BBC Blast Event at the V&A – 20th-21st June 2010
Blast is a creative outreach program run by the BBC’s Learning department. At its core is the BBC Blast Tour, which runs for 9 months of the year, hosting a range of free art, cultural and media orientated workshops for young people aged 13-19, at various destinations across the UK.
After building up a relationship with the BBC Blast crew over the past year – through completing a Creative Trainee Scheme and previously gaining work experience on the tour – I was asked if I would like to get involved with this year’s London event, held at the V&A and the Natural History Museum.
Saturday
The first session was held in a lecture theatre in the Victoria and Albert Museum, where most of the creative arts and media workshops took place throughout the week. I was part of a discussion panel member for ‘Getting into Radio’, alongside Rampage, 1Xtra Producers; Janine, Emma and the compere – Iyare, who has worked for both 6 Music and 1Xtra.
As a panel, we each spoke about the challenges of getting work experience and paid jobs in radio, as well as debating the relevant training and qualifications required; each using our differing areas of expertise to offer advice to an audience of young people.
After the discussion, we were approached by a number of young people, eager to find out more about how we gained work experience and for advice on which University courses to apply to. It felt extremely rewarding to pass on the knowledge I have gained so far and to hear from the rest of the panel about their career progressions.
Immediately after the Q&A session myself and Iyare headed to the Natural History Museum to facilitate a workshop on how to ‘Build your own radio demo’. After passing numerous fossils we reached our second workshop room, where we spent the afternoon guiding a small group as they wrote scripts, recorded and produced their very own demo, representing their views on music, festivals, fashion and exams.
I helped them to script-write, whilst gaining knowledge of audio-editing program, Garage Band.
It was brilliant watching talented young people experiencing new skills, producing their own work and leaving with a sense of achievement.
On Sunday I volunteered to work Front of House on the BBC Blast truck at the Natural History Museum.
Here I worked within a small team of work experience and crew members – signing young people into creative workshops, answering general enquiries, guiding people to workshop rooms and giving out goody bags containing information on various local arts organisations around London.
As always, the Blast event ended on a high, the sun came out, we spoke to many enthusiastic, young (and some old!) people, many of whom were eager to continue what they’d learned and who had produced some amazing content. You can view some of the content on the BBC Blast website.
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As well as the Blast workshops, many other creative sessions took place throughout Sunday as part of the Exhibition Road Music Day.
This event took place in order to encourgage people to visit the many arts institutions in Kensington and to diminish the perception of the insitutions and museums being old and outdated. You can hear Paul Cutts, the CEO of the Exhibition Road Cultural Group speaking about the purpose of this event on the Guardian Careers Talk podcast.
Hayley Clarke Media 
Living in the free(lance) world
I thought it best I update this ‘ere blog and provide any on-lookers a bit of context to my previous ‘status update’ post. It was not meant as a form of bragging, but ‘this is what I’m currently up to’ and an appeal for help – I am in need of further work to keep myself alive (physically, mentally and creatively).
The Guardian Careers Blog recently published an exciting (or at least, reassuring) article entitled: Graduate job seeking: The rise of the ‘slasher’.
In spite of the unfortunate wording I am proud to say that I myself am a slasher. It’s not a new concept – far from it, but perhaps it’s one that will become much more widely recognised, accepted and hopefully praised in the near future given the increasingly tumultuous job market.
The phrase ‘slasher’ is simple. It is someone who works in various different fields, i.e. a journalist/web developer/lecturer or as mentioned in the article pharmacist/writer/lawyer….the list is endless and full of opportunity.
This is something that excites me because when I underwent my placement at BBC Radio 1 back in 2009 I did so with the intention of becoming a Music Journalist/Reporter and instead came out with knowledge of the roles of Producers/Journalists/Executive Producers/Editors/Documentary Makers/Broadcast(Unit) Assistants/Web Developers…all sorts and despite my excitement of having such insight (plus the opportunity to rule out those I was uninterested in) I was given these words of advice within my exit interview, “narrow your focus”.
Narrowing my focus has since been my aim but with very little success. I have been living in constant fear that my skills and work experience will appear too broad to employers and I will seem indecisive. I’ll admit I have been very much undecided in the past but I honestly don’t believe that should be seen as a negative attribute, as long as you have drive and the willingness to be dedicated to whichever job you take on.
I once interviewed Hardeep Singh (of The One Show fame, among other things) – he told me in a rather blunt manner that people shouldn’t be pigeon-holed and nor should they be put off doing a variety of roles; “why should anyone have to be just one thing?” he stated in a firm, almost abrupt manner. Regardless of your perception of Singh, his words resonated with me. Rarely do people know exactly what they want to do in life, let alone have the confidence and opportunity to make that job happen.
I now have a much clearer idea of the type of work I want to be involved with now due to the very fact that I have experimented with events, broadcasting, writing, PR and so on. I understand that it is going to take some time to get there; along the way I will have to pick up odd jobs and simply apply the same enthusiasm regardless, as that is just the way the world is – we need money to survive and people to put in hard work to what others see as menial jobs.
I wish everyone was forced to work in an admin or labour-intensive job before embarking on their careers so that they could share the same perspective, then perhaps they’d appreciate how hard it is to ensure an organisation functions successfully and fully appreciate that no one in this world is superior to another (this is not meant to sound pro-communism, it’s just common sense).
And on that note I’m off to write an article, then a radio script, look into the likelihood of securing arts funding and re-shaping my CV for part-time work to pay the bills….it’s going to be a long night, but for once in my life I’m feeling pretty positive about it.
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