1st Edition
Event Volunteering. International Perspectives on the Event Volunteering Experience
Volunteers make important contributions across the spectrum of event settings, most visibly at high profile mega events such as the Olympic Games they are volunteers are lauded as ‘Games makers’, ’unsung heroes’ and the like. Less visibly volunteers are the heart and soul of community events and festivals, often undertaking multi-faceted roles from event leadership through to operations and ensuring that these celebrations are made possible in the absence of big budgets and professional event staff.
This book is the first to showcase and advance international research into the volunteering experience at events, drawing on the work of key scholars in this field. Events of all sizes benefit from volunteer support but event volunteering research is frequently case study-based and individually these cases make a limited impact. This text brings together cases from around the world, specifically including those that expand theoretical and methodological boundaries. It features mega events like the 2012 Olympics and the 2011 Rugby World Cup, alongside music festivals and sports events. New areas that are examined include the benefits of event volunteering for students, the role of volunteers in social enterprise events and new methodological approaches to researching this phenomenon, specifically ethnographic and cross-national studies.
This innovative book acts as a global source of key information for practitioners and researchers, an important text for students of event management and will provide stimulus for further work in this emerging area.
1. Introduction to event volunteering Karen A. Smith, Tom Baum, Kirsten Holmes and Leonie Lockstone-Binney Section 1:The event volunteer experience 2. Peace, love and wellbeing: Volunteering at the Peace and Love Festival, Borlange, Sweden Tobias Heldt and Anna Klerby 3. Securing your future: Festival volunteering and graduate employability David Bassett and Dan Lomax 4. “We don’t do that back home”: International students and event volunteering Olga Junek Section 2: Managing the event volunteer 5. The Spirit of Burgas Music Festival, Bulgaria: The management and experiences of volunteers Gergina Pavlova and Kevin Hannam 6. The background in the limelight: Volunteering in event management in Hungary Csilla Raffai and Berta Vajnai 7. Volunteers in social enterprise events: Triple bottom line benefits James Bostock Section 3: The volunteer program at mega-events 8. Volunteer experiences in the build-up to the Rugby World Cup, 2012 Karen A. Smith, Natalie Wolf and Leonie Lockstone-Binney 9. Volunteering for an audience of billions: Fifteen minutes of fame at an Olympic Games opening ceremony Leanne White 10. Emotions and the Olympic Games: The emotional management of volunteers Sandro Carnicelli-Filho 11. The 2012 Ambassadors: Second class Olympic volunteers or the best potential for developing a volunteer legacy from the Games? Geoff Nichols and Rita Ralston Section 4: Approaches to researching event volunteers 12. Event Volunteering Evaluation (EVE): Challenging the methodological limitations of event volunteering research Leonie Lockstone-Binney, Kirsten Holmes, Karen A. Smith and Tom Baum 13. An ethnographic approach to studying volunteers in events Jacqueline Leigh, Matthew Lamont and Grant Cairncross 14. Concluding thoughts Tom Baum, Leonie Lockstone-Binney, Karen A. Smith and Kirsten Holmes
Biography
Karen A. Smith is an Associate Professor in Tourism Management at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. She co-wrote Managing Volunteers in Tourism: Attractions, Destinations and Events (Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann 2009). Her research interests include the recruitment and selection of volunteers, and the career paths of managers of volunteers.
Leonie Lockstone-Binney is an Associate Professor in Event Management at Victoria University, Australia. Leonie's main area of research expertise relates to volunteering, specifically in event and tourism settings. Leonie has published in several top-tier journals including Leisure Sciences, Tourism Analysis and the International Journal of Hospitality Management.
Kirsten Holmes is a Senior Lecturer at Curtin University, Australia. She has been researching volunteers for over 15 years, particularly in tourism and leisure contexts. She is the co-author of Managing Volunteers in Tourism: Attractions, Destinations and Events (Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann 2009).
Tom Baum is Professor of International Tourism and Hospitality Management in the Department of HRM, University of Strathclyde, UK. His research interests focus on the workplace in tourism, hospitality and events, including the role of volunteer labour within the sector.
