10 Festivals You Should Volunteer at in Copenhagen

The biggest street party in Copenhagen takes place every summer in the beginning of June and for five days, every neighbourhood is filled with music stages and hundreds of people. Distortion is a popular event and many people choose to become one of the 1,100 volunteers that cover the festival’s various positions, from bar-tending and cleaning to merchandising and taking care of the artists’ needs. Those who join the Distortion Volunteer Crew can enjoy free drinks and food tickets, free entrance at the week’s main event, Distortion Ø, and a Distortion T-shirt.

For 10 days the city’s cinema halls screen intriguing documentaries from all over the world. Fans of this genre know better than anyone that finding documentaries online can be a bit of a hassle. Plus, being one of the largest film festivals in the world, CPH:DOX guarantees to present only the best of the newly released documentaries. Volunteers can choose to work for 10 or 30 hours in a position that matches their skills and they get a number of free tickets for screenings of their choice.

A food festival couldn’t be missing from the country that reinvented Nordic cuisine and has one of the most known gastronomy scenes worldwide. Copenhagen Cooking and Food Festival takes place in the end of August and for 10 days, 100 culinary events can be found all over the city. A great number of volunteers participate every year and help organise and set up the festival, while meeting renowned chefs and getting a taste of the latest trends of international cuisine.

Frost took place for the first time in 2011 and for the past six years every February, it presents music events in bizarre settings where different light installations create a truly ‘chilling’ environment. Volunteers will gain an insight of how a festival is set up by filling the different positions; from backstage and hospitality tasks to audience guidance and decoration of the various stages. For their efforts, they get free tickets for specific concerts.

Copenhagen Half Marathon is one of the biggest events in Copenhagen with approximately 25,000 participants running 21km through Copenhagen. 1,300 volunteers work during the race week and can join the course marshalls, tech crew, medical crew or any other post that they may be interested in to help out with the event. During the week leading up to the main event, volunteers get free meals throughout the day and at the end of the big day, they get an official Nike crew jacket to keep as a souvenir.

Copenhagen Pride is one of the most famous human rights festivals in Europe and every year, hundreds of people around the world travel to Copenhagen to celebrate diversity alongside with the Danes. Copenhagen Pride is a non-profit organisation which means that it is run entirely by volunteers and, during the five days of the festival, extra pairs of hands are frequently needed. Positions at the bars, the communication department, logistics and others are filled with volunteers who want to participate in one of Copenhagen’s largest events.

With 58 exhibitions and 250 Danish and foreign photographers taking part, the Copenhagen Photo Festival is considered to be the biggest photo festival in Scandinavia. Eleven days of exhibitions, workshops, seminars, photo tours and portfolio reviews bring the art of photography to the foreground and highlight both established artists and up-and-coming talent. Production assistant, runner and exhibition assistant are some of the positions filled by volunteers who have to take two or three shifts and work a minimum of eight to 12 hours before or during the festival. Those who become part of the volunteer team will have access to exhibition openings and other events and will get a t-shirt and a coffee table book called Picture The Music at the end of the festival.