Festival Welfare Services

Festival Welfare Services is a United Kingdom voluntary organisation established in 1972 to improve welfare services at pop festivals. Prior to formation of FWS a variety of voluntary groups were providing services at festivals which, at the instigation of Release, came together to improve their cooperation and effectiveness. Following the Windsor and Watchfield festivals the government provided funding, from 1976, for a full-time worker (Penny Mellor) to coordinate FWS activities, although the majority of work remained voluntary. Volunteers often came from a festival-sympathetic background and thus were quite relaxed with even some of the wilder events but also sometimes distrusted by the authorities. Government funding was withdrawn in 1995.