On Thursday 14 September, youth and adult volunteers who dedicated their time to Youth Beatz 2023 came together for the annual Youth Beatz Volunteer Celebration. The event was held as a thank you for the efforts and dedication of all those involved.
Youth Beatz was held over the weekend of Saturday 1 and Sunday 2 July, at Park Farm Showfield in Dumfries. The event weekend was a huge success, with the festival continuing to pride itself on providing high quality volunteering opportunities to both young people and adults, some of whom attended the Celebration Event.
Councillor Ian Blake, Chair of Communities Committee said: “Youth Beatz provides those who kindly choose to volunteer their time with many opportunities to develop new skills, to broaden their horizons, and to get valuable experience within the events industry. Our Council is incredibly proud to celebrate the achievements of all of those who volunteered their time at Youth Beatz 2023.”
This year, the festival was incredibly thankful to have 186 young and adult volunteers, who worked on a variety of aspects of the event, from staff welfare to the Youth Work Tent, backstage and production, and the box office to name a few. For the duration of the build and de-rig, 12 young Duke of Edinburgh’s Award participants from across Dumfries and Galloway and the rest of Scotland came along to undertake their Gold Residential section, working on several elements of the event alongside event staff.
The Toon also saw many volunteers help with the design and delivery of the immersive youth drama production which delivers powerful messages of youth information on a variety of topics and issues that affect young people in their day to day lives. A regional youth events group set up in Newton Stewart and Moffat were responsible for designing certain aspects of the festival, including social media content, parts of the Fringe Festival and working alongside event staff in the areas they were responsible for that involved young people. The group were also volunteering in different areas across the event weekend. Local environmental organisation DG Eco Warriors were also on hand for the entire event weekend to keep Park Farm clean, dedicating a large number of volunteers who carried out litter picking.
Councillor Jackie McCamon, Vice Chair of Communities Committee said: “Our Council truly appreciates the hard work and dedication of all volunteers involved with Youth Beatz. Thousands of volunteer hours were tallied up in the lead up to the festival and over the event weekend, further emphasising the point that Scotland’s largest free youth music event would not be possible without all our volunteers.”
Max Heughan, young volunteer and member of the Newton Stewart Events Group said: “I really enjoyed volunteering at Youth Beatz 2023. Through my role I got to work on designing parts of the festival in the lead up, and on the event weekend I worked on gathering social media content, and even got to interview Sunday headliner Callum Beattie which was amazing. If anyone is thinking about volunteering next year, my advice would definitely be to go for it!”
