friends with another lone traveller who had been before. So when I got off the train, with instructions from my friends (already there) to meet me at the beach, he took me all the way there so I didn’t get lost. Easier said than done, considering it was a 30 minute walk, in 40 degree heat, when we were carrying heavy rucksacks. Nearly died. Imagine my delight when I later discovered the campsite is RIGHT NEXT TO THE TRAIN STATION. Gutted.

In our optimism, my friend Beci and I thought that sharing one tent between us would be ideal. Having arrived at Benicassim the day before me, she and all my other friends had brought and already erected the tents. Hers was the size of shoebox. I slept outside on a lilo all weekend – which turned out to be a fairly sensible decision as by 9am, the tents had reached sauna level.

There was no shade in the campsite. Anywhere. There were strange waxed canopies over parts of the site, which provided a sort of half shade – however the wax was liable to melt and end up all down the side of your tent. Or, if you slept outside, your hair. Marvellous. Handily, the communal showers were absolutely freezing, and if you managed to turn the knob around you could get it so yours stayed on continually. A group of Spanish guys had set up a paddling pool under one by the second day.

I’d be lying if I said I remembered who I went to see play at that festival. One particularly brilliant memory is of almost breaking my toe in the middle of the crowd for the Prodigy. That hurt. Had to limp out to the first aid bit and get it drowned in iodine and bandaged up. But the rest of the bands, even looking at the line up posters doesn’t jog my memory much. We clearly spent a lot of time in the campsite drinking hot sangria & vodka lemonades (dead cheap from the LIDL) before heading into the arena.

Still one of the best festival experiences I’ve ever had. The way home was easy. The first thing I did when I get home was have the longest shower of my life, followed by the best sleep.

The second year I went, not so easy.

Itchy Feet

So I’ve been firmly back in the UK for just over a week, and I’m already suffering terribly with the knowledge that I can’t afford to leave the country again this year. At all. An intensely depressing thought.

Although for once it’s not as though I don’t have any other fun stuff planned. Starting on the 25th July, with WOMAD, I’m volunteering with OXFAM as a steward at several festivals throughout the UK (WOMAD, Boomtown Fair, Bestival). I have tickets to a couple of other festivals (V Festival, Creamfields), leading to me being away from home for most of the rest of the summer. It’s the long month until that point that’s driving me mad.

My friends have now either got full time jobs (that was me, until last year) or their own trips abroad (that was me, last year) – one to Peru, one to visit family in America… leaving me alone and poor and watching Angel endlessly.

I shouldn’t have left Zante so early. That was fantastic, exactly what I always want to do with my time. If only it were a cheaper thing to do. Spend weeks on end lying around in the sun all day and partying at night, meeting loads of new people and doing new things. Last year, in Malia, I attempted the whole “working summer” thing, but for many, many reasons it just didn’t end well. So I went back a couple of months later for another big holiday. Great. Expensive.

Once the Summer’s over, it’ll all be great again because I can go back to university and move into the new flat and feel like I’m getting on with my life again. I’ll have the continual presence of flatmates and uni work to keep me occupied.

So the solution to my endless boredom problem has been decided. I’m going to get out more. Do some more fun stuff, but on the cheap. My student loan won’t last forever. And when I’m not doing something new and fun and exciting, I’m going to write about the fun and exciting stuff I’ve already done. So I can just come back to this, a record of everything, and feel less bored for a while. It sounds like a plan.

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Links:

Stewarding with Oxfam: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/stewarding
WOMAD: http://womad.co.uk/
Boomtown Fair: http://www.boomtownfair.co.uk/
V Festival: http://www.vfestival.com/
Creamfields: http://www.creamfields.com/
Bestival: http://www.bestival.net/