Workplace 37 - Festivus Brisbanarious

Working for Major Brisbane Festivals was a goal achieved, a level unlocked, a huge step along the road of my career in Event Managements.
This job looked great on a resume, gave me heaps of amazingly talented and creative contacts, plus loads of opportunities to learn about working in major government funded festivals.


Unfortunately my role was as assistant to two people who were the assistants to the Program Director. The Program Director was an dynamic and incredibly talented man who rarely needed assisting in anything. This meant that the two staff above me rarely had enough work to fill their time and definitely nothing that could be filtered down to me. I spent a lot of my contracted 3 months bringing in books on usb sticks and sitting at my desk reading them, or meandering around the lovely West End, finding the best book shops, cafes and hidden treasures of that part of Brisbane.
On a few occasions other departments would need a hand with something and I was allowed to excitedly scoot over and research suppliers of orange zip ties, or photocopy and staple together hundreds of pages of artist itineraries.
The office had about 40 staff in it, with more appearing each week the festival got closer. Government funding makes a wonderful difference to events, the contrast between private event companies and government run events is phenomenal. So many helpers! And no matter how ridiculously extravagant an idea seemed to me, it seemed to always go through. The amount of money in the event was unimaginable for me. Fantastic.
On one occasions I was taken to a meeting at GOMA to finalise details for an exhibition - I had no reason to be there but apparently you need to take numbers to look serious. I was happy to be a number.
For me, the best part of this contract was once the festival had started. Our team was in charge of an amazing custom built stage that sat outside the Powerhouse in New Farm and played every night for the three weeks. We had sensational acrobat and gymnast shows, Shakespeare performances, matinee songstresses and The Dirty Brothers Sideshow, each mind blowing and wonderful in their own very different ways.
If you're interested in working in events then Brisbane Festival is an excellent one to get into, I volunteered one year and then applied for staff the next. I would recommend this method for any event, it will definitely put you ahead of anyone just applying, even if it is a bit of a long term plan!