Volunteer With Us
The Victorian Backcountry Festival is a 100% volunteer run event, by the community for the community.
Volunteering with us is a great opportunity to make new backcountry friends and join a group of like-minded outdoor individuals who want to help out and support the festival and the adventure community it represents.
The festival will be a family friendly, welcoming and inclusive event. We welcome volunteers of all walks of life regardless of their gender, marital/parental status, ethnic origin, nationality, age, background, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity.
Volunteers will be given priority first access to backcountry tours.
Tour group leaders
The festival is about education and inclusion. That means we want to introduce as many new people to the backcountry, and at the same time, train up and give working experience to aspiring, upcoming guides so we want to throw on as many tours as we have volunteers.
On Friday we want to offer half day tours. Saturday and Sunday will be a mixture of both half day and full day tours. That means we need a total of 30 volunteer tour group leaders. You can volunteer for one day or multiple days.
Due to increasing insurance costs and to maximise recruiting as many group leaders as possible, the 2022 VBCF will only be offering Introductory and Intermediate alpine skiing and splitboarding tours this year. The good news with this is that the minimum requirement for tour group leaders are:
AST1
First Aid
Tour leaders will work in groups of 2, with 7 participants per group. The touring areas around the mountain will be divided into 5 areas and we will have region/area coordinators in each who will support the tour groups. The region coordinators will be equivalent to ski guide accreditation (AV-Ops 1 / Wilderness FA) and ready on standby to assist where and when required. We are also calling out for region coordinators. We will have a capacity for around 150 participants per day. Let us know if you are a season pass holder so we can assign you to areas that is easier with lifts such as Mt Loch.
You’ll be working with Simon Murray from Mountain Safety Collective who knows the Hotham backcountry like the back of his hand. He’ll be giving volunteers a collection of Gaia GPS routes and photos of the Hotham backcountry tour lines for you to follow and test run before the festival weekend.
You will be invited to a private Facebook group chat with all the other VBCF tour volunteers for support and comradery. We encourage you to test out the tours with others, so think of this FB group chat as a Tinder for backcountry tour buddies.
Hands On Festival Jobs
Outdoor Bar
The outdoor bar committee would love people to volunteer on the Saturday who don’t mind some good ol’ snow shovelling.
You will be digging out a fire pit, snow benches for sitting, privacy wall for toilets, putting up decorations and lighting, tagging the path from the bus stop for guidance and safety, paving out spaces for the vendor’s marquees and other physical work.
See video of 2019 outdoor bar from Crepe Collective to see what needs to be done on the day.
On Sunday, we need a couple of volunteers to help the committee pack down and clean up the site so we can leave it in the same condition as it was before the bar.
General ‘all hands on deck’ work
Many hands make light work. There are so many little jobs across all the venues, and multiple dates/times that we would love an extra pair of hands here or there. Here are some of the various tasks you could be doing, even a few hours would help the festival out:
Speakers - setup room, IT support for speakers with Powerpoint presentations, ushers to check festival registration tickets
Workshops / Classes / Competitions / Demo Village - provide assistant to volunteers running their session
Photographer / Videographer to capture & share festival moments and help promote the festival for next year. Ideally someone who can also live update our Facebook and Instagram at the same time.
Marketing & Comms
Copywriting
These pages don’t write themselves. There’s lots of communication required to get a festival organised. You don’t have to be professional writer but we do require you to have a good grasp of copy for email newsletters, Facebook posts, outreach ‘cold calling’ emails and press releases. Our written style is very conversational so if you can articulate yourself well with words then we want to hear from you.
Graphic Design
It takes two to tango. Along with great writing we need amazing pictures to sell the story. We need someone who knows how to make social media images, email newsletter images, images and page layouts for new website pages. You don’t have to know all the Photoshop filters. This year we did all the social images on Canva. And this website is on Squarespace. You just need a good eye for design and branding.
Digital Marketing
Once we get that juicy copy from the writers and eye popping images from our designer, we need someone to run our email and social media marketing. You will know the difference between a Facebook Page, Facebook Post, Facebook Event and Facebook Group. You know how to put together Mailchimp email newsletters. You will also be responsible for replying to Facebook comments, keeping the online community thriving on our Facebook Pages and sharing our posts onto relevant Facebook Groups like Mt Hotham Community Page or Bright Community Notice Board.
Poster Distribution
We have 200 posters that needs to be distributed and put up around Hotham and surrounds. This role suits someone who is a Hotham seasoner who lives up on the mountain.
Merchandise
The folks love our festival and want a souvenir to remember their experience. We are looking for volunteers to help design clothing, stickers and other relevant merchandise to sell to our festival participants and raise money to help fund festival costs at the same time. You will also work with local business printers to get the merch created and delivered to Hotham to hand out to festival folks.
Media
Do you want to see your work in the news? We are looking for volunteers who can help get VBCF into relevant media outlets. Ideally you can also write press releases and conduct outreach with journalists.
Event Management
Join the Event Committee
We are recruiting new volunteers to join the core event committee. If you want to be in the centre of all the backcountry festival action or want to gain event management experience, then you should join the VBCF crew.
Insurance, Risk Management Plans
Do you have experience writing risk management plans and induction protocols? You will assist in the development, maintenance and implementation of an effective Operational Risk Management Framework. We would love someone of your experience to help us get event insurance to cover all the volunteers in the festival.
Grant Application Writing
We are seeking an enthusiastic and experienced volunteer to research and submit grant applications to government and community organisations on our behalf so we can receive funding to pay for necessary costs to run a backcountry festival and support volunteers for out of pocket expenses.
Corporate Sponsorship
We are looking for someone to liaise with brands and businesses that share the same target audience as VBCF and want to engage with our festival participants. This means working with brand managers on sponsorship via cash donations towards event expenses like insurance. Or organising gift vouchers, discount codes or competition prizes to giveaway to festival participants or volunteers.
Business Opportunities
Outdoor Bar
If you are a local food vendor who would like to be part of the outdoor bar, send us a message. We already have Crepe Collective (Harrietville), All Terrain BBQ (Dinner Plain) and Bright Brewery involved again this year.
Please note it’s a ski-in outdoor bar. No electricity will be available. There is Telstra and Optus reception at the site so you can operate Square payment. There will be a designated bump in time on Saturday for all bar stakeholders to meet at the car park, and a Hotham snow truck will transport equipment to the site for you. Reverse will happen for bump out on Sunday.
See video of 2019 outdoor bar from Crepe Collective to understand what conditions you’ll be working in.
Demo Village
Everest Sports Bright have graciously volunteered to coordinate the demo village again this year. The demo village will be held outside The General.
If you are a brand with product or services to showcase and want to be part of the Victorian Backcountry Festival demo village, please get in touch with Gavin Bufton gavin.bufton@backcountryfestival.com.au.
Sponsorship
Are you a brand interested in getting your product or services in front of a targeted backcountry audience?
We would love cash donations to help with necessary costs such as insurance. We will certainly promote your goodwill to our email database and social channels.
The festival also greatly appreciates products/gift vouchers/discounts to raffle off or giveaway to attract volunteers and festival participants to register and attend the event.
Get in touch with Amber to discuss how your brand can get involved with the festival amber@backcountryfestival.com.au.