Thank you so much to all who have taken the time to email and message.
We do understand that unpaid roles can be a concern across many sectors, not just scicomm, and as a policy New Scientist does not hire unpaid interns for this very reason.
In relation to New Scientist Live, our volunteers are not business critical. Although the event will be enhanced by their friendly faces and help, the event would be able to run without them. As detailed in the link in my original post, our volunteers are not our speakers; all our speakers are paid. But, the reason we offer these voluntary roles is because we are aware of what a fabulous opportunity this could be, and is, and want to be able to help people develop their skills and meet other like-minded individuals. Yes, our volunteers are not being paid, but they receive specific skills training, and get to experience the festival for free, to name but a few of the benefits. On this note, not only do our volunteers get access and time to experience the event free of charge, but we make great efforts to timetable our volunteers’ slots to match what they want to see.
Accessibility to the volunteer programme is also very important to us, which we have addressed twofold. One, we are promoting this opportunity with the Prince’s Trust to ensure the scheme includes a wide diversity of people. Two, there is not a strict requirement on the days or number of days one must volunteer. The show is over two week days and the weekend which means that people working during the week can volunteer at the weekend, and vice versa (the latter of which is especially relevant to customer service roles which are common in scicomm e.g. museums etc.).
Best wishes
Lucy
New Scientist Live Volunteer Coordinator
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