Festivals workshop: top tips for student involvement

The workshop split into four groups, which each considered a different aspect of student involvement in festivals, and came up with a number of "top tips".

Training / Support

  • Good pre-event information
  • Mentoring
  • Value your volunteers (tea, coffee, food) – treat them as part of team
  • Experience the festival as a punter [what do you need to focus on to make public experience better]
  • Use more experienced students as team leaders
  • Access other sources of training, eg. community groups, sponsors, employers
  • Feedback loop -> use volunteers to train staff
  • Good basic admin -> travel, timings, etc. Make it easy for them!
  • Choice of roles -> ask them what they want to do

Communication

  • Make use/friends with your departmental student administrators
  • Have a student ambassador for the project
  • Face-to-face communication with students to build relationships
  • Ask people how they want to be contacted
  • Dedicated notice board for public engagement
  • Make use of student symposiums
  • Encourage volunteers to talk about their experiences / spread the word
  • Communicate career benefits and skill development
  • Understand what the students are looking for

Recruitment

  • Get students to come up with ideas
  • Look to develop accreditation scheme – something that employers can look at / review
  • Have a group of Students Community Group that acts as a pathway
  • Support for them – can be experience / give spaces / can be mini-grant
  • Keep continuity – archive of experience
  • Get them to be the leaders of their project
  • What training – enable their project
  • Can't go wrong with giving them T-shirt – helps create their identity/group

Fundraising

  • Science (IoP, Wellcome, MRC, etc) – different application forms, may need 3 or 4 drafts
  • CHaOS have fundraising chair
  • Sometimes split the activity up to make fundraising packages
  • Start with budget for different types of costs
  • Generally an annual fundraising cycle
  • Has to be "new" every year
  • But also funders like to see evidence of sustainability
  • CHaOS: sometimes closely associated with university, sometimes as student
  • What if not a charity? OK if for charitable purposes
  • Pick a local charity + partner
  • Minimise hire charges