Hi there!
In this post I'm going to talk about my time as a Creative Events Intern at Abertay University and what I learned from the experience.
First some context, I studied Game Design and Production at Abertay and during the final weeks of writing my dissertation I got accepted for this graduate role. So, the inital few weeks of the job were a tad more stressful but once my work was submitted it all cleared up.
Now onto my first assignments.
The Digital Graduate Show
What was it?
The Digital Grad Show was a multi-part degree show for the School of Design and Informatics at Abertay University.
It would end up consisting of a website showcasing student work and a live event held at the V&A Dundee.
What Did I do?
My work for the grad show mostly consisted of working alongside the web development team to ensure that all the student content was submitted on time for the website going live alongside the show.
Several hundred emails and the odd Teams call later, we managed to get the content from over 100 students in place for the site going live.
At the same time, I had to also screen each students work and determine who would be a good fit for several extra opportunities such as behind the scenes videos and promotional material.
You can see all of this here!
I also took part in several site visits and meetings with the production team for the Digital Graduate Live Show at the V&A. On the night, I played a supporting role by briefing student event helpers and directing guests.
It was a blast (and ever so slightly weird) to be working on my own graduation event. I had to learn fast while on the job but I really enjoyed the challenges of managing aspects of such a large event.
The Slessor Garden Poster Exhibit
What was it?
The Slessor Garden Poster exhibit would, as the name suggest be a physical poster exhbition of student at Dundee's Slessor Gardens. The event would also include student led tours for the public.
What did I do?
This was my second assignement and ran alonside the Grad Show. The exhibit would consist of 18 posters and I had to select the 18 students whose work would be presented.
After scrolling through over 100 Google Drives, I created a shortlist and got the posters sent over to the printers for installation.
While curating the work for this exhibit, I wanted to ensure that I selected work that gave an idea of the diversity of the student body at Abertay and think that I managed to come up with the most equitable mix that I could.
All that was left was now to organise the actual the event.
Prep for this included working with Abertay's Widening Participation Officer, as the original plan was to have students from local schools come to the exhibit for tours. This would fall through as the event coincided with schools closing for the summer.
However, we created a new plan. We opened the event to the public and had 2 of the exhibiting students give tours, the first of which was televised on STV (Here's Shanna, who gave the televised tour)!
The exhibition turned out to be quite successful! We had a full day of tours and lots of positive comments from attendees. Not bad for an event that came close to being cancelled several times!
DARE ACADEMY 2021
What was it?
The DARE ACADEMY is an annual game development competition held by Abertay University where teams compete to create and present a game over a 4 week period during the summer. During this period, teams are given the chance to attend meetings and workshops with members of the games industry for feedback and advice.
What did I do?
Throughout the competition I was in charge of scheduling all of the meetings with industry mentors and communicating the timetable with the teams. I also ran the Discord channel for all teams, this allowed them to have a space to collaborate, ask each other questions and generally feel more like a community due to everyone working remotely.
Once the 4 week "hot housing" period was over I helped to organise the DARE finals which would be held at the V&A Dundee.
This time I was the main point of contact between the V&A and Abertay. This involved attending a site visit and working through catering and logistics with the team at the museum.
We were to be given the Tatha restaurant for the evening but we ran into an issue where there weren't enough power sockets to have the teams demonstrate each of their games. So we managed to negotiate the use of an extra room that better fit our needs (See the above image).
This was the first time where I was in charge of organising a big event and I think I managed to do pretty well. We managed to conclude the competition with a celebration commensurate with the effort that the teams put into their games.
In the header image of this post you can see me (the one with red hair, floral shirt and lanyard) and all the teams on the night. It was a genuinely heart warming and satisfying moment, to have gone on this journey with all of them and I couldn't be more proud of what they all managed to achieve in such a short space of time.
Commenti