Festival Volunteering Information for Oxfam Staff

Signing Up to Volunteer as a Festival Steward

Our steward volunteer places are in high demand, and we are now fully-recruited at every festival!

We think it's important that colleagues have the opportunity to join us at festivals too, so we have kept a small allocation of steward places back for you. These will be exclusively available to Oxfam staff on Saturday 21st to Monday 23rd March (inclusive).

On these dates, our public application page will be closed, and you should access the site at this internal address instead:

neu-oxfam-webapp-festivals-tmp-internal.azurewebsites.net

Access will only be available using an Oxfam computer connected to Ivanti or connected to the corporate Wi-Fi in Oxfam House.

On these dates, you will have the opportunity to sign up to steward at any festival, and our usual volunteering deposit will be reduced to £10.

Applying to Volunteer as a festival Campaigner

Festival Campaign applications have closed for most festivals. Applications for the remaining festivals are open to everyone on our public site here:

myfestivals.oxfam.org.uk

Please note that all applications for campaign roles have an additional selection process, so you are not guaranteed a place if you apply for this role.

Applying to Volunteer in the Festival Shop

Festival shop applications have now closed for 2026.

How to Book the time off work

Oxfam staff receive additional leave days each year, specifically for festival volunteering.

The amount of days you are entitled to is different for retail and non-retail colleagues:

  • Non-retail staff: 2 days
  • Retail Staff: 4 days

When booking your time off work to attend festivals, you should do the following on Peoplesoft:

  • Book your allocation of festival leave days by selecting "Other Paid Absences" then "Festival Volunteering (UK)" (as shown below).
  • Book the remainder of the days you need to attend the festival as Annual Leave in the normal way.

What if I need to cancel?

Every festival has a cancellation deadline which you'll be notified of in an email when you using up. If you do need to cancel, we ask that you do so before then so we can recruit a replacement.

Before this deadline you can easily cancel online via the application system.

To find out more, click here.

FAQs:

Special access to festival places for colleagues is only available on the 21st to 23rd of March. If you try to apply outside of these dates you will see this message.

If you receive this error, your computer is not currently connected to the Oxfam internal network.

To access the exclusive staff sign-up site, you need to be using an Oxfam computer with Ivanti connected, or an Oxfam computer connected to the corporate wi-fi in Oxfam House.