Work Experience Day
Late last year Playmakers held a Work Experience Day for young people interested in working in the arts. Held at Theatre Royal Winchester, staff from Play to the Crowd – the charity responsible for our own community work, the theatre and Hat Fair – held workshops exploring performing, working backstage, marketing events, and encouraging others to get involved.
One of our team, who is also a professional artist, talked about making and touring her own shows, and asked her groups to come up with their own, creating a tour schedule and budget. In another session, attendees learnt how the Box Office ticketing systems work and how to market shows to audiences, before using the systems to sell tickets and creating their own campaigns. We talked about the community work that Playmakers do, across the city centre and district, and asked groups to come up with ideas for projects with the theme, ‘Shout About It!’
The theatre’s Front of House managers showed groups how to prepare the venue for performances and get it ready for an evening’s event – with risk assessment scenarios to figure out too. The director of Hat Fair spoke about bringing performers from around the world to Winchester, and attendees were asked to design their own festival, considering budget and audience experience. Finally, the technical team demonstrated their lighting, sound and audio/visual skills to attendees who then worked with them to prepare the theatre’s stage for the evening’s performance.
Our Work Experience Day was held after young people expressed an interest in the charity’s opportunities and how to get into the arts. After the workshops, members of the team talked about how they got into the industry – with many not getting there via traditional means (i.e. studying for a degree), and options like volunteering were suggested as other ways to get involved early on.
There are a number of ways to get involved with Playmakers, check out our Join In page to find out what we have coming up!
