Wednesday 27th July 2022

Wednesday 27th July 2022

We left our campsite in Stroud around 9.15am, making our way to WOMAD in Malmesbury, where we will be working as stewards for Oxfam again. Neither of us have been to WOMAD before, so it will be really interesting to experience a new festival! The roles as a steward will be quite different to the roles at Glastonbury too, as at Glastonbury, the shifts were mainly spent on Pedestrian and Vehicle Gates. At WOMAD, the roles vary from wristbanding to different positions around the campsite and also in the festival arena itself. 

As we are working for Oxfam, we are able to arrive the day before all the ticket holders, so there were no traffic hold ups on the way. We arrived around 10.15am and parked up in the Oxfield (Oxfam’s campsite). Registration wasn’t opening until midday, so we had lunch first. As there was a delay with the registration set up, a new notice said we could register from 2pm, so we decided to head to the town of Malmesbury. It was a really nice town, with some nice shops and an abbey. 

When we got back, we queued to register and chatted to someone who has been volunteering for nearly 30 years at festivals with Oxfam! We received our shifts: 

Friday 9.45-18.00 - The Moon In The Woods

Saturday 19.45-04.00 - Siam Stage/ Open Air Stage

Monday 06.45-15.00 Meadow Patrol

These sound good - we get quite a lot of time at the festival to explore, and can experience quite a few different roles. We aren’t really sure what our roles will involve yet though! And no one seems to know what the Moon In The Woods is! 

In the afternoon, we explored some of the festival to understand where everything is, before cooking dinner.

As the site is technically still a building site, we had to wear our tabards on inside out to make ourselves more visible when walking around

The briefing was at 7pm, explaining the role of stewards in general, as well as a few speeches by the directors of the festival. After the briefing, the rest of the evening was spent having a group picnic. This was really nice, as it didn’t seem to matter about age - everyone just chatted to everyone else so it was nice to get to know more of the ‘Oxfamily’!