Name: Katherine Beverley
Job Title: Arts Engagement & Outreach Manager
Pathways Programme: Pathways to Arts, Culture & Heritage 2025
Organisation Summary: The Octagon Theatre and Westlands Entertainment Venue in Yeovil, are two central community hubs for local residents, offering access to arts, culture and film for residents across the South West.
The Octagon & Westlands stage over 230 performances each year, from comedy to music, plays to dance, and our legendary pantomime, bringing the magic of live performance to people across the South West. We run a wide variety of programmes offering opportunities to take part and experience the joy of the creative arts. In doing so, we are able to provide more opportunities for our communities to watch, take part and benefit from arts and cultural activities.
We deliver programmes and activities that benefit health and wellbeing, enrich learning and education in and outside school that inspires and celebrates young talent. Creating work that will support local artists and tell ālocal storiesā. Our work seeks to improve inclusion and remove barriers, whatever they may be, so that everyone is able to enjoy and benefit from the creative arts.
How was your experience of hosting a Pathways intern?
Our intern was very hard working, polite, inquisitive and engaging. They brought a positive ‘can-do’ attitude to the role and their passion for the arts and improving access shone. They were able to suggest ideas and help us find solutions to project delivery. They wrote a wonderful blog about their week and experience which is a joy to read. Blogs have become an important part of capturing our work as it develops and itās fair to say that hosting an intern has cemented that.
Given the Professional Pathways internship is 35 hours in total, how would you recommend ensuring both you and your intern gain as much as possible from the experience?
The week flew by for both us as an organisation and for our intern. We caught up with our intern ahead of their internship with us so that we could gain a better understanding of their interests and what they were hoping to get out of their week with us; this helped us shape our offer and pair our intern on projects which would be of the most benefit to them and ultimately to us too. Again when our intern started, we started their week with a tour of our venue and introducing them to the rest of the team so that they could feel at ease and welcome here. We then went through their personal goals for the week and discussed how these could be achieved. During the week we were fortunate enough to be able to provide our intern with on-the-job hands-on experience of running events and office/developmental project work, which kept the week varied and gave insight into the various aspects of the role. We rounded up our week with time for feedback and to evaluate the week with our intern to understand how their knowledge of the industry had grown and improved.
Why would you recommend hosting an intern via Professional Pathways?
If there are tasks you need support with; if you have a programme you are proud of; if you genuinely care about talent & career development then a student is a perfect fit. They donāt need to be studying a creative subject to work in a creative industries organisation and in fact maybe itās better if they donāt because they have a different objectivity. What a student will give you is a sense of perspective that is unobscured by complexities of life and work politics. Theyāll give a helpful naivety that provides honest input and fresh reading of impact. Theyāll also bring energy and willingness to work outside of learned behaviour or expected parameters. Students have a hunger to learn that can genuinely influence their own career/life decisions too which is exciting. As a host organisation you can play an important role on someoneās journey.