Placement host: City of Literature

City of Literature have hosted multiple placements for Nottingham students. Paty shares why this has been so successful for them...

How long was your most recent placement for? 

"Our most recent University of Nottingham student placement is part of the
Nottingham Internship Scheme, so four days per week for four weeks."

Tell us a little about City of Literature…

"Our mission, as Nottingham City of Literature, is to build a better world with words. Our permanent designation as a UNESCO Creative City enables us to use the power of words to transform lives, create new opportunities and establish Nottingham as a leading destination for lovers of literature worldwide.

As part of this, we have a particular interest to engage young people aged 14-25 in all things literature."

What made you want to offer work placements?

"We are keen to support young people at the start of their careers. Youth voice is also key to our work, and we feel students contribute greatly to how we should be communicating with other young people in all our digital channels. We are a very small organisation with three staff members in our team, so any help we can get is greatly appreciated."

What kind of work do placement students do for you? 

"Most of our student placements work on digital communications, particularly social media. We also try to follow the students’ interest. Our most recent student was interested in long form writing and put together a couple of stories for our blog. We also launched our summer reading campaign Big City Reads during the placement, and had the student really engaged in supporting this."

Thinking about your most recent placement, what did the student personally bring to the project, in your view?

"They brought their own voice and ideas to how we may develop ways of communicating with other students and young people. Throughout the project we saw the student developing their own confidence and working really well independently, but also asking questions and keeping us updated with their own progress."

Would you recommend hosting a placement student? 

"I definitely recommend it."