Wonderful smiley festival stewards did a great job this summer
People & Planet had a great summer stewarding and working the bar at some of the best festivals of 2008. Our volunteers were fantastic and remained cheerful and hard working despite blistering heat, knee deep mud and the temptations of amazing music. Thank you and hopefully see you in 2009.
Beach Break Live
We started the Summer at Beach Break Live, the UK’s student festival beside a Cornish surf beach. We recruited workers for the bar. Everyone had a fantastic, sun-soaked time.
Secret Garden Party
Green Man main stage attracts a crowd
This was our fourth year at Secret Garden Party and we just love the mayhem, eccentricity and sheer hedonism of it all. Over 200 stewards came along to the secret location in Cambridgeshire in July. Stewarding was expertly coordinated by our People & Planet Steward Coordinators and merry band of volunteer Team Leaders. The team leaders were amazing and went way beyond the call of duty. They handled some unexpected events really professionally and spent their shifts buzzing about moving stewards into new positions, keeping the radios hot with communications and looking after their stewards with cups of tea and breaks. You guys were truly fantastic, so thanks a million.
The stewards worked really hard, handling some tricky jobs: holding back baying crowds while the toilets were pumped out, keeping the public safe during the parade and fire show, a sinking stage, hours in the baking heat parking cars, and stopping hot punters swimming in the tempting lake etc.
The festival itself was sublime. A beautiful site centred around a lake with lots of unusual arty creative corners to explore: a tree house, a floating pagoda stage, art installations, acoustic areas, a pumping main stage, boat trips to the pirate ship. The programme was creative and daring - on the Saturday night, 5,000 people paraded around the site to the finale of a 100 performers spinning fire and flaming arrows being fired into the pirate ship to set it on fire!
The weather was unbelievable - not a cloud in the sky all weekend and some of the hottest temperatures of the year.
Stewards worked 3 x 6.5 hour shifts in exchange for free festival ticket and a meal per shift.
Nice words
“You and your people did a great job…. see you next year.”
Ed Power, car parking manager
Green Man Festival
In August 200 stewards headed to the beautiful Brecon Beacons in South Wales for the Green Man Festival.
A wee bit of mud outside the Fokey Dokey tent at Green Man!
Proof there was some sun at Green Man
There was so much mud at the Green Man!
Stewarding in the sunshine by the campfire
Oh how it poured! There were some lovely sunny moments, but by the end it was over-the-top-of-your-wellies kind of mud! But this did not deter our intrepid stewards who did a fantastic job and stayed cheerful through it all. Words like ‘Dunkirk spirit’ and ‘the Somme’ spring to mind!
The Green Man was held on a beautiful site nestled under soaring hills, with babbling brooks and sheep all around. We loved the folksey music, King Creosote, Iron & Wine, Badly Drawn Boy, Super Furry Animals, Laura Marling and particularly Pentangle’s Sunday night finale. The atmosphere was intimate and friendly.
The festival was superbly well organised which made our job as stewards a pleasure. Again our volunteer team leaders did a fantastic job and used their initiative to keep things running smoothly and the stewards well looked after. Our work received great feedback from the event organisers, Security and other crews. We were lavished with praise including “the best group of stewards I’ve ever worked with.” and:
“thanks for all your hard work, we were really pleased with the stewarding this year.”
Ian, Festival Manager
Stewards worked 3 x 7-hour shifts in exchange for a free festival ticket and a hearty meal per shift.
Rave reviews for the Green Man
The Guardian:
“The definitive boutique festival” 4 out of 5 stars
The Observer:
“an aura of intimacy and independence of spirit”
Reading and Leeds Festivals
The grand finale to our summer were Reading Festival and Leeds Festival in late August. 20 lucky people went to each festival and worked the bar with Workers Beer Company.
Our volunteers did a great job and got storming feedback from Workers Beer. At Leeds, the bar with the People & Planet crew on got voted the best organised in the whole festival! Well done guys. The temptations of big name bands did not lure you away from your duties on the bar.
Bar volunteers worked 3 x 6-hour shifts in exchange for a free festival ticket worth £155 and a meal and drink per shift.
Thanks to our supporters
Our work at festivals raises vital funds for our award winning campaigns on human rights, world poverty and the environment. This year it bought in £35,000, which is a lot of money for a small charity like People & Planet. A big thank you to all the festivals who used our services and supported our charitable work.
To develop our stewarding social enterprise we received a generous grant from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.
Divine Chocolate kindly gave us lots of delicious free samples which we gave away for donations, making us some lovely funds and keeping up steward morale. Ah, how delicious does a piece of Divine orange milk chocolate taste in the middle of a 7 hour rainy night shift…………..
Festivals 2009
Email us with the subject line ‘festivals 2009’ to register your interest for next year’s wonderful world of festival stewarding.
If you are a festival organiser and would like to use our services please call Louise on 01865 245678/249218 or email to discuss the range of services we provide and to get a competitive quote.
Give us your feedback and photos
Calling all Stewards 2008…we would love to receive your photos and comments about stewarding for People & Planet. This will help us both glow in the warmth of your comments and improve the steward experience for 2009. Email us with any feedback.
Nice words from Stewards 2008
Matthew, steward at Green Man festival:
“I hope you have all recovered from your efforts at the green man festival. I thought the stewarding was fantastically well organised and great fun as well.”
Calum, team leader at Secret Garden Party:
“I very much enjoyed working with the people and planet team. You are all a very good bunch of people and I hope to have the chance to work with you again next summer. Keep up all the positivity and good work.”
Katherine, steward at Green Man festival:
“Hope to see you again next year. I enjoyed stewarding a lot!”
Eimear, steward at Green Man festival
“Really enjoyed the festival, thanks for the opportunity, all the stewards were fun to work with and have come away with some great new friends. Thanks again for the opportunity. Hopefully be seeing you again next year.”
Steward Ellie Coombs compares Secret Garden and Green Man:
“Oh I can’t believe that my summer is over again! I just wanted to say that it was so much fun stewarding with People and Planet this summer. I had an amazing time at both the Secret Garden Party (SGP) and the Green Man festival. These two festivals are quite hard to compare for the fact that they are so different from each! For one the weather, gloriously sunny or total mudslide! Both, I have to admit, were incredibly enjoyable. One for the fact that I got the best tan that weekend I’ve had in ages and the other becuase it made me feel like a little kid again splosshing around in gigantic puddles of mud in my wellies!
But it wasn’t only the weather that was so different. The whole vibe of the two weekends couldn’t really be compared. The Green Man had a much larger target group than the SGP with many dedicated folk lovers over 60 but then a new generation of folky dolky kids running around as well. Even if the weather was rubbish the atmosphere never dropped and everyone was still in good spirits by the end of the festival. It was lovely to see so many of the same faces who had also stewarded at SGP, especially seeing as I had gone to the festival totally on my own without knowing anyone. Thanks especially to Louise who was such an amazing team leader at the Green Man. It was such a joy to see her marching a new group of fresh faced stewards to come and take over after the night shift! But not only that, her deliveries of chocolate and tea were gratefully appreciated!
I made some really good friends working with People and Planet this year and it almost felt more rewarding being a steward than a regular punter as you do feel that you are putting something back into the festival and helping it to all run smoothly.
All that’s left to say then really is roll on Summer 2009! :D”
Submit your review of festivals 2008.