Aki's Placement Blog

 After the first week of work, as I slowly make my way through the many documents I have to read and sign, the weekend gives me some chance to reflect on the tasks and skills gained, and reflect on what I am learning. I have run organisations before, and reasonable ones too - be it the university English Society, my old school's charity arm, or magazine editorial sections, and getting an insight into the organisational structure of Skimstone is giving me plenty of chances to reflect.  Skimstone is split into a few key artistic groups. The Young Artists Collective (YAC) works for young artists, a few of whom have gone on into ECHO. These two schemes run well, under the guidance of the management team. ECHO artists support other artists within Skimstone too, and some are involved in the management team collecting feedback and running YAC events too. This has bred a great family feel to the organisation, and it all feels very communal and relaxed. This seems it will work well. It...

 November 27. Zoom. Friday Check-In with whole team. I got to meet more of the team today in the more informal check-in meeting. A weekly fixture, this struck me as a really nice way for everyone to keep in touch within the company - particularly those involved in different projects at the moment. The premise is the zoom meetings are scheduled every Friday, and you can stay for 5 minutes or two hours!  Again this was a useful time for me to meet more people, like Arthur who plays the keyboard, and Dan who plays the piano and harmonica, as well as poetry, and Ho-Yin who is particularly interested in wildlife photography at the moment. The 'close-knitted-ness' of the whole team was again very clear with people demonstrating what they were up to that particular week in plenty of walks of life. Magpie also came to this catch-up. He's an actor and rapper who joined Skimstone in 2011, as part of the YAC, before graduating on to become an ECHO artist, and part of the management te...

 25th November. Zoom. Meeting YAC. Got to meet some of the young artists today. Most of them are taking a week out (after their last project has ended), but it was good to start placing some faces to names. I must admit I struggle to remember any now though! Everybody introduced themselves to me and I tried to take notes. Maddie plays viola and specialises in soundscapes and electronic music, often using found sound. Thomas (separate to Tom, who's away) plays piano and the steel drums. Claire plays the piano and drums and sings, as well as a bit of saxophone, photography and film! I then introduced myself to everyone as the placement student, doing English Literature. As everyone here is so artistic as well I'm talking about my musical background quite often too. It's a shame we can't meet in person, as it's so much easier to talk 1-2-1 that way, as opposed to over group video calls on zoom. It was useful for me to get an insight into some of the evaluation process ...

 24th November. Zoom. Intro with Peter Saaremets. Today I had my first introductory meeting with Peter Saaremets, the lead musician at Skimstone Arts. We talked about who I am, what I do and why I was interested in working with Skimstone. It was great to share my own personal interests and passions in the arts, from my theatrical background to musical instrument playing too. I'd already spoken to Peter and some of the team ahead of this meeting but we spoke about how I am learning to play the guitar now (Peter's instrument) - a new lockdown hobby! I felt very welcomed by Peter speaking about music, and we had to make sure we spoke about business matters because we could've spoken for ages! We talked a lot about jazz and bands; Peter said that in normal times it would've been good to get me playing in the Youth Band, but coronavirus... :(  Skimstone Arts is very rich in the music it explores, and we talked about all kind of genres, from my "Radio 2 - style, drive ti...