'Tis the Season
- scotland
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| Festival Carnival |
Every summer the craziness happens, Edinburgh fills up with people, rent and hotel prices sky-rocket, students sublet their flats and move to the countryside, tents, stages and arenas are set up all over the city for the Edinburgh Jazz&Blues Festival, the Art Festival, the Military Tattoo, the Festival Fringe, and the International Festival. This is a big deal here and affects everyone - even me who lives in the outskirts of the city and doesn’t have much business in the centre.
But I somehow got involved in the Jazz&Blues Festival by offering to volunteer at the Carnival - a one-day family event that happened last Sunday and involved live music and dance performances on Princes Street and Princes Street Gardens - attracting about 30.000 visitors on a great sunny day. One of my dancing friends got me in touch with the organisers and it went from there. I ended up volunteering at the Mardi Gras event as well, a free outdoor concert on four stages on the Grassmarket last Saturday. This event was much smaller from an organisational point of view and involved a smaller number of volunteers as well. I was put in charge of one of the stages, making sure the bands were on time and kept to their schedules, that they were hydrated, and also to announce them. The organisers only told me about that last part - having to stand on a stage and talking to a crowd - ten minutes before the show started, so I couldn’t possibly think it over or decline. But everything went well, I didn’t fall over any cables or instruments and didn’t mispronounce any band names. Also, the perks were that I got to wear a very important looking high-visibility vest and was referred to as the stage manager - which was pretty cool. The less glamourous part of the job was the cleaning up of the area after the event - another sunny day with loads of beer being consumed and heaps of plastic cups being discarded.
It was nice to be part of the volunteer group and we all went for a drink after the Saturday event and to the after-show party after the Sunday event. I thought it would be fun to keep volunteering for the rest of the Jazz&Blues Festival, so I got in touch with the volunteer coordinator who was happy about another pair of helping hands. I was given a magic badge which gets me into most of the concerts for free, and I have been working more or less full time every day since. Now, it is mainly selling tickets at the box office, flyering, and standing at doors - always with great live music in the background.
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| Shreveport Rhythm from Hamburg at Tron Kirk |
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| Another festival venue: The Palazzo Spiegeltent |
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| My cycle back home at night on the cyclepath along the infamous canal |