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
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
