Volunteers: Front Of House

Front of House is a large team of volunteers who steward each of the performance venues, checking tickets, guiding Festival-goers to their seats, answering queries and generally welcomiing people. They also sell programmes, artists' CD's and so on and sometimes they help with excursion buses and that sort of thing. Some of the venues (eg the Cathedral) have no fixed seat numbers; in such cases Front of House have to go through the entire hall, putting numbers on seats and letters at the ends of rows. As you can imagine, there is a lot of organisation involved in the run-up to and during the Festival.

This is the last of the posts about volunteers. If you have a look at Les' "Inside The Tent" posts, you can hear about the separate team of volunteers who work on the Magfest events. There are yet more volunteers who are part of committees organising the Festival Club and Publicity/Marketing. And the there's the Board itself, which oversees the whole enterprise.

So if you're here at the Festival as a performer or as part of the audience, do bear in mind that almost all the people you're dealing with, front- and back-stage, are unpaid and have often sacrificed lots of their personal time during the year running up to the SMF. Without all these volunteers the SMF could not happen, so be nice to them :)

Volunteers: Box Office

Box Office is a team of volunteers whose task during SMF is to look after ticket sales at the door - if there are any tickets left! They also make sure the cash "floats" are where they should be (so that people can get change) and deal with most ticket queries. Obviously, this can be quite stressful at times, especially as a performance is about to start. The box office task begins well before SMF starts: supporters' contributions and postal ticket bookings have to be processed long before that. Finally, for a couple of months before the start of SMF, the Festival office opens during the day for ticket sales to the public at large. This part of the job is unusual in that it is part-time paid: we cannot ask volunteers to give up weeks of their working-day time.

Volunteers: the Technical Team

Also known as the "all-blacks" because of the black clothing they wear while working at performances. They have the most physically demanding job, often building or dismantling stages or sets late at night after everyone has gone home or to the Festival Club. The core of this team has long experience of stage lighting, rigging, stage construction, etc. So the artists and public can have confidence in their comfort and safety. The effectiveness of each show in terms of its lighting and general stage dressing also depends heavily on the "all-blacks".

Indeed, they're already hard at work. One of the main venues for SMF events is the Pickaquoy leisure centre, which is constantly in use for sports and leisure events. It's impossible to leave the SMF staging in place because it would block other events. Last night the stage crew had to strike all the staging to accommodate a Junior Inter-county sports event; they will then have to put it up again after tomorrow's The Lighthouse performance in advance of Saturday's afternoon rehearsal and evening performance! So you can imagine how hard these guys have to work...

Weather a lot better today by the way - there's even a bit of sunshine right now.

Volunteers: Accommodation & Transport

SMF is almost entirely run by volunteers. Today the performers start arriving, so the Accommodation & Transport committee are about to be very busy. Available accommodation is so scarce during SMF that many of the performers are hosted (at no cost) by local residents in their own homes. As you can imagine, this sometimes leads to confusion when artists are expecting to be in a B&B or hotel. But SMF has run successfully on this basis for the past 30-odd years and it does create a very different atmosphere for the performers compared with what they're used to. The Accommodation & Transport Committee has the unenviable task of persuading people to host performers. This year has been particularly challenging since they've had to find hosts for the 60-strong Huddersfield Choral Society in addition to the usual array of performers. ** Today, the committee members will start collecting people from the airport and ferry terminals to take them to their lodgings. Best of luck to chairperson Karen and the rest of her team!

The Conducting and Composing courses are already well under way, having started on the 13th June. The Conducting Course has been going strong for 7 years now. This year's Director is Martyn Brabbins, who has directed every Orkney Conducting Course bar one. The newer Composing Course is directed by Alisdair Nicolson and Sally Beamish. More details here and here. Conducting Course participants get the opportunity to work with the musicians and conductors performing in SMF, plus they conduct one of the Festival Chorus rehearsals. Composers will have their new work performed next Wednesday.

** Many Huddersfield Choral Society members are being hosted by Festival Chorus members.