Volunteering with Your Live‑in Vehicle

If you’re volunteering with Oxfam at a weekend festival and plan to bring a campervan or caravan, you’re in the right place. Most volunteers bring a tent, however, we offer limited space in our crew campsite for live‑in vehicles, whether you’re pitching up solo or with friends.

Here’s everything you need to know to apply and ensure your vehicle meets our standards. There are two conditions to bringing your van to a festival with us:

  1. You must select campervan or caravan on your application.
  2. Your vehicle must meet our standard for a genuine live-in vehicle.

How to Tell Us You're Bringing a Van:

Once you've signed up to volunteer, you must tell us you're bringing a campervan or caravan on your profile. To do this, go to the relevant festival page of your profile and answer the 'transport' question.

Space considerations means we can only accept a limited number of campervans and caravans at each festival. If you don't see the option to select 'campervan' or 'caravan' as your transport choice in your profile, then we have reached capacity for that festival and you wont be able to bring a live-in vehicle.

For this reason, we recommend that you select 'campervan' or 'caravan' on your profile as early as possible after applying, to avoid disappointment.

Remember that your profile locks 4 weeks before the festival date (or 8 weeks for Glastonbury). Once the profile is locked, you won't be able to select a transport option.

Live-in vehicle places are in high demand. If you haven't told us you're bringing a van in advance, it's very likely you will be turned away at the festival gate.

Checking Your Van Meets Our Standards:

Your campervan or caravan needs to meet certain standards to be used in our campsite. To qualify, it must either have been purpose-built as a live-in vehicle or have clearly and genuinely been converted into one. At a minimum, it must contain both fitted sleeping facilities and fitted cooking and/or washing facilities. If you arrive with a vehicle we don't think meets the standard, you'll have to leave it in the car park and use a tent instead.

Please note: No vehicle which has converted from a passenger car will be considered a campervan. This includes passenger cars with roof-top tents.

Genuine factory-built trailer tents will be considered as caravans.

How you'll be Parked:

As you arrive, your van will be directed into your parking space. To make sure everyone fits safely into our campsite, vans are parked in rows in the order they arrive.

We'll ensure there's enough space between the vehicles to safely access your doors and to ensure nobody's vehicle gets blocked in, but it's very unlikely there'll be enough room for you to use an awning so please plan your setup accordingly.

Pitching of tents around vans is strictly forbidden on fire safety grounds.

Once your van has been sited it must remain static until you are leaving the festival.

Caravaners will need to take their tow car out to the car park once they've unhitched.

Glastonbury Pitch Deduction:

As part of our commitment to sustainability, we will deduct £35 from your deposit for each campervan or caravan brought into our campsite at Glastonbury Festival.

These charges are used to fund the free busses we arrange between Bristol and Glastonbury, to help volunteers who don't have access to a a vehicle, or who want to travel more sustainably.

The deduction will be automatically applied to your deposit upon its return.

At every other festival, there is no charge for bringing your campervan or caravan.

Campervan FAQs:

If you want to camp with your friends who are also using a van, please try to arrive at the same time so we can easily put your vans together. (Plus, driving in convoy is fun!)

If some of your friends are using a tent then unfortunately you will not be able to camp together with them. Fire safety precautions mean tents and vans are strictly separated into different parts of the campsite.

Sorry, we do not provide power to anyone's van (or tent), outside of very specific medical circumstances. But remember free phone charging sockets and boiling water are always on offer in our campsite marquee.

Do not run a generator or your engine in our campsite to charge your batteries. This is extremely disruptive to those camped around you.

When we calculate how many campervan places to offer, we take expected cancellations into account.

This means that once we've filled all the campervan places, it's extremely unlikely we'll have any more to offer.

If we do unexpectedly have any additional campervan places, we'll let everyone know in the pre-festival email, including instructions on how to apply for one.