THE NAKED CITY – TROPFEST REVISITED: AN INSIDERS LOOK

THE NAKED CITY – TROPFEST REVISITED: AN INSIDERS LOOK

Large outdoor festivals have been getting a bum rap in Sydney of late. Music festivals like Soulfest and Soundwave have been cancelled and those that did proceed were marred by drug deaths and numerous arrests. Partygoers who paid up to $500 a ticket at ‘NYE Above the Harbour’ in the Botanic Gardens complained of a distinct lack of portaloos, horrendous queues and poor quality food. At the inaugural ‘Sydney Barbecue Festival’ in the Domain carnivores grizzled that there was too much salad and not enough meat!  Even the Sydney Festival came in for criticism with its heavy handed crowd control at the free Flaming Lips concert where one well-known and much loved rock star was denied access by bully boy bouncers because he was wearing cricket gear from an earlier match.

Meanwhile, a few weeks ago Tropfest pulled off a remarkable comeback after it looked dead and buried in November, with sixty thousand odd punters flocking to Centennial Park. You might remember we reported on the previous Tropfest in the Park and the poor treatment of volunteers at the event. At the time we wrote: “Given that some of the volunteers signed up for shifts as long as sixteen hours, the absence of any complimentary nourishment, not even a plate of soggy sandwiches, seems incredibly mean. While VIPs whooped it up with all manner of gourmet free fodder, volunteers had to make do with a voucher for a free Slurpee.”

Could things get any worse for the free labour this year? Well the Slurpees were off the menu (and maybe that was actually an improvement), but elsewhere little seems to have changed. Given the outpouring of public support for the event, you might wonder why we highlight the plight of a handful of volunteers – but their treatment is symptomatic of the rampant corporatisation of the whole occasion. As one volunteer (call him our ‘secret shopper’) explained to us:

“Starting at 7.00am on the Sunday (with many volunteers “working” in Centennial Park for several days prior to the big day) and finishing at either 2.00pm or all the way through until 11.00pm, what actually was offered to volunteers? A Black t-shirt, with a certificate of appreciation promised at a later date. Oh, and as much bottled water as you could scrounge, as the one domestic fridge was empty as soon as it was filled, and that served the entire working crew at the park. One domestic fridge for several hundred workers – security, TV, lighting, audio, volunteers, runners, make up artists, PR runabouts and possibly the NSW Police. That’s it – no free meals, and no meal breaks, for an entire 16-hour-plus shift if you happened to volunteer for the entire day.” 

Compare this to the copious amounts of food, booze and cheese platters laid on for the VIPs and celebrity judges. You can’t argue that Tropfest needs to look after its corporate sponsors, but does the disparity between high profile guests and those in the black t-shirts need to be so severe? As our secret shopper noted:

“One of our chores was to place a well-stocked gourmet food container on every seat in the VIP section, which numbered approximately 350. At the end of the night at least twenty percent of these gastronomic delights were left unopened, swept to the ground as famished volunteers packed up the seats amid the piles of rubbish left by the corporate VIPs.”

Given the current behind the scenes wrangling that has beset the Tropfest organization, the future treatment of volunteers might seem a low priority. But as we have said before, other festivals like the Sydney Festival have set a standard when it comes to the welfare of those that enthusiastically give their time for free. Rather than scaling up each year, Tropfest needs to revisit the spirit of its earlier days – with more women filmmakers involved, more low budget entries, and volunteers who don’t need a certificate of appreciation to realise they have been made welcome!

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