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XR at Festivals

Festivals can provide a great opportunity for outreach, as they bring together large numbers of people, hopefully all in a good mood and with an open mind! If you’d like to represent XR at a festival, the following will help to get you started.

Applying

  • Locate online application. Movements can often apply via the festival website. This might be found under 'get involved', 'volunteer' or 'crew'. Groups from XR can be classified as a 'stall', 'campaign', and even 'charity' or 'voluntary group'.
  • If there is no online option. If your group hasn’t visited this festival before and do not know who to contact, it's always worth asking the XRUK Festivals Team to see if they can help with putting you in touch with the organisers.
  • Supporting documents. It can be handy to collect any additional documents that may support your application such as:
    • Testimonials, e.g. I visited the Extinction Rebellion Artblocking stall at the *Local event* and it was the best!
    • Photos of your stall at similar events.
    • Design assets such as XR Logos.
  • Complete your application. For this you can use the the XRUK Festivals application example or application template, replacing content with relevant information about your local group such as:
    • What is your stall?
    • What does it do e.g. flyering/fundraising/artblocking.
    • Is there walkabout as well e.g. Wombling, Dirty Scrubbers.
    If you need to attach this application to an email, PDF is the best format if possible, and here is an email template that can be used.
  • Contact details. It can be better to apply as Extinction Rebellion Team/Crew rather than as named individuals in order to make it clear that this is an application from a movement, and to make the application more resilient to crew members needing to be swapped out. As well as ensuring that the right contact person(s) are listed on the application, it can be good to include an active link to Extinction Rebellion’s website, or your XR Local group website if you have one.
  • Budget. Ensure that your local group is aware of your application and that budget implications have been discussed.
  • Follow Up. Make sure your team has an assigned contact person(s) to check for email responses and liaise with the festival moving forward.

Safety and Security

Next step is to make sure that your group and others attending the festival will be safe and secure in order to have a great time.

Public Liability Insurance (PLI)

This advice is aimed at local groups who need to get PLI in order to go to festivals, run public creative outreach stands or set up their own small festivals.

  • Do not apply for insurance as Extinction Rebellion, you will be refused insurance. Extinction Rebellion UK (central) cannot get PLI which would then cover all small groups.
  • Do hook up with other local environmental / activist groups and share their PLI.
  • PLI for a single event should be bought in the name of an individual on your team who will be attending the event. If you have multiple events across your region that groups will be attending you can buy annual PLI, again this can be bought under one person’s name and shared across groups as long as all the activities you are doing are covered by the insurance.
  • Some insurance brokers offer Craft Fair Insurance / Market Stall Insurance covering stall holders or performers at a one off event or at a yearly premium: Protectivity, Event Insurance Direct and Event Insurance.
  • Individual artists can get PLI included with their membership of Artists Union England for an additional fee. The artist should then lead on the teaching workshop for cover to be valid.

Risk Assessments

You can find an XR example risk assessment here, feel free to copy and edit so that it's relevant to your event.
For further information or assistance please feel free to contact the Festivals Circle on our Mattermost Channel.
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