Behind the scenes (2)… an intern’s perspective

2 months
2 weeks ago

Music Festival Intern Hannah Ross writes about her experiences so far…

“20kg of white rice… 6 white cabbages… 2 heads of garlic, was it?” Perhaps these are not quite the thoughts you might expect to be running through the head of an intern working at a music festival. Nor might you have imagined said intern looking for a tape measure and ending up using one of those metallic ones with the clippy bit at the end to get the chest measurements of a variety of t-shirts!

“…looking for a tape measure and ending up using one of those metallic ones with the clippy bit at the end to get the chest measurements of a variety of t-shirts!”

I count myself very lucky to be working as an intern at the Cheltenham Music Festival. It seems to be the case that for anyone trying to get into arts admin, competition is so high that unpaid internships are an essential part of your C.V. I’ve heard many horror stories about interns who are simply left to make tea and do photocopying, but luckily this is not the case for me! While there is indeed tea making and photocopying involved (and dishwasher unloading, and mailing preparation, and many other basic everyday tasks, as you’d expect), everyone takes on their fair share, and it’s a really inclusive and supportive environment to work in.

A cake

Not to gush — though I probably would if I were talking to you in person — but everyone is really, properly nice. I was even presented a cake from a cross-festival group of people (as Cheltenham Festivals incorporates teams for Music, Literature, Jazz and Science, as well as cross-festival teams for development, marketing, finance, production etc) to celebrate my graduation!

The different jobs of an intern

Friends and family have had a fairly vague picture of what being an intern entails, and variety is the main word which comes to mind when trying to explain what my workload involves. A small selection — in the run up to the festival I’ve prepared mailings of orchestra parts for the Festival Academy; helped to assign scores to Festival Chorus members; kept tabs on our Painted Quartet postcards; gleaned t-shirt sizes from our team of volunteers so festival t-shirts can be ordered up; written two blogs for the website; liaised with artists, agents and box office to assign complimentary tickets for concerts; processed emails filled with information and questions about the various events; and spent a fair amount of time going through every event on Artifax (the event planning software we are getting to grips with this year) figuring out when we need to be in the venue, when the piano will be tuned, and so on. Two cake-fuelled days of this Artifax checking led to some musical-related in-jokes — for instance, if we have two concerts in the same venue on the same day, we have planned a ‘venue turnaround’, which must be accompanied by Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart — it’s a good job the rest of the music team are patient, and occasionally as silly as me!

Under two weeks to go

Now with under two weeks to go to the festival, I’ll be spending more time on production of things — lanyards, artist passes, dressing room signs (plus a whole host of other signage), song text booklets, and the like — as well as attending Festival Chorus rehearsals, and planning camera shots for those concerts in the Town Hall which have live relay to screens above the stage. I’ll also be ordering the afore-mentioned 20kg of white rice and so on — this food is for three culture workshops held by the Tibetan Monks of Tashi Lhunpo. At these workshops, the monks will lead attendees through prayer flag printing, calligraphy and Tibetan dancing, as well as preparing them a meal — I should point out that the shopping list contains a bit more than just rice, cabbage and garlic!

Soon, our festival sprinters and runners (otherwise known as voluntary staff) will arrive, and I’m very excited about this — I’m not the only one from last year who will be returning, so it will be nice to see some of the friends I made last year, and to meet the new faces too — living and working together for two weeks will undoubtedly create many more friendships from all over the country. After a little first night party with the volunteers, the fun begins — 16 days of music, films, talks, workshops, and rehearsals. Each of us will help with selling programme books, tearing tickets, helping backstage, and page turning. Having been involved from an earlier stage in proceedings, I’ll also be doing some stage and event managing, alongside my camera direction in the Town Hall.

Protein-rich breakfasts and a lot of Lucozade!

It’s a real buzz working at the Music Festival — for all that the days are long and there are many of them (my energy-generating plan for this year involves protein-rich breakfasts and probably a lot of Lucozade!), any potential tiredness is completely worth it — the chance to meet and work with so many inspiring musicians and other creative types to bring together these fantastic events is a real privilege. I can’t wait!

We’ve tagged this post with behind the scenes, Festival Academy, Festival Chorus, Hannah Ross, intern, internship, jobs, music, painted quartets, Tibetan on Wednesday 23 June 2010.