Work Experience Reflections

Each year Doorstep Arts welcomes lots of young people to undertake a work experience placement with us. We know that work experience can be useful to young people in exploring what the world of work looks like. While many young people go to organisations that work a 9am-5pm workday, placements with us tend to be a little different with activity taking place across the day and across the week – many of our groups meet in the evenings and on the weekends.

June and July have been busy months for the team so having extra pairs of hands and being able to share our ways of working is an important part of the year for the team. This year we’ve asked those who have been on placement to share their experiences…

Hi, we are Lyla and Tianna, and this week we came to Doorstep arts for our work experience. We enjoyed meeting new people, helping out with youth groups and going to the TASN symposium event.

We took part in a wide range of interesting activities, from attending meetings to taking part in performing art clubs, which gave us the opportunity to chat with kids our age with similar interests to ours.

A highlight from this week was going to a symposium event that focused on finding ways to incorporate more of the arts into schools across Torbay. At the event, we took pictures, had conversations with different people that work with young people like us and joined in with workshops and sessions (including a really fun drum work shop). We also ate lots of delicious cake!

We think that we were probably most surprised by the schedule. We found that we were at our work experience a lot in the evenings, and we often did not need to work as much during the day- which is quite different to the school day that we are used to! 🙂

Overall, we think this week has been very beneficial to us both as we have learnt new skills and we have found out more about what it is really like to work in the arts community. This experience has helped us to figure out what we may like to do in the future shaping the pathways for possible collage and sixth-form options. One final thing that has changed this week is after going to the Tuesday DAS seniors I (Tianna) am looking into joining DAS as it was a very opening and fun community during the session.

Finally, we would both like to say a massive thank you to the doorstep arts team for welcoming us with open arms this week and a massive thank you to Erin and Polly for making this week possible.

Written by Sophie:

For me, I would have to say my favourite part was having the opportunity to work at Homelands Primary School, particularly with the SEND students in their garden space at lunch time. Prior to doing this work at Homelands, I was relatively unsure on what I wanted to delve into in terms of drama going forward. However, working with the children, especially those in the SEND group that we did gave me a really strong insight into possible aspirations and I found it the arguably most useful part of what we did with Doorstep as it allowed me to find myself more and gave me aspirations of potentially working with children going forward.

I think they are in quite the unique position in that they are able to work so closely with schools and students to create engaging and inspiring drama and art accessible to so many different types of people. Working with Polly and Harriet at Homelands Primary school also allowed me a strong look into how different approaches can be to teaching the arts and engaging with students of different age brackets, allowing me to feel confident not only to engage in their workshops along with the young children but also allowing me freedom to discover and think about how I might want to teach and engage with children in the future. I found it particularly useful as without Doorstep I wouldn’t have discovered how much I loved working with young children and engaging with them not only as a performer but allowing them to explore both themselves and the arts in a way that is unique to them and their experience. I would recommend doing work experience with Doorstep if, like me, you’re unsure of where you want to go with your passion for drama and the creative arts.

Written by Charlie:

Hi, I’m Charlie. Work experience at Doorstep Arts has been such an incredible experience for me. It combined two of my loves, theatre and working with children. My future plans are mostly centered around these two things so Doorstep was the perfect option for me as I’d experience both. My time here has been so eye opening and has really made me realise the depth of my love for working in theatre and with kids.

My favourite parts have to have been our primary school visits with Polly. Our first was an hour at Brixham Primary school and their after school club group who were working on their dance routine. Joining in with them and seeing how much they enjoyed the session was really great. The arts is something that I feel is underappreciated in schools, especially primary school, so to see the joy that it can bring just brought a sense of joy to me and solidified the fact that kids really do need the arts to thrive and have fun. It was a really great session and I wanted for it to continue forever.

