A Warm Welcome and Good Start

When I first took on the challenge of finding a placement, I didn’t think of some difficulties I would encounter. As I went about this journey, I had to think up solutions to continue forward. A lot of challenges popped up in finding the placement alone with the first of them being, who I contact for a placement. To overcome this challenge, I started by contacting my tutors to see what placement options they had available, there weren’t many left but they gave me the contact details of the ones they had.
I contacted the placement opportunities given to me and they invited me to some interviews but, unfortunately; I wasn’t successful in getting the placements and therefore had to continue looking for one. I started to panic when it was getting closer to the deadline for the placements when my friend came round to my flat and suggested asking around theatres and venues in Belfast. The past placement opportunities I contacted were by email and my friend suggested calling to get a faster answer.
The idea of calling someone I didn’t know gave me feelings of anxiety, so my friend offered to call them for me. We called many venues, such as the Grand Opera House, the Lyric Theatre, and the Waterfront Hall. I was given emails for people who worked at these venues and was told that they would let me know if a placement would be possible.

I waited for a few days after I sent each venue an email before I got any kind of response. I only had one response, from the Waterfront Hall. The contact was from one of their production managers, Dave Young. We emailed back a forth for a couple of days while he was checking what I wanted out of a placement. Dave then asked if I would like to come down to the Waterfront Hall for an interview. I went for the interview, arriving in good time, to make a good first impression. Dave took me on a tour of the Waterfront Hall before we sat down to discuss options. He asked again what I hoped to achieve during my placement and how long I would like to be with them. He then asked what previous experience I have. I opened up about what it is I would like to achieve at the Waterfront and Ulster Halls and explained that I have little experience working behind a stage, but that I am eager to learn. A few weeks after this interview, I got another email from Dave saying that they would like me to join their team and that they would love it if I started in November.

Throughout my journey to finding a placement, I did not give up. Although I found moments hard I made sure to use people around me as support. I went to my tutors for possible placements and even discussed what was happening with a friend. In future, however, I do feel I could have gone to people sooner than I did so that my placement was not left to the last minute. Once I got responses from the placement opportunities about having interviews, I made sure to plan what I was going to say such as my experience and what I want to achieve. This is to show that I want to learn as much as I can but, that I do have some experience and I’m not stepping into something completely unknown.

I started my first week of placement towards the end of November, the first week was mostly getting to know the Ulster and Waterfront Hall and learning who it is I’ll be working with. When I first arrived I met up with Dave and he took me on another more in-depth tour of the Waterfront Hall, as we went around he introduced me to the different departments. Later on in the day after doing my induction with Jenny, the Health and Safety Manager, I went to a department meeting. During the meeting, I got to see how the Waterfront and Ulster Hall plan future events and discuss past events to see what could be done better. In the meeting, I got to meet the director of events at the Waterfront and Ulster Hall, Charlie.
On my second day, I met Danielle who is one of the production managers and my mentor while I’m doing my placement. I discussed with Danielle what events I would like to work on while with them and we put some down on my rota up until Christmas. Some of those events were the pantomime, The Snowman: Ulster Orchestra, Irish New Arts and The HU. I also spent the day with the HR team going over the evacuation plans and doing anti-terrorist training. My first and second days with the Waterfront and Ulster Hall were very insightful into how venues work and what it takes to put on safe events, I had learned a lot in the short time I had already spent there.

Over the next few weeks coming up to Christmas, I started working on the events I had down. One of the events was The Snowman: Ulster Orchestra. I spent time working with different crew members on this performance including the stage manager and the AV technician and was shown what they do but, overall I spent most of my time with Andy the lighting technician. Before the show, we worked on designing the style and the colours of the lights were going to be during each song. We worked on a lighting desk called an MA Dot 2; I got used to working with the desk pretty quickly and programmed in some of the lighting designs myself.

Overall, my time so far with the Waterfront and Ulster Hall has been amazing. I’ve learned so much in my short time there already and I’m looking forward to working on my next event.