ABSTRACT

Using Beach Break Live Festival as a case study, this chapter focuses the specific skills being developed by student volunteers and also looks at how the students perceive the value of their experience. It is hoped that the findings will prove useful to festival organizers as well as academics. A brief review of the literature surrounding the motives of student volunteers, employability skills in the festival and event industry and the value of festival volunteering as a way of developing skills and experience, helps to provide a background to the case study research. In fact the three highest responses overall are all sub-domains of operational management: learning about event communications, the event site and event attendees. The most notable finding was the strong positive correlation between job role, average number of skills developed and both skills development and talent utilization scores. However most regular festival volunteers, as well as highly motivated by a chance to gain valuable skills and experience.