Could you provide a work placement for a Nottingham student?

Graduates are often faced with a riddle; employers want them to have a degree, but also want them to have demonstrable experience working in a professional setting.

How can our students build up their work experience while they are focusing on their degree? The most impactful answer is through a work placement.

This is where the alumni community can (and do) help - by generously offering placements to current Nottingham students. Matthew Lax (Music, 2003) from Symphonia Viva explains why he provided a placement and student Ken Zheng shares how he benefitted.

In the Faculty of Arts, the team has been busy developing a broad range of placement offerings to boost students' employability skills. These often have no financial cost to our hosts, just their time and support to make a difference to our students.

One such example is Derby-based Sinfonia Viva, where Matthew Lax (Music, 2003) enabled then 2nd year student Ken Zheng to undertake a 60 hour placement module over eight weeks in February and March this year at the organisation, which is the Orchestra of the East Midlands.

Matthew Lax: Sinfonia Viva - why we offer a placement

"Our placement gives students a fantastic glimpse of the variety of roles available within organisations in the arts. They have the opportunity to experience an ‘office’ environment, as well as working on events alongside our delivery teams.

"While they don’t work on every role within the organisation, students get to meet other staff and even just learning what departments exist can be eye-opening. We have had several students who have since gone on to gain employment within arts administration and I know that their experience on our placement will have played a significant part of their relevant experience on their CV for those jobs. We’ve even employed one student ourselves for a few years!

"Of course, with any placement scheme there’s going to be a time commitment on the part of the host, but I have not found this burdensome. There are probably a few hours of time setting up the placement each year, from confirming the brief, to shortlisting/interviewing students and confirming the placement schedule.

"Then there’s the on-the-job training. Like any new starter you must show them how to do tasks, but I’ve always found the students to be good at working independently and coming to you with questions, not requiring constant supervision. I’m always giving students tasks that I would have to do myself otherwise, so I easily claw back the time spent setting up the placement and training, and having an extra pair of hands at events is really helpful.

"I always try to provide a meaningful placement for the student which gives them something they can use on their CV as getting a foot through the door is a real challenge in the arts and I would heartily recommend other organisations consider hosting students."

Ken Zheng - my placement story

My module offered work experience with different companies in various industries to give students a range of choices and allow them to pick the one they are most interested in. This is how I found Sinfonia Viva.

Who is Sinfonia Viva?

Sinfonia Viva is a charity-based orchestral organisation. They primarily perform in Derby and Nottingham and have many skillful international musicians who help with meaningful projects for both the next generation and elderly people.

As the quote I greatly admire by Thomas Carlyle says, "Music is well said to be the speech of angels." I am proud to be part of this organisation through my work experience.

What was your placement like?

To be honest, I was very nervous at the beginning. However, my host gave me a very warm welcome, showed me around the office, introduced me to the team, and then took me to my seat and assigned tasks for me to do.

Throughout my work experience, I helped tidy up music scores and print them out for the musicians, set up stages for performances, change PowerPoint slides for the audience to follow the lyrics and sing along, assist pianists by turning score pages during performances and many more interesting tasks.

Most of the work seemed easy, but sometimes it's not about the job you are doing; it's about how your job can affect the entire project. By participating in these projects, I developed strong communication and problem-solving skills, as well as many other useful abilities. Using these skills, I had lovely conversations with many musicians and conductors from different projects throughout my work experience, and I believe this experience will help me in the future.

Final thoughts

This has been an incredible and very important work experience for me. I would like to give a massive thanks to Sinfonia Viva and the Art Replacement team for giving me the opportunity to have this experience.

To summarise my work experience with Sinfonia Viva, I would love to say that I enjoyed working with the team on different projects and learning more about the behind-the-scenes activities. In the end, I would like to say that maybe in the future I can be part of the Sinfonia Viva team.

Provide a placement for our Arts students

Our placement programme offers opportunities throughout the year so they are flexible to accommodate the needs of the business as well as our students’ availability. Placements can be between 5 and 10 hours per week and can last for 7 – 15 weeks.

If you’d like to discuss the possibility of hosting a placement student, please don’t hesitate to contact Hayley Revill, Faculty of Arts Placements Manager.