11/7/2022 0 Comments London olympic volunteers![]() ![]() "I was bouncing out of bed at 4am to come down from Cambridge every day. "I'm really surprised we're getting all this fuss where people are saying how wonderful the Games Makers were," he said. Stan Goodall, a member of the anti-doping team employed in the Olympic village who normally works as a prison officer in Cambridgeshire, felt the same. I just sat in a BMW and drove it around all day." I don't think I'm really worthy of all this. Having "got the bug" for volunteering after retiring in 2007, he felt a little embarrassed by the day's lavish expressions of thanks for the Games Makers. "Oh, it's been marvellous fun," said Andy Stewart from Leicestershire, who worked as a driver for International Olympic Committee dignitaries – "all very important, so they told me". To see people literally jumping with excitement as they came towards you, it was wonderful." "We were so honoured, really, to be able to give people that little bit of joy every day as they came to the stadium. "But I didn't realise they were going to be so enjoyable," Dennell said. She said she had decided to volunteer because the Olympics were going to be nearby. As a former volunteer driver out of the transport hub at the ExCel Centre, and normally based in Potters Bar in Hertfordshire, it wasn't exactly his area of expertise, but he did his best because, as his friend Jilly Dennell beamed, when in purple they are "Always on duty!" "Excuse me, we have tickets to the state rooms at Buckingham Palace, where is that?" two tourists interrupted David Austin as he was making his way through Green Park to take up his place in the Mall. It may all be over, but not everyone had adjusted. Particular attention is paid to highlighting how the findings might contribute to recent debates around whether sporting mega-event volunteering is best explained by the serious leisure quality of career volunteering, or by the serious leisure associated concept of project-based leisure, or alternatively by the competing term of episodic volunteering.The uniforms were soon to be packed away along with accreditation lanyards, pin badge collections and enough memories to last a lifetime.īut, for one final time on Monday, tens of thousands of Olympic volunteers donned their distinctive sportswear, smart but sensible trainers and rainproof jackets to witness the London 2012 victory parade through central London that had been billed in part as a thank you for their efforts during six glorious Olympic and Paralympic weeks.įrom St Paul's Cathedral in the City to Trafalgar Square in the West End, little purple and pink pockets of volunteer Games Makers were dotted along the route, many demonstrating the organisational skills that had made them so invaluable to London 2012 by arriving early and bagging the best viewpoints.Ī lucky few, however, had been given the best seats in the house: golden tickets to the conclusion of the parade along the Mall to Buckingham Palace, where they sat alongside armed service personnel, emergency service workers and a few hundred London schoolchildren.Īnd, after winning the biggest and most prolonged cheers of the Paralympic Games closing ceremony the night before, there were few who would have begrudged them that. Recommendations are also made, in the light of the findings, for the further refinement of the serious leisure perspective. This finding will help Olympic and other sporting mega-event managers to understand and improve the experiences of their volunteers. It is concluded that all of the qualities of serious leisure are identifiable to various extents within the experiences of the London 2012 volunteers. The data are drawn from the reflective diaries of 20 participants who volunteered in a variety of roles during London 2012. This study, therefore, uses a qualitative study of the lived experience of London 2012 volunteers to test the relevance of the serious leisure framework to Olympic volunteering. Stebbins’ theoretical perspective of serious leisure includes consideration of volunteering and there are calls for its further empirical evaluation. The 70,000 London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic volunteers, for example, played a vital role in the delivery of the event. Along with other sporting mega-events, the Olympic Games, in all its versions, makes extensive use of volunteers. ![]()
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