The second primary school visit however was even better. We worked with kids who were a lot younger than the first group, nursery and reception kids, who were the most adorable and well behaved kids I’ve ever seen. During the day we did some dances with them, played ribbon games and accompanied them at lunch time too. Being able to actually see what it would be like to work in a school environment was really great for me and working with the different age ranges made me realise the ages of the kids I’d like to work with in the future. We also worked with a number of SEND children as well. That experience in itself was so extremely rewarding. To see a non-verbal child be able to communicate through the arts and express themselves, whether that was just simply likes and dislikes was just a beautiful experience. Working in the primary school environments in particular brought me so much joy and taught me some pretty important things about not only the way kids work but how I work with them which is pretty incredible.

Written by Chloe:

Hi! I’m Chloe and I’m working with Doorstep for my work experience week in Paignton. Tasks have ranged from working on the website and the digital side of things, to visiting a primary school to deliver creative arts/dance sessions. I’ve really enjoyed working with Doorstep because it’s a very friendly and welcoming environment. So far I’ve learned a lot, and being surrounded by creative people & opportunities has been inspiring and fun! Monday consisted primarily of office work, where we got to see an insight into how Doortsep is run and meet the people behind it. We also started to source some materials to create a data collector for future events. On Tuesday I went to a Primary school where we did some sessions with different age groups. It was lovely to meet the children who were already so creative at such a young age, and I found the experience really fulfilling as I could see the positive impact the sessions had on the kids.

On Wednesday we worked on writing an anti-racism policy for the company and completed some digital tasks such as updating the website with local upcoming events/productions. Thursday consisted of storyboarding for an upcoming project with the Saturday drama group, and in the afternoon we made an Instagram post to be scheduled. I like getting to experience the ‘behind the scenes’ aspect, as I find it interesting to learn these new skills that I otherwise
wouldn’t have done!!

On Friday we had a look at the process of buying show rights and how to apply for them. We also got to make some promotional TikToks including an office tour video for Doorstep which was super fun!

Overall I really enjoyed this week. The staff are incredibly lovely and it was helpful getting to see how things are run in theatre groups and the arts in general as it is something I might want to do in the future.

Written by Amey;

Hi, I’m Amey. I am at Doorstep Arts for my work experience. I’ve been with Doorstep arts for over 7 years as Polly had come to my school for a while and I thought it was a fun experience so I joined. While looking for work experience I realised I could do it here as I found it from other students doing their work experience during my groups session times. On Monday, the first thing we did was to sit through a ‘Heartbeat’ meeting that the DAS team does every two weeks. Most of it went over my head, however it was good to hear things I could partially understand and how things are sorted and talked about in real jobs. After lunch, we helped to look through the attic (to find hats as it was Polly’s birthday) and later we also found some materials to use to make pockets for a data collector about what ages view the performances. We also wrote transcripts of people’s thoughts of the last event with DAS and Life On The Edge, not only listening to what people’s varied thoughts on the projects were, but also understanding the public point of view on the pop up show. Some people thoroughly enjoyed it and others admitted it wasn’t their cup of tea.

On Wednesday, the first thing we did was to update Doorstep Arts What’s On page on the website to show what creative arts events are happening near to people in the area. We added: Legally Blonde JR, Six, Just Macbeth, Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake. Then we gathered information for PYA England “Meet the Membership” social media series by finding pictures from different projects.

On Thursday, we did story boarding for the Saturday drama group for their performance of Jack and the Beanstalk. I wrote a small snippet of a scene where Jack
meets the giant and his family. We also created a video for instagram to promote DYT’s Training and Rep Companies so that more young people can adapt their skills in the creative world.

On Friday, we designed 4 activities for the Teddy Bears Picnic at Torre Abbey in August, considering the access needs like wheelchair users and neurodiversity adjustments. We had to research the costs of other events to work out what the ticket prices would be and then create a poster to promote the workshop and activities to the public. Then we had to work on condensed scripts for Sweeney Todd and The Addams Family. I chose to do Sweeney Todd and edited the original script to make it able to be around 30-45 minutes long as well as including 3 main songs – “No Place Like London”, “Worst Pies In London” and “Johanna (Anthony’s Ballad). After lunch, Polly explained how to apply for the show rights to be able to actually do the chosen show, otherwise we would not have the permission. This was a jam packed week.