A Volunteer Does Not Necessarily Have The Time, They Just Have The Heart (Naked City)

A Volunteer Does Not Necessarily Have The Time, They Just Have The Heart is the latest column (May 27, 2025) from Coffin Ed‘s The Naked City column – exclusive to City Hub.

Australians have a great tradition of volunteering, working unpaid for a whole variety of charities, community initiatives, bush fire brigades and special events – to name just a few of the areas where they volunteer their time and energy.

The recent floods on the mid north coast of NSW have demonstrated just how important volunteers are, whether they are members of the SES or just community members. When it comes to the arts, many festivals depend heavily on volunteers to expand their workforce and provide essential staffing.

Over the past few decades the major arts festivals have refined the process of not only recruiting volunteers but making sure they really enjoy and benefit from the experience. The Naked City recently chatted with one Sydneysider who is a familiar face at many arts events and has achieved an incredible number of volunteering experiences over some twenty years.

These include film festivals such as Antenna, the Sydney Underground, Tropfest, Bondiwood and notably the Sydney Film Festival, where he has racked up a remarkable fifteen years. Volunteers are not encouraged, in some case forbidden, from talking to the media so our celebrated volunteer has chosen to remain anonymous. All we can say is that he’s a big guy with long hair and a beard.

If you are attending the forthcoming Sydney Film Festival you might well come across our legendary volunteer amongst an army of around 400 volunteers that the SFF recruits each year.

There’s an online application followed by an induction meeting and in some cases a short interview.

The Fest is looking for volunteers with enthusiasm and ideally some experience working on similar events, but welcomes newcomers. Duties include queue and crowd management, ticket scanning, distributing programs, greeting patrons, providing Festival information and assisting with special events. Volunteers are allocated shifts via a computer program and no shift is longer than five hours. You are covered by insurance and the usual laws regarding workplace safety.

Like many festivals today, Sydney Film Festival makes no secret of the fact that it could not operate financially without the many hours of donated volunteer labour and that this recruited workforce is invaluable to the viability of the event.

So what’s in it for the volunteers? The SFF lists a number of benefits which include meeting “like-minded people including SFF staff, audiences and fellow volunteers”, gaining “industry experience and a behind-the-scenes insight” and contributing to Sydney’s cultural life.

Best of all, volunteers receive an Admit 1 pass to book a ticket to any of the screenings in return for each of the shifts they fulfil. There’s also an invitation to the end of festival party for those that work a certain number of shifts. If you can’t afford tickets to the Fest it’s obviously a great way to catch a good batch of films in return for a relatively small contribution of your time.

Whilst most festivals today make a point of supplying volunteers with adequate hydration and basics like coffee and sandwiches, there were times when they were treated very much as second-class citizens.

Our serial volunteer remembers working at one of the early Tropfest short film festivals, where the VIPS and celebrity guests were rewarded with some extensive catering. Those that gave their time for free, directing patrons and checking tickets received only a single Slurpee!

Volunteering Australia just celebrated National Volunteer Week between 19-25 May. Each year, the event highlights the important role of volunteers in all different roles within the community and invites people not currently volunteering to give it a go.

There are various organisations that specialise in recruiting volunteers for large scale events such as music and arts festivals, and you can also go to websites like Seek Volunteer to see what is on offer.

EDITOR NOTE: The headline of this story is a paraphrased version of the Elizabeth Andrew quote, “Volunteers do not necessarily have the time, they just have the heart”.