Electric Picnic Lost and Found a hive of activity in Laois

A team of volunteers are busy sorting and cataloguing hundreds of items at the Electric Picnic Lost and Found in Stradbally this week. 

Phones are being charged in a bundle while bags, wallets and clothing are being searched for identification. The volunteers are carrying out the work in order to establish the identity of the owners of the hundreds of some of the hundreds of items left behind after the music and arts festival. 

Work was well underway in the Stradbally Steam Museum on the Carlow Road near The Green in Stradbally last Wednesday. The building contains steam exhibits, Christmas decorations and a boxing ring but the volunteers manage to carry out their work in the available space.  

On Wednesday afternoon the team included Mona Mulhall, Alice Bryan, Mary Cahill, Caroline Cahill and co-ordinator Carmel Farrell. 

They are part of a wider group of around 16 volunteers who spent the festival operating the Lost and Found. The team reduces to around 12 after the event and they take turns working at the Stradbally Lost and Found office. 

“Yesterday, the minute we opened we were inundated with people,” Carmel said. 

Although the volunteers are finished at the Electric Picnic site, Mary Cahill explained that the team had received a box of items from the festival a day earlier and she said items continue to arrive. 

“There was phones and there was wallets and there was little bum bags,” Mary explained.

No stranger to the Electric Picnic, Mary revealed she attended the festival back in 2004. 

“We were at the first Picnic. I was doing information in the main arena,” she recalled.  

The festival has grown since then and the team now have a stack of lost and found books to keep track of the items reported or found by the 75,000 strong crowd. When something is handed in it is recorded in the found book and missing items are recorded in the lost book. There were several lost and found books detailing all manner of items from the festival.

If an address can be established from a wallet or identity card found in clothing or with a phone, the team will send out a  letter to the owner.   

“A hundred letters went out yesterday and I am getting texts back from those people today,” Carmel explained. “ I was up till half one this morning going through texts after being here till 8 O’Clock,” she said. 

“We check the bags and coats as they come in for identification. You would often get a bag with a phone in it. Obviously we don’t take the phones out,” she said, explaining that it made more sense to keep the items together. 

She also posts images of missing items to her facebook page and shares images on the Electric Picnic Banter facebook page which has almost 50,000 members. 

Carmel displayed some of the wallets, many of which still contained cash sums. Luckily most have identification and the team have placed stickers with the names of the individuals on the front of the wallets and on some of the bags. 

“A man came in here yesterday and he got back his wallet and there was €80 in his wallet and he gave us that €80,” Carmel said pointing to the donation box at the entrance. She explained that the stamps from the previous day’s mail had cost them €130.  

Carmel Farrell pictured with a gift delivered by a thankful visitor to the Lost and Found

Carmel expects the lost and found to continue into September but she said there are always unclaimed items. Clothing is handed over to the St Vincent de Paul but some iphones are left over. She has had an ongoing problem of being unable to access the IMEI numbers on the phones and was hopeful somebody with technical expertise could assist the volunteers in this regard so that they could use the IMEI to track the owners. 

Oddly, Mona revealed that not all of the phones they receive are connected to networks.  “There is some with no sims,” she said.   

Most of the volunteers have helped out at the Lost and Found since 2015. From experience, they expect to be working at the Lost and Found office until around the end of September.  

The Lost and Found will open between 6pm and 8pm on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and from 2pm to 6pm on Tuesday and Thursday and between 2pm and 6pm next Saturday.  

If you lost anything or recognise any found items Text 085 8596279(TEXT ONLY. Calls won’t be answered).