What happens when you put a creative student into a colourful co working space, give her a list of upcoming workshops and access to a whole bunch of local business owners? A LOT of content, a few laughs, some behind-the-scenes shenanigans and hopefully, a pretty good introduction to what working in a creative small business actually looks like.
Last week, we welcomed a Year 11 student Sophia from CathWest Innovation College to The Creative Fringe for her work experience placement.
And while work experience is about giving students a taste of working life, we think it can be so much more than that. We like to make work experience meaningful, so rather than finding a pile of random jobs to keep a student busy, we create projects that give them the opportunity to actually get involved.
For Sophia, that meant diving into the creative side of The Fringe.
She helped create content for our upcoming workshops, worked with photos and video, played around with reels and carousels, and got a behind-the-scenes look at how we create content for our website and social media. Sophia was also on hand to sample our beautiful upcoming soy wax candle workshop – she was taken through the whole process to be able to give her feedback about the class and the process directly to the facilitator.
She also got to meet and interview our resident coworkers for social media and see the many different businesses operating from The Creative Fringe.
And that’s one of the great things about being here. There isn’t just one business happening inside our four walls. There are creatives, consultants, photographers, makers, art therapists, service providers, filmakers and entrepreneurs all doing their thing.
And here’s the thing… it works both ways.
Taking on a work experience student isn’t just about what we can teach them. It also gives us an opportunity to stop and look at our own business and processes. When you’ve been doing something for years, it’s easy to fall into routines. Having someone new around means answering questions, explaining why we do things a certain way and looking at our processes with fresh eyes. And fresh eyes are good for business.
Students bring curiosity, different ideas and a completely different perspective on the platforms and content they use every day. We get to share what we know. They bring what they know. And somewhere in the middle, there’s usually something pretty useful.
You can give a student a genuine glimpse into the reality of working life, while they give you the opportunity to question, rethink and refresh some of the things you’ve been doing on autopilot.
And sometimes, they just bring a whole lot of energy into the building.
Sophia jumped into whatever we threw her way this last week, getting involved in content creation, participating in a creative workshop, video, photography and the wonderfully unpredictable world of The Creative Fringe and our resident coworkers..
There were laughs. There were a few shenanigans. There was A LOT of content. (Thank you!) We hope she left with a better idea of what it’s like to work in a creative small business, along with a few new skills in her toolkit. It was a pleasure to have her here.
For us, it was a great reminder that work experience really can work both ways. Students get a taste of the working world. Businesses get fresh eyes.