Beaufort Street Best-tival!

Today's post comes to you from a very sleep deprived and deliriously happy individual who has recently completed an 18-hour shift working at the Beaufort Street Festival. While I do not personally recommend working that many hours in a day, I can recommend volunteering at next year's festival in order to gain some excellent experience #shamelessplug.

The planning for Beaufort Street Festival had been on-going long before I began my internship at JumpClimb. The event was as much anticipated as much as it was dreaded in the office with the long hours and endless need for forms, risk assessments, logistical concerns, meetings, questions and more questions. 

I had been given a few jobs to manage on the day. One of which was the annual Dog Show, which I aptly named DOGUE. The dog show was a very minor part of the festival, held on the City of Vincent community stage  but it was well received and I felt that I organised it well! 

The dog show involved gaining the support of local business sponsors to put forward prizes for the event, producing some social media updates to push for applicants, preparing an online jot form for applications to register their dogs, preparing an on-site registering system for the day, securing three judges and an MC, inviting a range of dog rehoming charity groups, preparing a running sheet for the day that included briefing for volunteer roles, preparing a script for the MC and making provisions for the day in terms of weather for shade and water for the dogs. 

I had a couple of problems with my sponsors. During a meeting with the Beaufort Street Network I found out that one of my sponsors, a local pet shop had received quite a lot of bad press because of the way it endorsed puppy farming. This sponsor had to be removed from the event. My boss thankfully made the phone call on my behalf, telling me afterwards that it was the equivalent to a break up with a girlfriend! Oh dear. 

A few of the charity groups that I had booked in to attend also didn't turn up on the day which made the space feel a little empty. 

On the day of the festival it was a very unexpected 38 degrees with late thunderstorms. This turned away a lot of attendees to the festival including about 30 people who had registered online to attend the dog show. I was pleased about this in truth because the dogs that did attend seemed to be struggling in the heat. 

Other than the very terrible weather and the 30kms of walking that I did, the day practically went off without a hitch. We had some of regular residence and local business concerns we receive each year but we were about to deal with them fairly effectively earlier on in the day. 

The day was intensely busy. The radio communications we employed for the day were a non-stop flurry of individuals requesting the help of volunteers and trying to find solutions to problems. My respect for the JumpClimb team grew extravagantly as a result of this day. I saw my co-workers push themselves to their very limits, exhausted from fatigue and the sun, to put on a great day for the community. It is often forgotten that the festival is a not-for-profit-event operating off a shoe string budget. 

The Beaufort Street Festival experience gave me a very holistic viewing of the events industry in procession. From initial planning stages, to the early hours of the morning clean-up, I saw the ins and outs of WAs largest one-day festival in play. I feel incredibly blessed for the opportunity that JumpClimb has given me and would really love to write about it some more but I think I might just go to sleep instead! 

Thanks for reading!
-Heather.