Turn back the clock to January 2018. It’s a grim time of year, all I can think about is PhD, I’m in danger of developing tunnel vision… but at the back of my mind is the placement programme I learned about at the CHASE Induction event and via Steven Colburn’s talk during the Encounters conference at Essex University.
Have I learned a lot by doing a placement? Yes, an unbelievable amount.
Would I recommend fitting one into your PhD? Wholeheartedly.
In April 2018 I began working at the National Centre for Writing on the Noirwich Crime Writing Festival. My role was part time and became full time in the weeks leading up to the festival, which took place in Norwich 13-16 September. The placement wasn’t advertised via CHASE, instead the role was specifically created this year for the Noirwich festival, in consultation with NCW, UEA and Dr Steven Colburn at CHASE. If you’re thinking about a placement, then consider tailor-making one that will compliment your research. I’m currently doing a Creative-Critical PhD at UEA on contemporary crime fiction series (books not TV) and I had the opportunity to work on a crime writing festival. The perfect fit.
My placement was with Communications at NCW, the team responsible for marketing and promotion across all media. The National Centre for Writing has a packed programme of events, conferences and festivals throughout the year, but my role was to focus solely on Noirwich. I worked mainly from my home in South Norfolk. This was necessary to begin with as Dragon Hall – NCW’s headquarters – was undergoing construction work and there wasn’t desk space. As time went on, I continued being based mostly at home and we kept fully in touch via email, phone, regular meetings; in the weeks before the festival, I worked for longer spells in the NCW office, to help with the final build-up. Your preference may be to work at an organisation rather than partly from home, and there are plenty such opportunities through the placement programme.
What did I do during my placement? I began by producing a brief overview of all the UK crime/literary festivals, to establish where Noirwich sat in relation to these. I then helped develop a competition targeted at book groups, the latter being a major part of the current literary landscape. Next I helped generate and edit the ‘copy’ or written content of the Noirwich website and also the printed festival brochure, liaising on the layout too: the Programming team had devised a terrific lineup of authors, appearing in a series of themed events; in Comms we worked on how to convey the content of these events in a way that would appeal to the public and also capture the intellectual aims – Noirwich is a partnership between NCW and UEA, the intention of everyone involved being that the festival will entertain but also engage with cutting-edge ideas about crime fiction and contemporary society. I commissioned a series of 14 blogs from the festival authors, devising topics such as ‘What is a hybrid writer?’ and ‘Activism and literature’, liaising with the authors directly or via publishers, and editing and giving feedback on the different texts; these were published at intervals on the Noirwich website, which helped promote the festival programme, but also added to a growing online archive of crime-fiction research, accessible to a world-wide digital audience (see https://noirwich.co.uk/blog/).
In the months leading up to the festival, I became increasingly involved in the Noirwich social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. I researched newspaper articles on crime fiction and posted links, relating their content to the Noirwich festival programme; through this process I learned how to engage an audience via the limited word count of a tweet. I also did tweets and Facebook posts about the blogs I’d commissioned, picking out quotes that I felt would capture interest and make the Noirwich posts stand out amidst the wealth of competing material on social media. I learned the importance of ‘good visuals’ on Twitter, and took photographs of Noirwich-related displays in the Millennium Library and Norwich book shops etc, tagging in relevant parties and encouraging retweets, which all became a way of spreading the word and growing Noirwich’s physical and digital audience. The festival events were staged in different venues across successive days, and I took photographs of each location with the Noirwich brochure in the foreground, and then created a five-part Twitter thread, with a roll call of venues and speakers, which contained all the relevant Twitter handles – this may not seem much to the digitally literate, but for me it was a big achievement, as I only joined Twitter in April, and I’d reached a point where I felt competent to maximise its potential and be creative.
From the Thursday to the Sunday of the festival, I was responsible for the Noirwich Twitter account, taking photographs and live tweeting from fifteen events, retweeting relevant tweets that were appearing via notifications, responding to comments, and doing tweets that captured the vibrant atmosphere during the festival. I also had the opportunity to do podcast interviews with two of the authors, and in the coming months these will appear on the NCW and Noirwich websites. Back in April, when I first started my placement on Noirwich, the Twitter account had 590 followers; the day after the festival ended we topped 1000, and I feel proud that I helped make that happen. Twitter allows Noirwich to engage with the physical audience and the authors who attend the festival, but it also reaches a huge online audience who can benefit from the sharing of ideas about crime fiction, as well as the broadcasting of articles, blogs, podcasts, all of which helps spread the research into the crime genre that is happening thanks to the partnership between NCW and UEA.
Are there challenges to doing a placement? My only challenge was how to share my time between two roles; there were several months when I tried doing too much PhD, on top of the half week I devoted to the placement. I had to learn to scale back and not feel ‘guilty’. Going part-time on the PhD means part-time and not two-thirds time.
Am I glad I did it? Absolutely yes! Thanks to the National Centre for Writing I learned lots of new skills but I also had a really enjoyable time working with lovely people on a shared endeavour. I’ve been going to the Noirwich Crime Writing Festival since it was founded in 2014. To be part of this year’s Noirwich was a joy and a privilege. I am hugely grateful to everyone at NCW for this brilliant and fantastically worthwhile experience. I am also extremely grateful to CHASE for making this opportunity possible.
Considering a placement?
Do it.
You’ll be amazed by what you can achieve.