After all the stress trying to find a placement... It ends so quickly

Hello there,

I cannot believe it but I have now finished formal work at West Australian Ballet for the Curtin University's PR internship unit! I feel I have accomplished a lot over the past 11 weeks.

I had such a fantastic time with this company and I highly recommend interning with WAB. The staff are professional, passionate, focused and hard working yet friendly and extremely helpful.

Although I have officially finished my 20 days I am still in contact with the pr marketing team and I have been asked to help at some ballet events in the near future.

I was apprehensive to commence the internship unit but having overcome this first step into the professional world I have become more confident in my abilities. I  now know which techniques and skills I am competent in and understand which areas require work.  I displayed professionalism, organisational qualities, timeliness, a strong work ethic and an enthusiasm for knowledge of public relations and communications. An area I am sure that I need to focus on is research. I felt at times I was unsure of facts when I was writing which limited my creative thinking. Ballet is an art form with a great deal of technical and historical content. Although I believe I wrote well and my media releases, website copy, Ballet News articles and other content were succinct and sufficient, I believe with more knowledge of the subject matter I could have been more creative and more confident in my writing.

Is PR for me?
Yes I think so. The internship unit has inspired me and has encouraged me to take a more proactive approach to graduation and to think about the next steps I have to take to begin my career as a public relations professional. I have started looking for full time work as a result of the internship unit and feel more confident moving into industry.

Where will my journey lead now?
A public relations degree can lead to infinite possibilities.  Who knows where we will be or what we will be doing in ten years, but I am sure that the skills learned from this course will be extremely useful.


Good luck to everyone starting their internship! Enjoy the wonderful experience.

:)

Thanks for reading,

Eve Milner

Hiho hiho back to work I go!

Hello there,

And so begins the new year!

2014 will be exciting for West Australian Ballet with the world premier performance of Radio & Juliet. The show begins on the 7th February at the Quarry Amphitheater in Perth. The music for the performance has been written by the highly acclaimed and well-known English band, Radiohead. Shows to follow in the season include classics such as Gisselle, La Fille Mal Gardee and Snow White.

The public relations and marketing staff are busy with the preparations for Radio & Juliet. Copy for season and show programs and brochures are being created, websites and social media sites updated, posters and banners advertising the season are being dispersed throughout the city and media releases are being drafted.

Having spent a day writing constantly I thought it would be fitting to write some more and create a new blog post! To begin the day I found myself in a 'stop/start'mode of writing. I felt the necessity to reword and fix every word or sentence I typed. After about two hours of this I stopped.  I began to just write. What I wanted and how I wanted, deciding to fix mistakes later.  This has worked extremely well for me. I found that being to pedantic reduced the flow of my creative thinking. I believe this issue I have is a result of learning journalistic style. I will have to consider this and try leave my journalistic hat at the West Australian Ballets door step!

Oh my! I now have but only eight days left of my intern-ship to complete. Enjoy your experience! The time goes so quickly!

Half way to somewhere

Hello there,

My internship experience at West Australian Ballet has been fantastic so far! I can not believe how the time has flown. I am more than half way through and it seems like I just began my journey yesterday! The office environment is friendly and inviting, and I believe this is the reason why I am enjoying my experience so much. 

The Ballet has closed  over the Christmas period however I will start up again on the 6th of January. 

I have learned a lot about the industry despite the short time I have been interning. I was unsure of what exactly the role would entail. I assumed public relations practitioners to have strict deadlines similar to that of a journalistic career. I thought I would find myself in situations that were just as hectic. But having entered this industry I have realised that it is actually a quite laid back career pathway. I thought deadlines for media releases, newsletters, clippings and  social media plans would be tight. From West Australian Ballet I have learned that organisational skills and a strategic plan are key to success. Once the PR department is organised (like WAB), staff can spend a week working on a brilliant media release and pass it around to ensure perfection. I found this style of a collaborative approach suits me. I can understand the value of having multiple practitioners overlooking multiple project.

