Immediately after reading the title of this, you may have had a negative thought in your head. This blog post will be another boring account about of an Arts business student travel log. Well I hope it won’t be. My name is Nicole, I am a writer and performer based in Manchester also studying BA (Hons) Music, Theatre and Entertainment Management at Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA). As part of my final year at University, I have to undertake a placement as an Arts Manager for 3 months. My placement was with National Theatre Wales (NTW) for 2 weeks and the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester for 10 weeks.

So 2 weeks ago on Monday, I started my placement with NTW. I didn’t know what to expect from the team. Were the staff going to be frustrated artists who have become arts administrators? As I have experienced this in lot of arts organisations in both Manchester and Liverpool.  Instead I came across a dedicated team who worked well together and truly believed in the NTW’s vision. This became very apparent during the last few days of my placement, they truly had synergy.

NTW are theatre without walls, on 1^st October they started their residency in Treorchy at the Park and Dare Theatre for the whole month of October.  The Team were taken on tour of the Park and Dare Theatre by Tom the Assistant Manager.

Below are some photos of the Park and Dare Theatre.

What did I learn and do?

When travelling from Cardiff to Treorchy everyday taught me the principle that the arts should be accessible to all community, whether remote or not. This was evident, on the few occasions when I brought my train ticket from a Ticket clerk, they asked me “what’s in Treorchy?” I told them “NTW, Park and Dare and the amazing production being rehearsed called Tonypandemonium.” Leaving them with a flyer for the show.

I gained knowledge about behind the scenes of running a theatre and the lead up to tech week of a production, in this case it was Tonypandemonium.  It has been very interesting to see how NTW worked in partnership with Park and Dare Theatre to make Tonypandemonium a successful production.

I attended several meetings including:

• Team meetings
• Communication (Coms) meeting
• Ticket sales meetings
• Promotion meetings
• Production meetings
• Attended tech rehearsals
• Attended Ideas meeting for Welsh Assembly

I have assisted staff with any admin support for example:

• Promoted the Word4Word event
• Constructed questionnaires
•  Database management
• Door to door marketing for Tonypandemonium
• I performed some of my poetry at Word4word event

Below are some more photos  

Overall I had a wonderful experience with NTW, this has enabled me to build friendships and arts networks. 

See you soon.