Aki's Placement Blog

 12 Feb. Zoom.  Today I had my final call with Claire Webster Saaremets, where she thanked me for working with Skimstone, and we evaluated the experience. The obvious challenge we talked about was remote working. For me this was most obviously hardest with the breakdown in communication with Sheryl, but more than anything I felt that not being able to meet people at the beginning slowed the speed I could integrate into the group. Claire said that she and Peter both felt I was a good fit for the company ("because you get the humour!"), and I was glad that I could fit in eventually. The most important thing for me was the individual responsibility that I had, which was quite empowering in letting me work and live or die by my sword!  I had the most fun interviewing people for the trailer, which I commented was good because these were the kind of conversations that I would be having had we met in person as a group; you just can't have the same sort of 1-to-1 conversations in...

 Today we had our final evaluation session for the Who Holds The Torch project. It was very successful pulling in hundreds of listeners every day, and a growing number every day too. Today though, it was great to talk to some of the people in the community who helped make the pieces with Skimstone Arts. I was speaking to Loretta in particular, with Kema and Magpie, and it was great to be able to extract a personal reflection of what this meant to her. Skimstone is at heart a company dedicated to helping those at risk of social isolation, and it was nice to feel like a goal had been achieved. I helped coordinate some of the listener evaluation session too. At the same time, we also evaluated internally on the process of working throughout the last few months on this project, looking ahead at the next on in March! Even from last Tuesday, while the last project was ongoing, I met with the RO team to start prepping for the final festival of Skimstone's 3 year Reaching Out programme. An...