Volunteer | THE RUDES

Working for the Rudes as a Volunteer

Ways to help The Rudes. And become a Friend!

Over the years the company has grown and the work needed to be done to sustain it has grown too. If you love our work & would like to help to make it even better then you might like to consider volunteering. You won’t be paid, except expenses where appropriate, but you will get pleasure from being a part of it.

Here are some ways in which you might like to help us.

1.Production.

Help us make our shows in practical ways

Costumes – If you can make or adapt costumes & live reasonably near Eastbourne, we would be very pleased to hear from you. These skills are always useful.
Staging – People who are good at woodwork or painting or are just comfortable doing practical things, as long as you live near Eastbourne, we would welcome any time you can give. Just let us know.
The van & pageant wagon – If you are a mechanic & would like to keep our old van on the road for us to help us keep going – and you live near in East Sussex – that would be wonderful. It needs a bit of love & care in its old age! The pageant wagon needs to be maintained & painted annually too.

2.Venues & local organization

Work for us helping to organize shows in villages and towns.

Local organisers – We cannot visit a community to do a show without a local person or ideally group of people to liaise with us – and, luckily, we have loads of these lovely people already & rely on them so much. But if you would like us to visit your community & can fit a visit in, the first thing to do is volunteer to be the local organizer & make a proposal for your community.
Front of house – We perform about fifty times every summer & never have enough people to do front of house, so if you like coming to our shows, would like to help & come for free, let us know where you live & we’ll see if it is practical to be involved in your nearest performances. We now have an online course to tell you what to do. It’s short & easy to follow. Just get in touch. If you want to check out he course now then click here
Overnight accommodation – We stay away from our base in Eastbourne about sixteen times during the summer & often in places where B&B is hard to get or very expensive. If you would like to host an actor at a venue near you it would be so helpful for us! And it’s fun too to have an actor in your home – and you and your partner (& children if you have them) get to come for free. Just let us know if you can help.

3.Ambassadors

This is an area you can really help with as ‘ambassadors’ to promote our work. We want more people to hear about our work & come and see ours shows. Telling people they are going to have a good time is the best way to increase our audience size.

E-fliers – The best way to get audiences along to a show is through personal recommendation. For every performance there will be an e-flier that we can send to you & you in turn send to all the people you think might like the experience & adding your recommendation & endorsement at the top. If you would like to do this just let us know & we’ll put you on the list to send an eflier to for you to send it on
Posters & physical fliers – These are less effective & quite expensive. However, some left or put up in places where people expect to find information about local events can be useful. If you would like to do this, whether in villages or towns, let us know early in the year (February or March) then we know how many we need to get printed. Get in touch & let us know if you would like to do that
Facebook & other social media – These days social media is really important for getting the message out there. We can give you text which you can use as a basis for your post with all the key information & then you can add anything you want to say as your recommendation. Post it as an event & get a conversation going. It’s a really important way of getting audiences these days
Group bookings – Coming to our shows as a group is real fun. Getting together with work mates, friends & family, having a picnic & wine together, laughing together & enjoying a good story is great – and there are special group rates so it’s cheaper. There are two things you could do: – Organise a group yourself – Just email us with the details – Suggest possible groups – Think carefully about your community & give us a list of all the clubs & societies with the contact details of the leaders (if you know them) so we can invite them ourselves.

4.Funding & sponsorship researchers

Researching for sponsors – Finding sponsors in villages is difficult. It’s in the nature of things that the sponsor wants to get something back – exposure on the night in the form of advertising their business such as with a table & fliers, something in the programme or on a poster or flier or on our website. We have packages that may interest businesses that have an interest in particular communities. Ideally we could do with someone who can research for sponsors on our behalf, find possible businesses & if possible contact details. We need to diversify with our income sources rather than relying so much on grants. This would be really helpful.
Researching grant sources – After over twenty years we have come to know most of the likely funders & there aren’t in fact that many that fit exactly what we do. But there are some & the field is changing all the time. Ideally we could do with one or two people who are interested in this sort of thing who will research the field for us in a depth we don’t have the time to do ourselves. You would be a very welcome volunteer!

5.Helping in the office

Our base – The Peppe Nappa Studio is in the centre of Eastbourne & we have set up a second desk where volunteers can come in say for an afternoon or morning each week, or even just now & again and help out with routine admin. The summer tour usually has fifty venues so there is a lot to do. Some people just love organising! Well if you are retired or taking a year out before going to university & could do with the experience, then this may just be for you.

6.The shop

We don’t really look to make a lot of money from our merchandise, but people do for example love our t-shirts & other little things we do – and want to be a part of The Rudes brand. The sheer lack of time has meant we haven’t been able to fully devote our attention to it. Again, it might be something you would really enjoy. You probably need to be based near Eastbourne, or near enough, to come in now & again to sort stock, keep records & freshen our front of house boxes.

If you would like to help and have skills to offer then we'd be very glad to hear from you! Drop us an email!