How to Get a Free Festival Ticket

Dance, worker, dance!

Festivals often run on budgets that depend on volunteers to make everything come together. Even large festivals like Rothbury and Bonnaroo need some helping hands that aren't on the payroll. Donating a few hours of your time can mean saving tens or hundreds of dollars on a weekend ticket.

Will Work for Ticket

Most festivals will have information about volunteer work somewhere on the website. For smaller local festivals, you may need to contact the organizers directly to inquire about work opportunities. Festivals also use outside organizations like Clean Vibes to take care of trash and Kidz Jam to mind the kids.

Don't Expect any Cash

There are the occasional festivals that do pay a meager amount to workers, but mostly all you can expect to get is a free pass into the festival. Unless money is mentioned on a form or by the recruiter, you are not getting paid for this gig.

What Can I Expect to Do?

Jobs can range from scanning tickets to picking up trash. Here are some possible tasks you can expect to endure for your ticket.

• Light Security: Smaller festivals will use volunteers for light security jobs instead of hiring an outside security company. This usually involves standing in front of a gate and checking patrons for the right bracelet or badge to enter specific areas.
• Traffic Dude/Lady: It's you, the sun, and a dazzling orange vest. Worst job ever, so if you signed up late to work, this is probably going to be your job.  Basically you stand in a field, wave your arms around, and try not to get run over by cars moving 10 mph. The best part of this job might be your fellow co-workers. You're all in this together, and will have matching farmer's tans before it's over.
• Taking Tickets: Working the front gate takes just a minute of training and then you're suddenly doing it for hours at a time. While this is an exceptionally boring job, you can make it fun by coming up with witty 'lines' to feed the ticket holders. Simply asking them who they came to see will produce some interesting one minute conversations.
• Trash Detail: Just like it sounds. You'll be handed a bag and a pair of rubber gloves for picking up trash. If you do not receive a pair of rubber gloves, start inquiring. There are lots of nasty things left behind after a pulsating crowd disperses and you have the right to refuse this job if you are not provided with gloves. You will find cans, glass bottles (even if the fest doesn't allow them, they can be smuggled in), baggies of unknown substances... even urine-soaked garments have been left behind. Just keep telling yourself how much money you saved by doing this gig.

  The upside of trash detail? You're first on the scene to collect any possible 'ground scores'. While I'd love to imagine in a fairy tale world that this all ends up in the Lost & Found, anything outside of keys, cell phones and cameras is truly fair game. You might not like that slice of reality, but it's true. There are leftover blankets, camp chairs, umbrellas...you name it. Be a doll and take that possibly sentimental stuff to the Lost and Found- but buddy, that Family Guy keychain is all yours.

• Playing with Kids: In my biased opinion, this is the best job at the fest. You get to play in the sandbox, paint faces, make instruments out of toilet paper tubes, and occassionally police the bounce-house. Ask if your festival if it has a children's area for you to work in, and if it is a babysitting service or a family fun area where the parents are required to stay with the kids.

If your festival doesn't have a family activity area, contact the festival to offer a free kids craft table or activity area. An outside organization like Kidz Jam can help advise you on starting your own childrens area at the festival.

•  More Trash: Sometimes you'll be the guy on the gator that zooms in and hauls bags of trash out of the cans. Trash is a big business at a festival, as no one likes to pass by that overflowing bottle and plate volcano. This is a common job at a fest, so this could be a possibility.
• The Runner: Hey, you get a golf cart! Okay, maybe you just get to ride with the other dude that has a golf cart. Take this crate of Gatorade to the merch booth, deliver a bale of hay to the soggy road in tent city. That sort of thing. Some people may also call you a 'float' or 'floater'.  It's okay to giggle and call yourself a 'floater'...but it's only funny once.
• Set-Up, Tear Down: These jobs require some heavy lifting and happen the day before or after the festival. This could include moving some tent poles or setting out trash cans. Great job if you have an extra day off work and don't want to work during the actual festival.

What you shouldn't expect is working backstage handing bottled water to Trey Anastasio. Don't ask for a backstage job, because the people who run the fest probably already have 50 good buddies who already asked for that job and have been doing it for the past 10 years. Also, don't expect to do porta-pot cleaning. They are required to have professionals come in for that kind of thing.

One catch with volunteering is that you may end up with a schedule that doesn't jive with the acts that you came to see in the first place. Get the low-down on preferred volunteer spots and sign up early to help ensure that you're working the right shift.

What if I Don't Work?

You won't get away with it, my friend. Well, maybe this year. Not working your shift means that you will get permanently blacklisted from the volunteer list. At it's worst, you'll lose out on some cash, too. Many festivals ensure that you work your shift by taking a deposit in the amount of the gate ticket price. That way if you don't work, they didn't lose any money on your ticket.

Getting into a festival for free isn't as hard as you would think. There are plenty of opportunities to snag your festival ticket without coughing up the cash by donating part of your weekend. Remember, though, that as a volunteer, you are representing the festival or organization that you are working for. Treat it like any other job, as a professional. You're bound to meet lots of good people on the 'inside' of the fest, and trust me, they are eager to attach themselves to dependable, hard working volunteers and will remember a good worker next year.