About Gig Buddies

How can Gig Buddies make volunteering easier?

The idea behind Gig Buddies is that we want to enable people with learning disabilities and/or autism to enjoy all the great things going on in their community, especially live music. Gig Buddies is a project that pairs up people with and without learning disabilities (and/or autism) to be friends and to go to events together. The Gig Buddies project aims to make volunteering easier for people in Sussex by enabling volunteers to go to gigs they’d already probably be going to anyway, but with someone with a learning disability.

This means they’ll be sharing their passions with each other and be able to fit their volunteering around their other commitments.

Gig Buddies people come from all over Sussex, including Brighton and Hove, Worthing, Chichester, Lewes, Uckfield, Eastbourne and Hastings.

This is the website for the project in Sussex (run by the charity Stay Up Late)

If you would like to find out about Gig Buddies projects in other parts of the country then please follow these links:

Calderdale

Cardiff

Croydon

Long Eaton

Mid Lothian and East Lothian

Norwich

Portsmouth

Sydney

How Gig Buddies works

Each participant is matched to one volunteer by the Gig Buddies coordinators. You then meet your buddy once a month to plan what you’ll do together, and once a month to go to a gig, concert, club night or another cultural event.

Find out more

Would you like to know more about how Gig Buddies works? Read our Frequently Asked Questions!

More useful information and documents for our volunteers are available.

Gig Buddies at Glastonbury

Here’s a short movie about our trip to Glastonbury 2013, the first year we took some of our Gig Buddies for their first taste of a music festival…!

Gig Buddies on Latest TV

Here’s a short interview with Luc and Marc, two of our Gig Buddies along with Paul, Director of Stay Up Late.

Would you like to get out to more gigs?