OXJAM BEESTON TAKEOVER DAY Saturday October 19th. cannot happen without volunteers - find out how you can help here
WHAT HAPPENS ON TAKEOVER DAY?
Beeston becomes one multi-venue Music Festival. During the afternoon, many pubs cafés offer free music to kick off the day. After 6pm the activities intensify and access to all music venues is by wristband only; these are purchased in advance or on the day. All these activities are carried out by volunteers (this means people like you!) To coordinate this the Oxjam Beeston Project Team operate from a central hub taking responsibility for ALL aspects of the day. This includes ensuring all volunteers know what is expected of them and dealing with any queries. The volunteer co-ordinators – Steve Barton and Darren Bailey - will be on hand all day to help all the volunteers know where they are needed and when; this includes asking volunteers to take on another role or be at a different venue; flexibility on the day helps us all!
WHAT DO VOLUNTEERS GET ASKED TO DO?
Literally anything! - from delivering an instrument to a forgetful band member to selling raffle tickets! But the main activities we need volunteers to sign up for in advance are:-
- Venue Management – This is all about ensuring all the different activities go to plan at your venue, however large or small. It’s vital to liaise with the venue owner or landlord and the sound engineer to ensure all the artists get to perform at their allotted time. You’ll also need to ensure the “Oxjammers” get welcomed, ensure they have tickets at evening events, and make sure everyone remembers it’s a fundraising event. You may need to get on the microphone yourself to keep the everyone up to date, and you’ll be in contact with the Hub Project Team and with the event security team to ensure everything runs smoothly. In larger venues we also need venue assistants to support to the venue manager to ensure “Oxjammers” are catered for and that raffle tickets and donations are regularly promoted. A great opportunity to team up with a friend for the event!
- Fundraising – Though the evening events are ticketed, we rely on people to sell raffle tickets or carry Oxfam collecting buckets around Beeston and in the venues during the day.
- Runner – These help to move equipment between venues; collecting cash boxes; supplying additional raffle tickets; providing cover and support for other volunteers when needed!
- Kiosk staff – This really important job during the day and the evening involves selling wristbands, exchanging tickets the on line purchases for wristbands, giving out programmes, monitoring cash. There will be a number of these active through the event
- Sound Managers - Ideally, sound managers have some experience in running a sound booth, to the extent that you can work from the technical rider of the artists, which will be provided by the production coordinator at every venue. It would be ideal if you could bring along a small PA.
NONE of the volunteers needs to be a security guard – we hire experienced security team to cover that.
WHAT SKILLS DO VOLUNTEERS NEED?
The main things we need are your time, being flexible and approachable and some local knowledge. Any previous experience of helping out at a similar local event will be ‘icing on the cake’.
WILL I GET TRAINING?
Yes indeed! There will be a training session for you to attend shortly before the Oxjam Takeover Day. You’ll also be given some form of ID to ensure the public know it is an official event.
We will also need volunteers for the Ceilidh and Operatic Arias so don’t worry if you can’t help out on October 19th – you can still volunteer for other events