YOUROPE invites young festival professionals from its network to visit other member festivals in multi-day work stays. This is an opportunity for the new generation to gain experience, build international relations and learn from and with their peers. YOUROPE supports six such visits per year with €1000 each.
Photo: Roskilde Festival | Christian Solgaard
One of the core values and tasks of YOUROPE – The European Festival Association is knowledge sharing. We believe that sharing best practices and expertise between festivals will create better festivals and a more robust, healthy festival industry overall. To support direct exchange between festivals, YOUROPE will host an annual youth exchange program supported by “Future-Fit Festivals” (3F), which is co-funded by the EU. The program builds on the Youth Exchange initiated by the YOUROPE Event Safety (YES) Group.
Young event professionals get the chance to gain insights into the various areas of festival organization, e.g. event safety (security, health & safety), event sustainability, diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI) at events, marketing & communication, and more. The goal is for the young event professional beneficiaries to experience and learn about some of the skills and knowledge needed to produce a safe, sustainable and inclusive event for all festival participants.
Check out this video featuring May-Britt Morgenstern talking about her experiences with working at Roskilde Festival during the YES Group’s Youth Exchange:
Are you part of a festival that would like to host someone? Or are you a young professional that would like to visit and experience a festival other than your own? Then please keep on reading!
Funding
Each year, YOUROPE aims to facilitate the exchange of six young professionals. That can be mutual visits of two partner festivals exchanging staff, or young professionals visiting a hosting festival without their home festival receiving a young professional in return (“one-way exchange”).
Thanks to our 3F project, YOUROPE can support the visit of each young professional with €1000. For administrative reasons, the money will be paid to the hosting festival, which is encouraged to use the money to cover, e.g., travel and accommodation of the young professional they host. If someone else advances these costs, for example the sending festival, the hosting festival is responsible for forwarding a part of the money they receive from YOUROPE to cover the costs.
The money will only be transferred after the exchange has taken place successfully, meaning the hosting festival would have to advance any costs related to the exchange.
Info for young exchangees
Hello applicant, great to see that you are interested!
Within this program, you will get the chance to dive deep into the management of different aspects of festival organization. You can determine together with the festivals which areas you will be involved in during your stay. You might prefer to work in your own area of expertise, or follow an interdisciplinary approach by getting involved in a department that is new to you. The exchange must last for a minimum of two days.
We expect you to be curious, ask questions, try to understand correlations of different fields, risks and chances of different concepts and approaches. It’s a good opportunity to enjoy the atmosphere of the hosting festival, but please remember to act professionally, as you are a representative of your own festival and of your host festival simultaneously.
Please note that since this program is part of a YOUROPE network project, only YOUROPE member festivals and young professionals working for YOUROPE member festivals are entitled to participate.
To become part of the program, we want you to apply with the following information:
A CV including:
- Name, sending organization, profession, age (must be at least 18, but no older than 30), nationality
- Languages you speak and your level (e.g. A1/beginner, or C2/native speaker)
- Festival experience (professional and / or personal)
- Contact information and emergency contact
After the festival, you need to provide a short written report (about 2 pages) including:
- Your personal experiences at the hosting festival
- Areas you were able to take a glimpse into
- Challenges you encountered
- Things you learned
- Photos of your work and/or you working
You can easily create the report by filling out an online form that we will provide you with later. We will summarize all reports in a final document about the Youth Exchange Program that we must provide to the EU, which sponsors this program.
If you are interested in working at another festival as part of this youth exchange, please fill out this form:
Info for festivals that send out a young professional
Hello sending organization, thanks so much for contributing.
In this program, your young employee can collect new ideas, best practice and gain another level of professionality in other festival environments.
As a sending festival, you are to provide to the applicant:
- insurance covering them working at another festival, even if this festival is located abroad. This could also be covered by the hosting festival, but the sending and hosting festival need to agree on who covers the insurance and sign a written agreement before the exchange takes place.
Please note that since this program is part of a YOUROPE network project, you can only participate if you are a member of YOUROPE.
Info for festivals hosting a young professional
Hello potential hosting festival, it would be fantastic to have you on board!
Help us give young professionals a chance to explore the challenges and great moments of festival organization outside their own festival to further develop their love for the job. We are happy that you recognize the opportunities and the benefit that hosting a young professional from another festivals brings to your own event.
You will be able to see your festival through the eyes of your guest, leading to new ideas for your event. You are offering them and your own young team members a chance to build a professional international network and peer exchange forum, which will prove to be fruitful in the future. But please be aware of the responsibilities you are taking over as well as a host, and don’t consider the exchange person as an inexpensive worker.
You will receive €1000 to cover any costs related to the exchange. The exchange must last for a minimum of two days. It is possible to host more than one young professional. As the hosting festival, you should be able to provide to them:
- money to cover their travel costs to your festival and the return journey (if the sending festival prefers to book travel, you are required to reimburse them)
- accommodation (e.g. crew camping, hotel room)
- catering (e.g. crew catering, vouchers for food stalls)
- an AAA pass (or a comparable pass that grants them access to the necessary areas of the festival)
- the chance to shadow your staff in one area or more of event production, e.g. on-site security, safety operations, sustainable production, awareness teams, management/supervisor teams of any kind, project leading, communications and marketing, etc.
- a general supervisor and/or a contact person per area
- close supervision, so the applicant can make the most of their stay
- a challenge and actual tasks they can work on, ideally as part of a team, for example:
- create a risk analysis for a potential incident on the festival site
- calculate ingress and egress capacity
- spend a day in the command center
- supervise the security and crowd management of a particular area of your festival and suggest improvements
- be part of the security team in one special area
- check the festival site to find where resources (energy, water, food etc.) are being wasted
- help collect data to calculate the environmental footprint of the festival
- spend a day in the press center
- support media professionals at your event
- support the guest relations team and look for ways to improve the customer experience
- test how well way finding (visitors orientation) works
- spend time with guests with disabilities and interview them on how the festival could be more accessible
The applicants chosen can either work in their own area of expertise, or follow an interdisciplinary approach by working in an area of festival organization that’s new to them. That is up to you to decide together with them.
Please note that since this program is part of a YOUROPE network project, only YOUROPE member festivals and young professionals working for YOUROPE member festivals are entitled to participate.
If you are interested in hosting a young professional, please fill out this form:
The role of YOUROPE
As a facilitator, the YOUROPE Office will act as a main contact for all involved:
- providing the “jury” evaluating the applications, composed of leading experts from the association’s working groups.
- serving as a general contact for festivals and young professionals
- serving as an emergency contact during the on-site phase for festivals and young professionals
- being open to all questions / suggestions; a problem solver for festivals and young professionals
Names and contacts will be provided to the exchange participants.
Disclaimer:
Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
