Clothing for Music Festival Staff.

What staff managing a music festival wear during the live dates of an event is an extension of the event’s brand and its perception to all on-site visitors. Whether it’s full-time permanent staff or volunteers organisers should produce guidelines and dress codes for everyone working on site.

As well as contributing to the presentation of the music festival brand having staff and volunteers dressed in clothes that identifies them as staff is an essential element of being easily found for any site visitor that needs help or assistance. Random clothing or staff that look scruffy do not reflect well on the organisation responsible for the event. 

Consistent Dress Code. 
Organisers can produce dress code guidelines for staff and volunteers, however, given the nature of most music festivals this should make allowances for potential weather and include an element of flexibility. Volunteers and staff may often have no further requirement than to wear black jeans or trousers plus a branded top.

Branded Clothing. 
It is not unusual for organisers to pre-order branded merchandise and it makes economic sense that staff and volunteer specific clothing be ordered at the same time. Specified branded clothing for staff and volunteers may include T-shirts, polo shirts, hoodies and baseball caps for example. Every member of staff and the volunteers should be supplied with multiple sets of branded clothing so they have something clean to wear on each day of the event. 

Clothing Messaging and High Visibility Jackets. 
It is common for staff to have additional words like ‘crew’ printed on their branded clothes with volunteers getting different wording to distinguish them from permanent staff. The addition of high visibility jackets can also help to clearly identify staff and volunteers to all site visitors and can include useful messaging like ‘information’ ‘security’ or ‘help’. This is a key part of providing assistance to site visitors particularly when there is a medical emergency as it helps to expedite help to anyone who needs it.

For volunteers who will have free time during their festival attendance organisers will sometimes insist that branded clothing be removed to avoid any confusion or in circumstances where their behaviour is undesirable. Branded clothing should only be worn during work hours where staff and volunteers are expected to be professional and helpful. Although some festival organisers can be quite strict about what is worn on site by staff and volunteers this needs to be balanced with a degree of flexibility, especially as volunteers are giving up their free time to help. Some organisers will even gift the branded clothing to volunteers as part of the benefits package but this will depend on the number of events taking place over a year and the need to reuse branded items.

For festival organisers planning their events using a software management platform like Festival Pro gives them all the functionality they need manage every aspect of their event logistics. The guys who are responsible for this software have been in the front line of event management for many years and the features are built from that experience and are performance artists themselves. The Festival Pro platform is easy to use and has comprehensive features with specific modules for managing artists, contractors, venues/stages, vendors, volunteers, sponsors, guestlists, ticketing, cashless payments and contactless ordering.

Photo by Mikhail Nilov via Pexels

<< Back to articles