You need to have the Flash Player installed in your browser in order to use the audio player.

We have a team of at least 200 volunteers every year and they play a critical role; without them the festival wouldn’t be able to exist. We often have up to 12 events taking place simultaneously and all of those events need front-of-house people, ushers, we need people manning the information booths, we need people, the favourite job, the one that they, all the volunteers, hanker for is the 'green room' position where you sit in the green room and lead the writers to events, that's one of the most starry roles. And we have them as runners; we often use volunteers for our disabled audience who require assistance. And each year the volunteers keep coming back which is fantastic. They love being part of the festival, they love feeling like they’re involved in it.

And in terms of rewards, apart from the good feeling that they get from participating in the festival, we do things like provide them with a volunteer survival kit which includes discounted tickets to the festival’s books, movie tickets and whatever else we can rustle together to make it worth their while. We won an award in 2007 for, there’s a National Australia Bank Volunteers Award, and we won that for the Arts and Cultural Centre for the way that we look after and take care of our volunteers.