Working a festival? It's a Picnic, writes Limerick journalist

I CAN SAY with some satisfaction that I have never paid for a ticket to Electric Picnic.

Of course the downside is I've had to work every year I've gone, but what a small price to pay to see good music.

This year is my third year working the festival, my second in-a-row, and coincidentally ten years since I first got the opportunity to work it, as a volunteer with Oxfam, in 2013.

There are a number of ways you can work festivals in Ireland, whether as a volunteer or as staff, or - if you're really lucky - for a vendor.

As a broke 20 year old who was neither interested in or able for the serious drinking of a festival, I jumped at the chance to get to a festival, any festival, for free.

Few experiences can rival that of sitting in a camping chair as the moon comes up, listening to the sound of Robert Plant roll over the row of food trucks between our stall and the main stage, or the thrill of smuggling cheap wine in a plastic bottle into the main arena for the Sunday night headliners simply by waving your vendor's wristband at a security guard who’s busily searching all your friends who’ve paid to be there.

As formative festival experiences go, it made an impression.

But of course, you’re there to work, not just skive off to drink cans and dance.

The chances of you being stuck at your job on the opposite side of the arena, gnashing your teeth and cursing your luck, while your favourite band plays another stage is high.

Working a festival makes the shows you can see all the more special though. By some stroke of luck this year, any artist I managed to catch played all my favourites in the short window I was able to see them for.

There’s a certain joy that comes from sprinting across an arena and diving into a mosh pit just in time for someone to catch you by the arms and tell you you’re beautiful, or from sitting in the grass eating your dinner to your favourite band, when it’s a moment caught between working.

Ten years on from my first Picnic and working as a journalist, I get a much better seat to listen from these days. Rick Astley sounds just as good from the tent you’re working in behind the stage as he does if you were standing in the front row.

The real pleasure of working a festival comes from the people you meet. From families to first timers to seasoned festival veterans, from the sesh heads to security personnel to punters, working a festival allows you to widen your interactions far beyond who you might if you were there with a group of friends.

Everybody has their festival essentials, be it a signature hat, your sleeping bag, a tent that doesn't leak. My festival essential is that I keep getting lucky enough to enjoy good music, at the cost of a few hours work.