Aki's Placement Blog

Things have deteriorated again in my personal life, to the extent that my work is affected. On the 14th and 16th I am in communication with Claire and Peter, who offer sympathy and support. As an organisation, Skimstone also offers personal support which I look to take up. Work-wise though, things are on hold essentially until New Year.  Looking back again on what I have already done though, progress is going well on the factual research I am doing on social media, though we are now looking at doing an animated songbook with the help of the in-house animator at Skimstone, instead of using issuu. I am now in the Comms Team, and while it is a bit difficult as I still haven't met a couple of the others involved, and Cristina is only working about one day a week at the moment, it gives me more chance to run with my ideas and cover more ground. I would like to see stronger engagement with the stories feature on Instagram, and am reassured that we will do this in the run up to the next p...

 December 8. Further planning on Who Holds The Torch. With the deadline coming up so tight before Holocaust Memorial Day, we have planned a timetable that increases steadily in business up to the event, whilst still allowing plenty of time for individual completion of projects. We have decided to do another radio show series, this time of three programmes about half an hour long. A key focus has been getting as broad a range of voices involved as possible, to allow for a global reach. With my limited experience in radio too, I feel that I can contribute meaningfully as I discuss radio technology potential with the musical and director team. Nii Kwartey Owoo is the radio manager, so he will be tech-ing the whole thing, but I try to provide some perspective for the broadcast too. My schedule is becoming very busy now, which I communicate to Peter and Claire.

 December 2. Zoom. ECHO artists. To further develop creative ideas we embarked on a creative inspiration exercise. This maybe would have worked better in person, as opposed to over zoom, but was still helpful in expanding the horizon of possibilities for pieces. Claire led an introspective mental sojourn down different memories relating to the Who Holds The Torch and Light in the Darkness themes. I found myself thinking of my mother, but the useful part of the exercise was that we were encouraged not to narrow things down to identifying one sole light, but instead focussing on the 'light' qualities of those people in our lives who hold the torch. Then, still with our eyes closed, we continued to do collective recalls of the words and feelings that were coming to us, all at random. This was actually very effective in building a patchwork of inspiration for creative practice, and helped to try and find the universal qualities that everyone can relate to in a very individual way -...

December 1. Zoom. Management team. Today was a very significant day, where my work has begun proper. I was introduced to everyone again, as an English Lit student with particular skills in marketing (especially Instagram), and how I'm looking forward to getting involved across the board, with the aim of gaining insights should I start my own company too. This time I made sure I kept the focus on the business and industry insights I wanted to gain, with my musical and theatrical experience supplementing that and coming second, so that I could really engage on the business level that I wanted. Recently I have been pitching quite a lot, and it is reminiscent of the sessions with Sascha! His tips are coming in handy here; particularly in engaging a virtual audience. I got to meet everyone in their business capacities today (where previously I have mostly met them informally or artistically). It was much clearer today that Claire Webster Saaremets (creative director and boss) was runnin...

 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 ...