Today we have welcomed our 8,000 participants to our site, but did you know there have been members of the build team here for almost a month already? There have been more and more people arriving to help set up our fantastic event every day since the end of June.
One of those people is Deputy Technical & Stage Management Team Lead, John, who arrived last Sunday and has been setting up every venue that has lights or sound including House of Music, Soft Rock, Cinema, Main Stage, Outdoor Stage and the Urban Umbrella (the most important venue if you ask some of our staff…) This can mean anything from working out how much power is needed (then very nicely asking the electrician team for more), being up on a cherry picker to hang lights on the top of our main stage or testing sound levels in House of Music so our participants can enjoy our evening DJs. In his non Scout life, John is a professional stage manager so lighting, sound and stage pizzazz are a part of day to day life, “In the average population, there very few people that can do stage management, so it is a skill set that I can bring that isn’t necessarily readily available, so I thought I would give it a go!”
Essex International Jamboree is powered by volunteers and people from all sorts of professions come and share their skills with us, sometimes in their field of work and sometimes in something completely different! Whilst John is bringing his invaluable experience from his professional life, previously he has worked in a role that was totally different, “This is my first jamboree working on stage but I have previously done Norjam working on the security team and before that was a participant.”
While Scouts and Girlguiding are focused on the experiences we can provide our young people, our volunteers will all tell you the value that Scouting and Guiding adds to their lives. John has been a member since he was a Beaver and has found that Scouts really have given him skills for life! “Stage management is a lot of knots, tying, common sense and Scouting is a lot of knots, tying, common sense, the same skill set really!”
