Thursday, December 20, 2018
We'd like to send out our very best wishes for the holiday season to all of the staff and volunteers who joined us at 2018's festivals!
As 2018 comes to an end we've been reflecting on another successful festival filled year...
Our summer kicked off with us returning to Download Festival in June with a team twice as large as last year! A huge thank you to everyone who returned to the Hotbox Dog Squad team at Download and to those who joined us for the first time this summer – you absolutely smashed it – with feedback from Download once again being fantastic! We received praise throughout the week for the hard work and professionalism of our staff and volunteers from the event organisers and other agencies we work with at Download. The Accessibility Team asked us to pass on a special thank you for the help and support you provided to the disabled access festival goers. In addition, the help you provided festival goers requiring welfare support and medical attention was outstanding - assisting the dedicated welfare and medical teams when their resources were most stretched.
We then headed to the beautiful fields of Henham Park in Suffolk for our 11th year at Latitude Festival! It was a stunning sun-drenched week and as always, a pleasure to see you all having so much fun whilst supporting the festival goers! The feedback from Latitude Festival was brilliant with glowing reports and messages of thanks throughout the week for everything our staff and volunteers were helping with from the festival organisers, zone managers, other onsite agencies, and festival goers. We'd like to say a special thank you to everyone for all you did despite it being the hottest Latitude on record! It was brilliant to see how enthusiastic you were to help the Latitude Festival goers, the above and beyond attitude of our staff and volunteers is always inspiring and never fails to make us and everyone around you smile!
With August comes our busiest week of the year – the Reading Festival and Leeds Festival! 2018 was Hotbox Events' 16th year working with Leeds Festival and 13th working with Reading Festival and the overwhelming consensus is that it was the best yet! The feedback from the Reading and Leeds Festival organisers was fantastic! At both Reading and Leeds we received complimentary reports and messages of thanks throughout the week for everything our staff and volunteers were helping with, your positive, proactive, and enthusiastic attitude, and ability to handle any situation that came your way, was complimented by everyone you worked with and helped.
We'd like to say a special thank you to everyone who stepped up to assist the Red Cross Safe Mates teams at Reading Festival, the Red Cross teams were far busier than they expected to be so the support and assistance you provided was invaluable in helping to ease the pressure. We'd also like to thank everyone who worked throughout the heavy rain on the Friday and Sunday of Reading Festival, you all coped admirably pushing through the difficult conditions.
We'd like to say another very special thank you, this time to everyone at Leeds who, like Reading, stepped in to help with the very busy Safe Hubs in the Campsites, your assistance to the Festival Angel teams was again invaluable in easing the pressure and helping to support the Leeds festival goers. The weather was unfortunately against us at Leeds at times too, so another big thank you for the enthusiasm and commitment of everyone who continued to help throughout the downpours and despite the cold and muddy conditions!
With the dust just having settled, come September we headed to London's Hyde Park for BBC Proms in the Park and BBC Radio 2 Live in Hyde Park! This was a late addition to our 2018 calendar so a huge thank you to our incredible team of minibus drivers for joining us with very little notice! We've received lovely feedback and thanks from the event organisers for the assistance you provided to the two event's disabled access customers and their families at Hyde Park.
Your feedback from working with us this year has been wonderful to receive! It's great to hear how much you enjoy being part of the team, helping the festival goers, the fun you have, and the friendships you forge!
In 2018 we implemented a wealth of changes, all of which seem to have been well received! Please do keep the feedback coming as we're already planning for next year – every suggestion is considered with changes made wherever possible to improve your festival volunteering experience!
The continued success of Hotbox Events is due to the amazing work of our festival staff and volunteers, none of what we do would be possible without your help and tireless enthusiasm, so as always, we are truly grateful to each and every one of you for joining us at Download, Latitude, Reading and Leeds in 2018!
To round off another awesome year, we'd like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
We can't wait to welcome you back to the Hotbox team next summer!
