I was once (nearly) a steward at Cambridge Wordfest... (2)

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

27 November

Interestingly, the web-site wants to boast this:

Every year the festival needs a crew of friendly, reliable and unflappable people to act as stewards at the venues for day and evening events. Stewards collect and sell tickets, show patrons to their seats, assist wheelchair users where necessary, are trained in each venue's safety procedures, answer questions and provide the friendly face of the festival. In return, stewards receive free entry to all events where seats are available.


Well, I've already made mention of safety procedures. As for wheelchair users, it was apparently sufficient that the programme would have told them that there was no access to one of the venues (or not all of the way, but maybe as far as the foot of a flight of stone steps), so I am sure that there will have been no disappointments on the day, and, of course, it's pointless to consider why a place without such access would be chosen for a public event.

Even suggesting that, once off duty from the four-hour shift, other stewards might want to change out of the required uniform of the Wordfest T-shirt was misconstrued as 'not being in the right spirit':

Well, I was actually thinking, believe it or not, of the paying public!

It is scarcely a help for people to be picked out by their clothing as helpers, when they have actually finished working. If they appear to be stewarding, but don't actually know the behind-the-scenes details of the event (because they are seeking to attend it - one of the perks of stewarding), one of two things happens.

They either have to get involved (possibly leading to confusion), or else cannot safely direct the person in need of help to someone else in a T-shirt, because he or she may be in the same position.

(Allegedly, then, no marks for being 'friendly'.)


I also think that I must have proved myself not unflappable, if I bothered to wonder about realities such as where people should assemble in the event of a fire. At any rate, I believe that I have seen behind the friendly face of the festival...


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I was once (nearly) a steward for Cambridge Wordfest... (1)

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


26 November

I even got given the T-shirt, when, on Monday evening, I attended what was billed as a training session that was vital, necessary, apparently, because of their complying with health-and-safety regulations.

Vital because, when we were shown that there were two fire-exits at the back of one of the venues, no one actually knew, when I asked, where they led to, let alone where the fire assembly point was! - and we'd been told that we couldn't steward, unless we attended one of these vital sessions.

So was it sour grapes that led to the e-mail on Thursday morning, telling me that they had reviewed their needs, and I wasn't required to steward?

Dunno, though I'm suspicious...


As to the vital training, if you're going to any of Sunday's events, I wouldn't plan to be ill, as nothing was said about what to do in a medical emergency, and I'd pray that there is no fire, as, in addition, none of us was told where the fire extinguishers were, how to raise the alarm, or what the alarm sounded like!

They also thought, when muggins again asked on your behalf, that written instructions, with no diagrammatic representation, were all that was needed, so I hope that everyone is well up on the more obscure reaches of Trinity College...


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