(bright music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) - The volunteers at WaterFire are, they're everyone.

So they come from all walks of life.

They come from not only Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, but they are the pulse of WaterFire as to what we have to get done.

(upbeat music) - The metaphor here is the fires burn bright and they burn low, and then out of the, out of the corner of your eye, or coming down the dark river, a boat appears full of people from your community and each of them are adding their effort, and their contribution to making the city burn bright.

(upbeat music) - Without our volunteers, we literally, like, would not have an event at all.

So they are here from the start of the morning, getting the wood into the boat.

They come in the morning to help build the braziers, they're here in the evening, feeding the fires, talking to guests, and from a whole week of events, it could, from the wood pile workout, all the way to Truck Tuesday, it could be anywhere from a hundred to 200 volunteers.

(upbeat music) (bright music) - So you're gonna be in Main Merch.

We are here.

And then all the way down, you can either go Memorial Boulevard to the mall area.

(phone rings) Name please.

- Emilio.

- A lot of people don't realize that all the folks on the boats are volunteers.

- We have an amazing core of volunteers.

Some volunteers have been with us from the very beginning.

They feel like they own WaterFire as much as the staff and they have so much institutional knowledge.

- Well, guys, welcome to the first non-rainy WaterFire of the year.

Yay.

It is a little muggy, though.

We all know about the tide situation.

If you don't, it doesn't look great until 9:30.

So we are not lighting the areas of concern, so the mall, the Confluence and the Risley shorts until 9:30.

In a volunteer, we are looking for people who are reliable, someone who cares about the community, someone who is wanting to give back, someone who wants to have a good time.

We have a special social that we set up to meet every month, but then they take it a step further and they set up times on, like, Thursday nights to just go hang out because that's how much they love the community that they've built.

- They feel what they're part of or what they're doing brings another meaning to them, themselves.

And there's a tight click with our volunteers.

We'll do this lighting tonight, they'll be off the river, the volunteers on the boats, they'll probably come off quarter to one or one o'clock.

Where are they?

They're not done for the night.

Over to the local watering hole to talk about the night.

- And I've made great friendships that have grown over the years.

We've had gatherings outside of WaterFire.

We have gatherings, potlucks at WaterFire that involve all the volunteers.

- I received an email in our off season that two of our volunteers who actually drive down from Maine got engaged here at our last lighting last season.

So I thought that was really nice.

- He was a board member, Moto, met his wife here.

They actually got married right on that dock on a boat ride.

Ken Panciera, who proposed to his potential wife did it during a WaterFire.

- To be a good volunteer for WaterFire, you have to be a people person.

You have to enjoy a little bit of hard work and getting your hands dirty.

You have to enjoy art.

Gary Saint Laurent, one of the volunteer coordinators came up to me and said, what are you doing for the Christmas fire?

I said, I'm not gonna be on a boat in the middle of winter.

He goes, what if we dress you in red instead of black?

I said, what do you have in, oh, I get it.

- Hi, Santa.

- Merry Christmas.

- Merry Christmas.

(Santa laughs) - Merry Christmas.

(Santa laughs) Thanks for coming.

- Merry Christmas.

- [Ken] It's awesome to have a line of kids to come and see Santa Claus during a unique event like WaterFire.

So it's pretty good.

I'll never be a mall Santa, but I'll always be a WaterFire Santa.

- Hi, Santa - Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas.

(upbeat music) (singing in foreign language) - You get pride when you're driving the boat, you turn the corner, you see all the kids cheering to you, waving, stuff like that, you light the fire.

It's special to be part of something in Providence that everyone knows about and you're part of it.

(singing in foreign language) (crowd applauds) - The army here is anything from 150 volunteers and that's just bare minimum.

And that's smaller scale events like today, all the way up to 300 individuals, 400 individuals.

- Volunteers do all sorts of things.

They help with translating something into a different language.

They help with guiding people through the park who aren't from around here.

