Hello everyone! My name is Sofia, and I am a second year Communication Science student. From February to June 2023, I was a marketing & communications intern at SPRING Performing Arts Festival. The internship started by preparing the marketing prior to the festival for several months, included the 10-day festival itself, and concluded with enough time for several evaluations after the festival. I learnt a lot in this internship, and developed both hard and soft skills. In this blog, I would like to show you the flexibility that is required when working in the cultural sector, specifically at a time-sensitive festival.
Organizational structure
Starting from the organizational structure itself, it already becomes obvious that flexibility in this sector is a must. At SPRING, and most other festivals, there is only a small team which works year-round. The rest of the team only works for a few months, or even a few weeks, on a freelance basis. This means there are new employees constantly, and most people are working on something completely new to them. As an intern, this can actually be quite nice: everyone is learning, so you are not the only one who is confused sometimes.
Furthermore, the team at SPRING was also quite small. This means close collaboration with your own department, but also with others. If there is someone in production who needs help with something urgent, it is completely possible that someone from marketing steps in. Therefore, you also learn to do a lot of things that are not directly related to marketing, but could still be useful in a future career.
Last-minute changes
When preparing a festival, things change all the time: whether it’s an artist who has to cancel, the municipality not giving certain permits, or a theatre who had different expectations; there are constantly last-minute changes. This is of course very challenging for marketing and communications, as you have to communicate these changes properly to the outside world. There might not be a lot of time for your message to reach a large audience. However, this means that as an intern, I learnt a lot about communication: things were constantly moving, and there was always work to be done. I learned a lot from how my colleagues handled these (sometimes stressful) situations.
Still recommended
Of course, this required flexibility can also be difficult sometimes. You might have to change a strategy you have been working on for a while, and due to everyone moving so fast sometimes it might feel like you cannot really ask questions. Instead of having a stable, but maybe boring environment where you just do the same things every week, you have to learn new tasks constantly. I was prepared for this challenge, and therefore I learnt a lot in the past five months. I got to try many different things, and really felt like I was part of the team. If you feel like you would be able to handle thinking on your feet, I would highly recommend an internship at such a festival!
