Showcasing our interns

Becky Gribble and Talea Bartlet formed the other half of the inaugural Turner Sims intern team.  While teammates Louisa and Cerys focussed on programme editing and marketing in the concert hall, Becky and Talea were the managers of the Southampton Showcase programme for advanced student performers.  Here’s how they spent their year:

We applied for the position in the intern team to further our experience in arts management, as this was not an opportunity available to most students.  We were hoping to learn how to organise events and promote a group of musicians in a ‘real world’ situation.  We wanted to get a better understanding of how to market different types of musicians who are at different stages of their careers. The Showcase intern role included a variety of activities which we split between the two of us. These included administrative task such as designing and running the website, answering email queries from prospective clients, gaining detailed information from the performers in order to efficiently plan concerts, produce programs and promote them on social media and on the website.

Managing the Showcase concert series required liaising with our artists, the university, venues, ushers and stage managers, as well as piano tuners and sound engineers in order to  plan the concert schedule and stage requirements.  We also organised other events for our performers, such as talks by the Musician’s Union and marketing professionals to help them prepare for their professional musical careers.
We were surprised that the performers were not always 100% motivated to work with us, and some did not provide the necessary media to promote them effectively. To overcome this issue we created a list of expectations for future performers joining the scheme, which would make it easier for the following interns.

One of the main challenges that all interns faced was to develop the ability to prioritise workloads, balancing our university work with the internship (and in our cases, also a part-time job). The experience of learning important time management skill for our future careers was very valuable. We used regular meetings to keep on top of the tasks and to ensure that we all knew what we were doing.
One particular challenge was to agree on the logo as a team – we had several meetings including marketing professionals to create different versions before settling on one that we were all happy with.

Some of the skills that we learned throughout the year included using programs such as WordPress and Publisher, what works in social media marketing, and the different administrative and managerial skills involved in organising a concert.  From this, we have gained a better understanding of what goes on behind the scenes of a concert, and what needs to be organised before performers step foot on the stage.
It was a unique opportunity to be able to shape the Showcase Project by suggesting and implementing our own ideas and being able to draw from the experience of professionals in the industry. Being the inaugural team allowed us to help guide the project’s direction and scope, which was an invaluable experience. Working with the internship team was also very enjoyable and the achievement of successfully managing a complete concert series was highly rewarding.

For those interns following us: Keep calm and don’t panic! There is a lot to do and it can seem a bit daunting when you first start. Take it one step at a time, and you’ll look back and wonder what you found so hard!