- So you guys did great.

- Yeah.

What do we win?

- You win a boat ride.

- Nice.

- We get people from all over the world and these people come with great questions.

And it's the opportunity to share Providence, to share WaterFire, from me, but also from the hundreds of volunteers that it takes to put this event on.

(upbeat music) - It's a race out here, look at it.

We've got five kayaks chasing.

You're putting your money on the green one.

I've got two bits on the red one, all right?

Anybody else wanna incur it up?

The reason I have fun is because I enjoy interacting with people.

You know, but I was out there at eight o'clock in the morning putting those nice big pieces of wood out, right?

We were doing it.

- This morning.

- I tend to wanna just interact a lot and it should be an amusing evening.

Should be a fun evening.

- Okay.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Have a nice evening.

- Can we go fishing?

- No fishing allowed.

- Fish on a kayak.

(bright music) - Got it.

- Great job, Sue.

Good girl.

- So it's a wide range of volunteers and they are instrumental.

They're the actors in the play.

We're really behind the scenes, behind the curtain.

(upbeat music) - Being in the procession is part of the art.

You wanna stand still, you don't want to be on your phone, waving to everyone in the crowd.

Blend into the boat, be part of the procession, be part of the art.

- We're here to promote the art, and the beauty of it and definitely be a part of it, and enhance the, like, the magic of it all.

(bright music) (bright music continues) - They look great.

Look at your fires that you lit.

- Beautiful.

(bright music) - I'm a fire spinner, so I spin hula hoops lit on fire.

So I was really interested in getting involved in the actual fire tending of WaterFire, that's something that I love.

(bright music) It's exciting, it's fast paced, so we have to, like, get the wood on there really fast as the boat is moving.

There's a lot of heat coming off of the fire, there's sparks flying, you're reaching right directly into the flames And it's very magical being on this boat, and with the music pumping on the water, it's like being in a different world.

The fire is mesmerizing.

(bright music) - You can't sit there.

Nope.

- Sorry.

- Back in this way.

- Sorry.

- That's alright.

No problem.

Around over there.

- Okay, that way?

- Yes.

Go around there, there you go.

There you go, all right.

Just come in in the evening.

I work what they call special ops, which helps with the torch bearers.

Sometimes I'll do crowd control, which I'm doing now.

I really like interacting with people.

I like talking to them about how special WaterFire is.

(bright music) (soft music) - Of course, enjoy the night.

I have a biased opinion because I work in Star Field.

Star Field is, looks just like this.

We have a whole bunch of stars in our field.

- Do we tie ourselves or does somebody tie it for us?

- So they're just safety pins, and they're gonna, you're gonna write it and then you're gonna hand it to our volunteers.

- Okay.

- They're gonna pin it onto the star for you, and then you're gonna walk it out together, and you get to see it go up, it's a pretty magical experience.

- Okay, cool.

- And the most gratifying part of that is really just, you feel like you're helping people.

You feel like you're really being there for people who are, like, going through something.

- Wow, good job.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

(fire crackling) (bright music) (bright music continues) - We've had rain, we've had windy nights, we've had interesting nights, but none of them have ever really stopped us because the artwork that we're a part of is so important to all of us and important to everybody in Rhode Island.

So WaterFire really drives us.

So even in some of the worst nights, you know, cold, windy nights maybe in the late season we do fires for Christmas.

It's cold and windy, but we're still out here enjoying ourselves.

- So the volunteers are a really important part of WaterFire.

And it wasn't something I fully realized at first.

I created WaterFire for the first time, artists are pretty good about helping other artists on their projects, was me and my friends did it.

But pretty quickly people contacted us, just on their own, and saying they wanted to help.

But I should have had a sense of this capacity for volunteers to come forth.

- [Gary] The heart and soul of WaterFire is our volunteers in the real community that we build, while building community for the rest of the city.

(soft music) (soft music continues) (soft music continues) (soft music continues) (soft music continues)