Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Leeds Beckett students set for experience of a lifetime at Leeds Festival
The legendary Leeds Festival is held at Bramham Park, just outside Wetherby, and this year will take place 28 - 30 August. Run by Festival Republic, Leeds is the sister festival of Reading, one of the world’s longest running popular music festivals. Every year it takes the hard work of thousands of staff to make the Leeds Festival experience perfect for approximately 75,000 punters who will descend on the site for the weekend. This year 151 of our students will be working within that team to gain valuable work experience in a huge number of areas including Helpful Arena Team (HAT), film crew, DJs, stage crew, stage production, artist liaison, lighting and sound, PR and media, photography, licensing, crime mapping and campsite management.
Ryan Webster, BA (Hons) Marketing graduate, is now in his second year of festival volunteering, having started out working as a HAT (Helpful Arena Team member) last year. This summer he moved up to a role as HAT Manager at Latitude Festival.
Ryan says: “The relationship our University has with Festival Republic is a brilliant and unique opportunity for all our students, but particularly those who are studying subjects like events, film and music who get to work in specialist roles. It’s such good work and life experience.”
Natalie Primavera, now in her third year of our BA (Hons) Sports Business Management degree, had her first ever festival experience this year as a volunteer at Latitude. She worked as a performance check-in intern – checking in dancers, comedians and other performance artists.
Natalie says: “My role was quite admin based and I still got to meet some famous people, which was brilliant! It was also a good chance to meet other people at our University and make new friends – I’m still in touch with the girls I camped with and we’re going to meet up again soon. To anyone considering do it, I say go for it. It’s brilliant on your CV and great socially too – you meet so many new people and everyone is so friendly. I loved it! It was such a brilliant atmosphere, I definitely want to go back next year.”
Among the huge range of volunteering roles available, festival film production is a fantastic opportunity for students on film, media and broadcasting-related courses to get practical, hands-on experience of working on a tight deadline to a brief in an exciting environment. Students will work together at Leeds Festival to produce a trio of short films over the course of the weekend, each reflecting a different aspect of the festival experience.
Student filmmakers’ work from this year’s Latitude Festival is now available to view online here:
Leeds Beckett University aims to develop students' personal and career skills through a wide range of unique volunteering roles at sports, arts and entertainment events. In 2014 alone over 600 Leeds Beckett students, staff and alumni volunteered in roles at events including Live at Leeds, Hove Festival (Norway), Latitude, Leeds Festival and Reading Festival.
Follow our students' updates on the Leeds Beckett festival blog and on Twitter @festvolunteers.