It has been a month since I interned at CIDA. It has been
such a great time that I learnt a lot of things. I remember that when in one
lecture of the Analysing Cultural and Creative Industries module, we learnt
that creative workers have to keep updating their skills in order to survive in
the industry. From this one month experience, I find it quite true. I have
leant three different softwares by myself during this month--- almost one in a
week!
my first design- the rate card for cr8net 2014
Cultural and Creative Industries are abounding with small
business enterprises, for which it is crucial to keep the cost low. For this reason, they need to DIY everything,
and thus the employees might be given different task which they may have not
encountered before. Take cr8net for example. It is a big conference held by
CIDA aiming to bring academics, creative workers and companies together. Last
year, even Richard Florida lectured at this conference. It was quite shocking
for me when I found that such a big conference was planned and organised by
less than ten people. I was asked to design the sponsorship brochure for 2014
cr8net. At first I felt really nervous and confused--- though I have the
experience designing mobile phone themes, I consider myself as an amateur in
design. On the top of that, I have not used Indesign before, which is a
professional design software. I was not sure whether I was able to fulfil this
task. However, panic cannot solve anything. So I decided to learn it by myself.
I took two days to research online, trying to find out how other companies’
sponsorship brochure look like. After that I watched several tutorials on
youtube --- thanks to prosumer culture, there are thousands of free tutorials
online. Finally my design of the coversheet was approved by toks, which made me
quite relieved!
11 versions in all!
This feature of creative work can be viewed as a double
edged sword. On the one hand, as Gill (2007) points out, a number of creative
workers complain that they have to spend a lot of time on updating their skills
in order not to be kicked out in their work. Though creative workers may seem
free and have less pressure than workers in other industries, in fact the
learning of new skills takes up long hours in their personal time. On the other
hand, from my point of view, this is an excellent chance to push yourself to
learn new things. If there is no competition and no challenge at work, people
will hardly grow better. Once they lost their job, it will be hard for them get
employed again.
Interning at CIDA is not only about learning new skills.
Because the organisation is small, people from all departments sit in the same
office. I am always interested in marketing and am curious about how companies
approaching their potential sponsors and customers. This internship provides me
a great opportunity because I can hear Paul making cold calls almost every day
;p I find it really challenging to do the marketing job because you have to
have not only courage, but also knowledge about the project. You need to answer
the questions immediately without hesitation, otherwise people will not trust
you and give you further details. Though I love challenges, I find myself lack
of confidence communicating with people in English. Thus I deleted ‘marketing’
from my dream job list after this internship. But still, I truly admire those
who are good at marketing. J
Because of the problem of accommodation and my dissertation,
I have to give up this internship now. I feel so sorry and I really hope to
stay to learn more. The people here are really nice, and you are encouraged to
solve the problems on your own in order to develop your personal skills. I will
never forget this experience which has great influence on my future career.
