Dickinson College Humanities Program in Norwich

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I fulfilled my volunteer/internship hours at the Norfolk Beer Festival held at Dragon Hall last weekend. This event was sponsored by the Campaign for Real Ale, or CAMRA. This is an organization that, based on all I witnessed during my time as a volunteer, supports the local breweries. It is a national organization spread throughout the United Kingdom. The Norwich and Norfolk branch of CAMRA puts on beer festivals, holds tastings, and publishes Nips, a magazine that contains reviews, calendars displaying scheduled events, opinion pages, and many other types of articles that describe the up-to-date happenings in the local beer world of Norwich and Norfolk. It pays to be a member, as discounts are offered at various events to people holding the CAMRA membership card. (Norwich & Norfolk CAMRA’s website: http://www.norwichcamra.org.uk/ )

            Friday was my first day as a volunteer. I arrived at 5 o’clock in the late afternoon at Dragon Hall. The students on the Dickinson program have all seen it before because of the walking tour we were assigned. This was one of the locations that someone had to explain the significance of. It is located across the river from the movie theatre near the train station. It’s only a five to ten minute walk from the train station when getting off the 25 or 35 bus. Dragon Hall is a fifteenth century building that has been used as a venue for commercial, social, and domestic purposes. However, this weekend it hosted the beer festival as a fundraiser to maintain the building and its historic merit.

            After arriving on Friday, I was herded up stairs to the big hall. There were two bars lined with casks (I learned never ever, ever, to call them kegs), two shelves high. The festival itself was scheduled to start at 6, so the hour between was used to divvy up the jobs that the volunteers were going to be doing. The older volunteers, the CAMRA members, and the more confident of the volunteers were given the tasks upstairs where the bars and beer were located. I myself volunteered to go downstairs, to the door and help with the till (cash register). Before the night started, all the volunteers were given food vouchers, because food was being provided by a catering service downstairs, and a pint glass, which could be filled with beer.

            That night I worked at the first table that the costumers came to. I was working with an old man who volunteers regularly at Dragon Hall and is also a well-educated-in-beer CAMRA member. Sean Nam was there too, working alongside me and this old man, named Mark I believe. Initially, Sean and I worked on passing out glasses, along with £2 worth of tokens (which were actually raffle tickets) to the men and women coming in. These tokens would be put into the glasses that the arriving costumers would receive after paying an admission fee of £5 or £4 for CAMRA members. At a table located across the room, more tokens would be available for purchase. The initial £2 worth of tokens could buy a half pint of beer. Friday night turned out to be a lot busier than expected, so Sean and I were constantly opening new boxes of pint glasses and putting tokens inside of the glasses. When Mark left to get food, he left me in control of the till. I did one transaction that had to be voided, but soon I got the hang of it. I’m glad that I didn’t work upstairs with the beer Friday night because working down at the front door helped boost my confidence, relax in this new environment, and get comfortable with the beer festival vibe. I’d never been to a beer festival before, let alone worked at one.

            The people coming into the beer festival seemed to all belong to different crowds. There were the older people, usually coming together as spouses or pairs of spouses. The CAMRA members were usually these people, which I was not surprised about. Mark would continually jest with the older people who showed their membership cards, either knowing them or pretending to know them. I was surprised at how many young people came though. Lots of the attendees looked to be about my age or a little older. There was a policy set in place that nobody under the age of 18 should be allowed in, but everyone seemed of age. These younger people, the ones that could have been my 21 or older, were extremely friendly and I was able to joke with them.

            I worked the door until it was time to leave around midnight. The last call was sometime before 11, I believe it was around 10:45. People started to file out soon after that, everyone seeming very happy with what they had experienced that night, saying goodbye and thank you. I felt as if I had done a good job that night, no big mistakes had been made, and by the end I had adjusted to the venue and the crowd. It was a very good night.

Date: 29 April 2011
Time: 17:00-24:00
Total Hours: 7
Location: Dragon Hall
Supervisor: Rachel M.