Writing with Mr Malkovic and whats 'Left of Central'

The three weeks of ‘Left of Central’ have been very busy for me and the Central marketing team. Since the Launch party there have been activities, music, food and events on almost everyday that need to be coordinated by the marketing team.

I have been spending a lot of my time at helping out Leanne the events coordinator, anyway I can with setting up, packing up and any job in between to try and make each day run as smoothly as possible. I have found this part of my work experience fun, rewarding and hard work. The best part of being involved in the events was physically seeing the work you do transform a space into something people really enjoy. Often I found at the end of a day I would watch people use the space or be entertained by an event and think I helped make that happen.

During the ‘Left of Central’ I was also I was given the title of ‘Night Supervisor’ which basically meant packing up the street each day or after each event was finished. Apart from the heavy lifting I really enjoyed this opportunity and the responsibility given to me. It gave me the opportunity to use leadership and organisational skills. I has head of a team of people who packed up the street each evening and I directed them as to what needed to be done and the best way to go about it. I think I did a good job managing this task because the pack up became more and more efficient throughout the three weeks developed a rapport with the people I worked with.

The only time my patience was tested was packing up after the movie night on a Friday. A group of drunks walked through where we were packing up and jumped on all the bean bags, ran off with one of our trolleys and were generally an all around nuisance. I was very irritated by this but soon came to realise this is probably part and parcel of working in events and tried to busy myself in other areas while the drunks got bored and left.

to see what Left of Central was all about click here

It was easy to forget that even though ‘Left of Central’ was on there were still other things for the marketing team to do. In the last week of ‘Left of Central’ the marketing team and I were invited to take part in a writing workshop with former 730 Report journalist Tony Malkovic. I was pretty intimidated going into the workshop; I didn't know what the expectations were for writing and feared I wasn't up to scratch. I was soon put at ease though because the workshop was very inclusive and ended up being probably the best learning experience for writing I have ever done. I was practical, concise and didn’t get caught up in the ‘rules’ of grammar or punctuation but rather focused on ensuring that Central has a consistent style and we communicate as concisely and effectively as possible. The two main things I took out of the workshop were to try and use an active voice and avoid using to many adjectives, instead find a good verb. Although this may sound dry and dull it has helped me to make my writing far more engaging and easy to understand.

It saddens me that there is so few days left of my internship. I have been learning so much about what goes into a PR role and how to improve my skills I fear I'll end up forgetting some of it. I think the challenge now will be deciding what I enjoy most and trying to focus on that one thing. At the moment though I don't have a favorite part but enjoy doing a little bit of everything, from event preparation to writing press releases and blog stories.

Until my next and final Blog

Steaf