Working Rebellion Festival
Rebellion Festival (Winter Gardens, Blackpool, North West) takes a small army to build, run and strike. Crew are hired by the festival and by the contractors who supply the bars, stages, marquees, fencing, power and toilets - usually in the weeks before August. Pick the work you do:
Add your name to CrewPool, say you'll travel to Winter Gardens, Blackpool, and you go on the list companies search when they're staffing Rebellion Festival. Free, two minutes, and you keep every penny of your rate.
Rebellion Festival jobs - what's on offer
Rebellion is one of the most crew-intensive festivals in the UK relative to its capacity. Nine indoor stages across the Winter Gardens complex - the Opera House (3,000+ capacity), the Empress Ballroom (2,000+), the Festival Theatre, the Winter Gardens Arena and five further halls, plus an outdoor Rebellion Stage - means nine separate bar operations, nine steward deployments and nine stage crew call times running simultaneously. That is more venue management work compressed into four days than most outdoor festivals of similar size.
The indoor setting is a practical advantage for crew. No mud, no weather risk and no tent structures to manage in August wind. Load-in happens from Thursday; four show days run Wednesday to Saturday; load-out is Monday. Stage crew for the build and strike are typically recruited 4-6 weeks out. On-event bar staff and stewards are contracted for the full four-day run, with shifts built around stage changeovers.
Pay follows mainstream festival rates. Bar staff earn £11.44-£13/hr; SIA-licensed door supervisors earn £120-£140/day on venue doors; stewards earn £100-£120/day; stage crew earn £120-£150/day on the build and strike and £140-£160/day on show days. Most crew travelling from outside Blackpool book local B&Bs for the week - accommodation is noticeably cheaper than Manchester, making a multi-day stint affordable.
Recruitment for Rebellion crew typically opens in May and June for the August dates. Add your name to CrewPool, tick what you can do, and set your travel radius to include Blackpool - the contractors who staff Rebellion search the list and ring you direct.
Rebellion Festival crew - the Blackpool circuit
Blackpool is 55 miles northwest of Manchester and 25 miles south of Lancaster. Most Rebellion crew are local to the Fylde Coast, but the North West pool extends across Preston (18 miles), Burnley (30 miles) and Lancaster (25 miles). Crew from the Manchester festival circuit regularly travel for Rebellion - it sits in the same August window as Creamfields in Cheshire, and production contractors working both events draw from the same regional pool.
Blackpool has a year-round pub and bar circuit along the Golden Mile and around the Winter Gardens complex itself that gives local crew a strong baseline in the local hospitality market. Crew already working Blackpool bars or hotels have a natural advantage for Rebellion: they know the venue layout, the town centre geography and the service infrastructure. If you are in the Blackpool hospitality market, Rebellion is 4-8 days of concentrated summer event work that builds directly on that experience.
Hiring crew for Rebellion Festival?
If you're a contractor or organiser staffing Rebellion Festival, CrewPool is a live list of event crew you can filter by distance from Winter Gardens, Blackpool and by availability for your exact build dates. Search the list free, then unlock the people you want and ring them direct - no agency in the middle.