AN URGENT call has been made for volunteers to champion four of Dorset’s most popular summer festivals.

Organisers of the Dorchester Festival (May 22-26), B-Town Throwdown (June 6-8), b-side (September 5-14) and Inside Out Dorset (September 12-26) are all looking to recruit dedicated and enthusiastic people to lead a field survey team to find out who comes to their festivals and why.

A free training course will be held on April 3, where potential volunteer champions will learn how to gather the information and how teams will be organised to carry out mini surveys at festival events.

“This is a fantastic opportunity for people to help with some of Dorset’s most popular festival events and gain some valuable skills in the process. By finding out more about our audiences we can make future events even better” says Mark Tattersall, artistic director of Dorchester Festival.

The 11th biennial Dorchester Festival, run by Dorchester Arts, will once again bring a world of music, dance, theatre, comedy and community arts to the county town.

B-Town Throwdown run by Pavilion Dance South West, is a three-day hip hop event in Bournemouth, packed full of performances, masterclasses and free outdoor events.

Multimedia arts festival b-side is back again with its distinctive brand of specially commissioned artworks for unusual and often overlooked sites and spaces. This year’s focus is the Isle of Portland as artists invite the public to take another look at the familiar landscape.

With events planned across Dorset, including Poole, Bournemouth, Purbeck and along the South Dorset Ridgeway, Inside Out Dorset will bring large scale, site-specific performances to the county’s landscape.

To find out more visit the website at volunteeringdorset.org.uk or phone 01305 269214.