The Worthing Beer and Cidar Festival runs from the Friday morning until the Saturday evening. However many volunteers are needed to help with various roles from the Wednesday, thoughout the event as well as packing up at the end of the the festival. Without volunteers the event cannot take place.
Why consider volunteering? You will help make the festival a fun, safe event for all those who attend. As a volunteer you will receive food from Piglets Pantry during your session as well as your own glass to enable you sample the drinks whilst on duty.
Wednesday
We get access to The Rooms at the Guildborne Centre around 8.30am. We have a freight lift that allows us to move the equipment, stillage and barrels up to the first floor.
Initial Tasks
- Unloading the hire van of the Stillage and CAMRA equipment into the lift.
- Receive the CAMRA Pallette and unpack it upstairs.
The Stillage is a large mechano set comprising of steel legs, spans and feet. It is best to wear gloves when handling as it is usually sticky from many beer festivals. We will split volunteers between the ground floor and upper floor to unload.
The CAMRA pallette will be brought up to the first floor on a pallette truck and it contains equipment such as stands, banners, scanners, glasses and other equipment. We will also recieve an electronic cask lifter that will allow us to lift the full barrels safely onto the stillage once it is built.
The next step is to lay down the spill proof matting. This is a roll or rubber mats and has to be taped to the floor to protect the floor from spillages. This is the first step to preparing the bar.
There are also tables and chairs that need moving in the venue to set up seating areas for the customers. A ticketing desk also needs laying out.
Next Tasks
- Next we will build the stillage. This requires a team of people to place the feet, hold the legs and then build the crossbars so that it will stand by itself. The stillage is set back from the wall so we can place chillers and walk behind the stillage during the festival.
- In parallel and also after the stillage is built we will be receiving casks and kegs at intervals during the day. There will be a master list of deliveries and each delivery will be marked off and labelled on a master list.
- CAMRA members stand also needs to be built and some posters / banners put up.
- Meet the deliveries (downstairs) and sign off the cask on the master list
- Number the cask, so that when it goes upstairs using the freight lift, they know where to place it on the stillage
- When the cask is upstairs use the cask lift to put the cask in the right position on the stillage.
Around lunchtime there will be a volunteer break where we go to The Selden and have a drink on the festival. At this point the jobs for the day are done.
Thursday
We will have a specialist come in to cool and tap the barrels as well as setup the keg area. This is also the day we layout all we need for the festival. This is less of a physical day.
We will receive the programmes, and beer scoring slips as well as beer mats and posters. There are tasks to stuff the programmes with beer of the festival, put up posters and signs, layout leaflets and bar mats around the venue
Initial Tasks
- Stuff Programmes
- Put out bar mats and signs
- Setup glasses and the ticketing area for when the festival opens
Once the casks have been tapped there will be a need to mop the floor and empty the buckets that we use to catch beer drips. This is a shorter day and most tasks are complete before lunchtime
Friday (Festival Opening Day)
Volunteers are asked to arrive early so that a health and safety briefing can be given and to discuss how we will run the bars and get the volunteers to sign in.
At this point we will distribute volunteers to different roles and prepare to open the festival. Please see the volunteers page to find out more about what roles are available. Below is a quick summary of different roles
- Ticket Scanning and applying wristbands
- Cash Desk, taking money and card payments for tokens
- Handing out Glasses (initially for the rush)
- Membership stand taking CAMRA card details for the free tokens
- Bar manager (One per bar to look after the volunteers)
- Bar Staff
- Glass Collecting & Washing
- General cleaning, spillages
The customers will be age checked at the door. If you are working at the bar you can serve only people with wristbands. We will reset the venue between 16:00 and 17:00.
To reset the venue we will
- Wipe down tables, clear rubbish sweep
- Empty bins
- Layout new glasses and programmes
- Empty beer spillage buckets
- rest
Saturday (Festival Day Two)
Some volunteers are needed to come in an hour early to reset the venue (from the night before). The Festival will run on the same lines as Friday.
The festival will finish at 21.30, however we need to pack down and clear the venue. In previous years we have closed sections of the hall and started clearing up. It is much easier to pack down.
Below are the tasks that we do to close the festival
- Wipe tables and return to the table store
- Empty bins, sweep floor
- stack chairs and move to the walls of the venue
- take down posters and stands
- re-pack the CAMRA pallette
- Carry the empty casks and kegs onto the balcony.
- break up the stillage and carry to the lift.
- Unload lift to awaiting van
- rip up matting and dispose