Rebecca's Work Experience

Hello my name is Rebecca and I spent a week at the Poetry Society helping out with the Rise Londonwide Youth Slam Championships. I’m writing to tell you what happens behind the scenes and about my work experience.

On my first day I met with Joelle Taylor the co-ordinator of the competitions. She explained to me what I would be doing this week. I was a little bit shocked because I thought I was just going to help out in the office. As my first day progressed I had tackled with the printer, which didn’t want to work and had learn how to un-jam the photocopier. Who said that office work wasn’t physical?

The next day I returned to the Poetry Society office and after a few hours I was off in a taxi to City Hall where the RISE Londonwide Youth Championship semi –finals took place. After setting up in the Chambers, the room in which the competition was taking place, I learnt what I was going to be doing to help out Joelle while she was on stage emceeing. I was going to take the place of stage manager while Joelle’s real stage manager was away

At around five o’clock the competitors arrived for a technical run through. This is where I had a chance to take note on what microphones they wanted and how they wanted the space they where performing in. After their rehearsal I took them down to the green room where they could eat, drink and get interviewed by a pod-caster. You can hear these on the website.

The performance night went really well. I managed to do my job with out any faults and the performers where amazing so many of them had a meaning of truth in their words. I came to realise how serious racial discrimination, gun and knife crime is in London. It opened my eyes to stuff I have never really understood. I knew of knife crime in my area where I live but I never really thought much of it other than it is wrong.

But when Amanda Attram (the sister of Eugene Attram who was stabbed and murdered last year) came onto stage to talk about her experience of losing her brother and explained how wrong knife crime is, I wanted to get myself involved in stopping all this anger and hate that has been generated over of the years.

The following day I had to leave early but I helped in setting up the prizes for the performers and helped with some of the technical rehearsals.

On Thursday I heard about the competition and how well it went I was so upset not be there. After an hour at the office me and Joelle went down to the Royal Court Theatre where there was an event organised by The Human Rights Watch. Joelle, Sic Sense , Tom Donovon , Chinedum Nwonkonkor, Pace , Chris Preddie and Korbel all performed in the second half of the event and really livened up the audience they were all brilliant and I was proud to say “yeah I’m with that lot over there”.

Over all it was a pleasure to work with everyone at the Poetry Society from Joelle, all the office staff and of course all the people that performed at the Rise Championship. I've learnt a lot from this week especially how to get lost by using the tube and trains. I would like to thank Joelle and the work experience organiser for getting and letting me work here.