The build, the show, the strike
A festival is built from an empty field in days. Build crew arrive first and put up the bones of the site: marquees and structures, stages and decking, fencing and trackway, power and cabling, bars, toilets, signage and the campsite. Through the event, crew run and maintain it - stewarding, bars, litter, site teams. Then the strike: everything comes down, gets loaded out, and the field goes back to grass. Most crew work one or two of those three phases.
The main crew jobs
On a typical build you'll find marquee crew raising frames and walls, stagehands building stages and decking, lighting & AV crew rigging festoon and sound, drivers moving kit between sites, bar staff running the bars, stewards on gates and arenas, and litter & recycling crew keeping it clean. Crew chiefs lead teams on the ground and site managers run the whole build.
The hours and the graft
Build days are long - early starts, heavy lifting, all weathers, often camping on or near site. It's physical, but a lot of it is general labour that takes willing, reliable hands rather than experience. Turn up, work hard, and you get re-booked. Crews travel in packs and the work compounds - one good festival becomes a season of them.
Who hires build crew
Sometimes the festival directly, but more often the contractors who supply each part of the site - the marquee company, the staging firm, the bar operator, the power and toilet suppliers. They book crew in the weeks before the dates. The fastest way in is to be on a list they search: join CrewPool free and pick your city below. Hiring crew yourself? See day rates first.
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