Since 2015, I’ve been a mentor in the Business Career Mentor Programme at the University of South Australia. This is “an innovative scheme that pairs students and recent graduates with experienced business professionals to enhance employability and leadership skills.”
Each year, I’m matched with a UniSA student interested in working in events, tourism or arts management. Through monthly meetings, we discuss the student’s post-study goals and create plans for gaining hands-on experience.
I do my best to pass on the wisdom I’ve gleaned from a somewhat meandering career of 14+ years in these fields. I’ve gotten value from these monthly meetings with student mentees too. They’ve helped me to articulate my skills and knowledge, plus reflect on my own personal growth and learning from my work over time.
Below are tips I give each year as a mentor, which may help others on their emerging arts and events careers.
PS. If you have questions about taking part as a mentor, let me know!
Networking Events
- Wear a ‘prop’ as an easy conversation starter and to make you memorable later (eg. badge, remark-worthy necklace, tote bag with slogan/festival logo, tshirt from an event).
- Always keep a space in a conversation group, like a horseshoe or a ‘Pacman’ shape for an extra person to join.
- Be that person who welcomes others into your conversation. You’ll be appreciated!
- Get okay with that squirmy feeling when a conversation has ended and you’re left on your own. Don’t rush.
- Work out your exit strategies in advance for when you’re stuck talking to people for too long.
Networking One-on-One
- Considering asking contacts out for coffee to pick their brains, like ‘mini mentoring sessions’. More senior workers will often be willing to meet someone who has demonstrated curiosity and well-thought-out questions in a pitch email; or may be able to suggest someone else in their organisation who might be suited to having a chat.
- Search out people in the organisations or industry you want to work in. Say that you are interested in finding out how they went about getting into their role and ask if they’d be willing to meet for a coffee.
- Show that you’ve done your research. Check their LinkedIn profiles in advance or search for their work online; make (non-creepy) reference to a relevant role they had, suggesting how their work links to something you’ve studied and you’d like to hear how that topic is applied practically.
- Be respectful of their time. Make sure to be prepared with some questions; be on time and be brief; pay for their coffee too.
- At the end, ask them if they can recommend anyone else for you to meet for a different perspective. Be sure to followup and thank them after your meeting.
Online Presence
- Make sure to keep your publicly visible versions of Facebook, Instagram etc reasonably tidy. Think grandma-appropriate. It can be useful to include words about your work in your FB bio.
- Keep your LinkedIn up to date, with good intro description.
- Consider buying your own domain name and creating a simple website (which can act as part of your portfolio); or at least having a redirect to LinkedIn.
Job Research
- Use a website “change detection” alert service to monitor career pages for job postings (eg. Visual Ping).
- When you see interesting jobs, save the position descriptions for your files, so you can see what skills you’d need to develop to get future roles.
- Having other job descriptions on file can also help for good wording to borrow when doing your own job applications.
- Some places to look for arts/events jobs:
- Festival and Event Staff Network – Facebook group
- ArtsHub.com.au – has free student membership
Useful Skills
- Learn different software and tools including:
- Excel and Google spreadsheets
- Google Drive, Dropbox storage
- Trello (or Asana)
- Basic graphic design, eg. with Canva
- If you don’t know how to do something yet, aim to find out online eg. with quick YouTube tutorial.
- Don’t come to your manager without at least 1-2 suggestions of ways you think a particular problem could be solved.
Courses (free)
- Free online classes for independent producers – Milke
- Lynda.com aka LinkedIn Learning – free with public library membership. Great for learning lots of software.
- “Physical Theatre: Exploring the Slap” – Meyerhold’s form of physical theatre on FutureLearn
- “Arts & Culture Strategy” – University of Pennsylvania on Coursera
- “Leading Innovation in Arts & Culture” – Vanderbilt University on Coursera
- “Managing the Arts”- Goethe Institute (view videos from course)
News and Resources
- Enews with helpful links
- ArtsHub.com.au – free student membership
- Milke – independent producing & artist news
- Theatre Network Australia
- Arts Industry Council of SA
- MEAA – Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance
- APAM – Australian Performing Arts Network
- Podcasts
- Intel podcast – Australia Council
- Run the Show podcast – Milke