I’m David. In September, I’ll be going in to my 4th year of studying Community Music. I’m currently finishing the 5th week of my 10-week internship with the Development Trust. The title of my internship is “Strategic Digital Review”, which entails putting forward ideas and consulting on many different areas in the digital realm. Last year I was lucky enough to get an internship with the Elphinstone Institute, during their North Atlantic Fiddle Convention – I had a great experience, so I decided to apply to some other programmes this year.
My Project
I’m helping with the creative direction of a few areas of the Development Trust – mainly web presence and social media presence.
So far, I’ve made some prototypes of what a new development trust website could look like, and it’s been met with positive thoughts from the director and my line manager. They now know what they want from their microsite. However, implementation into the University’s web ecosystem will be up to the web team, after my internship is completed.
You can see my website prototype here
Additionally, I’ve been pushing for more activity on their social media channels – as making people aware of the amazing work the Development Trust is doing is vital. Just recently they reached and breached their target of £4.5m for their cancer research appeal.
One of my goals is to simplify the donation process. I believe making it a frictionless experience would encourage users to donate to the amazing work the Development Trust is doing.
Why I chose this internship
For a while, I’ve wanted to get some further experience in creative direction and digital content management. Outside of this, I run a record label, podcast series, party series, and artist collective – and I wanted to get some experience to reflect the skills that I have gained for running these different creative agencies. I’ve always been a tech person – building websites and computers at a young age – predestined to be the family’s tech support. “Community Music” doesn’t necessarily instil the most tech-savvy vibes to an employer, so I thought it would be a great internship to show the knowledge and skills I have outside of my University course. I’m a strong believer that it doesn’t matter what specific degree you do, if you’ve got the drive to get further experience.
The Trust
I’m in a great office space with Lorna, who’s in charge of marketing and Laura, who’s in charge of donor stewardship. They’ve been extremely helpful during my time here – and so has the entire team. It’s been a very friendly office, and I quickly met everyone.
I couldn’t recommend the University’s internship programme more. Both of my experiences have been great. I was pretty scared of full-time work, since I hadn’t enjoyed any job before these experiences. However, after these two internships, I’m now looking forward to the job hunt after graduating. If you’re thinking on applying for an internship – go for it.
Thanks for reading,
David
