A message from Jane McCabe, our Volunteers Co-ordinator
As you know, the Chiswick Book Festival is an increasingly popular community event which raises funds for charities. There is, as ever, an impressive line-up of speakers – and we couldn’t run it without our many other volunteers.
The programme listings are here and the brochure can be downloaded here.
Printed brochures can be found in St Michael & All Angels, the Oxfam Bookshop, Waterstones Chiswick, Bookcase, Foster Books, Chiswick Library, Chiswick House Cafe and some coffee shops and other places.
The main weekend venues are St Michael & All Angels Church, the Parish Hall, the Tabard Theatre, Orchard House School on Rupert Road (new this year) and Arts Ed, with Chiswick House on the Thursday evening, the London Buddhist Vihara on Friday, and Chiswick Library on Monday 16th. The Cookbook Festival again runs alongside and they are providing their own volunteers.
The roles we need to fill include:
• “Door and Floor” (taking tickets, minding the event);
• Hospitality in bars;
• Cake sellers (and makers – not on app rota)
• Ticket sales and information desk
• A gang of strong arms to help with setting up some of the venues and clearing away – not on app rota – see below.
• Green Room (looking after authors) – not on app rota.
• Publicity (dealing with media, putting up posters, social media etc) – not on app rota.
This year we are using a web-based app, VolunteerSignup, which lets you: identify the times and places where we need help, sign up and get immediate confirmation. The links to the VolunteerSignup site are here, with separate pages for Saturday, Sunday and other days:
If you’d like to bake cakes or help with the heavy gang, Green Room or publicity, these are not on the app: please email me and I’ll be back in touch.
Because we have more events, we are combining some into a single volunteer session. And in some places we have paired consecutive events at the same venue and are asking for two or three volunteers to cover both events. This helps us manage the administration and also makes better use of your time as a volunteer.
When planning your volunteer sessions, please allow time to move between venues and plan to arrive a few minutes early in case queues start to form.
All volunteers are eligible for one complimentary ticket for an event they are not working at, on Friday, Saturday or Sunday. This excludes workshops and Cookbook Festival events. To claim your ticket, please email Sue Buchan at boxoffice@chiswickbookfestival.net.
We really appreciate all the help we get from our volunteers and are looking forward to hearing from you.
Best wishes and many thanks,
Jane McCabe, Volunteers Co-ordinator
Volunteers@chiswickbookfestival.net