Hartford, CT: The First Concert
23 August 2005
Oxfam America staffer Najat El Sayed is traveling with Make Trade Fair campaign volunteers on Coldplay's "Twisted Logic" concert tour.
August 8, 2005 -- Brian and I load our bags into the rental car and begin the two-hour drive to sunny Connecticut. The next thing I knew, we are exiting into downtown Hartford and driving into an empty lot to the right. It is around 11 o'clock in the morning, and the vendor gate is wide open. Brian and I stop at the box office to see how best to get backstage.
Finding Backstage
I stop and ask a nice man in the hall who only speaks Spanish where Production is located, and he directs to me to a door up the very long flight of stairs we had just walked down. We go up step after step and find an office. We open the door and wait for a very busy women talking on the phone to finish. "Where would Production be?" I ask, and she shares that "It’s just down the stairs and through the second door on your left." Forty minutes after we arrive, we finally find backstage.
We enter a long hall of black walls and instruments, pictures of legends and the air thick with hustle and bustle. I pass the empty Coldplay dressing room, then the "Crew room" and finally "Production."
I walk in and meet Mark, a fairly tall man with a kind smile and a cowboy hat. I assume he's a Texan until he speaks, and I hear the wonderful English accent that is floating all over backstage. Mark is from Great Britain and has been in the business for some time. He introduces me to Shari who sets me up with all my credentials and makes me feel right at home.
We also met Janice with ticketing and Yasmin from Houston, but everyone is busy--talking on phones, calling each other on walkie talkies--and I didn’t want to be in the way.
Brian and I drop off the Make Trade Fair tape--an amazing plea by Chris Martin to join the campaign by texting your support courtesy of Sun Microsystems--to Andy, the video tech. Andy is a very nice English gent who offers to answer any of my questions about the tour. I thank him for his help and then gather my items to load on the bus.
The tour bus is amazing! Each comfy bed bunk has its own DVD player. It also has a kitchen and stocked cupboards, leather seats, a nice TV, two bathrooms, a shower, and a recreational lounge in the back with a soccer ball. Brian and I take pictures, relax a bit, and then get to work.
Getting Down to Work
Brian goes to meet Brande with Lokahi, the group that will be our professional support. Lokahi will follow the tour to set up early, manage and stock our booths at every show, and manage any necessary data entry.
I will be focusing on our volunteers at each venue: from corresponding with emails and phone calls to day of training about the campaign and our goals; getting proper clearances; meeting with security; strategic volunteer placement; helping motivate our onsite team and providing any aid I can; making the volunteer experience a fruitful and happy one; setting up our volunteers with the proper materials (clipboards, t-shirts, pens, petitions, etc.); joining in canvassing; trying to get fans to join the big noise; wrapping up; and doing evaluations and documenting our experiences through the daily blog with photos.
Before you know it, its time to meet our volunteers at the box office. We check in everyone and give them their credentials. They are then escorted in and we start our training. We do introductions and then go into the campaign, followed by logistics and questions. Soon we are all hitting the pavement for three hours non-stop. Our team is so dedicated and passionate!
About 15 minutes before the show, we all find our seats on the lawn to relax and enjoy the show. Some of us were on our feet so long that, during the show, we couldn’t get up with the crowd!
We continued canvassing after the show until the audience thinned out. It was defiantly a wonderful start that I imagine will only get better and better. Tomorrow we are off to Boston for a day off. I am told everyone sleeps most of the day off because they are so tired, (work schedule 7am-2am) but I think I will do some work. Till next time. Cheers.