It is interesting to enter an organisation as a young person who had never worked in an office before. I felt as if I had gone back in time after my first  few days within the office. Although systems work reasonably well, I feel that West Australian Ballet could develop more contemporary and efficient business information systems within the office to eliminate menial tasks and clerk errors. This would help to produce more effective services for customers and enable staff to attend to more important tasks. Although the staff ranges from a span of young to elderly people I feel that the systems in place do not cover all aspects of the business and that the systems lack a modern approach. Excel spread sheets are used alongside a computer information system known as ACT. Paper is still used as a primary medium within the office and I believe this should be eliminated. On the other hand, the company has a customer base of mainly elderly people and I understand that paper systems are important for the majority of customer. There is a divide within the business industry. Some offices are embracing change whilst others hold on to older methods. As a young person entering the workforce in 2014 I assumed that more than 90% of offices are paperless and that technology is embraced. This is not the case. To me, this was quite a shock.




 

Life is a dance!

I have begun an internship at the West Australian Ballet. It is a wonderfully creative organisation and I feel extremely lucky and grateful to have been given such an amazing opportunity.

 I was instantly welcomed into the company and introduced to the office staff (of about thirty people). I was then treated to a grand tour of the large antiqued heritage-listed ballet centre. The building has been modernised and consists of a large communal office area, a grand foyer, a cafe space, three large dance studios, a lounge area, gym and physiotherapy centre.

I was given a copy of the company style guide to learn and a brochure of the current and coming ballet season. I noticed that the style guide is thorough with details of colours, text size and font. It also explores logos for different mediums, sponsor logos, details of ‘how to’ for email, telephone, fax, photocopy, paper size and style etc. One thing I found interesting was that the style guide also discussed how to communicate messages- the tone, the idea of quality customer service, professionalism and proper use of the English language. I am glad that I received a copy of the style guide the moment I commenced work and found this an incredible useful tool throughout my professional practice thus far. I know understand the importance of having a style guide. As a new employee it provided me with exactly what was expected. A style guide helps to ensure a standard that all employees follow. It also creates consistency and is engrained with the brands values, attitudes, and key messages of the organisation. The style guide formulates a consistent and memorable organisation standard.  The brochure was also useful as I gained an understanding of the ballet season. For 2014 the West Australian Ballet will perform one ballet titled Radio and Juliet at the quarry amphitheatre, three shows at His Majesty’s Theatre- Giselle, Snow White and La Fille Mal Gardee.  The company will also host a number of small genesis shows (contemporary solo dances) and public dance classes. A Black and White ball has been organised for sponsors and donators and a number of open days for the public.

I learnt quickly that the organisation is heavily focused on producing spectacular world class events and performances, increasing ticket sales and add-on sales, gaining support of ballet community (subscription packages), receiving sponsorship and donations, promoting ballet to younger audiences, ballet education, and efficient and effective public relations, marketing and advertising strategies.

I embarked on my internship during a busy period (The day before opening night of Peter Pan).  I was given a variety of jobs over the next two weeks including;

1.     A mock up of “Friends of WAB” pamphlet

a.     Create Mock up

b.     Describe what we want in a word document for the outsourced graphics teams

c.     Include all style, image, and logos

2.     SWOT analysis

a.     Where the company is at and how the shows this year have gone so far and what is in store for next season

b.     ‘In’ and ‘out’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats

c.     Improvements

d.     Boardroom meeting with all important shareholders, directors, staff and dancers

e.     Categorise into most important and agreeable points

f.      Create a document based on findings of season

3.     Patron data schedule for tickets 2014 (for ticketek)

4.     Media Clippings of Onegin performance

5.     Draft of donations letter

6.     List of potential places to send pamphlets about Radio and Juilet performance at the Quarry.

a)     Draft email and send

b)    Received five emails back (sent 5 boxes of pamphlets to local shopping centres)

7.     Created a competition for the mid year newsletter – 10 double passes to see Bolshoi ballet at The Winsor Cinema

a)     Drafted letter for winners and a piece on who won for social media sites

8.     Survey for Onegin- results document in Survey Monkey

9.     Survey for Peter Pan (created) in Survey Monkey

So far I am enjoying my experience working at WAB. I am at the nine-day mark and have gained confidence in my abilities as a young PR professional. I have learnt how I can implement PR strategies and practices into a real life situation. I have found that in a real life situations results are more important than in an academic assignment. Throughout my university studied I never put much emphasis on the evaluation section however I now see the value in doing this. This is something I have struggled with personally as a student. I understand what positive effects can eventuate from PR practices that satisfy business goals and objectives and how important it is to measure these for increased productivity in coming years.